Fans, Harry Potter stars, GLAAD slam J.K. Rowling for anti-trans tweets

J.K. Rowling is once again at the center of a storm of controversy, this time for anti-trans comments she made on Twitter over the weekend. With people still out of work and at risk over the coronavirus and folks around the world protesting to end hundreds of years of systemic racism, you’d figure now might not be the best time for Rowling to to trot out her reductive opinions about trans people (and during Pride Month, no less), but here we are.

Her comments were inspired by an article on Devex titled Creating a more equal post-COVID-19 world for people who menstruate, which focused on maintaining menstrual health in a time when many resources are shut down around the world due to the pandemic. Using the term “people who menstruate” in the article is a way to include trans men who still menstruate in the discussion, since the things the article talks about would apply to them as much as to anyone else.

But instead of focusing on the topic of the issues of public health brought up by the article, Rowling zeroed in on the terminology:

Now, we could spend a long time breaking this down, explaining how using inclusive terminology doesn’t “erase the concept of sex,” and how what she’s saying basically boils down to, “trans men aren’t men, trans women aren’t women, trans people aren’t valid.” And did she really say that she would march with people if they were discriminated against for being trans? Because they definitely are.

If you want to know more about these issues, Katy Montgomerie wrote a great article about why these tweets are transphobic over at Medium, and the YouTuber Contrapoints has a very entertaining video refuting some of the arguments made by TERFs (trans-exclusionary radical feminists) that addresses much of what Rowling is saying. This kind of bigotry isn’t new.

Predictably, Rowling was criticized from a great many quarters for her comments. GLAAD (the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) put it plainly, and encouraged people to donate to charities that help trans people, trying to drag at least something positive out of this:

A lot of fans are trying to do that, too, matching the amount of money they’d spent on Harry Potter merch over the years to help trans people, or calling for others to pitch in:

Even Katie Leung, who played Cho Chang in the Harry Potter movies, is tweeting out resources to help trans people, cheekily drawing people in by promising to give her “thoughts on Cho Chang”:

I’m at least happy that something positive is happening as a result of Rowling’s tweets. Over the years, she’s developed a bit of a reputation for being out of touch with the fandom, what with her constantly making alterations to the Harry Potter mythology after the fact. This feels like the next level of that. It’s unfortunate that someone with such a big platform uses it for this, and I hope she evolves on the issue, and maybe that she improves her timing.

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