Oh yikes, JK Rowling just made the last kind of joke I ever would have expected from her

JK Rowling has been spotted on X (where else?) again, this time making a joke that’s sure to ruin any childhood fantasies you had about Harry Potter and his spellcaster pals. 

The author, who seemingly has ample time to type away at anything besides quality material, took to her preferred platform to make an unexpected joke that involves Christmas and… suggestively shaped gifts. Rowling made the quip in response to the X page Dame Katy Denise, a notorious troll account dedicated to making a mockery out of trans people and causes.

Yep, instead of doing the honorable thing and moving to a faraway place to enjoy the spoils of Harry Potter in complete solitude (ideally without access to X), Rowling is instead engaging with transphobic social media accounts, such is the TERF way.   

Interacting with that account (as she so often does) is crude enough, and Rowling brought the whole ordeal to new lows when responding to an image of a suspiciously-shaped Christmas gift that Denise supposedly sent to her vicar. “It’s really rude to publicly regift presents I’ve given you,” the author wrote. I guess the implication is that these two share sex toys, which is not only rife with hygiene concerns but also evidence that their comedy chops are nowhere near worthy of a stand-up special, which would probably be called Punching Down. 

In response, Denise joked about the fake gift Rowling had given last year, a bottle of perfume with the name Novichok Salisbury — a nod to the 2018 poisonings of Sergei and Yulia Skripal. You don’t need a grade-A in potions class to know that Rowling obviously didn’t receive that gag gift, or to know that the gag isn’t that funny, either. While the author of a beloved children’s book series making sexual jokes feels icky all over, Rowling’s obsession with people’s anatomy is at this point unsurprising. 

Just this week, she again joined in on a so-called ‘joke’ made by Denise on X, in which she mentioned the words “shenis” and “hanging ovaries,” adding to a long history of controversial comments about trans people. Sometimes, as was the case for Imane Khelif, the people aren’t even trans, but are presumed to be trans and subsequently used as a pawn by Rowling to incite a culture war at the community’s expense. Rowling was later named in a cyberbullying lawsuit filed by the Olympic champion boxer (Punching Up, one might say), joining the equally esteemed company of Elon Musk.

It’s not yet known whether anatomical jokes will find their way into HBO’s upcoming Harry Potter reboot series, on which Rowling serves as an executive producer. The show, which will dedicate a season to each of the Harry Potter books, has yet to announce any casting details, but it is slated to arrive sometime in 2026. In the meantime, Rowling will no doubt continue to fire off harmful posts on social media, to the point where I hope she conceives of some kind of spell that renders once-beloved authors completely silent. That might be wishful thinking, but for the author of a franchise about flying cars, there are surely a few spells left up her sleeve.