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Mark Hamill, Jameela Jamil & other celebs are calling out J.K. Rowling for anti-trans tweet

Jameela Jamil, Mara Wilson, and Mark Hamill
Jameela Jamil, Mara Wilson, and Mark Hamill Photo: photos Shutterstock, composite LGBTQ Nation

Celebrities and activists are calling out Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling for her transphobic tweet from yesterday.

Referring to Maya Forstater – a tax expert at the Centre for Global Development whose contract with her employer was ended for, among other things, calling trans women “men” – Rowling tweeted that people can “dress however you please” but not “force women out of their jobs for stating that sex is real.” She added the #IStandWithMaya and #ThisIsNotADrill tags, both frequently used by transphobes on Twitter.

Related: This amazing trans high school student is speaking out against a bigoted teacher

A lot of people aren’t having it, including Mara Wilson, the actress best known for playing the titular character in 1996’s Matilda.

What, exactly, is to be gained by using your platform to be cruel and exclusionary to one of the world’s most vulnerable populations?” Wilson tweeted.

One fan noted that Wilson and Rowling are both known for their work in the “magic children” genre….

Star Wars actor Mark Hamill liked Rowlings’s tweet, and then he apologized because he said he didn’t understand the context of the last line or the hashtags.

But in the apology he called Rowlings’s words “transphobic.”

Jameela Jamil – who plays Tahani on The Good Place – unfollowed Rowling and tweeted about it with the hashtag #TransLivesMatter.

She then gave some advice to Rowling: start listening to transgender people.

Freddy McConnell – whose journey to fatherhood as a transgender man was the subject of the documentary Seahorse – said that Forstater’s words are a “dog whistle” and that he’s sad to see a former colleague thank Rowling.

Sexuality writer Ella Dawson was direct.

Comedian Travis McElroy called her a TERF (trans exclusionary radical feminist) and said he wished someone else had written Harry Potter.

Even the popular parody account “It’s Not Disney, It’s Disney Prime Video” mocked Rowling.

U.S. LGBTQ organizations also called her out.

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