J.K. Rowling described transgender activism in the 21st century as “elitist,” adding that her political views “haven’t changed,” despite having faced “an avalanche of death, rape, and torture threats.”
“It’s been six years since I wrote my essay explaining why I chose to speak up on the issue of trans activism and the risk I believe it poses to women’s rights, and to everyone’s freedom of speech and belief,” Rowling wrote in a new essay, published on Wednesday.
“My views haven’t changed,” the “Harry Potter” author continued. “But the landscape certainly has, and my own involvement in the issue has become practical as well as theoretical, so I thought it was time for an update.”
Rowling went on to pen an update to her June 2020 essay, titled, “J.K. Rowling Writes about Her Reasons for Speaking out on Sex and Gender Issues.”
As Breitbart News reported, Rowling first spoke out against transgender extremism in 2019, after a British woman lost her job for refusing to use certain pronouns while speaking to a biological man pretending to be a woman.
As a result, the author faced “an avalanche of death, rape, and torture threats” for opposing “the current, dominant strain of trans activism, which holds that a man who declares himself a woman is, literally, a woman, and is therefore entitled to be treated as a woman in all contexts.”
“Where women go to undress, he, too, should go to undress,” Rowling continued. “If there’s an award or job advertised as exclusively for women, he should be eligible. Should he wish to play sports, he must be on the women’s team.”
“No breast-feeding or rape support group should be allowed to exclude him,” she added. “If he’s sexually orientated towards women, lesbians should include him in their dating pool. If convicted of a crime, even rape, he should be locked up with women.”
In her essay, Rowling also says that “without question,” there are “vulnerable trans people” in society, adding that twenty-first century trans activism “bears no resemblance whatsoever to the great social justice movements of the twentieth century.”
“Should trans people be discriminated against when it comes to housing or employment? Of course not. Should trans people be stripped of their human rights, or denied personal safety? Again: of course not,” the author wrote.
“But the statistics don’t lie,” she continued. “Men as a group pose a risk to women and girls, as a group. Of course, all men aren’t rapists, voyeurs or flashers, but enough are to make safeguarding necessary. That’s why women and girls want separate changing rooms and public bathrooms.”
“That’s why women need male-free spaces when seeking to recover their sense of self and safety after rape,” Rowling added. “Not because we hate trans people, not because we want them dead, not because we want them somehow eradicated from existence.”
“But because women and girls have specific issues and needs that men do not, even if they’re calling themselves women and even if they’ve taken cross-sex hormones,” the author asserted.
Rowling went on to say, “When it came to civil, gay and women’s rights, ordinary people who had little to no individual power organized at a grassroots level to challenge powerful institutions, from government downwards, on their entrenched prejudices, and campaigned to change harmful, discriminatory treatment.”
“Twenty-first century trans activism is the very inverse of those movements. It is elitist to its core,” she asserted.
Last year, the author established the J.K. Rowling Women’s Fund, a private, non-charity organization that she solely and personally funds to help women “who don’t have deep pockets or expensive lawyers on speed dial” involved in cases related to sex-based rights and single-sex spaces.
Near the end of her essay, Rowling vowed to “continue to speak out, continue to use my money to help women who otherwise couldn’t afford to go to court, and continue to ensure that women in my area can still access female-delivered, female-centered support after rape.”
“If a man can be a woman, there is no such thing as a woman,” she added. “That might not matter to you personally, but it matters to millions of women who don’t have the luxury of pretending that their sex doesn’t matter. I remain on their side.”
Alana Mastrangelo-Wrask is a reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow her on Facebook and X at @ARmastrangelo, and on Instagram.
