JK Rowling’s brave trans stand has been vindicated
JK Rowling’s brave trans stand has been vindicated
Every day brings new reasons to thank the Harry Potter writer for fighting extreme gender ideology
The transgender children’s charity Mermaids hasn’t exactly covered itself in glory recently. In fact, recent weeks may rank as the worst time for sea maidens since the mermaid-impersonating cleric Parson Hawker was shot at on suspicion of being a French spy while he sat singing on a rock in Bude harbour during the 19th century.
Last week, Jacob Breslaw resigned as a trustee after a newspaper exposed his links with a pro-paedophile organisation. Yesterday it emerged that Darren Mew, Mermaids’ digital engagement officer, had dressed up as a sexy schoolgirl and posted pictures of his genitals on social media. The Charity Commission is investigating Mermaids after a Telegraph investigation found it was handing out breast-binders to girls as young as 13, sometimes behind their parents’ backs.
Any organisation working with vulnerable youngsters – particularly one in a position to recommend them to receive irreversible medical treatments – ought to be utterly diligent in its vetting, but it seems Mermaids has scarcely covered the basics. Or perhaps it just doesn’t care. Certainly, recruiting a paedophilia apologist to a children’s charity requires mystifying incompetence at the very least.
Rowling is of course not alone in her brave stand for women’s rights; from Allison Bailey to Julie Bindel to courageous whistleblowers like Keira Bell who has spoken powerfully about the plight of gender “de-transitioners”. And the battle continues to rage. Even as the Charity Commission investigates Mermaids’ own operations, Jolyon Maugham KC (who else?) is using his crowd-funded Good Law Project to support Mermaids’ High Court action against the vital new charity LGB Alliance. But perhaps no one has done more to make this a mainstream cause of concern than Rowling; or faced greater opprobrium for it.
Back in 2020, she wrote a heartfelt, considered essay linking her experience of sexual assault with her concerns about the future of single-sex spaces in a world where biological reality is deemed meaningless. Millennial Harry Potter stars soon began turning on their creator in the public square. Daniel Radcliffe and Rupert Grint denounced Rowling; Grint by patronisingly likening her to an “auntie” he doesn’t always agree with. Emma Watson donated money to Mermaids and urged fans to consider doing the same. Eddie Redmayne, star of the mediocre spin-off Fantastic Beasts, condemned her too.
Even the “Quidditch league” – which, to us Muggles, means a bunch of grown adults running around with broomsticks between their legs – changed their name to “quadball” to register their disgust. Though to be fair, if I were Rowling I wouldn’t want my wizarding world affiliated with these maniacs either.
Rowling-critics have certain things in common. They excel at presenting complex questions about child safety, free speech and competing rights as simplistic questions of virtue vs hatred. When pushed, however, they can rarely identify anything genuinely malicious or “transphobic” that Rowling has said or done.
Graham Norton gave a masterclass in this recently; after conceding that he might let Rowling come on his show to talk about her bestselling Cormoran Strike series (or, in Norton’s words, to “wang on about her crime novel”), he dismissed her views as “problematic” without explanation or corroborating evidence. Yet Rowling has never been anything less than thoughtful and humane. She acknowledges that this is a complicated debate, which poses a host of complex legal and moral issues, including for other groups that have been historically oppressed.
Among the younger Harry Potter cast members, it is ironically Tom Felton, who played arch-baddie Draco Malfoy, who has displayed a real moral compass. Interviewed this week, Felton refused to be drawn into mud-slinging, speaking instead of the “joy” Rowling had brought to millions.
This was a welcome intervention. Thanks to the sordid abuse and post-truth nastiness of the debate, many have forgotten what Rowling’s work meant – especially to those of us who grew up in the 1990s and 2000s, back when every child’s bedroom contained, amid the squashed Furbys and clusters of Pokemon cards, a stack of well-thumbed Potter books. Rowling brilliantly enticed a generation to read and filled their childhoods with magic. But she also introduced deep moral and theological concepts. As I found during my first family bereavements, few books better equip children for dealing with death.
Yet as it turns out, JK Rowling’s literary success was the least of her achievements. She could have sat back, raking in royalties and praise from her adoring fans, but instead she chose to wage a long and often lonely battle for the rights of women and children. For this we owe her an even greater debt.
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