Renowned TERF and occasional author J.K. Rowling has slammed a trio of “activist actors” for posting pictures of themselves protesting outside of her highly public estate, the address of which is readily available online.
Rowling, who is known for penning transphobic rants as well as some fantasy books, took to Twitter yesterday to claim that said activist actors carefully positioned “themselves to ensure” that her address was visible in the pictures they posted to social media, which have since been taken down. She gave her thanks to those who reported the image to Twitter Support, as well as to Police Scotland, and implored “those people who retweeted the image with the address still visible, even if they did so in condemnation of these people’s actions, to delete it.” This is, again, despite the fact that both of Rowling’s Edinburgh-area residences are historical landmarks, one of which has a Wikipedia page, and the other of which would be immediately obvious from the massive hedges surrounding it.
She related the harrowing experience of having her publicly available address posted on Twitter to the doxxings of a laundry list of renowned British TERFs. Notably, as editor Allie Capps pointed out, some of the figures Rowling listed have themselves been responsible for doxxing trans people and trans allies.
“None of these women are protected in the way I am,” Rowling wrote. “They and their families have been put into a state of fear and distress for no other reason than that they refuse to uncritically accept that the socio-political concept of gender identity should replace that of sex.”
Rowling attributed the supposed “doxxing” to an assumption that doing so “would intimidate me out of speaking up for women’s sex-based rights.”
“They should have reflected on the fact that I’ve now received so many death threats I could paper the house with them, and I haven’t stopped speaking out,” Rowling wrote. “Perhaps – and I’m just throwing this out there – the best way to prove your movement isn’t a threat to women, is to stop stalking, harassing and threatening us.”
It bears repeating that Rowling, who has nearly 14 million followers, tagged the three people who posted the original image in a tweet, potentially exposing them to the online ire of millions of violent transphobes. All of them have since deactivated their Twitter accounts. And while stalking, harassment and threats are, to put it lightly, bad, it appears that the trio actually did nothing more than stand outside her door with signs reading “Trans Liberation Now,” “Don’t Be a Cissy,” and “Trans Rights are Human Rights.” Could the demonstrators have cropped their original photo to avoid this whole mess? Sure. Were they exposing information that couldn’t have been ascertained by asking literally any old resident of Edinburgh where Rowling lives? Certainly not.
The “scandal” comes on the heels of the announcement that Rowling will not be making an appearance in HBO Max’s “Harry Potter 20th Anniversary: Return to Hogwarts” special, which will air on the streaming service on New Year’s Day. The special will reunite series stars Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint, as well as other actors from the film franchise to discuss the making of Harry Potter and its impact. Notably, all of the actors behind the Golden Trio have spoken out against Rowling’s transphobia. Although no reasons for Rowling’s absence from the special have been publicly given, it’s not hard to imagine that her continued insistence on being loudly and proudly transphobic might cause some controversy and/or tension between herself and the actors.
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