“Harry Potter” author J.K. Rowling laid into “genderists” in a brief Twitter thread on Wednesday, slamming them for making excuses when it was revealed that a “paedophilia apologist” had been allowed to sit on the board of trustees at a transgender children’s charity.
Rowling, who often leans to the left on the political spectrum, has drawn a hard line at radical gender theory — which she argues erases women — and has been labeled a Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist (TERF) for her troubles.
The author still speaks out on the subject regularly, despite receiving numerous threats. On Wednesday, she responded to reports that Dr. Jacob Breslow — an associate professor of gender and sexuality at the London School of Economics — had resigned from the transgender children’s charity Mermaids after people became aware that he had once spoken at a B4U-ACT conference promoting support for pedophiles.
“I note the genderists are now arguing that it doesn’t matter that a paedophilia apologist was a trustee of a trans children’s charity, because he was ‘only one.’ You know, I thought things were pretty bad when you were arguing to put convicted rapists in women’s jails,” Rowling began.
when you shrugged off masked men roughing up lesbian protestors and tried to shout down detransitioners talking about what was done to them by ideologically-captured doctors. Women, gay people and vulnerable kids have suffered real harm and you? You cheered it all on. 2/3
— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) October 5, 2022
“When you shrugged off masked men roughing up lesbian protestors and tried to shout down detransitioners talking about what was done to them by ideologically-captured doctors,” she continued. “Women, gay people and vulnerable kids have suffered real harm and you? You cheered it all on.”
“You still prefer willful blindness and four word mantras to considering you might have got this badly wrong,” Rowling said, going on to note that many of the activists had become the very thing they so often professed to hate.
“You became part of an authoritarian, misogynist, homophobic movement and you didn’t even notice,” she said. “Enjoy the sense of your own righteousness while you can. It won’t last.”
Perfect example. The problem isn't that a man who wrote sympathetically about orgasming 'on or with' a child was made trustee of a children's charity, but that the TERFs might 'twist' his appointment. Then straight back to the self-soothing mantras, with a glow of inner virtue. pic.twitter.com/KwDWSK2B79
— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) October 5, 2022
Rowling later added to the thread, sharing a screenshot of one of the comments she had received. The comment read: “Even if he was (and his appointment as a Mermaid trustee was stupid given the level of scrutiny and how everything is twisted by TERFs) that doesn’t stop trans men being men, trans women being women, and non-binary people being non-binary people.”
Rowling responded by saying, “Perfect example. The problem isn’t that a man who wrote sympathetically about orgasming ‘on or with’ a child was made trustee of a children’s charity, but that the TERFs might ‘twist’ his appointment. Then straight back to the self-soothing mantras, with a glow of inner virtue.”