J.K. Rowling Says Trans Activism Is 'Elitist to Its Core,' Defends Her Views in Essay: They 'Haven’t Changed' Despite 'Death Threats'

Author J.K. Rowling has written a new essay reaffirming her views on transgender issues, saying that 21st-century trans activism is “elitist to its core.”

Rowling published the more than 2,000-word essay on her website on Wednesday, October 21, six years after she first wrote on the topic in 2020.

“My views haven’t changed, but the landscape certainly has, and my own involvement in the issue has become practical as well as theoretical, so I thought it was time for an update,” Rowling, 61, wrote. She also said in her introduction that her original essay explained why she decided to speak up about trans activism and “the risk I believe it poses to women’s rights, and to everyone’s freedom of speech and belief.”

Since then, Rowling said she has received an “avalanche of death, r--- and torture threats” due to her objection to what she called “the current, dominant strain of trans activism, which holds that a man who declares himself a woman is, literally, a woman, and is therefore entitled to be treated as a woman in all contexts.” Her critics have described her views as anti-trans, a label Rowling has rejected.

In her essay, Rowling compared today’s trans activism to past gay rights and women’s rights movements. “Twenty-first-century trans activism is the very inverse of those movements,” she wrote. “It is elitist to its core.”

She also said that there are “without question” some vulnerable trans people, and she went further, stating that trans people shouldn’t have their rights taken away. “Should trans people be discriminated against when it comes to housing or employment? Of course not,” she wrote. “Should trans people be stripped of their human rights, or denied personal safety? Again: of course not.”

Rowling referenced the U.K. Supreme Court decision from last year, which held that the term “woman” in the country’s equality law refers to biological s--. “For a decade or more, trans activists and acolytes in positions of influence have insisted and behaved as though women’s rights were outdated and even meaningless,” she wrote. “That climate persists.”

Her charity, the J.K. Rowling Women’s Fund, was among those that funded For Women Scotland’s legal challenge, and Rowling wrote that the fund will continue supporting women taking legal action regarding their rights. She further expressed that she was “shocked and disgusted” that “large numbers of women” had spent years “vilifying members of their own s-- for fighting to retain their hard-won rights and single-s-- spaces.”

The essay appeared less than a week after trans activists disrupted a gala performance of a new version of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child in London on Saturday, October 17. Before the performance began, the activists stormed the red carpet.

Since her 2020 essay, LGBTQ advocacy group GLAAD and several actors from the Harry Potter film series, including Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, and Rupert Grint, have criticized her. In the new essay, however, Rowling said she’ll continue speaking out on the issue.