J K Rowling is transphobic. This blog isn’t about establishing if that is the case, that has been well evidenced by her actions – and is discussed by numerous other articles and blogs written by trans people over the last near decade. Instead, this blog treats this fact as just that: a fact. Indeed, the Harry Potter author-cum-mold connoisseur is – almost without equal – one of the most consequential transphobes in the UK, if not globally. She has personally financed political and legal campaigns responsible for the eradication of trans rights and remains resolutely the anti-trans lobby’s (unofficial) propogandist-in-chief.
It comes as no surprise, then, that her latest anti-trans diatribe exists for no other reason than to be another article of anti-trans propaganda to further push the anti-trans narrative. Indeed, this latest 2000-word philippic so unashamedly inhabits the imagined landscape constructed by anti-trans propogandists that to critique every incorrect statement, myth, omission, lie, or fabrication, would be an almost never-ending task. Moreover, it wouldn’t be very effective for the simple reason that J K Rowling and her transphobic followers don’t care about reality.
If they cared about reality than Rowling might have felt some shame in publishing an article in which she condemns the trans movement as “elitist to its core” and powered by “well-funded lobby groups” whilst living in her Scottish castle and holidaying on her $150m yacht. Or perhaps she might have given a second thought to the optics of publishing her blog post wherein she claims trans women are taking rights away from cis women the same week that trans people have been segregated on the NHS. No, facts don’t matter to anti-trans propogandists.
What matters to anti-trans propogandists is sounding reasonable to people whilst pushing what counts as reasonable ever closer to full-scale trans eradication, regardless of how much they must distort reality to present their so-called evidence. Transphobia in the UK has been examined through several models as of late. There is Judith Butler’s ‘phantasm of gender’ which describes how transgender identities are constructed by anti-trans campaigners as both causal and symptomatic of an imagined moral failure by society; thereby morally justifying trans eradication efforts. We also have Amery and Mondon’s ‘organized transphobia’ which views transphobia as a top-down, and inherently far-right, elite discourse designed to present trans people as incompatible with a morally superior cis society. Most recently we have also had Veale codify ‘trans eliminationism’ and present how it operates through her ‘anti-trans ideology escalation engine’. This framework acknowledges the co-dependent nature of banal anti-trans prejudice and cis-supremacism with anti-trans propaganda to drive forward eliminationist policies towards an end goal where outright trans eradication is not only palatable for the general population – but demanded. Rowling’s October 2026 tirade evidences all three conceptualizations of transphobia and fundamentally serves to ‘other’ trans people and manufacture consent for ever more explicit anti-trans eliminationist programs.
Of course, Rowling is careful to say, around a third of the way into her invective, that “Should trans people be stripped of their human rights, or denied personal safety?… of course not.”, because she understands that the UK is not quite at the point where the removal of trans rights can be so blatantly and publicly called for (despite the fact the UK is currently removing our human rights). Though, as every ‘definitely a good person’ says immediately following a claim that people shouldn’t have their human rights stripped, she does begin the next sentence with “but…”. This is because Rowling, and other anti-trans propogandists, are still carefully supporting the bridging mechanisms needed for the blatant removal of our rights to be spoken of in ways without dog-whistles. Plausible deniability, or rather the veneer of plausible deniability, is still a requisite component of anti-trans world building. You can say trans people have gone too far, you can say trans people are a danger, you can say trans people are morally wrong, you can ask “the trans question”, you just can’t state the solution with your whole chest quite yet. This is why Rowling has distanced herself from people like Posey Parker or Graham Linehan. I personally doubt its because she finds their publicly stated aims of trans eradication undesirable (if that was the case she wouldn’t write essays in favor of the same underlying ideology), but because it is far more politic to play oneself as the victim to a powerful trans lobby than reveal transphobia as the powerful force capable of stripping human rights away that it is.
And Rowling does play herself as the victim of, as she claims, ‘the trans lobby’. And I want to make something crystal clear here, Rowling talking about being a victim of sexual violence (which she does in her essay) is not what I am critiquing when I discuss the hypocrisy of a billionaire calling herself the victim of ‘an elite trans lobby’. As a survivor of sexual violence myself, I would never. Nor should anyone else. The violence that Rowling suffered in that instance is horrific and unimaginable. What I do critique, instead, is her narrative of victimhood at the hands of the so-called trans lobby. For a start, what lobby Rowling? You talk of trans people as if we are some powerful group manipulating the strings of power. If that was the case J K then why would we manipulate the UK government into segregating us on the NHS? The Welsh government into banning our healthcare? All major political parties into supporting the bogus Cass Review and suspending life saving medication for trans Youth? Why would we have passed the latest RSHE guidance which promotes conversion therapy in schools? If we are an all-powerful lobby, why would we have passed the For Women Scotland Ltd versus The Scottish Ministers Supreme Court ruling which completely desiccated the lives of trans people with and without Gender Recognition Certificates?
Painting trans people as an all-powerful group is certainly a convenient way of recruiting people to the anti-trans cause. It’s a shame it’s all bullshit though. There is only one powerful lobby in the so-called trans right ‘debate’, and that’s you and your ilk Rowling. And you are most certainly not victims. Victims are people like Brianna Ghey, murdered for being trans because of the anti-trans climate you have fostered. Victims are people like Joelle Plow, who died a preventable death whilst awaiting a segregated hospital bed because she was trans. Victims are the trans people in Wales whose life saving gender-affirming surgeries were cancelled without warning because of anti-trans propogandists like you. Victims are the countless trans people who have died whilst awaiting a first appointment at a gender recognition clinic because your anti-trans lobby have convinced the UK government that transition is happening too quickly. Victims are all the trans kids whose puberty blockers have been stopped because anti-trans campaigners believe in quack science and have the ear of policy makers. You aren’t a victim of trans people Rowling, trans people are a victim of you and your pathetic bigoted propaganda.
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