JK Rowling opens up on 'dropping a hand grenade' in trans row and how fans reacted
JK Rowling criticised a think tank that did not renew its contract with Maya Forstater after she joined the trans debate.
PA/Twitter: JK Rowling
JK Rowling has shared an insight into the hate she has faced online after speaking out in the row over transgender people.
The Harry Potter author has grown notoriety within the trans community as they believe she holds transphobic views.
Most recently, there have been calls for fans of her Harry Potter franchise to boycott a new video game released earlier this year called Hogwarts Legacy.
Despite this, the 57-year-old has said “a ton” of fans of the Potter franchise have got behind her and voiced their support for her after arguing that women should not be fired for saying biological sex is real.
JK Rowling said “a ton” of fans of the Potter franchise have got behind her and voiced their support.
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Maya Forstater lost her job at a thinktank after she tweeted that transgender women cannot change their biological sex.
She later won her appeal against an employment tribunal.
Rowling publicly shared her support for Forstater, tweeting: “Dress however you please. Call yourself whatever you like. Sleep with any consenting adult who’ll have you.
“Live your best life in peace and security. But force women out of their jobs for stating that sex is real?”
Reflecting on the response she received, Rowling said: “I have to tell you a ton of Potter fans were still with me and in fact, a ton of Potter fans were grateful I had said what I said.
“I am constantly told I don’t understand my own books and I am constantly told that I have betrayed my own books.” She told The Witch Trials of JK Rowling.
“My position is that I am absolutely upholding the positions I took in Potter.
“My position is that this activist movement in the form it is currently taking echoes the very thing I was warning against in Harry Potter.”
JK Rowling has said joining the trans row was like dropping a hand grenade into Twitter.
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However, she admitted that voicing her comments was like “dropping a hand grenade into Twitter”.
“I was just keeping a reign on my own fury. So off it went … I am arguing against people who are literally saying sex is a construct, it’s not real.”
Elsewhere in the podcast, Rowling said she did not care about maintaining her legacy or the opinion people had of her as a bestselling children’s author.
“I do not walk around my house thinking about my legacy.
“What a pompous way to live your life, walking around thinking, ‘What will my legacy be?’
“Whatever. I’ll be dead. I care about now, I care about the living”.