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JK Rowling claps back at Vladimir Putin for comparing her transphobia to his invasion of Ukraine

J.K. Rowling, The Ickabog, transphobia
J.K. Rowling Photo: Shutterstock

J.K. Rowling clapped back at Russian President Vladimir Putin after he defended the Harry Potter writer’s transphobia.

Rowling has spent years attacking transgender equality and spreading stereotypes about transgender people, so it didn’t come as much of a surprise last week when Putin – who helped pass Russia’s ban on “gay propaganda” and who looked the other way as Chechnya put LGBTQ people in torture camps – bemoaned how “cancel culture” had ensnared Rowling…and compared it to how Russia is getting “canceled” for invading Ukraine.

Related: 5 times celebrities clapped back at J.K. Rowling’s transphobia

“They canceled J.K. Rowling, the children’s author recently,” Putin said in a speech last week. “Her books are published all over the world. Just because she didn’t satisfy the demands of gender rights.”

“They are now trying to cancel our country. I’m talking about the progressive discrimination of everything to do with Russia.”

Rowling – who presents herself as a defender of cis women instead of as someone who attacks transgender people – apparently didn’t like it that Putin praised her and told him off on Twitter.

“Critiques of Western cancel culture are possibly not best made by those currently slaughtering civilians for the crime of resistance, or who jail and poison their critics,” Rowling tweeted with the hashtag #IStandWithUkraine.

Rowling’s transphobic antics have led many Harry Potter fans to distance themselves from her.

The author has issued diatribes about transgender people, come out in support of conversion therapy for trans people, and claimed that almost everyone agrees with her, even as famous people that she has worked with condemned her words. She also published a book about a man who wears dresses in order to kill women.

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