J.K. Rowling Nails It Again

J.K. Rowling published the beloved children’s book series Harry Potter between 1997 and 2007. Then she made herself public enemy number one in 2020 when she wrote an essay condemning the transgender movement, particularly where it takes away the rights and safety of women and girls. It was a brave stand in the face of COVID-era craziness. Rowling was among the few rich and famous voices who pointed out what a farce this ideology made of women’s rights. We were at the height of cancel culture, and the trans agenda seemed to be infiltrating every institution.

Six years later, Rowling has penned a new essay in which she revisits her own thoughts and brings some more observations to the public’s attention.

Her convictions on transgenderism’s interference in women’s rights remain consistent. Rowling believes that if one group’s ostensible rights supersede another group’s actual rights, that’s neither just nor liberating. It’s authoritarian and turns the “oppressed” into the oppressor. As National Review contributor Raleigh Adams articulates, this is exactly what Brazilian political theorist Paulo Freire predicted — because at the end of the day, the lust for power eclipses the crusade for equal rights under the law.

Rowling addresses the current climate of transgender activism:

For a decade or more, trans activists and acolytes in positions of influence have insisted and behaved as though women’s rights were out-dated and even meaningless. They created a climate of fear and intimidation whereby a single misplaced pronoun could see a woman disciplined.

That climate persists. Gender ideology remains so entrenched among swathes of the management and political class that women are still having to fight for their rights in law. These have included nurses protesting at having to change their clothes in front of heterosexual, cross-dressing men; rape survivors stigmatised for protesting at the presence of males in their support groups or crisis centres; women investigated and persecuted at work for even questioning the approved gender mantras; parents whose daughters are having to share primary school toilets with boys as they approach puberty; and incarcerated women, already with a high likelihood of sexual violence in their pasts, forced to share intimate facilities with trans identified males.

Rowling still receives death threats, and the activists love to target anything having to do with her, even if it’s a gala performance.

While the climate hasn’t changed, the people pushing it have. Rowling is absolutely right: The transgenderism crusade of luxury beliefs and elitism is cultivated in the minds of philosophy and gender studies professors and spoon-fed in college classrooms. This is not a grassroots movement in which a group is fighting against government institutions for equal rights. This movement was manufactured by those with no accountability to the larger community, and instead of forming from the bottom up, it infiltrates from the top down with draconian precision.

Rowling also points out that the transgenderism belief system is mainly upheld by people who don’t have to deal with the consequences of imposing their beliefs on the culture. She writes:

Trans activism doesn’t impact all women negatively. In fact, the more privileged you are, the less it tends to affect you, and the more it might benefit you. Aside from an avalanche of death, rape and torture threats, it hasn’t noticeably affected my life. Nor does it hurt wealthy women who repost the vogueish mantras while sitting in dressing rooms guarded by private security guards. It doesn’t hurt women in the upper echelons of media, publishing and academia, who don’t need a changing room at work and who feel a snobbish disdain for working class women who don’t want to strip off in front of heterosexual males who’ve ‘identified’ into the women’s changing room. Trans activism doesn’t hurt headline-hungry female politicians whose attitude to women’s rights is ‘whatever is good for me personally’. On the contrary, trans activism has been good for those women. It’s fashionable, and keeps them popular with their progressive tribe, and costs them, personally, absolutely nothing.

Rowling is British, but this is exactly the case here in the States and exactly what I have been pointing out with individuals like former U.S. women’s soccer star Megan Rapinoe: Their beliefs cost them nothing, while the rug is being pulled out from under those who are trying to succeed just like the activists did.

While promoting transgender ideology to the detriment of all women is certainly bad enough, what’s worse is that it has become ensconced in some government institutions. This is especially true for Rowling.

A native of Edinburgh, Scotland, Rowling who has used her money and influence to start a women’s-only rape crisis center called Biera’s House (the only other center of its kind in the city is run by a gender-confused man). She also started J.K. Rowling’s Women’s Fund, which helps women take action against companies and government organizations that have taken away their rights.

Through her fund, Rowling has noticed a startling trend: After the 2025 Supreme Court ruling in Scotland that clarified that “woman” refers to the immutable biological fact of sex, most companies ceased their top-down enforcement of the trans agenda in the workplace. However, government workplaces are entrenched, and because they have access to taxpayer money, Rowling says “they continue to fight the idea that women have, or should have, the rights the Supreme Court upheld.” In other words, the battle is not over.

In America, there is a sense that the battle has been won because of the results of the 2024 election. While transgenderism isn’t currently the main front in the culture war, it’s part of the Left’s omnicause. “Free Palestine,” abortion, socialism, defund the police, abolish ICE, and gender ideology are all being pushed simultaneously.

The silver lining is that each of these issues contradicts one other; the only thing holding them together is hatred of the West. Eventually, the coalition will eat itself. In the meantime, it would be best for our country if that implosion occurs after the Left’s omnicause gets defeated again at the ballot box on November 3.