J. K. Rowling

Joanne Rowling, CH, OBE, HonFRSE, FRCPE, FRSL (born 31 July 1965), is a British novelist, best known for writing the Harry Potter series as J. K. Rowling, a pen name devised using her grandmother's name, "Kathleen" as a middle name. Rowling has written under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith and, since around 2020, has gained substantial attention for her advocacy of gender-critical feminism.

Quotes

I've never set out to teach anyone anything. It's been more of an expression of my views and feelings than sitting down and deciding "What is today's message?"

I think that it's a very healthy message to pass on to younger people that you should question authority and you should not assume that the establishment or the press tells you all of the truth.

1990s

When the American deal came through, that meant security. It means that I can buy a flat. It means not worrying. The constant mind-blowing worry of wondering if you are going to be able to last the week without buying another pack of nappies. That is how it was and it is a horrible, horrible way to live.
- From an interview by Ann Treneman, as cited in "Joanne Rowling's secret is out", The Independent (21 November 1997)
- On Rowling's period as a single parent, the "secret" being her writings. Rowling's first book Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone had been published the previous June.

The wizards represent all that the true "muggle" most fears: They are plainly outcasts and comfortable with being so. Nothing is more unnerving to the truly conventional than the unashamed misfit!
Hermione was very easy to create because she is based almost entirely on myself at the age of 11. She is really a caricature of me. I wasn't as clever as she is, nor do I think I was quite such a know-it-all, though former classmates might disagree. Like Hermione, I was obsessed with achieving academically, but this masked a huge insecurity.
- From an interview by Margaret Weir, as cited in "Of magic and single motherhood", Salon (13 March 1999)

Hermione's white face was sticking out from behind a tree.
- from Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (July 1999) in "Hermione's Secret" (chapter 21)

I absolutely did not start writing these books to encourage any child into witchcraft. [...] I'm laughing slightly because to me, the idea is absurd.
I have met thousands of children now, and not even one time has a child come up to me and said, "Ms. Rowling, I'm so glad I've read these books because now I want to be a witch." They see it for what it is [...] It is a fantasy world and they understand that completely.
I don't believe in magic, either.
- As quoted in "Success of Harry Potter bowls author over", CNN (21 October 1999)

2000–2006

[On her first marriage] I married on October 16, 1992. I left on November 17, 1993. So that was the duration of what I considered to be the marriage. ... [O]bviously you do not leave a marriage after that very short period of time unless there are serious problems. I'm not the kind of person who bales out without there being serious problems. My relationship before that lasted seven years. I'm a long-term girl. And I had a baby with this man. But it didn't work. And it was clear to me that it was time to go and so I went. I never regretted it.
Depression is the most unpleasant thing I have ever experienced. [...] It is that absence of being able to envisage that you will ever be cheerful again. The absence of hope. That very deadened feeling, which is so very different from feeling sad. Sad hurts but it's a healthy feeling. It's a necessary thing to feel. Depression is very different.
- As quoted in Ann Treneman "J. K. Rowling : The Interview", The Times (30 June 2000)

I've never set out to teach anyone anything. It's been more of an expression of my views and feelings than sitting down and deciding "What is today's message?" And I do think that, although I never, again, sat down consciously and thought about this, I do think judging, even for my own daughter, that children respond to that than to "thought for the day."
- Interview by Lizo Mzimba (February 2003) ^{[specific citation needed]}

If you need to tell your readers something … there are only two characters that you can put it convincingly into their dialogue. One is Hermione, the other is Dumbledore. In both cases you accept, it's plausible that they have, well Dumbledore knows pretty much everything anyway, but that Hermione has read it somewhere. So, she's handy.
- Interview by Lizo Mzimba (February 2003) ^{[specific citation needed]}

I've given you more than I've given anyone else which I probably shouldn't probably say on — on screen, or they'll kidnap and torture him, and we need him.
- To screenwriter Steve Kloves, in an interview by Lizo Mzimba (February 2003) ^{[specific citation needed]}

The fame thing is interesting because I never wanted to be famous, and I never dreamt I would be famous.
I imagined being a famous writer would be like being like Jane Austen. Being able to sit at home in the parsonage and your books would be very famous and occasionally you would correspond with the Prince of Wales's secretary.
[Before her success] I totally felt a waste of space. I was lousy. Yes I did, yes. And now I feel that, it turns out there was one thing I was good at, and I'd always expected I could tell a story, and I suppose it's rather sad that I needed confirmation by being published.
- As quoted in an interview with Jeremy Paxman, on Newsnight, from an edited transcript as published in "'Harry is a lot, lot, lot angrier in this book'", The Telegraph (20 June 2003)

He [Harry] is very much in puberty [...] I just think it is a very confusing time. Yes, he's very confused in a boy way. He doesn’t understand how girls' minds work. [...] Harry, for the first time, does have a relationship of sorts. The emphasis is very much on 'of sorts' . . . That was really fun to write actually. I think you will find it painful. You should find it painful. It is painful but it was such fun to write. Poor Harry! What I put him through.
- Interviewed by Ann Treneman, as cited in "Meet Harry Potter at 15: girl trouble, hormones, death and anger", The Times (20 June 2003)
- Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix was due to be published at midnight.

I went to the British Book Awards that evening. I bumped into a woman I hadn't seen for nearly three years. The first thing she said to me? "You've lost a lot of weight since the last time I saw you!"
"Well," I said, slightly nonplussed, "the last time you saw me I'd just had a baby."
What I felt like saying was, "I've produced my third child and my sixth novel since I last saw you. Aren't either of those things more important, more interesting, than my size?" But no — my waist looked smaller! Forget the kid and the book: finally, something to celebrate!
- "Section: Extra Stuff: For Girls Only, Probably...", J.K.Rowling Official Site (c. 2006)

2008

Harvard address (2008)

Harvard University Commencement Address (5 June 2008) video at Vimeo · Full text at Harvard Gazette:"The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination"

Now, I am not going to stand here and tell you that failure is fun. That period of my life was a dark one, and I had no idea that there was going to be what the press has since represented as a kind of fairy tale resolution. I had no idea then how far the tunnel extended, and for a long time, any light at the end of it was a hope rather than a reality.
So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had been realised, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.

It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by default.

Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation. In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power that enables us to empathise with humans whose experiences we have never shared.

Unlike any other creature on this planet, humans can learn and understand, without having experienced. They can think themselves into other people’s places.
Of course, this is a power, like my brand of fictional magic, that is morally neutral. One might use such an ability to manipulate, or control, just as much as to understand or sympathise.
And many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all. They choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own experience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they are. They can refuse to hear screams or to peer inside cages; they can close their minds and hearts to any suffering that does not touch them personally; they can refuse to know.
I might be tempted to envy people who can live that way, except that I do not think they have any fewer nightmares than I do. Choosing to live in narrow spaces leads to a form of mental agoraphobia, and that brings its own terrors. I think the wilfully unimaginative see more monsters. They are often more afraid.
What is more, those who choose not to empathize enable real monsters; for without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves, we collude with it, through our own apathy.

One of the many things I learned at the end of that Classics corridor down which I ventured at the age of 18, in search of something I could not then define, was this, written by the Greek author Plutarch: "What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality."
That is an astonishing statement and yet proven a thousand times every day of our lives. It expresses, in part, our inescapable connection with the outside world, the fact that we touch other people’s lives simply by existing.

We do not need magic to transform our world. We carry all the power we need inside ourselves already. We have the power to imagine better.
- Paraphrased variant: We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.

2009–2011

I think most of us if you were asked to name a very evil regime would think of Nazi Germany. … I wanted Harry to leave our world and find exactly the same problems in the Wizarding world. So you have to the intent to impose a hierarchy, you have bigotry, and this notion of purity, which is a great fallacy, but it crops up all over the world. People like to think themselves superior and that if they can pride themselves on nothing else, they can pride themselves on perceived purity. … The Potter books in general are a prolonged argument for tolerance, a prolonged plea for an end to bigotry, and I think it's one of the reasons that some people don't like the books, but I think that it's a very healthy message to pass on to younger people that you should question authority and you should not assume that the establishment or the press tells you all of the truth.
- Quoted in John Granger ‪Harry Potter's Bookshelf : The Great Books Behind the Hogwarts Adventures‬ (2009)

No story lives unless someone wants to listen.
The stories we love best do live in us forever. So, whether you come back by page or by the big screen, Hogwarts will always be there to welcome you home.
- Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 London Premiere (July 2011) ^{[specific citation needed]}

2015

The world is full of wonderful things you haven’t seen yet. Don’t ever give up on the chance of seeing them.
- Online tweet, in response to an extremely depressed person contemplating suicide, as quoted in "J.K. Rowling Sends Beautiful Message to Fan Who Wants to 'Finally Give Up'" by Alex Ungerman ET Online (5 May 2015)

The Internet doesn’t just offer opportunities for misogynistic abuse, you know. Penis enlargers can also be bought discreetly.
- Tweet (8 May 2015), as cited in "J.K. Rowling Burns Twitter Troll With 'Penis Enlargers' Joke", The Hollywood Reporter (8 May 2015)

How horrible. Voldemort was nowhere near as bad.
- Remarks on Donald Trump, in a Tweet (8 December 2015), as cited in Sian Cain "JK Rowling on Donald Trump: 'Voldemort was nowhere as bad'", The Guardian (8 December 2015)

2016

I had a bunch of racists telling me that because Hermione 'turned white' – that is, lost colour from her face after a shock – that she must be a white woman, which I have a great deal of difficulty with. But I decided not to get too agitated about it and simply state quite firmly that Hermione can be a black woman with my absolute blessing and enthusiasm.
- From an interview, as cited in Rebecca Ratcliffe "JK Rowling tells of anger at attacks on casting of black Hermione", The Observer (5 June 2016)

I mean, is ‘fat’ really the worst thing a human being can be? Is ‘fat’ worse than ‘vindictive’, ‘jealous’, ‘shallow’, ‘vain’, ‘boring’ or ‘cruel’? Not me.
- from Pansy Hermiones, 2006

I don't think I've ever wanted magic more.
- Tweet quoted in "J.K. Rowling Wishes Magic Could Get U.K. Out of Brexit" by Amanda Calvo, Time (24 June 2016)

2017

If I try harder I might be reincarnated as a lonely virgin hiding behind a cartoon frog.
- January 2017 tweet, as reported by Ian Cheong of Heat Street

2019

Dress however you please.
Call yourself whatever you like.
Sleep with any consenting adult who’ll have you.
Live your best life in peace and security.
But force women out of their jobs for stating that sex is real?
#IStandWithMaya #ThisIsNotADrill
- Tweet dated 19 December 2019 in support of Maya Forstater, cited in "Maya Forstater: Who is woman in employment tribunal over transgender comments?" The Independent (27 April 2021)

2020

If sex isn't real, there's no same-sex attraction. If sex isn't real, the lived reality of women globally is erased. I know and love trans people, but erasing the concept of sex removes the ability of many to meaningfully discuss their lives. It isn't hate to speak the truth.
- Tweet (6 June 2020), as cited in "'Trans women are women': Daniel Radcliffe speaks out after JK Rowling tweets", The Guardian (9 June 2020)
- Responding to comments from Harry Potter actor Daniel Radcliffe.

Many, myself included, believe we are watching a new kind of conversion therapy for young gay people, who are being set on a lifelong path of medicalisation that may result in the loss of their fertility and/or full sexual function.
The long-term health risks of cross-sex hormones have been now been tracked over a lengthy period. These side-effects are often minimised or denied by trans activists.
- From a series of posts on Twitter/X (5 July 2020), as cited by Rachel McGrath "JK Rowling sparks fresh criticism with 'conversion therapy' tweets", Evening Standard (6 July 2020)

Reasons for Speaking out on Sex and Gender Issues (10 June 2020)

"J. K. Rowling Writes about Her Reasons for Speaking out on Sex and Gender Issues" (10 June 2020)

'This isn't an easy piece to write, for reasons that will shortly become clear, but I know it's time to explain myself on an issue surrounded by toxicity. I write this without any desire to add to that toxicity.

What I didn't expect in the aftermath of my cancellation was the avalanche of emails and letters that came showering down upon me, the overwhelming majority of which were positive, grateful and supportive.

If you didn't already know — and why should you? — "TERF" is an acronym coined by trans activists, which stands for Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist. ... Ironically, radical feminists aren't even trans-exclusionary — they include trans men in their feminism, because they were born women.

... as a much-banned author, I'm interested in freedom of speech.

I'm concerned about the huge explosion in young women wishing to transition and also about the increasing numbers who seem to be detransitioning (returning to their original sex), because they regret taking steps that have, in some cases, altered their bodies irrevocably, and taken away their fertility.

Again and again I've been told to 'just meet some trans people.' I have: in addition to a few younger people, who were all adorable, I happen to know a self-described transsexual woman who's older than I am and wonderful.

The current explosion of trans activism is urging a removal of almost all the robust systems through which candidates for sex reassignment were once required to pass. A man who intends to have no surgery and take no hormones may now secure himself a Gender Recognition Certificate and be a woman in the sight of the law.

We're living through the most misogynistic period I've experienced....Never have I seen women denigrated and dehumanised to the extent they are now.

From the leader of the free world's long history of sexual assault accusations and his proud boast of 'grabbing them by the pussy', to the incel ('involuntarily celibate') movement that rages against women who won't give them sex, to the trans activists who declare that TERFs need punching and re-educating, men across the political spectrum seem to agree: women are asking for trouble. Everywhere, women are being told to shut up and sit down, or else.

I've read all the arguments about femaleness not residing in the sexed body, and the assertions that biological women don't have common experiences, and I find them, too, deeply misogynistic and regressive.

It isn't enough for women to be trans allies. Women must accept and admit that there is no material difference between trans women and themselves.

But, as many women have said before me, 'woman' is not a costume. 'Woman' is not an idea in a man's head. 'Woman' is not a pink brain, a liking for Jimmy Choos or any of the other sexist ideas now somehow touted as progressive. Moreover, the 'inclusive' language that calls female people 'menstruators' and 'people with vulvas' strikes many women as dehumanising and demeaning. I understand why trans activists consider this language to be appropriate and kind, but for those of us who've had degrading slurs spat at us by violent men, it's not neutral, it's hostile and alienating.

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.

... the scars left by violence and sexual assault don't disappear, no matter how loved you are, and no matter how much money you've made. My perennial jumpiness is a family joke — and even I know it's funny — but I pray my daughters never have the same reasons I do for hating sudden loud noises, or finding people behind me when I haven't heard them approaching.

If you could come inside my head and understand what I feel when I read about a trans woman dying at the hands of a violent man, you'd find solidarity and kinship.

I believe the majority of trans-identified people not only pose zero threat to others, but are vulnerable for all the reasons I've outlined. Trans people need and deserve protection. Like women, they're most likely to be killed by sexual partners.

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

I spoke up about the importance of sex and have been paying the price ever since. I was transphobic, I was a cunt, a bitch, a TERF, I deserved cancelling, punching and death.

It would be so much easier to tweet the approved hashtags — because of course trans rights are human rights and of course trans lives matter — scoop up the woke cookies and bask in a virtue-signalling afterglow. There's joy, relief and safety in conformity.

But endlessly unpleasant as its constant targeting of me has been, 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.

None of the gender critical women I've talked to hates trans people; on the contrary. Many of them became interested in this issue in the first place out of concern for trans youth, and they're hugely sympathetic towards trans adults who simply want to live their lives, but who're facing a backlash for a brand of activism they don't endorse.

The supreme irony is that the attempt to silence women with the word "TERF" may have pushed more young women towards radical feminism than the movement's seen in decades.

The last thing I want to say is this. I haven't written this essay in the hope that anybody will get out a violin for me, not even a teeny-weeny one. I'm extraordinarily fortunate; I'm a survivor, certainly not a victim.

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. I never forget that inner complexity when I'm creating a fictional character and I certainly never forget it when it comes to trans people.

All I'm asking — all I want — is for similar empathy, similar understanding, to be extended to the many millions of women whose sole crime is wanting their concerns to be heard without receiving threats and abuse.

2021

I have to assume [they] thought doxxing me would intimidate me out of speaking up for women's sex-based rights. They should have reflected on the fact that I've now received so many death threats I could paper the house with them, and I haven't stopped speaking out. Perhaps, and I'm just throwing this out there, the best way to prove your movement isn't a threat to women, is to stop stalking, harassing and threatening us.
- From a series of posts on Twitter (22 November 2021), as cited in "JK Rowling’s address posted on Twitter by trans activists", The Times (23 November 2021)

War is Peace.
Freedom is Slavery.
Ignorance is Strength.
The Penised Individual Who Raped You Is a Woman.
- 12 December 2021 tweet

2022

The law Nicola Sturgeon is trying to pass in Scotland will harm the most vulnerable women in society — those seeking help after male violence/rape and incarcerated women.
Statistics show that imprisoned women are already far more likely to have been previously abused.
The most searing, heartfelt and courageous response yet to Shona Robison's astounding claim in the Scottish parliament that there is no evidence sexual predators "have ever had to pretend to be anything else". Susan, as a fellow survivor, I salute you.
- Tweet, as cited in "Self-ID law will harm the most vulnerable women, says JK Rowling", The Times (7 March 2022)
- In an article for The Scotsman, journalist Susan Dalgety had written about a man's abuse of her when she was a child as a response to Robison's comments.

Critiques of Western cancel culture are possibly not best made by those currently slaughtering civilians for the crime of resistance, or who jail and poison their critics. #IStandWithUkraine
- 25 March 2022 tweet responding to remarks by Vladimir Putin who mentioned hostile reactions to her rejection of many transgender assumptions, amidst his claims that economic and political sanctions in reaction to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine were attempts at total exclusions of Russian culture.

2023

A strange new form of temporary blindness has broken out among Scottish politicians.
None of them could read placards calling for violence against women while standing inches away from them, yet they were instantly cured when photos of them posing with the signs hit the press.
- Post on X (22 January 2024), as cited in Jenness Mitchell "Scottish politicians and JK Rowling voice anger over 'decapitate terfs' sign at pro-trans rally in Glasgow", Sky News (23 January 2023)
- The four SNP politicians at the demonstration all denied having seen the sign and denounced it.

Never forget, Sturgeon, her government and supporters have insisted that it is ludicrous to imagine anyone would dress in women's clothes to get access to vulnerable women and girls. Wouldn't happen. Everyone is who they say they are. To question this is hate.
- From a series of tweets quoted in "Nicola Sturgeon: Gender law opponents use women’s rights as 'cloak' to be transphobic" The Telegraph (27 January 2023)
- Responding to an announcement that an untransitioned rapist (who identified as female, but retained male genitals) would be moved out of a women's prison.

[To Labour frontbencher Lisa Nandy] You said rapists should be transferred to women's prisons if they self-identify as women.
Given that you're one of the biggest reasons many women on the Left no longer trust Labour to defend their rights, do you stand by these comments?
- Comments on X (formerly known as Twitter), as cited in "JK Rowling says Lisa Nandy is reason women on left don't trust Labour", The Independent (12 October 2023).
- Rowling was referring to comments Lisa Nandy made at the 2020 Labour Party conference: "I think trans women are women and I think trans men are men so I think they should be in the prison of their choosing."

The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling (2023)

Podcast series with Megan Phelps-Roper.

The pushback is often, "You are wealthy. You can afford security. You haven't been silenced." All true. But I think that misses the point. The attempt to intimidate and silence me is meant to serve as a warning to other women [with similar views who may also wish to speak out].
- Extract cited in Pamela Paul "In Defense of J.K. Rowling" The New York Times (16 February 2023)
I do not walk around my house thinking about my legacy. What a pompous way to live your life, walking around thinking, "What will my legacy be?"
Whatever. I’ll be dead. I care about now, I care about the living.
There is a huge appeal, and I try to show this in the Potter books, to black and white thinking.
It's the easiest place to be and in many ways it's the safest place to be. If you take an all-or-nothing position on anything, you will definitely find comrades, you will easily find a community. "I’ve sworn allegiance to this one simple idea."
What I've tried to show in the Potter books, and what I feel strongly myself, is that we should mistrust ourselves most when we are certain.
[In the United States, during the early 2000s, Rowling's books were burned by Evangelical Christians because they were perceived as promoting witchcraft.] Book burners, by definition, have placed themselves across a line of rational debate.
There is no book on this planet that I would burn, including books that I do think are damaging. Burning, to me, is the last resort of people who cannot argue.
- Cited by Anita Singh in "JK Rowling: Black and white thinking on controversial issues should be abandoned" The Telegraph (21 February 2023)

The marriage [to Jorge Arantes] had turned very violent and very controlling. He was searching my handbag every time I came home and I didn’t have a key to my own front door. [...] It was a horrible state of tension to live in because I had to act as though I wasn't going and I don't think I'm a very good actor. That’s a terrible way to live and yet the manuscript kept growing, I had continued to write.
[The project eventually became Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (1997). Rowling's first husband] knew what that manuscript meant to me because at a point he took the manuscript and hid it. That was his hostage.
When I realised I was definitely going to go, I would take a few pages of the manuscript into work every day, just a few pages so he wouldn't realise anything was missing, and I would photocopy it.
Gradually in a cupboard in the staff room, bit by bit, a photocopied manuscript grew and grew because I suspected that if I wasn’t able to get out with everything he would burn it or take it and hold it hostage.
That manuscript meant so much to me and it was the thing that I prioritised saving. The only thing I prioritised beyond that was my daughter but at that point she was still inside me so she was as safe as she can be in that situation.
- "JK Rowling reveals abusive ex-husband hid Harry Potter manuscripts" The Times (21 February 2023)
There is something about a mass of human beings. There's always an edge in a crowd. Always.
- From the first episode at 44m27s

[Something] I explore in the Potter books [is that] a sense of righteousness is not incompatible with doing terrible things. You know, most of the people in movements that we consider hugely abhorrent, many many many of the people involved in those movements understood themselves to be on the side of righteousness. Believed they were doing the right thing. Felt themselves justified in what they were doing.
- From the second episode at 46m41s

I never sat out to upset anyone. However, I was not uncomfortable with getting off my pedestal, and what has interested me over the last ten years, and certainly in the last few years, the last 2-3 years, particularly on social media: "You've ruined your legacy. Oh, you could have been beloved forever but you chose to say this." And I think you could not have misunderstood me more profoundly.
- Source: Kulturnyheterna (at 8m0s) quoting the trailer of the podcast, SVT, 22 February 2023.

If you want to know what a man's like, take a good look at how he treats his inferiors, not his equals.
- [1]

I've looked around and realised that it has to be someone who can take the hit. And it has to be me. I can afford it.
This has never been about trans rights. [...] This is about women’s rights and activists' demands to dismantle those rights.
I have nothing but profound sympathy for trans women who have experienced male violence.
I want trans people to be safe. I just don't want women and girls to be any less safe.
- Appearing unannounced at a FiLiA conference in Glasgow (15 October 2023), as cited in "JK Rowling speaks at FiLiA feminist conference labelled 'transphobic'", The National (Glasgow, 16 October 2023)
- Women expressing gender-critical opinions have been cancelled, sacked from their jobs and have suffered violence from activists opposing them.

2024–present

I’m sick of this s---. This is not a woman. These are #NotOurCrimes.
Crime statistics are rendered useless if violent and sexual attacks committed by men are recorded as female crimes. Activists are already clamouring for this sadistic killer to be incarcerated in a women’s prison.
Ideologically driven misinformation is not journalism.
- From a series of posts on X, formerly known as Twitter, as cited in "JK Rowling says 'I'm sick of this s---' after transgender cat killer is called a woman", The Telegraph (27 February 2024).
- A transwoman (under the name Scarlet Blake) had been convicted of murdering a man in Oxford several months after killing a cat, crimes almost always committed by men, but much of the media had downplayed this individual's trans status. They were sentenced to 24 years in prison.

When I've asked what the lack of female-only spaces would mean for women of certain faith groups, or survivors of sexual violence, the response is an almighty shrug. Over and again I've heard "no trans person has ever harmed a woman or a girl in a female space", the speakers' consciences apparently untroubled by the fact that they are parroting an easily disprovable lie, because there's ample evidence that men claiming a female identity have committed sexual offences, acts of violence and voyeurism, both inside women's spaces and without. Indeed, the Ministry of Justice's own figures show that there are proportionately more trans-identified males in jail in the UK for sexual offences than among male prisoners as a whole. When this inconvenient fact is raised, I'm sometimes told trans-identified sex offenders "aren't really trans, they're just gaming the system”. Well, yes. That's the point. If a system relies on an unfalsifiable sense of self rather than sex, it's impossible to keep bad faith actors out.
- Extract from essay published in Susan Dalgety and Lucy Hunter Blackburn (eds.) The Women Who Wouldn’t Say Wheesht: Voices from the Front-Line of Scotland’s Battle for Women's Rights (Constable), as republished in "JK Rowling: Why I decided to stand up for women", The Times (29 May 2024)

Kemi Badenoch and I might not agree on a lot, but how often are male politicians called "spiteful"? And what's the issue with her manner? Did she fail in womanly sweetness, kindness and deference?
[To Alastair Campbell, former spokesman for Tony Blair, who had commented Badenoch was not speaking about her role as Secretary of State for Business and Trade] Badenoch is also minister for women and equalities. Thanks once again for highlighting Labour's complacency and indifference towards the rights of half the electorate.
- Posts on X (3 June 2024), as cited in "JK Rowling attacks Labour’s ‘indifference to women’ in trans row", The Times (3 June 2024)
- Badenoch had been criticised for her responses to broadcast interviewers.

[Rosie Duffield] and I share more than the occasional meal and a fairly sweary WhatsApp thread. Last month, a man received a suspended prison sentence for sending both of us death threats. Rosie was to be taken out with a gun; I was to be beaten to death with a hammer. The level of threats Rosie has received is such that she's had to hire personal security and was recently advised not to conduct in-person hustings.
Is this what [Keir] Starmer meant, when he talked about toxic, divided debate? A female MP in his own party being intimidated and harassed? Or was he referencing the activists in black masks who turn up at women’s demonstrations with the declared intention of punching "Terfs", an intention that has more than once translated into action? Was he perhaps thinking of the trans activists who sang "f*** you" over a microphone as women from all over the world queued outside FiLia, the feminist conference, to discuss issues like female genital mutilation? It didn’t seem so.
The impression given by Starmer at Thursday’s debate was that there had been something unkind, something toxic, something hard line in Rosie’s words, even though almost identical words had sounded perfectly reasonable when spoken by Blair.
- "JK Rowling: Labour has dismissed women like me. I'll struggle to vote for it", The Times (21 June 2024).
- The previous Thursday evening, Starmer (along with other party leaders) had appeared on a Leaders' Special edition of the BBC's Question Time during the 2024 general election campaign.

Quotes about Rowling

[From a letter, originally in German, sent to author Gabriele Kuby] It is good that you enlighten us on the Harry Potter matter, for these are subtle seductions that are barely noticeable, and precisely because of that have a deep effect and corrupt the Christian faith in souls even before it could properly grow.
- Pope Benedict XVI (March 2003, at the time Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger), as cited in "Pope criticises Harry Potter", The Times (13 July 2005)
- Ratzinger was Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith when Kuby sent him a copy of her book Harry Potter - Good or Evil? (2003).

The ultimate model for Harry Potter is Tom Brown's School Days by Thomas Hughes, published in 1857. The book depicts the Rugby School presided over by the formidable Thomas Arnold, remembered now primarily as the father of Matthew Arnold, the Victorian critic-poet. But Hughes' book, still quite readable, was realism, not fantasy. Rowling has taken Tom Brown's School Days and re-seen it in the magical mirror of Tolkein. The resultant blend of a schoolboy ethos with a liberation from the constraints of reality-testing may read oddly to me, but is exactly what millions of children and their parents desire and welcome at this time.
- Harold Bloom (7 November 2000). "Can 35 Million Book Buyers Be Wrong? Yes.". The Wall Street Journal.

In psychoanalytic terms, having projected his childish rage onto the caricature Dursleys, and retained his innocent goodness, Harry now experiences that rage as capable of spilling outward, imperiling his friends. But does this mean Harry is growing up? Not really. The perspective is still child's-eye. There are no insights that reflect someone on the verge of adulthood. Harry's first date with a female wizard is unbelievably limp, filled with an 8-year-old's conversational maneuvers.
Auden and Tolkien wrote about the skills of inventing secondary worlds. Ms. Rowling's world is a secondary secondary world, made up of intelligently patchworked derivative motifs from all sorts of children's literature.
- A.S Byatt "Harry Potter and the Childish Adult", The New York Times (7 July 2003)

We did not intend to suggest that JK Rowling was transphobic or that she should be boycotted. We accept that our comparisons of JK Rowling to people such as Picasso, who celebrated sexual violence, and Wagner, who was praised by the Nazis for his antisemitic and racist views, were clumsy, offensive and wrong.
- UK news website The Day quoted in "Children's news website apologises to JK Rowling over trans tweet row" The Guardian (23 July 2020)

Last year, initially The Scotsman newspaper — being Scottish and J. K. Rowling being Scottish [sic] — and because of the English tendency to try and tear down their idols, they kept trying to build stories which said J. K. Rowling ripped off Neil Gaiman. They kept getting in touch with me and I kept declining to play because I thought it was silly. And then The Daily Mirror in England ran an article about that mad woman who was trying to sue J. K. Rowling over having stolen muggles from her. And they finished off with a line saying [something like]: And Neil Gaiman has accused her of stealing.
Luckily I found this online and I found it the night it came out by pure coincidence and the reporter's e-mail address was at the bottom of the thing so I fired off an e-mail saying: This is not true, I never said this. You are making this up. I got an apologetic e-mail back, but by the time I'd gotten the apologetic e-mail back it was already in The Daily Mail the following morning and it was very obvious that The Daily Mail‍'‍s research consisted of reading The Daily Mirror. And you're going: journalists are so lazy.
- Neil Gaiman, on newspaper stories which implied Harry Potter was merely a revised Timothy Hunter of Gaiman's The Books of Magic, in Linda Richards January magazine interview (2002)

J.K. Rowling, thinking of a name of white character: Albus Dumbeldore, Hermione Granger, Minerva McGonagall. J.K. Rowling, thinking of nonwhite character: Cho Chang
- Astead Herndon on Twitter (May 13, 2020)

I didn't feel she ripped me off, as some people did, though she could have been more gracious about her predecessors. My incredulity was at the critics who found the first book wonderfully original. She has many virtues, but originality isn't one of them.
- Ursula K. Le Guin, quoted in "The magician" by Maya Jaggi, in The Guardian (17 December 2005)

This campaign against Rowling is as dangerous as it is absurd. The brutal stabbing of Salman Rushdie last summer is a forceful reminder of what can happen when writers are demonized. And in Rowling’s case, the characterization of her as a transphobe doesn’t square with her actual views.
[N]othing Rowling has said qualifies as transphobic. She is not disputing the existence of gender dysphoria. She has never voiced opposition to allowing people to transition under evidence-based therapeutic and medical care. She is not denying transgender people equal pay or housing. There is no evidence that she is putting trans people "in danger," as has been claimed, nor is she denying their right to exist.
- Pamela Paul "In Defense of J.K. Rowling" The New York Times (16 February 2023)

When Harry Potter author J. K. Rowling published the piece "TERF (trans exclusionary radical feminist) Wars" on her blog in the summer of 2020, she specifically mentioned her fear that many transgender men are actually Autistic girls who weren't conventionally feminine, and have been influenced by transactivists on the internet into identifying out of womanhood. In presenting herself as defending disabled "girls," she argued for restricting young trans Autistic people's ability to self-identify, and access necessary services and health care. Rowling's perspective (which she shares with many gender critical folks) is deeply dehumanizing to both the trans and Autistic communities. We're fully fledged, complex people, who are entitled to the same body autonomy and self-determination as anyone else.
- Devon Price Unmasking Autism: Discovering the New Faces of Neurodiversity, p 59

External links

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