J.K. Rowling has responded after multiple stars within the Harry Potter universe signed an open letter in support of trans rights.
ICYMI, hundreds of film and television professionals last week called on the U.K. entertainment industry to better protect the trans and non-binary community, after a controversial Supreme Court ruling that officially defined women as based on biological sex.
I love it when a plan comes together.#SupremeCourt #WomensRights pic.twitter.com/agOkWmhPgb
— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) April 16, 2025
The pledge — which was addressed to movie and TV institutions like BAFTA, BBC and Channel 4 — counted multiple celebrity signatories including Bridgerton’s Nicola Coughlan and Babygirl’s Harris Dickinson, but it was those within the wizarding world that caught Rowling’s attention.
That includes Fantastic Beasts star Eddie Redmayne, original Cho Chang actress Katie Leung, and Paapa Essiedu, who’ll portray Severus Snape in HBO’s upcoming Harry Potter TV reboot.
In a lengthy X post that makes a good case for bringing back the character count limit, Rowling, who celebrated the Supreme Court ruling last month, spewed some usual TERF nonsense while writing that “that nobody sane believes, or has ever believed, that humans can change sex”.
“[The] signatories of these sorts of letters are motivated by fear”, Rowling added, before mentioning “back-stabbing colleagues” and claiming the signatories are “pretending to believe these things” as “an elitist badge of virtue”.
Later, Rowling quoted fellow author George Orwell (even though it’s her views that feel straight from 1984), and described the sentiment that trans women are women as a “seemingly harmless little white lie”.
In light of recent open letters from academia and the arts criticising the UK’s Supreme Court ruling on sex-based rights, it’s possibly worth remembering that nobody sane believes, or has ever believed, that humans can change sex, or that binary sex isn’t a material fact. These…
— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) May 3, 2025
It’s an essay-length post that regurgitates much of what we already know about Rowling, who can conjure up magical fantasy lands on paper but can’t quite seem to grasp that trans people exist.
It’s not the first time celebs have rebuked Rowling’s stance on the trans community.
After celebrating the Supreme Court ruling with an image of herself smoking a cigar, Rowling was condemned by the likes of Bowen Yang — who delivered a simple, character count-friendly “fuck you” to the author — and Coughlan, who said she “wouldn’t touch [the Harry Potter reboot] with a ten foot pole”.
Despite the controversy, production on the HBO series is moving full steam ahead, with Essiedu joining the cast alongside John Lithgow as Albus Dumbledore, Janet McTeer as Minerva McGonogall and Nick Frost as Rubeus Hagrid.
Lead image: Taylor Hill/FilmMagic and Alan Chapman/Dave Benett/Getty Images
