J.K. Rowling slams 'backstabbing colleagues' days after Emma Watson's cryptic message
Author J.K. Rowling has written an essay slamming 'back-stabbing colleagues' after a number of Harry Potter stars signed a pro-trans open letter.
This comes just days after Ms Watson, who played Hermione Granger in the films, appeared to speak out against Ms Rowling on social media.
Ms Watson, attended Headington School and the Dragon School in Oxford when she was younger, has turned her attention to studies in recent years.
She became a student at the University of Oxford in September 2023 and tt was revealed in February that Ms Watson had switched to a DPhil, which is Oxford's version of a PhD.
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Last week, the 35-year-old wrote in a cryptic Instagram post: 'To the person who said they like me best when I am not ranting about politics: I like me best when I am not ignoring fascism."
Ms Rowling's essay on X comes after a number of Harry Potter stars, including Charlotte Ritchie and Katie Leung, signed a letter addressed to film and TV industry bodies to support the trans community last week.
The letter, which received 400 signatures, expressed 'solidarity' with the LGBTQI+ community, which was 'impacted' by the UK Supreme Court's gender ruling in April.
Ms Rowling celebrated the ruling that only biological women meet the definition of a woman under equality laws in a landmark case.
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The letter claimed the ruling 'undermine(d) the lived reality and threatens the safety of trans, non-binary, and intersex people living in the UK'.
Other signatories included actress Bessie Carter, who is the daughter of Dolores Umbridge actress Dame Imelda Staunton, and actress Daisy Haggard, who voiced the Ministry of Magic lift in the Harry Potter films.
On Saturday (May 3), Ms Rowling took to X to slam 'backstabbing colleagues' who could be 'motivated by fear'.
'It's possibly worth remembering that nobody sane believes, or has ever believed, that humans can change sex, or that binary sex isn't a material fact,' she wrote in a lengthy statement.
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'These letters do nothing but remind us of what we know only too well: that pretending to believe these things has become an elitist badge of virtue.
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'I often wonder whether the signatories of such letters have to quieten their consciences before publicly boosting a movement intent on removing women's and girls' rights, which bullies gay people who admit openly they don't want opposite-sex partners, and campaigns for the continued sterilisation of vulnerable and troubled kids.
'Do they feel any qualms at all while chanting the foundational lie of their religion: Trans Women are Women, Trans Men are Men?'
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