J.K. Rowling has published a new essay vowing to continue her advocacy on sex and gender issues despite what she describes as an onslaught of violent threats.
Rowling, 61, released the lengthy update on her personal website last week, six years after her original 2020 post on the same topic. The Harry Potter author framed the new piece as a necessary response to years of escalating hostility, writing that she “thought it was time” to address where she stands.
In the essay, Rowling detailed her history of funding women’s services. “For nearly thirty years I’ve funded women’s domestic abuse refuges, rape crisis centres and projects helping women affected by hardship or disadvantage,” she wrote. “I well remember receiving abuse by post, years ago, because I spoke up for single mothers. I’ve also fallen foul of no small number of men’s rights activists online.”
The author then pivoted to what she characterized as a dramatic intensification of attacks in recent years. “However, what to me represents no change at all in my political or ideological outlook has, in recent years, seen me and women like me subject not only to criticism but also to death threats,” she wrote.
Rowling specifically attributed this backlash to her opposition to what she called “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.”
She elaborated on her position with a series of specific objections: “Where women go to undress, he, too, should go to undress. 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. 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.”
The author stated she has weathered “an avalanche of death, rape and torture threats,” but added that this has not “noticeably affected [her] life.”
Rowling addressed her considerable wealth directly, noting she appeared on The Sunday Times Rich List this year with an estimated net worth of £975 million (over $1 billion). “As everyone knows, I’m in the privileged position of never needing to work again and of not needing state run services, but I once lived hand to mouth,” she wrote. “I was one of the women who couldn’t afford to insulate herself from potential physical harm and who fell into the categories of both domestic abuse and sexual assault victim.”
This personal history, Rowling suggested, informs her current frustration with other women. “Large numbers of women who’ve never been poor, who’ve never worked the kind of job where they’d be vulnerable to predatory men and who’ve never needed a rape crisis centre have spent the last few years vilifying members of their own sex for fighting to retain their hard-won rights and single-sex spaces, in ways that have shocked and disgusted me,” she wrote. “I freely confess that I feel an extra layer of abhorrence for any woman who claims to be a feminist while doing it.”
Rowling’s stance on transgender issues first drew widespread attention in December 2019, when she tweeted support for Maya Forstater, a researcher who lost her job over social media posts critics labeled transphobic. The controversy escalated dramatically in June 2020, when Rowling mocked a headline that used the phrase “people who menstruate” instead of “women,” posting: “I’m sure there used to be a word for those people. Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?” That same month she published her original lengthy essay explaining her views on sex and gender, prompting public criticism from several Harry Potter film stars though some cast members defended her.
The author closed her latest essay with a pledge of continued action. “And so I’ll 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-centred support after rape,” she wrote.
Rowling’s essay did not specify what legal cases she might fund next or identify particular services she supports in her local area.