New Delhi: JK Rowling has written a new essay defending her views on sex and gender, calling 21st-century trans activism “elitist to its core”. The follow-up essay, published 21 October, is titled ‘An Update to My Essay of June 2020’.
“My views haven’t changed,” Rowling wrote, “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 writes that she continues to oppose what she describes as the dominant form of trans activism, which, according to her, states 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.”
Rowling lists specific implications, such as access to women’s changing rooms and bathrooms, eligibility for women-only awards and jobs, participation in women’s sports, inclusion in lesbian dating pools, and placement in women’s prisons even for transgender rape convicts. She consistently refers to trans women as males, using male pronouns.
Rowling’s problems with trans activism
The Harry Potter author frames her position as consistent with a “lifelong commitment to women’s and girls’ rights and opportunities, with a particular emphasis on those who’re vulnerable or disadvantaged”. Rowling adds that her stance has brought her “an avalanche of death, rape and torture threats”.
“Trans activism doesn’t hurt headline-hungry female politicians,” Rowling wrote. “On the contrary, trans activism has been good for those women.”
According to her, trans activism makes people “popular with their progressive tribe” without costing them anything, while ordinary and working-class women bear the brunt of losing single-sex spaces, sports categories, and support services.
Rowling contrasts it with earlier civil rights, gay rights, and women’s rights movements, which she describes as grassroots efforts.
She details her practical involvement in women’s issues since 2020, including founding and funding Beira’s Place, Edinburgh’s only women-only rape crisis centre, and establishing the J.K. Rowling Women’s Fund “to provide financial support for women in the UK and Ireland who’re attempting to protect their rights in law”.
On the UK Supreme Court’s 2025 ruling that “woman” in equality law refers to biological sex, Rowling writes that the decision has not ended the dispute. Private companies, she argues, appear to be adapting and seeking legal compliance, while many publicly funded institutions continue to resist what she calls “Stonewall Law”.
Applications to her Women’s Fund for help against private employers have dropped, she said, but cases involving state bodies remain common.
Rowling explicitly rejects claims that she wants transgender people “eradicated”, stating that she does not. She concludes by vowing to keep speaking out, funding legal challenges for women who cannot afford them, and ensuring female-centred support remains available after rape.
She ends her piece by quoting George Orwell: “Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two is four. If that is granted, all else follows.”
“If a man can be a woman, there is no such thing as a woman,” she concludes. “That might not matter to you personally, but it matters to millions of women who don’t have the luxury of pretending that their sex doesn’t matter. I remain on their side.”
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‘Lobbying of hatred’
The essay has drawn sharp criticism from transgender people and activists.
“The piece treats the existence of people like me (trans women who have medically transitioned, live as women, and ask only that our material reality not be legislated out of every public category) as an existential threat to the very concept of ‘woman,’” a transwoman wrote on X. “That is not a statement of concern. It is a demand that we vanish into a pure biological definition you control.”
Another user described personal fallout after what they said was targeting by Rowling.
“The most vicious harassment i and my loved ones have ever received came in the days after Rowling targeted me personally, posting uncensored images of my account to her millions of followers calling me a man in a dress,” read their comment. “I had just turned 21, and had less than $100 in my account.”
Critics have questioned her silence on the Cornell rape case and reports of sexual violence in ICE detention centres, arguing that her focus is selective.
“JK Rowling has not uttered a word about Cornell. JK Rowling has made no mention of the girls being raped in ICE detention centres. All of her ‘concerns’ hinge on her hatred of transgender people,” a post on X read.
The user concluded their thread with what they see is at stake: trans lives.
“A woman who lied her way into a best seller off of the backs of creatives before her will now lie her way into holding no culpability for the deaths that come from her lobbying of hatred,” the user concluded.
(Edited by Prasanna Bachchhav)