JK Rowling, famous for Harry Potter, is now at the centre of a controversial debate on transgender rights.
We'll explore her views, why they've sparked so much outrage and support, and the impact on free speech laws in the UK.
[00:00:00] Hello, hello hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:00:12] The show where you can listen to fascinating stories, and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:21] I'm Alastair Budge, and today we are going to be talking about JK Rowling.
[00:00:26] But we aren’t going to talk about Harry Potter, or at least it’s not going to be a major part of the episode.
[00:00:33] Instead we are going to talk about her controversial views on the topic of transgenderism.
[00:00:40] It’s a story that brings together social media, freedom of speech, gender identity, British politics, Scotland, and the question of what it means to be a woman, so I hope you’ll enjoy it.
[00:00:53] OK then, JK Rowling and Transgenderism.
[00:00:59] As you will probably know, JK Rowling is one of the best-selling authors in history.
[00:01:05] From 1997 to 2007 she published the Harry Potter series, a 7-part series that has sold over 600 million copies and by some estimates is worth $25 billion dollars.
[00:01:21] This success brought with it great fame and fortune, and although she doesn’t court publicity, she has never been afraid to put her money and her platform behind political viewpoints that she supports.
[00:01:35] She is a staunch supporter of the British Labour Party, has spoken publicly in favour of Labour politicians and donated to Labour campaigns.
[00:01:45] She opposed Scottish independence and supported the UK remaining in the European Union.
[00:01:52] And she was vocal in her criticism of Donald Trump when he stood for election back in 2016.
[00:02:00] Of course, this support has attracted criticism from those with differing viewpoints to hers.
[00:02:06] She is told that she doesn’t know what she’s talking about, to stick to her writing and that she is out of her depth.
[00:02:13] But nothing that she had done prepared her for the reaction she would get when she expressed her views on transgenderism.
[00:02:23] In December 2019, JK Rowling posted a tweet in support of a lady called Maya Forstater, who had lost her job because she had expressed views about sex and gender that were deemed offensive.
[00:02:38] Forstater went to an employment tribunal, essentially a law court, to contest the decision and the judge ruled against her, saying that her views were, and I’m quoting directly “incompatible with human dignity and fundamental rights of others”.
[00:02:59] JK Rowling read about this verdict and then tweeted out, and I’ll read the entire thing for you:
[00:03:05] “Dress however you please.
[00:03:07] Call yourself whatever you like.
[00:03:09] Sleep with any consenting adult who’ll have you.
[00:03:13] Live your best life in peace and security.
[00:03:17] But force women out of their jobs for stating that sex is real?”
[00:03:22] This was in 2019, and the tweet has now been liked over 300,000 times and retweeted more than 120,000 times.
[00:03:35] Even if she knew that she was wading into some controversial territory, she had no idea of the extent to which this belief would define the following almost five years.
[00:03:48] Her inbox has been flooded with both messages of support and death threats.
[00:03:53] Friends and colleagues have both come out to support her and have broken off all contact with her.
[00:04:00] Some fans have said that this means that they are even more likely to buy her next book, while others have thrown them in the rubbish bin, or even posted videos of them burning them.
[00:04:13] And this has continued ever since.
[00:04:17] She has continued to speak out publicly and on social media about her position on transgenderism.
[00:04:24] To some people, it is vile, and she is trampling on an already oppressed and marginalised group of people.
[00:04:33] To others, she makes perfect sense and is standing up against a dangerous movement that erodes hard-won women’s rights.
[00:04:41] It is nothing if not controversial.
[00:04:44] So over the next 15 minutes or so we are going to unpack what JK Rowling actually believes, why some people find this so controversial, and why this matters in the context of UK law.
[00:04:59] As to the first question, of what JK Rowling believes and why she has decided to speak out on the subject, we actually have a pretty good source for this, as she wrote an extensive article on her blog.
[00:05:13] Her five reasons for speaking up are as follows.
[00:05:17] First, she has been heavily involved in charity work in Scotland, particularly with women and children. And she was worried that trans activism will “erode the legal definition of sex and replace it with gender”, and this will be damaging to the vulnerable people that she was trying to help.
[00:05:39] The second reason is because of her background as a teacher. She writes, and I’m quoting directly, “Like many others, I have deep concerns about the effect the trans rights movement is having on education and safeguarding”.
[00:05:55] The third is from a freedom of speech perspective. She thinks that people should have the freedom to say what they think, and this shouldn’t be controlled or restricted by a government.
[00:06:07] The fourth is more personal. She talks about her own teenage years and how she struggled to identify as a traditional woman, and suggests that–had she been offered the same opportunities as young women today–she might have taken the decision to transition into a man, and then would have deeply regretted the decision later on.
[00:06:33] And the fifth reason is more personal still. She talks about her life as a survivor of domestic violence at the hands of her ex-husband, and how she fears what would happen if trans women, or biological men as she calls them, were allowed to enter spaces that were traditionally “safe” for women, like women’s public toilets.
[00:06:57] And throughout the article she expresses her sympathy for trans people, how she understands them and empathises with them, and how she wants trans people to live in a way that they feel is true to their wishes, but she has these concerns.
[00:07:16] Whatever your views might be on the subject, even if you disagree with everything she says, I would certainly recommend you read the article, because it is very well-written and articulate, and it is the main source for her opinion. This is clearly not a position that she has come to lightly, without proper thought, and it is full of sympathy for trans people as individuals, at least she writes that she is sympathetic.
[00:07:44] However, her outward behaviour, through her primary outlet, Twitter, has been criticised for not showing the least bit of sympathy for trans people, in particular, transwomen, people who were identified as men at birth but now identify as women.
[00:08:03] She has been labelled as transphobic, which is defined as having a “dislike of or strong prejudice against transgender people”.
[00:08:12] She has found that many of the actors in Harry Potter, such as the actors who played Harry, Ron and Hermione, the three main characters in the series, have spoken out against her, saying that they vehemently reject her beliefs, and that “transwomen are women”.
[00:08:29] She has also been heavily criticised by her previous fans, people who grew up reading and adoring the books. To these critics, Harry Potter is a story about a boy who is different, a boy who longs to understand himself, and it’s only when he realises that he is a wizard that he truly understands himself. It's the same as a trans person, her critics argue, how can JK Rowling completely misunderstand her own book? She literally wrote a book about a child’s struggle to be accepted, and there she is criticising a movement that is only about acceptance.
[00:09:10] To these critics, JK Rowling has a simple comeback. It is not her but them that has misunderstood.
[00:09:18] After all, she did spend 17 years writing the books, so she should know what they are about.
[00:09:24] And ever since that first controversial tweet back in 2019, JK Rowling has continued an almost daily schedule of posting about the subject of transgenderism, offering messages of support to people who have been criticised for saying that sex and gender are the same thing and sharing negative stories about trans women, for example, trans women who are convicted criminals.
[00:09:51] This has got her into a lot of hot water, not just by alienating fans and former colleagues, but it has also made her a high-profile target for a new Scottish law.
[00:10:05] As you may remember from our episode on Scotland vs. England a few weeks back, Scotland has the power to create its own laws; the law is not exactly the same in Scotland as it is in England.
[00:10:19] One difference is a law that came into effect in April of 2024, called The Hate Crime and Public Order Act.
[00:10:29] The purpose of this law was to go above and beyond the pre-existing hate crime legislation, which protects people from being prejudiced or discriminated against based on things like their gender, race, religion or sexual orientation.
[00:10:46] And the difference was that transgender identity was added to this.
[00:10:52] What’s more, this law created a new crime for ‘stirring up hatred’ which, and I’m quoting directly, “criminalises threatening or abusive behaviour and the communication of threatening or abusive material which is intended to stir up hatred against a group of people”
[00:11:13] To JK Rowling’s critics, she was guilty of this.
[00:11:17] For four years she had been posting messages on social media that “trans women were not women”, or sharing a picture of a transwoman and calling that person “he”, referring to them as a man.
[00:11:31] This was hate speech, her critics cried, she was literally denying trans women’s existence by saying that they are not who they say they are.
[00:11:41] And with her 14 million followers, surely this must meet the legal guidelines for “hate speech”.
[00:11:48] It would only be a matter of time before the police knocked on her door and dragged her away.
[00:11:55] Rowling, who lives in Scotland, was clearly eagerly awaiting this moment.
[00:12:01] On April 1st, just hours after the new law came into effect, she launched into a lengthy Twitter thread where she posted the names and details of 10 different trans women, only to finish with, and I’m quoting directly, ”April Fools! Only kidding. Obviously, the people mentioned in the above tweets aren't women at all, but men, every last one of them.”
[00:12:25] And then adding, “I'm currently out of the country, but if what I've written here qualifies as an offence under the terms of the new act, I look forward to being arrested when I return to the birthplace of the Scottish Enlightenment.”
[00:12:39] There she was, egging the Scottish government on to arrest her.
[00:12:44] There were multiple complaints from members of the public, the police investigated and concluded that these tweets did not meet the legal requirements for “stirring up hatred”.
[00:12:56] Now, as I was writing this episode, new tweets were coming out every day, and this is very much a story in development.
[00:13:06] It is also one that is emblematic of the complete absence of middle ground.
[00:13:12] To her critics, JK Rowling’s views on transgenderism are hateful towards vulnerable people.
[00:13:19] To say that a trans woman is not a woman is deeply prejudiced and hurtful, they say, it undermines their entire identity.
[00:13:28] To JK Rowling, she is fighting to protect what she sees as an invasion by men on female identity. She is a sufferer of domestic and sexual abuse at the hands of men, and what she is doing is trying to stand up for women’s rights.
[00:13:47] Of course, you could argue that when it comes to transgenderism it is hard to find any middle ground, that’s the entire point.
[00:13:55] A person is a man or a woman, it is a biological fact, you cannot choose it.
[00:14:01] Or that a transwoman is a woman, it doesn’t matter whether they were assigned a different gender at birth. Gender is different from biological sex, and someone can know that their gender is female even if their biological sex is male, so the theory goes.
[00:14:18] Now, similar debates are going on all over the world, most probably in your country too.
[00:14:25] What makes the case of JK Rowling particularly interesting and unique is not just her celebrity and millions of followers, but the fact that she was the author of a series of books that so many children found particularly appealing.
[00:14:41] Being a child is, as we all know, often a confusing time. You are trying to figure out who you are, where you fit into the world, what your hopes and dreams are.
[00:14:53] And through the Harry Potter series, hundreds of millions of children got to experience the innermost feelings of a young boy who was going through exactly that.
[00:15:05] He was different, he could feel that there was something different about him, but he didn’t know what it was.
[00:15:12] As any Harry Potter fan knows, readers get very invested in the books. After all, there are more than 3,000 pages, over a million words, and especially for people who were reading the books as they were being released, like me, you grew up with them, you grew up with Harry, Ron and Hermione.
[00:15:34] And the creator of all of this magic, JK Rowling, was a wonderful person, how could she not be if she had created this magical world?
[00:15:44] And then like a thud, she comes out and says something that you believe goes against everything that the books stand for.
[00:15:52] It is, on one level, perfectly understandable why some people are so up in arms.
[00:15:59] But to JK Rowling, and indeed to those who have come out in support of her messages of caution against the trans movement, this is a dangerous movement that seeks to erode the rights of women and put women in positions of danger.
[00:16:16] She has no “legacy” to protect, so she says; she is doing this for the sake of her daughter and the sake of millions of women that she feels are in danger from a movement that has been taken to its extreme.
[00:16:30] No doubt to Rowling, people will look back on this period in 50 years and thank her for being a voice of reason.
[00:16:39] And to her critics, she will be remembered as a pariah who publicly criticised a group of already vulnerable people and who was on the wrong side of history.
[00:16:50] Only time will tell which is right.
[00:16:54] OK then, that is it for today's episode on JK Rowling and Transgenderism.
[00:17:00] Just in case you haven’t listened to them, we have made episodes on the life of JK Rowling and her struggle to get the Harry Potter books published.
[00:17:08] Those are episode numbers 262 and 263, if you haven’t checked out those already.
[00:17:14] As always, I would love to know what you thought about this episode.
[00:17:17] Are there any high-profile voices in the trans debate in your country, either in support of or criticising? Were you aware of this debate over JK Rowling’s views?
[00:17:28] I would love to know, so let’s get this discussion started.
[00:17:32] You can head right into our community forum, which is at community.leonardoenglish.com and get chatting away to other curious minds.
[00:17:39] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:17:44] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[00:00:00] Hello, hello hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:00:12] The show where you can listen to fascinating stories, and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:21] I'm Alastair Budge, and today we are going to be talking about JK Rowling.
[00:00:26] But we aren’t going to talk about Harry Potter, or at least it’s not going to be a major part of the episode.
[00:00:33] Instead we are going to talk about her controversial views on the topic of transgenderism.
[00:00:40] It’s a story that brings together social media, freedom of speech, gender identity, British politics, Scotland, and the question of what it means to be a woman, so I hope you’ll enjoy it.
[00:00:53] OK then, JK Rowling and Transgenderism.
[00:00:59] As you will probably know, JK Rowling is one of the best-selling authors in history.
[00:01:05] From 1997 to 2007 she published the Harry Potter series, a 7-part series that has sold over 600 million copies and by some estimates is worth $25 billion dollars.
[00:01:21] This success brought with it great fame and fortune, and although she doesn’t court publicity, she has never been afraid to put her money and her platform behind political viewpoints that she supports.
[00:01:35] She is a staunch supporter of the British Labour Party, has spoken publicly in favour of Labour politicians and donated to Labour campaigns.
[00:01:45] She opposed Scottish independence and supported the UK remaining in the European Union.
[00:01:52] And she was vocal in her criticism of Donald Trump when he stood for election back in 2016.
[00:02:00] Of course, this support has attracted criticism from those with differing viewpoints to hers.
[00:02:06] She is told that she doesn’t know what she’s talking about, to stick to her writing and that she is out of her depth.
[00:02:13] But nothing that she had done prepared her for the reaction she would get when she expressed her views on transgenderism.
[00:02:23] In December 2019, JK Rowling posted a tweet in support of a lady called Maya Forstater, who had lost her job because she had expressed views about sex and gender that were deemed offensive.
[00:02:38] Forstater went to an employment tribunal, essentially a law court, to contest the decision and the judge ruled against her, saying that her views were, and I’m quoting directly “incompatible with human dignity and fundamental rights of others”.
[00:02:59] JK Rowling read about this verdict and then tweeted out, and I’ll read the entire thing for you:
[00:03:05] “Dress however you please.
[00:03:07] Call yourself whatever you like.
[00:03:09] Sleep with any consenting adult who’ll have you.
[00:03:13] Live your best life in peace and security.
[00:03:17] But force women out of their jobs for stating that sex is real?”
[00:03:22] This was in 2019, and the tweet has now been liked over 300,000 times and retweeted more than 120,000 times.
[00:03:35] Even if she knew that she was wading into some controversial territory, she had no idea of the extent to which this belief would define the following almost five years.
[00:03:48] Her inbox has been flooded with both messages of support and death threats.
[00:03:53] Friends and colleagues have both come out to support her and have broken off all contact with her.
[00:04:00] Some fans have said that this means that they are even more likely to buy her next book, while others have thrown them in the rubbish bin, or even posted videos of them burning them.
[00:04:13] And this has continued ever since.
[00:04:17] She has continued to speak out publicly and on social media about her position on transgenderism.
[00:04:24] To some people, it is vile, and she is trampling on an already oppressed and marginalised group of people.
[00:04:33] To others, she makes perfect sense and is standing up against a dangerous movement that erodes hard-won women’s rights.
[00:04:41] It is nothing if not controversial.
[00:04:44] So over the next 15 minutes or so we are going to unpack what JK Rowling actually believes, why some people find this so controversial, and why this matters in the context of UK law.
[00:04:59] As to the first question, of what JK Rowling believes and why she has decided to speak out on the subject, we actually have a pretty good source for this, as she wrote an extensive article on her blog.
[00:05:13] Her five reasons for speaking up are as follows.
[00:05:17] First, she has been heavily involved in charity work in Scotland, particularly with women and children. And she was worried that trans activism will “erode the legal definition of sex and replace it with gender”, and this will be damaging to the vulnerable people that she was trying to help.
[00:05:39] The second reason is because of her background as a teacher. She writes, and I’m quoting directly, “Like many others, I have deep concerns about the effect the trans rights movement is having on education and safeguarding”.
[00:05:55] The third is from a freedom of speech perspective. She thinks that people should have the freedom to say what they think, and this shouldn’t be controlled or restricted by a government.
[00:06:07] The fourth is more personal. She talks about her own teenage years and how she struggled to identify as a traditional woman, and suggests that–had she been offered the same opportunities as young women today–she might have taken the decision to transition into a man, and then would have deeply regretted the decision later on.
[00:06:33] And the fifth reason is more personal still. She talks about her life as a survivor of domestic violence at the hands of her ex-husband, and how she fears what would happen if trans women, or biological men as she calls them, were allowed to enter spaces that were traditionally “safe” for women, like women’s public toilets.
[00:06:57] And throughout the article she expresses her sympathy for trans people, how she understands them and empathises with them, and how she wants trans people to live in a way that they feel is true to their wishes, but she has these concerns.
[00:07:16] Whatever your views might be on the subject, even if you disagree with everything she says, I would certainly recommend you read the article, because it is very well-written and articulate, and it is the main source for her opinion. This is clearly not a position that she has come to lightly, without proper thought, and it is full of sympathy for trans people as individuals, at least she writes that she is sympathetic.
[00:07:44] However, her outward behaviour, through her primary outlet, Twitter, has been criticised for not showing the least bit of sympathy for trans people, in particular, transwomen, people who were identified as men at birth but now identify as women.
[00:08:03] She has been labelled as transphobic, which is defined as having a “dislike of or strong prejudice against transgender people”.
[00:08:12] She has found that many of the actors in Harry Potter, such as the actors who played Harry, Ron and Hermione, the three main characters in the series, have spoken out against her, saying that they vehemently reject her beliefs, and that “transwomen are women”.
[00:08:29] She has also been heavily criticised by her previous fans, people who grew up reading and adoring the books. To these critics, Harry Potter is a story about a boy who is different, a boy who longs to understand himself, and it’s only when he realises that he is a wizard that he truly understands himself. It's the same as a trans person, her critics argue, how can JK Rowling completely misunderstand her own book? She literally wrote a book about a child’s struggle to be accepted, and there she is criticising a movement that is only about acceptance.
[00:09:10] To these critics, JK Rowling has a simple comeback. It is not her but them that has misunderstood.
[00:09:18] After all, she did spend 17 years writing the books, so she should know what they are about.
[00:09:24] And ever since that first controversial tweet back in 2019, JK Rowling has continued an almost daily schedule of posting about the subject of transgenderism, offering messages of support to people who have been criticised for saying that sex and gender are the same thing and sharing negative stories about trans women, for example, trans women who are convicted criminals.
[00:09:51] This has got her into a lot of hot water, not just by alienating fans and former colleagues, but it has also made her a high-profile target for a new Scottish law.
[00:10:05] As you may remember from our episode on Scotland vs. England a few weeks back, Scotland has the power to create its own laws; the law is not exactly the same in Scotland as it is in England.
[00:10:19] One difference is a law that came into effect in April of 2024, called The Hate Crime and Public Order Act.
[00:10:29] The purpose of this law was to go above and beyond the pre-existing hate crime legislation, which protects people from being prejudiced or discriminated against based on things like their gender, race, religion or sexual orientation.
[00:10:46] And the difference was that transgender identity was added to this.
[00:10:52] What’s more, this law created a new crime for ‘stirring up hatred’ which, and I’m quoting directly, “criminalises threatening or abusive behaviour and the communication of threatening or abusive material which is intended to stir up hatred against a group of people”
[00:11:13] To JK Rowling’s critics, she was guilty of this.
[00:11:17] For four years she had been posting messages on social media that “trans women were not women”, or sharing a picture of a transwoman and calling that person “he”, referring to them as a man.
[00:11:31] This was hate speech, her critics cried, she was literally denying trans women’s existence by saying that they are not who they say they are.
[00:11:41] And with her 14 million followers, surely this must meet the legal guidelines for “hate speech”.
[00:11:48] It would only be a matter of time before the police knocked on her door and dragged her away.
[00:11:55] Rowling, who lives in Scotland, was clearly eagerly awaiting this moment.
[00:12:01] On April 1st, just hours after the new law came into effect, she launched into a lengthy Twitter thread where she posted the names and details of 10 different trans women, only to finish with, and I’m quoting directly, ”April Fools! Only kidding. Obviously, the people mentioned in the above tweets aren't women at all, but men, every last one of them.”
[00:12:25] And then adding, “I'm currently out of the country, but if what I've written here qualifies as an offence under the terms of the new act, I look forward to being arrested when I return to the birthplace of the Scottish Enlightenment.”
[00:12:39] There she was, egging the Scottish government on to arrest her.
[00:12:44] There were multiple complaints from members of the public, the police investigated and concluded that these tweets did not meet the legal requirements for “stirring up hatred”.
[00:12:56] Now, as I was writing this episode, new tweets were coming out every day, and this is very much a story in development.
[00:13:06] It is also one that is emblematic of the complete absence of middle ground.
[00:13:12] To her critics, JK Rowling’s views on transgenderism are hateful towards vulnerable people.
[00:13:19] To say that a trans woman is not a woman is deeply prejudiced and hurtful, they say, it undermines their entire identity.
[00:13:28] To JK Rowling, she is fighting to protect what she sees as an invasion by men on female identity. She is a sufferer of domestic and sexual abuse at the hands of men, and what she is doing is trying to stand up for women’s rights.
[00:13:47] Of course, you could argue that when it comes to transgenderism it is hard to find any middle ground, that’s the entire point.
[00:13:55] A person is a man or a woman, it is a biological fact, you cannot choose it.
[00:14:01] Or that a transwoman is a woman, it doesn’t matter whether they were assigned a different gender at birth. Gender is different from biological sex, and someone can know that their gender is female even if their biological sex is male, so the theory goes.
[00:14:18] Now, similar debates are going on all over the world, most probably in your country too.
[00:14:25] What makes the case of JK Rowling particularly interesting and unique is not just her celebrity and millions of followers, but the fact that she was the author of a series of books that so many children found particularly appealing.
[00:14:41] Being a child is, as we all know, often a confusing time. You are trying to figure out who you are, where you fit into the world, what your hopes and dreams are.
[00:14:53] And through the Harry Potter series, hundreds of millions of children got to experience the innermost feelings of a young boy who was going through exactly that.
[00:15:05] He was different, he could feel that there was something different about him, but he didn’t know what it was.
[00:15:12] As any Harry Potter fan knows, readers get very invested in the books. After all, there are more than 3,000 pages, over a million words, and especially for people who were reading the books as they were being released, like me, you grew up with them, you grew up with Harry, Ron and Hermione.
[00:15:34] And the creator of all of this magic, JK Rowling, was a wonderful person, how could she not be if she had created this magical world?
[00:15:44] And then like a thud, she comes out and says something that you believe goes against everything that the books stand for.
[00:15:52] It is, on one level, perfectly understandable why some people are so up in arms.
[00:15:59] But to JK Rowling, and indeed to those who have come out in support of her messages of caution against the trans movement, this is a dangerous movement that seeks to erode the rights of women and put women in positions of danger.
[00:16:16] She has no “legacy” to protect, so she says; she is doing this for the sake of her daughter and the sake of millions of women that she feels are in danger from a movement that has been taken to its extreme.
[00:16:30] No doubt to Rowling, people will look back on this period in 50 years and thank her for being a voice of reason.
[00:16:39] And to her critics, she will be remembered as a pariah who publicly criticised a group of already vulnerable people and who was on the wrong side of history.
[00:16:50] Only time will tell which is right.
[00:16:54] OK then, that is it for today's episode on JK Rowling and Transgenderism.
[00:17:00] Just in case you haven’t listened to them, we have made episodes on the life of JK Rowling and her struggle to get the Harry Potter books published.
[00:17:08] Those are episode numbers 262 and 263, if you haven’t checked out those already.
[00:17:14] As always, I would love to know what you thought about this episode.
[00:17:17] Are there any high-profile voices in the trans debate in your country, either in support of or criticising? Were you aware of this debate over JK Rowling’s views?
[00:17:28] I would love to know, so let’s get this discussion started.
[00:17:32] You can head right into our community forum, which is at community.leonardoenglish.com and get chatting away to other curious minds.
[00:17:39] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:17:44] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[00:00:00] Hello, hello hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:00:12] The show where you can listen to fascinating stories, and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:21] I'm Alastair Budge, and today we are going to be talking about JK Rowling.
[00:00:26] But we aren’t going to talk about Harry Potter, or at least it’s not going to be a major part of the episode.
[00:00:33] Instead we are going to talk about her controversial views on the topic of transgenderism.
[00:00:40] It’s a story that brings together social media, freedom of speech, gender identity, British politics, Scotland, and the question of what it means to be a woman, so I hope you’ll enjoy it.
[00:00:53] OK then, JK Rowling and Transgenderism.
[00:00:59] As you will probably know, JK Rowling is one of the best-selling authors in history.
[00:01:05] From 1997 to 2007 she published the Harry Potter series, a 7-part series that has sold over 600 million copies and by some estimates is worth $25 billion dollars.
[00:01:21] This success brought with it great fame and fortune, and although she doesn’t court publicity, she has never been afraid to put her money and her platform behind political viewpoints that she supports.
[00:01:35] She is a staunch supporter of the British Labour Party, has spoken publicly in favour of Labour politicians and donated to Labour campaigns.
[00:01:45] She opposed Scottish independence and supported the UK remaining in the European Union.
[00:01:52] And she was vocal in her criticism of Donald Trump when he stood for election back in 2016.
[00:02:00] Of course, this support has attracted criticism from those with differing viewpoints to hers.
[00:02:06] She is told that she doesn’t know what she’s talking about, to stick to her writing and that she is out of her depth.
[00:02:13] But nothing that she had done prepared her for the reaction she would get when she expressed her views on transgenderism.
[00:02:23] In December 2019, JK Rowling posted a tweet in support of a lady called Maya Forstater, who had lost her job because she had expressed views about sex and gender that were deemed offensive.
[00:02:38] Forstater went to an employment tribunal, essentially a law court, to contest the decision and the judge ruled against her, saying that her views were, and I’m quoting directly “incompatible with human dignity and fundamental rights of others”.
[00:02:59] JK Rowling read about this verdict and then tweeted out, and I’ll read the entire thing for you:
[00:03:05] “Dress however you please.
[00:03:07] Call yourself whatever you like.
[00:03:09] Sleep with any consenting adult who’ll have you.
[00:03:13] Live your best life in peace and security.
[00:03:17] But force women out of their jobs for stating that sex is real?”
[00:03:22] This was in 2019, and the tweet has now been liked over 300,000 times and retweeted more than 120,000 times.
[00:03:35] Even if she knew that she was wading into some controversial territory, she had no idea of the extent to which this belief would define the following almost five years.
[00:03:48] Her inbox has been flooded with both messages of support and death threats.
[00:03:53] Friends and colleagues have both come out to support her and have broken off all contact with her.
[00:04:00] Some fans have said that this means that they are even more likely to buy her next book, while others have thrown them in the rubbish bin, or even posted videos of them burning them.
[00:04:13] And this has continued ever since.
[00:04:17] She has continued to speak out publicly and on social media about her position on transgenderism.
[00:04:24] To some people, it is vile, and she is trampling on an already oppressed and marginalised group of people.
[00:04:33] To others, she makes perfect sense and is standing up against a dangerous movement that erodes hard-won women’s rights.
[00:04:41] It is nothing if not controversial.
[00:04:44] So over the next 15 minutes or so we are going to unpack what JK Rowling actually believes, why some people find this so controversial, and why this matters in the context of UK law.
[00:04:59] As to the first question, of what JK Rowling believes and why she has decided to speak out on the subject, we actually have a pretty good source for this, as she wrote an extensive article on her blog.
[00:05:13] Her five reasons for speaking up are as follows.
[00:05:17] First, she has been heavily involved in charity work in Scotland, particularly with women and children. And she was worried that trans activism will “erode the legal definition of sex and replace it with gender”, and this will be damaging to the vulnerable people that she was trying to help.
[00:05:39] The second reason is because of her background as a teacher. She writes, and I’m quoting directly, “Like many others, I have deep concerns about the effect the trans rights movement is having on education and safeguarding”.
[00:05:55] The third is from a freedom of speech perspective. She thinks that people should have the freedom to say what they think, and this shouldn’t be controlled or restricted by a government.
[00:06:07] The fourth is more personal. She talks about her own teenage years and how she struggled to identify as a traditional woman, and suggests that–had she been offered the same opportunities as young women today–she might have taken the decision to transition into a man, and then would have deeply regretted the decision later on.
[00:06:33] And the fifth reason is more personal still. She talks about her life as a survivor of domestic violence at the hands of her ex-husband, and how she fears what would happen if trans women, or biological men as she calls them, were allowed to enter spaces that were traditionally “safe” for women, like women’s public toilets.
[00:06:57] And throughout the article she expresses her sympathy for trans people, how she understands them and empathises with them, and how she wants trans people to live in a way that they feel is true to their wishes, but she has these concerns.
[00:07:16] Whatever your views might be on the subject, even if you disagree with everything she says, I would certainly recommend you read the article, because it is very well-written and articulate, and it is the main source for her opinion. This is clearly not a position that she has come to lightly, without proper thought, and it is full of sympathy for trans people as individuals, at least she writes that she is sympathetic.
[00:07:44] However, her outward behaviour, through her primary outlet, Twitter, has been criticised for not showing the least bit of sympathy for trans people, in particular, transwomen, people who were identified as men at birth but now identify as women.
[00:08:03] She has been labelled as transphobic, which is defined as having a “dislike of or strong prejudice against transgender people”.
[00:08:12] She has found that many of the actors in Harry Potter, such as the actors who played Harry, Ron and Hermione, the three main characters in the series, have spoken out against her, saying that they vehemently reject her beliefs, and that “transwomen are women”.
[00:08:29] She has also been heavily criticised by her previous fans, people who grew up reading and adoring the books. To these critics, Harry Potter is a story about a boy who is different, a boy who longs to understand himself, and it’s only when he realises that he is a wizard that he truly understands himself. It's the same as a trans person, her critics argue, how can JK Rowling completely misunderstand her own book? She literally wrote a book about a child’s struggle to be accepted, and there she is criticising a movement that is only about acceptance.
[00:09:10] To these critics, JK Rowling has a simple comeback. It is not her but them that has misunderstood.
[00:09:18] After all, she did spend 17 years writing the books, so she should know what they are about.
[00:09:24] And ever since that first controversial tweet back in 2019, JK Rowling has continued an almost daily schedule of posting about the subject of transgenderism, offering messages of support to people who have been criticised for saying that sex and gender are the same thing and sharing negative stories about trans women, for example, trans women who are convicted criminals.
[00:09:51] This has got her into a lot of hot water, not just by alienating fans and former colleagues, but it has also made her a high-profile target for a new Scottish law.
[00:10:05] As you may remember from our episode on Scotland vs. England a few weeks back, Scotland has the power to create its own laws; the law is not exactly the same in Scotland as it is in England.
[00:10:19] One difference is a law that came into effect in April of 2024, called The Hate Crime and Public Order Act.
[00:10:29] The purpose of this law was to go above and beyond the pre-existing hate crime legislation, which protects people from being prejudiced or discriminated against based on things like their gender, race, religion or sexual orientation.
[00:10:46] And the difference was that transgender identity was added to this.
[00:10:52] What’s more, this law created a new crime for ‘stirring up hatred’ which, and I’m quoting directly, “criminalises threatening or abusive behaviour and the communication of threatening or abusive material which is intended to stir up hatred against a group of people”
[00:11:13] To JK Rowling’s critics, she was guilty of this.
[00:11:17] For four years she had been posting messages on social media that “trans women were not women”, or sharing a picture of a transwoman and calling that person “he”, referring to them as a man.
[00:11:31] This was hate speech, her critics cried, she was literally denying trans women’s existence by saying that they are not who they say they are.
[00:11:41] And with her 14 million followers, surely this must meet the legal guidelines for “hate speech”.
[00:11:48] It would only be a matter of time before the police knocked on her door and dragged her away.
[00:11:55] Rowling, who lives in Scotland, was clearly eagerly awaiting this moment.
[00:12:01] On April 1st, just hours after the new law came into effect, she launched into a lengthy Twitter thread where she posted the names and details of 10 different trans women, only to finish with, and I’m quoting directly, ”April Fools! Only kidding. Obviously, the people mentioned in the above tweets aren't women at all, but men, every last one of them.”
[00:12:25] And then adding, “I'm currently out of the country, but if what I've written here qualifies as an offence under the terms of the new act, I look forward to being arrested when I return to the birthplace of the Scottish Enlightenment.”
[00:12:39] There she was, egging the Scottish government on to arrest her.
[00:12:44] There were multiple complaints from members of the public, the police investigated and concluded that these tweets did not meet the legal requirements for “stirring up hatred”.
[00:12:56] Now, as I was writing this episode, new tweets were coming out every day, and this is very much a story in development.
[00:13:06] It is also one that is emblematic of the complete absence of middle ground.
[00:13:12] To her critics, JK Rowling’s views on transgenderism are hateful towards vulnerable people.
[00:13:19] To say that a trans woman is not a woman is deeply prejudiced and hurtful, they say, it undermines their entire identity.
[00:13:28] To JK Rowling, she is fighting to protect what she sees as an invasion by men on female identity. She is a sufferer of domestic and sexual abuse at the hands of men, and what she is doing is trying to stand up for women’s rights.
[00:13:47] Of course, you could argue that when it comes to transgenderism it is hard to find any middle ground, that’s the entire point.
[00:13:55] A person is a man or a woman, it is a biological fact, you cannot choose it.
[00:14:01] Or that a transwoman is a woman, it doesn’t matter whether they were assigned a different gender at birth. Gender is different from biological sex, and someone can know that their gender is female even if their biological sex is male, so the theory goes.
[00:14:18] Now, similar debates are going on all over the world, most probably in your country too.
[00:14:25] What makes the case of JK Rowling particularly interesting and unique is not just her celebrity and millions of followers, but the fact that she was the author of a series of books that so many children found particularly appealing.
[00:14:41] Being a child is, as we all know, often a confusing time. You are trying to figure out who you are, where you fit into the world, what your hopes and dreams are.
[00:14:53] And through the Harry Potter series, hundreds of millions of children got to experience the innermost feelings of a young boy who was going through exactly that.
[00:15:05] He was different, he could feel that there was something different about him, but he didn’t know what it was.
[00:15:12] As any Harry Potter fan knows, readers get very invested in the books. After all, there are more than 3,000 pages, over a million words, and especially for people who were reading the books as they were being released, like me, you grew up with them, you grew up with Harry, Ron and Hermione.
[00:15:34] And the creator of all of this magic, JK Rowling, was a wonderful person, how could she not be if she had created this magical world?
[00:15:44] And then like a thud, she comes out and says something that you believe goes against everything that the books stand for.
[00:15:52] It is, on one level, perfectly understandable why some people are so up in arms.
[00:15:59] But to JK Rowling, and indeed to those who have come out in support of her messages of caution against the trans movement, this is a dangerous movement that seeks to erode the rights of women and put women in positions of danger.
[00:16:16] She has no “legacy” to protect, so she says; she is doing this for the sake of her daughter and the sake of millions of women that she feels are in danger from a movement that has been taken to its extreme.
[00:16:30] No doubt to Rowling, people will look back on this period in 50 years and thank her for being a voice of reason.
[00:16:39] And to her critics, she will be remembered as a pariah who publicly criticised a group of already vulnerable people and who was on the wrong side of history.
[00:16:50] Only time will tell which is right.
[00:16:54] OK then, that is it for today's episode on JK Rowling and Transgenderism.
[00:17:00] Just in case you haven’t listened to them, we have made episodes on the life of JK Rowling and her struggle to get the Harry Potter books published.
[00:17:08] Those are episode numbers 262 and 263, if you haven’t checked out those already.
[00:17:14] As always, I would love to know what you thought about this episode.
[00:17:17] Are there any high-profile voices in the trans debate in your country, either in support of or criticising? Were you aware of this debate over JK Rowling’s views?
[00:17:28] I would love to know, so let’s get this discussion started.
[00:17:32] You can head right into our community forum, which is at community.leonardoenglish.com and get chatting away to other curious minds.
[00:17:39] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:17:44] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
