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Journalism of Courage
Oscar-nominated actor Keira Knightley became the latest in a long list of illustrious actors who have joined the newly announced adaptations of the Harry Potter series, authored by JK Rowling.
When asked about the ongoing boycott of the books and Rowling by some fans, Knightley said she was “unaware” and hoped that “we can all find respect.”
Renewed attempts at reviving the Harry Potter phenomenon, which raged through the 2000s, are now underway. In September, TV network HBO announced that it had commenced production and completed casting for a new TV series based on the books. Rowling will serve as executive producer.
However, it comes alongside the boycott call, which extends to all properties affiliated with Rowling, and aims to create financial consequences for the author who has lent her conviction and money to anti-transgender rights advocacy for years. Many celebrities have come out against her actions — notably, actors Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Eddie Redmayne, and Emma Watson, who starred in the Harry Potter and spin-off Fantastic Beasts films.
How did Rowling become such a polarising figure in the movement for trans rights?
According to the American Psychological Association, transgender is an umbrella term for those who have a gender identity that “does not conform to that typically associated with the sex to which they were assigned at birth”.
This definition establishes a distinction between sex, which refers to one’s biological status as male or female based on one’s anatomy, chromosomes, and hormone prevalence, and gender, a social construct that determines roles, behaviours, and attributes that society deems acceptable for men and women. Hence, one’s ‘gender identity’, or a person’s sense of self and their gender, may or may not correlate with the sex assigned at birth.
Also of note, some individuals may be categorised as intersex if they are born with sex characteristics that don’t fit into typical binary notions of male or female.
In the Indian context, a transgender person is defined as an individual whose “gender does not match the gender assigned at birth”, according to the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2019. The term may include trans men and trans women, and persons with sociocultural identities, such as kinnar and hijra. This followed the landmark Supreme Court verdict in April 2014 that legally recognised transgender persons as the “third gender”, affirming their Constitutional rights.
In the West, the roots of anti-trans feminist politics date back to the 1970s. “Gender-critical” feminists, who dismiss distinctions between gender and sex, then argued that anyone born as a male cannot “become” a woman since sexism is a product of the systematic oppression of women by men. This view was cemented in American author-activist Janice Raymond’s seminal work The Transsexual Empire: The Making of the She-male (1979), as she argued, “Transsexualism is… the ultimate… conclusion of male possession of women in a patriarchal society.”
Over the following decade, Raymond’s book was weaponised by anti-trans activists, including Raymond, who targeted openly trans women such as artist and academic Sandy Stone. Stone published a rebuttal of the book in a 1987 essay titled The Empire Strikes Back: A Posttranssexual Manifesto.
She wrote, “Transsexuals do not… share common oppression [to ‘biological’ women] prior to gender reassignment…in the transsexual’s erased history, we can find a story disruptive to the accepted discourses of gender, which originates from within the gender minority itself.” Empire became a foundational text, aiding pro-trans advocacy that followed, and establishing “transfeminism” as an academic discipline.
In recent years, increased visibility and rights for the trans community and a shift in gender norms have been met with sharp pushback. We have written about the scenario in the US here.
The culture wars between the anti- and pro-trans rights groups, however, have not been limited to the digital space and have now spilt into the offline realm, with transgender exclusion serving as the key political plank in many battles for political office. This political project has both been aided by and has fed into potent anti-trans rhetoric among the general public. The result is an increased incidence of targeted harassment against trans people, a numerical and socio-political minority in the UK and the US.
Fuelling the rhetoric are the likes of conservative commentators Ben Shapiro, Joe Rogan, Charlie Kirk, psychologist and author Jordan Peterson, tech billionaire Elon Musk, and Rowling.
Rowling first waded into this debate in 2018 when she had what her publicist described as a “clumsy and middle-aged moment”, liking a social media post that described trans women as men in dresses. She doubled down on these views in the following years, writing a personal essay in 2020 where she pondered on the term TERF, or trans-exclusionary radical feminist, used to describe her, criticised the “new trans activism”, and found “the arguments about femaleness not residing in the sexed body… deeply misogynistic and regressive.”
In the same essay, she recounted her experience as a domestic violence and sexual assault survivor, and linked this to her concerns with restricting access to spaces based on a person’s sex, not their gender identity. The refrain that trans women could be “stealth” men dates back to at least the ’70s and is unsupported by data. A 2021 study by the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law shows that trans people are, in fact, over four times more likely than cisgender people to be victims of violent crime.
In subsequent years, however, the self-described liberal Rowling’s views, as well as those of the TERF camp, have increasingly aligned with people and parties that hold regressive beliefs about gender roles and implement policies that harm women’s rights across the board. She has specifically argued against the inclusion of transgender women in the women’s category in sports and in single-sex spaces, and against laws meant for cisgender (biological) women being applied to them.
ON THE LEGAL DEFINITION OF A WOMAN IN THE UK: In 2018, UK-based feminist voluntary organisation For Women Scotland (FWS) mounted a legal challenge against the Scottish government, arguing that it was redefining the category of “woman” beyond its remit. This came after the government passed legislation mandating at least 50 per cent of non-executive members on public boards, such as those running the National Health Service (NHS), to be women. Following the provisions under the Gender Recognition Act 2004, “woman” was defined as including persons whose “acquired gender is female” (that is, transgender women).
In April, the UK Supreme Court ruled in favour of FWS, holding that the legal definition of a woman under the Equality Act 2010 is based on biological sex and does not include those who identify as women.
Rowling has become one of the most vocal supporters of FWS, donating £70,000 in 2024 to the organisation’s crowdfunding for its Supreme Court appeal.
ON TRANS WOMEN IN SPORTS: During the Paris Olympics last year, Rowling and Elon Musk spoke out repeatedly against trans women competing in the women’s category. They specifically targeted, amongst others, Algerian boxer and Olympic gold medalist Imane Khelif. They argued that higher levels of the “male” hormone testosterone create an unfair advantage for trans women.
The argument was moot on two levels: for one, Khelif is not trans. She has since filed a criminal complaint against both Musk and Rowling over alleged cyberbullying. Second, there is not enough research about how naturally-occuring testosterone improves performance in athletes with sex variations.
Payoshni Mitra, the executive director of Humans of Sport, works with female athletes with sex variations and is currently working to abolish sex testing in sports. She notes, “Sex testing policies have led to human rights violations, discrimination, public humiliation, and often unnecessary and irreversible medical intervention” for cis women. Baseless fearmongering has harmed both transgender and cis women athletes with sex variations. She adds, “Treating women [cis or trans] with sex variations as the biggest enemy of the female category is stupidity… especially when there are so many issues that young girls and women in sports face.”
It must also be noted that these claims have been routinely weaponised against women of colour, as evidenced in Khelif’s case, an African woman, and that of Taiwanese boxer Lin Yu-Ting, who faced similar harassment at the Paris Olympics. Women from the Global South are subjected to more sex testing and sex-based scrutiny than those from the Global North. Speaking to how these pseudo-scientific claims fall flat in the face of evidence, Mitra notes, “There are very few of these women competing in professional sports; fewer still are successful.”
Research has proven that access to gender affirming healthcare at an early age greatly improves the mental health outcomes of trans persons. Despite this, “Save the children” campaigns in the US have gained steam, and both the US and UK have seen a rollback in gender affirming care and healthcare protections for trans children and adults. In the US, over 19 states have seen regressive policy changes that affect trans children’s access to sports and healthcare.
A 2024 study published in the journal Nature Human Behaviour, notes that states that passed anti-trans laws aimed at minors saw suicide attempts by trans and gender-nonconforming teens increase by as much as 72 per cent. A 2021 Trans Lives Survey found that 70 per cent of respondents were impacted by transphobia when accessing general healthcare, and 14 per cent were denied care at least once because of their trans status.
