Rowling’s war with Watson, Radcliffe nothing to do with Harry Potter

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J.K. Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter series of novels, won’t soon be mending any fences with the stars of the movie versions of her stories, social media posts suggest.

Rowling, who has sparred online for years with Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and others over her comments on trans people, responded recently on the platform X to a suggestion that she might safely be predicted to patch things up with them.

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“Not safe, I’m afraid,” she wrote. “Celebs who cosied up to a movement intent on eroding women’s hard-won rights and who used their platforms to cheer on the transitioning of minors can save their apologies for traumatised detransitioners and vulnerable women reliant on single sex spaces.”

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The exchange comes in the wake of the Cass Report, a just-released study in Britain into how children with gender issues have been let down by their treatment by the NHS, Britain’s government-funded health service.

Dr. Hilary Cass found that ideology had driven gender clinics to use unproven and potentially dangerous treatments on vulnerable children. Rowling said Cass had exposed “severe medical malpractice,” which had seen young people “experimented on.” She criticized those who had “cheered on” an ideology which had left young people “infertile and in pain.”

It’s hardly the first time Rowling has sparred with Radcliffe, Watson and others over her views. Here’s a brief history.

When did this dustup begin?

On June 6, 2020, Rowling retweeted an op-ed piece that referred to “people who menstruate,” upset that the term “women” was not used. “‘People who menstruate.’ I’m sure there used to be a word for those people. Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?” she wrote.

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Despite backlash online, she soon followed that up with other comments, adding: “I respect every trans person’s right to live any way that feels authentic and comfortable to them. I’d march with you if you were discriminated against on the basis of being trans. At the same time, my life has been shaped by being female. I do not believe it’s hateful to say so.”

Rowling later started using the term TERF (trans-exclusionary radical feminist) and outlined “five reasons for being worried about the new trans activism” on her official website.

What was the celebrity response?

Radcliffe, who starred as Harry Potter in the movies, was the first star from the franchise to release a statement. While he noted that “Jo is unquestionably responsible for the course my life has taken,” he added he felt compelled to respond to her comments.

“Transgender women are women,” he wrote. “Any statement to the contrary erases the identity and dignity of transgender people and goes against all advice given by professional health care associations who have far more expertise on this subject matter than either Jo or I. According to The Trevor Project, 78% of transgender and nonbinary youth reported being the subject of discrimination due to their gender identity. It’s clear that we need to do more to support transgender and nonbinary people, not invalidate their identities, and not cause further harm.” (The Trevor Project is a help centre for LGBTQ youth.)

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Emma Watson and Rupert Grint, who played Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley, respectively, then added their support for the trans community, as did other actors in the franchise. “Trans people are who they say they are and deserve to live their lives without being constantly questioned or told they aren’t who they say they are,” tweeted Watson. 

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Not everyone was against her, however. Robbie Coltrane, who played Hagrid, said in September of that year: “I don’t think what she said was offensive, really. I don’t know why but there’s a whole Twitter generation of people who hang around waiting to be offended.” Helena Bonham Carter, who played Bellatrix Lestrange, also came to Rowling’s defence.

“I think she has been hounded,” she reportedly told Times in 2022. “It’s been taken to the extreme, the judgmentalism of people. She’s allowed her opinion, particularly if she’s suffered abuse. Everybody carries their own history of trauma and forms their opinions from that trauma and you have to respect where people come from and their pain. You don’t all have to agree on everything — that would be insane and boring. She’s not meaning it aggressively, she’s just saying something out of her own experience.”

How did Stephen King get mixed up in this?

The horror author retweeted one of Rowling’s tweets, to which she responded by writing that her admiration for him had reached “new heights.” However, she immediately deleted that tweet when King, facing questions, followed up by noting simply: “Trans women are women.”

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He later said in an interview with The Daily Beast: “Here’s the thing: She is welcome to her opinion. I just felt that her belief was, in my opinion, wrong. We have differing opinions, but that’s life.”

Did it all take place online?

Hardly. In the fall of 2020 Rowling’s new book sparked more outrage. Titled Troubled Blood, it’s about a detective on the hunt for a male serial killer who dresses as a woman in order to hunt and murder women.

Two years later, her next novel, The Ink Black Heart, chronicled a cartoonist whose work is accused of being racist, transphobic and ableist, and who is then doxxed, threatened with rape, and eventually murdered. Rowling denied she was drawing from her own life.

In the meantime, she was notably absent from an HBO special commemorating the 20th anniversary of the Harry Potter movies. She said she had been invited to participate but chose not to.

What’s been happening since then?

Much. A trans artist starting selling used copies of Harry Potter novels with Rowling’s name removed from the cover. A video game, Hogwarts Legacy, included a character widely thought to be transgender, though not explicitly labeled as such. Rowling compared the trans rights movements to the franchise’s dangerous Death Eaters. She also said she would rather go to jail than use a trans person’s pronouns.

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Meanwhile, in March of 2023, Radcliffe doubled down on his support of the community by moderating the first episode of The Trevor Project’s Sharing Space, which featured conversations with LGBTQ youth. “We listen to so many people talk about trans youth and hear them talked about so often in the news, but very rarely do we actually hear from these youth directly,” he said in a statement. “At the end of the day, if you’re going to talk about trans kids, it might be useful to actually listen to trans kids.”

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