JK Rowling has defended her decision to influence the debate on transgender issues in the past few years.
The Harry Potter author first published her views in 2019, when she tweeted in support of Maya Forstetter, who was fired from her job at Poverty Research, the Center for Global Development, over a series of tweets questioning government plans to allow people to express themselves. Determine another gender.
After Forstater’s comments, a group of supporters started the hashtag #IStandWithMaya, including Rowling.
She wrote: “Dress as you wish. Call yourself however you like. Sleep with any approved adult.”
“Live your best life in peace and security. But forcing women out of their jobs for saying sex is real?”
In the years since, Rowling has shared a number of controversial social media posts and articles about the debate, which has led to accusations of transphobia. She denied being transphobic.
Speaking in the latest episode of the podcast JK Rowling’s Witch Trialsreleased on Tuesday, March 14, the author said she was aware of the backlash she might receive from fans for her work because of her views on gender and transgender rights.
“When I first became interested in, and then deeply disturbed by, what I saw as a cultural movement that was illiberal in its methods and questionable in its ideas, I knew full well that if I spoke, many people who love my books would be very unhappy with me,” she said.
“I knew that, because I could see that they thought they were living the values I espoused in those books. I could tell they thought they were fighting for the underdog and difference and fairness. And I thought it would be easier not to.”
“I knew this could be really bad and it was personally bad, it wasn’t fun, and I was sometimes afraid for my safety and, overwhelmingly, for the safety of my family.”
She continued, “Time will tell whether I get this wrong. I can only say that I have thought about it deeply and long and listened, I promise you, to the other side, and I believe, absolutely, that there is something dangerous about this movement and that it must be challenged.”
(AFP via Getty Images)
Rowling also talked about how, when she tweeted in support of Forstater in 2019, she knew it would cause a “huge storm.”
She said, “I was considerate enough to call my management team and say you can’t talk me out of this, and I read what I was going to say because I felt they needed a warning.”
She said the tweet was met with “utter outrage and incomprehension”, with one Harry Potter fan telling her: “What a shame, you’ve become the villain you’ve taught so many of us to stand up to.”
She claimed that “a ton of Potter fans were grateful I said what I said”.
When asked what she would say to people who claim she has become like the villains in her books, Rowling said: “I would say some of you didn’t understand the books. The Death Eaters claimed, ‘We were made to live in secret, and now our time has come, and anyone who stands in our way must be destroyed.'” If you disagree with us, you must die They demonized those who were not like them.
“I am fighting what I consider to be a powerful, virulent, misogynistic movement that has gained significant buy-in in very influential areas of society.
“I don’t see this particular movement as 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.”
One Harry Potter fan interviewed on the podcast said, “I just hope [Rowling] He could be trying to figure out why so many transgender people are so angry and hurt by this…and understand why people who are constantly humiliated by our families and governments, who lose or threaten our access to health care, who fight for our basic ability to share are rejected In society, why we might feel hurt and betrayed by her contribution to the fear of us.”
Read more about the podcast and its host, former Westboro Baptist Church member Megan Phelps-Roper, here.
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