JK Rowling Reported To Police For ‘Misgendering’ Transgender Broadcaster; Author Fires Back With ‘Harassment’ Claims

Author JK Rowling is best known for her fiction series Harry Potter. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)

Famed author of the Harry Potter series JK Rowling was reported to the police by India Willoughby, Britain’s first transgender newsreader and a Loose Women co-host, after the writer referred to Willoughby as a “man” in posts on X.

In a debate about banning trans women from female locker rooms, Rowling said that Willoughby was “just a man revelling in his misogynistic performance of what he thinks ‘woman’ means: narcissistic, shallow and exhibitionist.”

Giving an interview with Byline TV, Willoughby asserted that Rowling had “definitely committed a crime” and said that she had reported the post to the Northumbria Police.

Willoughby said: “I’m legally a woman, she knows I’m a woman, and she calls me a man. It’s a protected characteristic and that is a breach of both the Equalities Act and the Gender Recognition Act. She’s tweeted that out to 14 million followers.”

She continued: “If you check out the accounts that have been responding to me on the back of that, her trigger, it’s absolutely disgusting. Putrid.”

https://twitter.com/BylineTV/status/1765484416275472570?s=20

In response via a thread on X, Rowling said that in the past she had consulted lawyers who said she had a “clearly winnable case against India Willoughby for defamation.” The writer said that Willouby had “obsessively targeted” her in a way that meets “the legal threshold for harassment.”

Rowling said that she “ignored this advice because I couldn’t be bothered giving India the publicity he so clearly craves” and posted screenshots of Willoughby’s tweets, alleging “racism” and highlighting her views on immigration.

She went on to cite the “Forstater” case, a 2022 employment law ruling that found gender-critical views were a protected philosophical belief under the Equality Act.