J.K. Rowling might not be concerned with her legacy, but legions of fans have struggled with their adoration Harry Potter in the wake of her TERF-like behavior. Since the early 2010s, the author has found herself fending off haters and former fans alike over her views on sex, gender identity, and incredibly sus depictions of minorities.
The stars of the Harry Potter franchise are split over Rowling’s views. The Golden Trio actors — Emma Watson, Daniel Radcliffe, and Rupert Grint — have all criticized Rowling’s stance, but older actors including Helena-Bonham Carter and Ralph Fiennes don’t consider her transphobic. Rather, they see her position as a reflection of Rowling’s lived experience with abuse.
Without further ado, here are the 10 worst things J.K. Rowling has ever said about the trans community.
“Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?”
The quote to kick off, as Rowling sees it, the witch hunt, the above quote surfaced in 2020. Devex published an opinion article with the title, “Opinion: Creating a more equal post-COVID-19 world for people who menstruate.” The article sought to highlight the difficulties faced by women, girls, and non-binary people whose periods had become less hygienic and less manageable during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Rowling took umbrage with the “female erasure” in the inclusive language, “people who menstruate” and tweeted the now infamous line above. Critics were quick to point out that Rowling’s stance denied trans women the umbrella identity of woman. Moreover, the idea flew in the face of one of Harry Potter’s core messages – one of empathy, love, and understanding.
Liking Maya Forstarter’s Tweet
#IStandWithMaya
The above statement might seem innocuous, but Rowling’s previous statement had already proven she was no ally to the trans community. Her support for known TERF (Trans-exclusionary radical feminist) Maya Forstarter solidified this for many former fans, six months after her “wumben” tweet.
A tax expert for the Centre for Global Development, an international thinktank campaigning against poverty and inequality, Forstarter was fired after several tweets opposing the idea that sex change was possible. Forstarter firmly believes that gender is immutable and has gone out of her way to label transgender individuals with their biological pronouns, rather than their preferred ones. A judge ruled that Forstarter’s actions were “absolutist” in nature and that her actions violated individuals’ “dignity and/or create an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment.”
The phrasing of Rowling’s tweet was also a point of contention. “Dress how you please,” and “call yourself what you like” makes it sound like being trans is a costume. Rowling wrote a lengthy blog post explaining her side of the incident, but the Forstarter incident proved more decisive than the infamous Pottermore Tweet declaring that wizards used to simply poo on the floor.
J,K. Rowling’s sex and gender essay
You’d better believe that Rowling’s response essay would end up on this list. Her attempts to clarify her position, which were touted as brave by certain media outlets, yet again point to her outdated and bigoted ideas of what a woman is. The essay contains quotes like, “woman is not a costume” and “When you throw open the doors of bathrooms and changing rooms to any man who believes or feels he is a woman… then you open the door to any and all men who wish to come inside,” which highlight her anti-trans stance — even if she doesn’t see it that way, herself.
The argument about women-only spaces makes it sound as if there is a dress code for women, and completely discounts the lived experience of androgynous and masculine women. Not all women fit the typical idea of femininity. Within the essay, Rowling says that she might have been convinced to transition during her youth, as if the typical confusion of adolescence is reason enough to change one’s body, come out, or risk estranging friends and family members. Her essay might be brave to some, but to others, it sounds like she believes there is some evil trans cabal waiting in the wings to persuade kids to change their gender.
Support of Magdalen Berns
Rowling’s “accidental” support of late YouTuber and TERF extraordinaire Magdalen Berns in 2019 wasn’t technically something the author said, but it unleased a wave of controversy. Berns claimed that transwomen are “blackface actors,” and “trans women are men.” She was a fringe vitriolic figure and as a lesbian myself, it’s hard to listen to her rant about how oppressed we are as a group.
Rowling liked one of Berns’ Twitter posts and followed her account, rocketing her platform to 30,000 followers. The author commended her for being a “brave young feminist and lesbian.”
Holocaust denial
In early March 2024, Rowling yet again lit the beacon of TERFy nonsense. She and users on X, formerly Twitter, went back and forth over the Nazi party’s documented genocide of the small transvestite – the first coined phrase for transgender folks – community. Magnus Hirschfeld, a Jewish-German physician and sexologist, was documenting the experience and advocating for the rights of homosexual and transgender people.
He was one of the first advocates for homosexual and transgender rights. Hirschfeld cataloged 64 varieties of sexuality through his findings and founded the first research body to study sexual science. Not only did Hirschfeld push for legislation for gay and lesbian protections in the 1920s, but he was also an avid feminist and believed that gay rights and women’s rights were connected.
After the Nazis rose to power, Hirschfeld’s research was burned. Rowling argued with Twitter users for days over her comments, the possibility that transgender people existed before 2010, and Hirschfeld’s concerning belief in sterilization, but she never acknowledged the historical facts presented.
“If sex isn’t real, there’s no same sex attraction….”
For this one to make sense, we need a quick vocab lesson. Sex is a biological characteristic determined by the 23rd chromosome. XY is male, XX is female, and around 98% of the population falls into these categories. The other 2% is reserved for other variants, like intersex people, but we won’t go into it right now.
Gender is a cultural characteristic and typically has 2 variations; psychological sex, or the gender you feel (gender identity), and social sex, or the role you were born into. There are, of course, non-binary folks who don’t feel they fit into either social sex group.
There might be a lot of overlap with sex and gender, but the 2 don’t line up 100%, but recent studies have shown that transgender brains more closely resemble the brain of the sex they identify with. With that out of the way, we can finally talk about Rowling’s tweet.
The gist of the outrage comes from Rowling’s insistence on conflating sex and gender as the same construct, a common benchmark of the TERF movement. It’s not that sex isn’t real, it’s that, in this world where transgender people exist, it’s not the most important thing, in this instance. Not only is Rowling gatekeeping femininity from anyone who doesn’t identify their sex and gender as both female, but she’s doing it to XX chromosome individuals who identify as male. No one would claim this guy was a lesbian if they saw him walking down the street with a girlfriend.
Rowling then capped her rant off by saying she would march with trans individuals “if you were discriminated against on the basis of being trans,” but so far, the author has never put her activism where her mouth is.
Backing Protests over Scottish gender bill
in 2022, Rowling stood with protestors over a Scottish bill that would make it easier for people to be legally recognized as their preferred gender by removing the requirement for a gender dysphoria diagnosis. Protestors saw the bill as a way to undermine women only spaces, and would make it easier for bad faith actors to abuse the system. Supporters saw the bill as a massive step forward for trans rights. The bill, which passed, allowed trans individuals the rights to their own healthcare after they turned 16, and removed mandatory waiting periods and evaluations that many deemed degrading.
Queer-baiting Dumbledore
There were plenty of reasons why the Fantastic Beasts films failed to capture fan adoration. For many LGBTQIA+ readers, one of the franchises greatest sins was a product of the Harry Potter days. in 2019, Rowling described Dumbledore’s relationship with Grindelwald as an intense and passionate “love relationship.” She said that though “there is a sexual dimension to this relationship” she was more interested in the “emotions they felt for each other.”
That sentiment is well and good, but the lack of any actual implications on screen rankled fans. Her assertion that Dumbledore was a gay man without any sort of in-book or on-screen back up was seen as performative activism at best and exploitative at worst. At the time, Rowling defended the lack of any sort of relationship building between the characters by claiming that the film was only 1 part of a 5 part series, but with Warner Brother’s apparent shelving of Fantastic Beasts 4’s, it seems the relationship is doomed to exist only in Rowling’s mind.
Troubled Blood
Robert Galbraith might be Rowling’s pseudonym, but it doesn’t change her ideologies. Her 2022 book, Troubled Blood solidified in many reader’s minds Rowling’s place in the TERF hall of fame. The book is rife with parallels to Rowling’s own altercations with trans activists. The story centers on a murdered artist who was accused of being transphobic (among other things), and stars a male serial killer who dresses like women in order to predate and murder them.
The killer is characterized as a narcissistic male fetishist who preys on women, and spoiler alert, its a view many TERFs have about trans women. While he is never outright declared transgender, many in the community felt the context was obvious, especially with context, “in a wig, a bit of lipstick… they think you’re harmless, odd… maybe queer… You’re the nice man who’s safe.”
Man dresses as a woman, invades women’s spaces and then kills them fits perfectly into the worries voiced in her TERF essay.
Trans activists = Deatheaters?
In the 5th episode of The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling podcast, she describes the trans rights movement as “dangerous.” In the absolutely ridiculous claim, as per Vox Rowling says,
The Death Eaters claimed, “We have been made to live in secret, and now is our time, and any who stand in our way must be destroyed. If you disagree with us, you must die.” They demonized and dehumanized those who were not like them.
“I am fighting what I see as a powerful, insidious, misogynistic movement, that has gained huge purchase in very influential areas of society. I do not see this particular movement as either benign or powerless, so I’m afraid I stand with the women who are fighting to be heard against threats of loss of livelihood and threats to their safety.”
The trans-women community in the U.K. is about 0.10% of the population, and since Rowling doesn’t seem to have an issue with trans men (TERFs view them as female only), we can only assume its that small community and their supporters that she is so terrified of. To compare the trans community to Deatheaters when there are literally Nazi parties in existence is beyond the pale.