‘Time for women to vote with their wallets’: J.K. Rowling calls for boycott of clothes store after trans staff member does their job

J.K. Rowling is on yet another anti-trans tirade as she takes aim at British department store M&S over an incident involving a member of staff who happens to be trans.

The Harry Potter author has taken to X to encourage women and TERFs to “vote with their wallets” and boycott the department store chain. M&S recently came under fire after a customer complained about a trans employee who allegedly approached her daughter in the bra section and asked if they needed any help. The department store apologized to the mother which many argued it should not have done as the member of staff had done nothing wrong.

However, Rowling’s issue with M&S is not with the decision to apologize. It’s with the decision to hire a trans person in the first place. The author referred to the recent U.K. supreme court ruling, which she gleefully celebrated earlier this year, that determined that a person’s legal sex would always be their biological sex (i.e. the sex listed on their birth certificate).

She accused the store of flouting the ruling by allowing a trans woman into a woman only space and she claimed that justified the boycott.

Rowling perpetuates a false narrative

The 60-year-old billionaire claimed that the M&S employee “offered to help a teenage girl with her bra,” although this isn’t exactly how the situation played out. In the apology, M&S clarified that the staff member is not an employee who carries out bra fittings, the complaint states that the employee simply asked the mother and daughter if they needed help finding the right part of the store according to Pink News.

Rowling’s posts suggest she thinks, or wants people to think, that the employee was offering to help with the bra specifically. In reality the woman was simply doing her job which had nothing to do with fitting bras.

The response online

On X the whole situation has been the subject of a hot debate for the past 24 hours. While there are always going to be those who agree with Rowling’s hateful views, many called her out for yet another needless attack on the trans community. One person asked if the author would demand the store stop selling her Harry Potter merchandise.

Others called her out for lying about the situation.

Another individual pointed out that M&S employs thousands of women meaning Rowling’s plan could end up harming the very group she claims to want to protect.

In the end it seems unlikely that this boycott will amount to much. While Rowling may be incredibly vocal about her hate towards the trans community, her rants on X are nothing more than white noise from a billionaire bully. However, it is a shame that M&S isn’t standing up for the trans employee, especially considering the employee was simply trying to do their job.