JK Rowling says she has to fight trans rights because she’s rich

Anti-trans author JK Rowling made a surprise appearance this week at the anti-trans FiLia Women’s Conference. It is thought to be the Harry Potter author’s first public appearance discussing her anti-trans views.

Rowling spoke alongside known TERF (trans-exclusionary radical feminist) Julie Bindel on a panel about sexism and bullying. She said she felt her wealth gave her a duty to speak out against trans folks in the name of protecting women and girls.

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“I will always be able to feed my family,” Rowling reportedly stated.”I’ve looked around and realized that it has to be someone who can take the hit. And it has to be me. I can afford it.”

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Rowling also claimed that “This has never been about trans rights.”

“This is about women’s rights and activists’ demands to dismantle those rights,” she said. “I have nothing but profound sympathy for trans women who have experienced male violence. I want trans people to be safe. I just don’t want women and girls to be any less safe.”

Here Rowling used the common TERF argument that granting trans people rights somehow puts cis women in danger. In reality, trans folks are the ones in danger due to dangerous rhetoric like Rowlings. The Williams Institute found that trans people are over four times more likely than cisgender people to be victims of violent crime.

FiLia reportedly left Rowling out of the program to avoid a trans rights protest outside the venue. The conference had already been temporarily canceled after trans activists, led by the group Glasgow Trans Rally, pressured the venue to do so, arguing in a statement that “dangerously transphobic” conferences like FiLia “legitimize debates around trans lives as an area of concern for women and pit trans rights against women’s rights,” as reported by The Herald.

While the venue initially sided with the trans rights protestors, it reinstated the conference after FiLia threatened legal action. Nevertheless, about 70 protestors demonstrated outside the venue, chanting, “Say it loud, say it clear, trans people are welcome here,” according to The Scottish Sun.

Rowling posted a video on X of one of the protestors singing Lily Allen’s F**k You (Very Much), calling him a pr**k.

“Inside the venue: women from 35 different countries discuss their sex-based issues and concerns, including the harassment and intimidation they face from men,” Rowling said. “Outside the venue, this prick.”

She then criticized the protestor again in a follow-up post, writing, “To prove his point that the female fear of male harassment is groundless, he got up early to bellow ‘fuck you’ at a group of peacefully assembling women. Is he genuinely that thick? Or are we talking #TERFblackops?”

To the heartbreak of many of her fans, Rowling has long positioned herself as an enemy of the trans community.

She 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.

Rowling’s anti-transgender views have even held sway in U.S. politics, with Republicans citing her to attack LGBTQ rights.