Published 10:57 IST, June 7th 2020
JK Rowling faces heat for stand on transgenders, says 'it isn't hate to speak the truth'
On Saturday, 'Harry Potter' author JK Rowling sparked major controversy on Twitter for her opinion about 'people who menstruate' by claiming that 'sex is real'.
Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling has been facing major backlash from netizens and the LGBTQ community for a series of allegedly anti-transgender tweets that she posted on Saturday. She sparked controversy when she shared an opinionated article titled “Creating a more equal post-COVID-19 world for people who menstruate” and pointed out the lack of terminology for 'people who menstruate'. She tweeted, "‘People who menstruate.’ I’m sure there used to be a word for those people. Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?”
Twitterati immediately called out Rowling for her comment by calling her “anti-trans” and “transphobic”. They claimed that transgender people, non-binary people and gender-nonconforming people can also menstruate. Rowling followed that tweet by criticizing the idea that someone’s biological sense isn’t real.
The author stood her ground that she believed in the fact that sex is real and struck out at people calling her a TERF, a trans-exclusionary radical feminist. Rowling has been in a soup with the community for quite some time now for her binary view of sex and gender. Through another tweet, she has even defended her ideology by pointing out that her life has been shaped by being 'female'.
The celebrated storyteller had recently faced backlash for another tweet that she had accidentally shared while promoting her new fairytale book The Ickabog. While replying to one fan-made drawing Rowling accidentally pasted an explicit message, for which she later apologised. The post which has since been deleted read, "I love this truly fabulous Ickabog, with its bat ears, mismatched eyes, and terrifying bloodstained teeth! In court, Wolf claimed the Facebook post in which he’d said he wanted to ‘mess up some TERFs’ was just ‘bravado’. #TheIckabog."
The 'Wolf' in the original post referred to Tara Wolf, a transgender woman who was convicted for assaulting a transphobic feminist woman Maria Maclaughlin during a protest in London in 2017. Rowling was criticized for addressing Wolf as a male and not a female. Following the accident, she even apologized for the explicit tweet and later posted multiple tweets defending her action and slamming people for calling her out.
Updated 10:57 IST, June 7th 2020