The week started strong with JK Rowling, the writer of what is probably the most popular children’s literary saga of all time and a reference for millennials: Harry Potter. The author bitterly complained about this post-COVID-19 world that there would be one day and her need to create a more just society for those who menstruate to refer to women, leaving aside other women who do not, as they can be trans women or those who have gone through menopause.
Pandora’s box was opened, and many picked up the glove to take their transphobia for a walk in a few days when entering Twitter has been hard due to the lack of humanity and empathy of some people. For many readers of the saga, a myth fell. Regardless of the author’s opinions, a large part of the cast has distanced themselves from her, showing their total support for the trans community.
J.K Rowling Tweet :
It all started last Saturday on JK Rowling’s Twitter, where he ironically searched for the term to refer to menstruating people. Her tweet raised blisters very quickly, and many women do not have a period, and no, having a period is not a defining characteristic of being a woman.
After the tweet, Rowling published a thread trying to calm the waters by explaining that she has been supporting trans people for decades because they are “vulnerable in the same way as women to male violence” (sic) … o
r what is the same, reaffirming the fact that trans women are not women. Despite the background of the message, the forms of JK Rowling were contained, something that cannot be said of many transphobic people who took advantage of the situation to release ridicule. In a matter of hours, the cast of Harry Potter has been distancing itself from the author of the play that catapulted them to fame.
Danial Radcliffe was writing an entry in the blog The Trevor Project – an NGO whose activity is to help the LGTBIQ + community – answering bluntly: « trans women are women »Hours later, Emma Watson was just as clear-cut, explaining in a tweet that ‘trans people are who they say they are and deserve to live their lives without being constantly questioned or told what they are.
Chris Rankin, aka Percy Weasley in the Harry Potter saga, also used Twitter to show his support, this time saying that “you are wonderful and you deserve to be treated as such, be proud of who you are because we are proud.”