J.K. Rowling has published an essay of more than 2,000 words defending her views on trans issues, saying they “haven’t changed” in the six years since she first wrote about the subject.
The Harry Potter author posted An Update to My Essay of June 2020 on her website on Wednesday.
“My views haven’t changed,” she wrote, “but the landscape certainly has, and my own involvement in the issue has become practical as well as theoretical.”
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Rowling writes that she has faced an “avalanche of death, rape and torture threats” since 2020.
She repeats her objection to what she calls “the current, dominant strain of trans activism, which holds that a man who declares himself a woman is, literally, a woman”.
She says there are “without question” vulnerable trans people who need protection, and asks whether trans people should be discriminated against in housing or employment, or denied their human rights or personal safety.
The essay’s central argument is about class.
Rowling compares today’s activism with earlier gay and women’s rights movements, saying it bears no resemblance to the great social justice movements of the 20th century.
“Twenty-first century trans activism is the very inverse of those movements,” she writes. “It is elitist to its core.”
She argues that it is backed by universities, corporations, government bodies and advocacy groups, and affects working-class women more than wealthy people.
She defends single-sex spaces such as female-only changing rooms and rape crisis services.
She ends by promising to keep speaking out and to keep using her money to help women who couldn’t otherwise afford legal action.
The Rowling Women’s Fund has been among those financially supporting a feminist group’s legal challenge.
Critics have called her views “anti-trans”, a label Rowling rejects.
When she published her original essay in 2020, GLAAD, the Human Rights Campaign and several Harry Potter cast members, including Daniel Radcliffe and Eddie Redmayne, publicly disagreed with her.
Trans rights groups argue that trans women are women and say her positions harm trans people.
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