JK Rowling defends transgender comments, reveals she is a survivor of sexual assault

JK Rowling has defended her right to speak about transgender issues in a personal essay in which she shares painful details from her past.

Author J.K. Rowling.

JK Rowling has shared intimate details of her private life as a survivor of sexual assault and an abusive marriage in an essay in which she took on critics who accused her of hating the trans community.

The author of the Harry Potter books, who has guarded her privacy closely, posted the message on her website in response to a recent row when she tweeted about a headline that referred to “people who menstruate”.

Earlier this week she wrote on Twitter: “I’m sure there used to be a word for those people. Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?”

‘People who menstruate.’ I’m sure there used to be a word for those people. Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?

Opinion: Creating a more equal post-COVID-19 world for people who menstruate https://t.co/cVpZxG7gaA

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) June 6, 2020

Her remark and subsequent messages justifying why biological sex was important prompted hundreds of thousands of responses accusing her of transphobia. Among those joining the debate were Daniel Radcliffe, who played the boy wizard in the Harry Potter films, and Eddie Redmayne, who stars in the spin-off film series Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. Redmayne wrote: “As someone who has worked with JK Rowling and members of the trans community, I wanted to make it absolutely clear where I stand. I disagree with Jo’s comments.”

Daniel Radcliffe.

Rowling, 54, published the essay to explain how her personal experiences as a teenager with “severe” obsessive compulsive disorder and as a woman who survived a “serious sexual assault” shaped her opinions on the need to protect girls and women.

She revealed that her father had wished he’d had a son and that she might have sought to become a boy if the option had been available. She said it was important to allow girls to deal with their anxieties without feeling pressured to resort to changing their gender, only to regret it later.

Rowling said that an experience of sexual assault in her twenties had convinced her of the need to maintain women-only spaces. “I’m mentioning these things now not in an attempt to garner sympathy, but out of solidarity with the huge numbers of women who have histories like mine, who’ve been slurred as bigots for having concerns around single-sex spaces,” she wrote.

“This isn’t an easy piece to write,” Rowling said in the 3695-word essay. “I’ve been in the public eye now for over twenty years and have never talked publicly about being a domestic abuse and sexual assault survivor. This isn’t because I’m ashamed those things happened to me, but because they’re traumatic to revisit and remember.”

In December, Rowling expressed support for a woman who had lost her job over what her employer deemed to be “transphobic” tweets. Rowling said on Wednesday that “accusations and threats from trans activists have been bubbling in my Twitter timeline” ever since.

“Huge numbers of women are justifiably terrified by the trans activists; I know this because so many have got in touch with me to tell their stories,” she wrote.

Rowling said she refuses to “bow down” to criticism about her recent comments on transgender people.

“I refuse to bow down to a movement that I believe is doing demonstrable harm in seeking to erode ‘woman’ as a political and biological class and offering cover to predators like few before it,” she said.

“I stand alongside the brave women and men, gay, straight and trans, who’re standing up for freedom of speech and thought, and for the rights and safety of some of the most vulnerable in our society: young gay kids, fragile teenagers, and women who’re reliant on and wish to retain their single sex spaces.”

Rowling ended her post by affirming that she was “a survivor (and) certainly not a victim”.

“I haven’t written this essay in the hope that anybody will get out a violin for me, not even a teeny-weeny one,” she said. “I’ve only mentioned my past because, like every other human being on this planet, I have a complex backstory, which shapes my fears, my interests and my opinions.”

Rowling said she had spent many years thinking about trans issues because of her own troubles with gender identity when she was young. “When I read about the theory of gender identity, I remember how mentally sexless I felt in youth,” she wrote.

“As I didn’t have a realistic possibility of becoming a man back in the 1980s, it had to be books and music that got me through both my mental health issues and the sexualised scrutiny and judgement that sets so many girls to war against their bodies in their teens.”

Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, J K Rowling and Rupert Grint attend the World Premiere of Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows: Part 1 in 2010 in London.

She said she spent a period feeling “ambivalence about being a woman” before learning that “it’s OK to feel confused, dark, both sexual and non-sexual, unsure of what or who you are”.

She also argued that “the current explosion of trans activism” has resulted in too many people undergoing gender reassignment surgery without giving it sufficient thought.

“I want to be very clear here: I know transition will be a solution for some gender dysphoric people, although I’m also aware through extensive research that studies have consistently shown that between 60-90 per cent of gender dysphoric teens will grow out of their dysphoria,” she said.

“So I want trans women to be safe. At the same time, I do not want to make... girls and women less safe.”

But she also stood up for her right to speak freely about an issue that she said has been with her throughout life.

“As a much-banned author, I’m interested in freedom of speech and have publicly defended it, even unto Donald Trump,” she wrote.

Rowling’s books have been banned in parts of the world because of their association in some cultures with witchcraft and the occult.

The Times, agencies