Once upon a time, J.K. Rowling was a beloved author, commanding the Harry Potter media empire to legions of devoted fans. She was considered one of the United Kingdom’s greatest cultural ambassadors and a general force for good in the world. Now, a few short years later, she’s widely considered a monster.
So, how does someone who said in 2020 “I respect every trans person’s right to live any way that feels authentic and comfortable to them. I’d march with you if you were discriminated against on the basis of being trans,” go from that to demonizing a trans woman who’s the head of a rape crisis center? The answer is that something insidious happened to J.K. Rowling’s brain. So, in a nutshell, here’s why she’s now cuckoo bananas.
Our horrible United Kingdom
The United Kingdom is a hotbed of anti-trans activism, with prominent transphobes given free reign on television and newspapers to espouse their hateful ideology, almost always without any opposing argument from a trans person. On top of that, the British politicians responsible for the country’s cratering economy and collapsing public services are desperate to stoke the fires of a culture war, targeting the trans community in an attempt to distract from their catastrophic decisions.
This is fertile soil on which transphobia flourishes unchecked and where even the most horrific and hateful comments are effectively immune to mainstream criticism. That’s resulted in a truly virulent anti-trans brigade across social media who will bombard any trans person they encounter with hateful language. And, as you would expect, trans people on social have grown combative in response to this non-stop barrage of abuse.
Enter Rowling
In 2019, Rowling came out in support of Maya Forstater, a tax researcher whose employment contract was not renewed after colleagues complained about her public transphobic views. As Rowling is one of the most famous people in the United Kingdom her taking this stance kicked up an enormous stink and resulted in two things: overnight she became the anti-trans community’s queen (the day she posted her support is described as “TERFmas”) and trans people around the world were left utterly horrified.
As an active Twitter user, Rowling then experienced love-bombing by transphobes, who now figuratively (and probably literally) kiss the ground on which she walks, with the volume of their praise increasing as her opinions become more extreme. On the flip side, the trans community isn’t going to lie down and take this abuse, resulting in her experiencing constant negative responses from her former fans.
So what happens to the human brain over time when saying hateful things brings you adoration from one group and abuse from another?
The echo chamber and online radicalization
As the British press and politicians are happy to attack trans people, Rowling has never received any serious pushback for her hateful conduct. That, combined with her social media experience of receiving bottomless love from transphobes, has resulted in her becoming trapped inside an internet Skinner Box. The Skinner Box is a famous experiment by behavioral psychologist B.F. Skinner that sees an animal isolated inside a box containing two buttons. One button brings the animal pleasure and the other discomfort and inevitably the animal learns to compulsively push the pleasure button.
At this point, Rowling has conditioned herself to hammer the “post” button that brings her the dopamine hit of TERF adoration. To speculate a little further, as a billionaire who can do anything she likes, perhaps she’s become numb to other forms of pleasure, and social media approval is the only brief joy she can experience? As a case study of where the social media Skinner Box can lead, look no further than the unfortunate story of Graham Linehan. Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, he was a well-regarded comedy writer, though on receiving some mild pushback about the portrayal of a trans person in an episode of The I.T. Crowd, he went off the deep end. Like Rowling, Linehan is a prolific social media user, and his transphobia was carefully stoked and shaped by positive reinforcement from transphobes and the negative response to his comments from trans people.
By 2024, Linehan’s transphobia had cost him his marriage, his career, his social life, and his mental health. Now the once-feted writer appears to do nothing but abuse trans people on X, leading a life so pathetic and depressing I feel sorry for him, even after all the horrible things he’s said.
With an estimated personal fortune of $1.2 billion, Rowling has much further to fall than Linehan, but the signs of a similar collapse are there. For example, in Linehan’s case, his anti-trans mind virus gradually hollowed out everything else in his life until it was the only thing left. An extended scroll through Rowling’s X account shows that trans issues are now pretty much the only thing she ever posts about and, while her money will insulate her from a Linehan-style social banishing, sooner or later all her friends will be transphobes reinforcing her opinions.
Is there a way back for Rowling?
Don’t count on it. Even if Rowling were to conclude that she’s internalized a hateful worldview, the social pressure against her expressing that is unimaginably immense. The explosive and addictive love from anti-trans campaigners would instantly invert to hatred and trans people are not likely to rush to forgive her. Ultimately, if Rowling was to retreat or apologize, she would lose the last friends she has left.
My prediction is that she will only get more hateful over time as her thinking continues to be warped by the social media hell machine she’s locked herself inside. At this point, it’s possible to feel some sympathy for Rowling: her brain is all messed up and has left her walking down a one-way street of hatefulness. That said, she could easily log off, touch grass, and simply enjoy the fabulous life that unlimited wealth grants her. But she won’t. She’s just going to be mad online. Forever.
