![Sample our Communication Studies journals, sign in here to start your access, 2013 & 2014 volumes FREE to you for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5927/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Information-Science2.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
J. K. Rowling uses the large, public platform she has attained as the author of the popular Harry Potter series to make public statements attacking trans people, framing them as a threat to the safety of women and girls. She views her continued relevancy as a public figure as support for her positions and functions as a primary figure in spreading anti-trans discourse. Her rhetoric is populist in nature; she views herself as speaking up for “the people” (women and girls) to combat an “enemy” (trans activists and trans people) and defy a system (acceptance of trans people and recognition of their rights) that put “the people” at risk. Continued financial support and attention allows Rowling’s antagonism of trans people to continue and inspire others to adopt anti-trans beliefs.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 Veronica Ivy, “J. K. Rowling's Maya Forstater Tweets Support Hostile Work Environments, not Free Speech,” NBC News, December 20, 2019, https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/j-k-rowling-s-maya-forstater-tweets-support-hostile-work-ncna1105201.
2 Ivy, “J. K. Rowling’s May Forstater Tweets.”
3 Aja Romano, “J. K. Rowling’s Latest Tweet Seems like Transphobic BS. Her Fans are Heartbroken,” Vox, December 19, 2019, https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/12/19/21029852/jk-rowling-terf-transphobia-history-timeline.
4 Romano, “J. K. Rowling’s Latest Tweet.”
5 Aja Romano, “Is J. K. Rowling Transphobic? Let’s Let Her Speak for Herself,” Vox, March 16, 2023, https://www.vox.com/culture/23622610/jk-rowling-transphobic-statements-timeline-history-controversy.
6 Jennifer Duggan, “Transformative Readings: Harry Potter Fan Fiction, Trans/Queer Reader Response, and J. K. Rowling.” Children’s Literature in Education 53 (2022): 161.
7 Duggan, “Transformative Readings,” 162.
8 Nick Duffy, “J K Rowling Thinks People are Afraid to Speak about Gender because They ‘Fear for Their Personal Safety,’” PinkNews, December 9, 2020, https://www.thepinknews.com/2020/12/09/jk-rowling-trans-transgender-good-housekeeping-interview-gender-ideology/.
9 Vivian Kane, “J K Rowling Reminds Us Why Separating the Art from the Artist Isn’t Actually an Option,” The Mary Sue, October 18, 2022, https://www.themarysue.com/jk-rowling-ghoulish-tweet-royalty-checks/.
10 Janay Kingsberry, “Why the New Game ‘Hogwarts Legacy’ Is Roiling the LGBTQ Community,” Washington Post, January 23, 2023, https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2023/01/23/hogwarts-legacy-jk-rowling-trans/.
11 Katelyn Burns, “The Rise of Anti-Trans ‘Radical’ Feminists, Explained,” Vox, September 5, 2019, https://www.vox.com/identities/2019/9/5/20840101/terfs-radical-feminists-gender-critical.
12 Aleardo Zanghellini, “Philosophical Problems with the Gender-Critical Feminist Argument against Trans Inclusion,” Sage Open 10, no. 2 (2020): 2.
13 Sophie Perry, “UK Government Bans Private Puberty Blocker Prescriptions for Trans Youth,” Pink News, May 30, 2024, https://www.thepinknews.com/2024/05/30/uk-government-puberty-blockers-restrictions-trans/.
14 Anna Sanders, “What Does Brexit Mean for the Future of Gender Equality?,” London School of Economics and Political Science (blog), May 31, 2023, https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/what-does-brexit-mean-for-the-future-of-gender-equality/#:~:text=Yet%20it%20was%20the%20issue,in%20Scotland%20to%20self%2Didentify.
15 Anna Sanders and Joanna Flavell, “The Direction of Gender Equality Policy in Britain Post-Brexit: Towards a Masculinised Westminster Model,” Journal of European Public Policy 30, no. 11 (2023): 2312.
16 Stephen Clear, “How the UK Government’s Veto of Scotland’s Gender Recognition Bill Brought Tensions in the Union to the Surface,” The Conversation, January 25, 2023, https://theconversation.com/how-the-uk-governments-veto-of-scotlands-gender-recognition-bill-brought-tensions-in-the-union-to-the-surface-198181.
17 Clear, “How the UK Government’s.”
18 Michael J. Lee, “The Populist Chameleon: The People's Party, Huey Long, George Wallace, and the Populist Argumentative Frame,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 92, no. 4 (2006): 358.
19 Rowling mainly directs her attention toward trans women. One rare occasion in which she addressed trans men directly came in a July 12, 2020 tweet in which she quotes photographer Laura Dodsworth from an article about destransitioners saying that “[t]hey all, in some combination, found being a woman too difficult, too dangerous or too disgusting.” Rowling’s use of the quote implies that trans men are basically trying to escape the pressures of being a woman by claiming identities as men, a decision she believes they will come to regret. Rowling signals in her tweet that she sees trans men as disruptive and harmful to the clear gender binary based in sex assigned at birth that she believes protects women and girls. While Rowling mainly attacks trans women, she does not view trans men as harmless and not warranting restriction. J. K. Rowling, (@jk_rowling), “I fear that the detransitioners … ,” Twitter, July 12, 2020, https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1282343711620431875?lang=en.
20 Michael C. McGee, “In Search of ‘The People’: A Rhetorical Alternative,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 61, no. 3 (1975): 242.
21 Alyosxa Tudor, “The Anti-Feminism of Anti-Trans Feminism,” European Journal of Women’s Studies 30, no. 2 (2023): 293.
22 Tudor, “Anti-Feminism,” 293
23 Historian Martha Hodes locates the rise in concerns over White women having sex with Black men in the Reconstruction period after the American Civil War. The freedom of Black people after the ending of slavery gave rise to concerns over an act that had been somewhat tolerated previously. These concerns were used as a justification for the lynching and violence visited upon Black Americans starting at the end of the nineteenth century. Martha Hodes, White Women, Black Men: Illicit Sex in the Nineteenth-Century South (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), 1–2.
24 Ilaria Michelis, “Re-Centring White Victimhood in the Age of Black Lives Matter: A ‘Gender Critical’ Project?,” London School of Economics and Political Science (blog), January 12, 2022, https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/gender/2022/01/12/re-centring-white-victimhood-in-the-age-of-black-lives-matter-a-terf-project/.
25 Emi Koyama, “Whose Feminism Is It Anyway? The Unspoken Racism of the Trans Inclusion Debate,” The Sociological Review Monographs 68, no. 4 (2020): 739–40.
26 Koyama, “Whose Feminism,” 741–2.
27 J. K. Rowling (@jk_rowling), “If Sex Isn’t Real, There’s No Same-Sex Attraction,” Twitter, June 6, 2020, https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1269389298664701952.
28 Benjamin De Cleen and Yannis Stavrakakis, “Distinctions and Articulations: A Discourse Theoretical Framework for the Study of Populism and Nationalism,” Javnost: The Public 24, no. 4 (2017): 310.
29 Théo Fournier, “From rhetoric to action, a constitutional analysis of populism,” German Law Journal 20, no. 3 (2019): 365–6.
30 Fournier, “From Rhetoric to Action,” 366.
31 Historian Federico Finchelstein traces the global history of modern populism’s development out of fascism in the aftermath of World War II, starting in countries like Argentina and spreading around the world. Federico Finchelstein, From Fascism to Populism in History (Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2019): 18–20. Beyond just having historical roots in fascism, populism also shares an objective: “fomenting xenophobia without neglecting political violence.” Finchelstein, From Fascism to Populism, xviii. I expand on Finchelstein’s limitation of populism and fascism to xenophobic violence by arguing that they can find expression in any antagonism toward the Other. See also Umberto Eco’s analysis of Ur-Fascism’s use of “selective populism” to argue that individual’s only have rights as members of “the people.” Umberto Eco, “Ur-Fascism,” The New York Review of Books, June 22, 1995.
32 Faith Agostinone-Wilson, Enough Already! A Socialist Feminist Response to the Re-Emergence of Right Wing Populism and Fascism in Media (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill Sense, 2020): 47.
33 J. K. Rowling (@jk_rowling), “The Question at the Heart of this Debate … ,” Twitter, December 29, 2021, https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1476194393631645699.
34 Finchelstein, From Fascism to Populism, xxxv.
35 Noor Noman, “Elon Musk’s Promise to Treat ‘Cis’ as a Slur will Provoke More Extremism,” MSNBC, June 22, 2023, https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/jk-rowling-elon-musk-cisgender-trans-slur-rcna90632.
36 John Russell, “J. K. Rowling Walks Back Support for Far-Right Anti-Trans Troll Matt Walsh,” LGBTQ Nation, July 13, 2022, https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2022/07/j-k-rowling-walks-back-support-far-right-anti-trans-troll-matt-walsh/.
37 Jan Jagers and Stefaan Walgrave. “Populism as Political Communication Style: An Empirical Study of Political Parties’ Discourse in Belgium.” European Journal of Political Research 46, no. 3 (2007): 322.
38 J. K. Rowling, “J. K. Rowling Writes about Her Reasons for Speaking out on Sex and Gender Issues,” J. K. Rowling (blog), June 10, 2020, https://www.jkrowling.com/opinions/j-k-rowling-writes-about-her-reasons-for-speaking-out-on-sex-and-gender-issues/.
39 Rowling, “J. K. Rowling Writes.”
40 For more on the accusation that trans people are deceivers, see Talia Mae Bettcher, “Evil Deceivers and Make-Believers: On Transphobic Violence and the Politics of Illusion,” Hypatia 22, no. 3 (2007): 48, and Julia Serano, Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity (Emeryville, CA: Seal Press, 2007), 36.
41 Ryan Smith, “J K Rowling Declares War on Her Nemesis,” Newsweek, March 7, 2024, https://www.newsweek.com/jk-rowling-india-willoughby-transgender-women-police-twitter-x-1876787.
42 Smith, “J K Rowling Declares War.”
43 Smith, “J K Rowling Declares War.”
44 Clarissa-Jan Lim, “J. K. Rowling Challenged Scotland’s New Hate Crime Law by Attacking Trans Women,” MSNBC, April 3, 2024, https://www.msnbc.com/top-stories/latest/jk-rowling-scotland-hate-crime-laws-transphobic-rcna146183.
45 Rowling, “J. K. Rowling Writes.”
46 Johannes Angermuller, “Accumulating Discursive Capital, Valuating Subject Positions. From Marx to Foucault,” Critical Discourse Studies 15, no. 4 (2018): 419.
47 Romano, “Is J. K. Rowling Transphobic?”.