10 hours ago
JK Rowling in bitter spat with Boy George as singer calls her ‘rich bored bully' over trans rights
JK Rowling has blasted Boy George for calling her a 'rich bored bully' – pointing out he once served time for whipping a male escort with a chain.
The Harry Potter author posted a furious response on X after the Culture Club singer waded into a spat with another user who claimed Ms Rowling was 'the person maybe most responsible for the push to take away trans rights'.
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When Ms Rowling asked the X user 'which rights have been taken away from trans people?', Boy George responded: 'The right to be left alone by a rich bored bully!'
Ms Rowling posted a lengthy rebuttal in which she accused the Karma Chameleon singer, whose real name is George O'Dowd, of sneering at 'unenlightened plebs' who reject the notion that trans women are women.
She added: 'I've never been given 15 months for handcuffing a man to a wall and beating him with a chain.'
Boy George was jailed in 2009 for handcuffing an escort to his bed and inflicting 'wholly gratuitous violence' at a property in Shoreditch, east London, in April 2007.
The court was told that the cocaine-fuelled attack on Audun Carlsen, a Norwegian man, had been 'premeditated and callous' and had left the victim 'traumatised'.
Boy George had been found guilty at an earlier trial of false imprisonment and beating Carlsen with a chain with the help of another man, whom he had never identified.
Ms Rowling rejected Boy George's claim that she was entitled.
She pointed out that she had been poor and could empathise with women who relied on state-funded services, such as single-sex rape crisis, domestic abuse and homeless shelters.
She said: 'You yourself have been convicted of violent assault. The overwhelming number of people who commit crimes of violence are male, just like you.'
Ms Rowling has become one of the most outspoken campaigners for women-only spaces, becoming a target for criticism by transgender rights activists.
The row broke out months after Supreme Court judges unanimously ruled that a woman is defined by biological sex under equality law.
