J.K. Rowling Sparks Backlash After Doubling Down on Anti-Trans Rhetoric on International Women’s Day

Leia IdlibyMar 8th, 2022, 1:56 pm
 
J.K. Rowling attends HBO's "Finding The Way Home" World Premiere

Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images

J.K. Rowling is once again facing backlash for a series of controversial tweets regarding the transgender community.

Rowling criticized the Labour Party’s stance on gender in a tweet on Tuesday — which is also International Women’s Day — joking that under a Labour government, the day will be known as “We Who Must Not Be Named Day.”


The crack, which references her own franchise, was prompted by a Twitter user who condemned Annalise Dodds, Chair of the Labour Party, for claiming she was unsure how to define the term woman.

“Someone please send the Shadow Minister for Equalities a dictionary and a backbone,” Rowling added in another tweet.

Rowling’s criticism of Dodds came after Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon publicly rejected the author’s claim that the nation’s Gender Recognition Reform Bill is a threat to vulnerable women.

Sturgeon defended the bill, which aims to make it easier for people to legally change their gender, in a segment on The World At One on BBC Radio 4.

“This is about a process, an existing process, by which people can legally change their gender, and it’s about making that process less traumatic and inhumane for trans people, one of the most stigmatized minorities in our society,” Sturgeon said of the bill.

“It doesn’t give trans people any more rights, doesn’t give trans people one single additional right that they don’t have right now. Nor does it take away from women any of the current existing rights that women have under the Equalities Act.”

Rowling swiftly began to trend on Twitter following both Sturgeon’s response and the International Women’s Day quip, as users slammed the author’s “transphobic agenda.”

 

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