J.K. Rowling is standing firm in her views on the trans community despite growing backlash. Last week, a number of Harry Potter actors, including Eddie Redmayne, Paapa Essiedu, and Katie Leung, publicly signed a pro-trans open letter following the UK Supreme Court’s decision to define “woman” and “sex” strictly in terms of biological sex. The move has reignited the ongoing debate as the author slammed the actors.
J.K. Rowling calls out Harry Potter actors
Rowling did not mince her words as she supported the essay in public on X while making blistering remarks on her “back-stabbing colleagues”, adding that their act was “motivated by fear.” She wrote on X, “In light of recent open letters from academia and the arts criticising the UK’s Supreme Court ruling on sex-based rights, it’s possibly worth remembering that nobody sane believes, or has ever believed, that humans can change sex, or that binary sex isn’t a material fact.”
She added, “These letters do nothing but remind us of what we know only too well: that pretending to believe these things has become an elitist badge of virtue.”
In her long message on social media, the author continued, “Some argue that signatories of these sorts of letters are motivated by fear: fear for their careers, of course, but also fear of their co-religionists, who include angry, narcissistic men who threaten and sometimes enact violence on non-believers; back-stabbing colleagues ever ready to report wrongthink; the online shamers and doxxers and rape threateners, and, of course, the influential zealots in the upper echelons of liberal professions.”
Somewhere in her note, she also commented that the “court losses” against the trans community, “are starting to stack up, meanwhile, “women are fighting back and winning significant victories.” At the end, she called out the people who signed the pro trans letter, however, she did not drop any names, as reported by The New York Post. She wrote, “I wonder if they ever ask themselves how they got here, and I wonder whether any of them will ever feel shame.”
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Harry Potter actors and other celebs who signed the letter
The open pro trans letter was decorated with more than 2,000 signatures that argued that the court’s ruling “undermines the lived reality and threatens the safety of trans, non-binary and intersex people living in the UK.” Redmayne, who starred in teh Harry Potter prequel franchise, The Fantastic Beasts, signed the letter. Leung, who was in the original Harry Potter series, was also one of the signatories. Essiedu also signed the letter and is set to play Severus Snape in the upcoming Harry Potter series on HBO.
Other British actors who were part of the signatories included Bella Ramsey, Nicola Coughlan and Joe Alwyn.
