J. K. Rowling

"I want trans women to be safe. At the same time, I do not want to make natal girls and women less safe."

"I spoke up about the importance of sex and have been paying the price ever since. I was transphobic, I was a cunt, a bitch, a TERF, I deserved cancelling, punching and death."

"It would be so much easier to tweet the approved hashtags — because of course trans rights are human rights and of course trans lives matter — scoop up the woke cookies and bask in a virtue-signalling afterglow. There's joy, relief and safety in conformity."

"But endlessly unpleasant as its constant targeting of me has been, I refuse to bow down to a movement that I believe is doing demonstrable harm in seeking to erode 'woman' as a political and biological class and offering cover to predators like few before it."

"None of the gender critical women I've talked to hates trans people; on the contrary. Many of them became interested in this issue in the first place out of concern for trans youth, and they're hugely sympathetic towards trans adults who simply want to live their lives, but who're facing a backlash for a brand of activism they don't endorse."

"The supreme irony is that the attempt to silence women with the word "TERF" may have pushed more young women towards radical feminism than the movement's seen in decades."

"The last thing I want to say is this. I haven't written this essay in the hope that anybody will get out a violin for me, not even a teeny-weeny one. I'm extraordinarily fortunate; I'm a survivor, certainly not a victim."

"I've only mentioned my past because, like every other human being on this planet, I have a complex backstory, which shapes my fears, my interests and my opinions. I never forget that inner complexity when I'm creating a fictional character and I certainly never forget it when it comes to trans people."

"All I'm asking — all I want — is for similar empathy, similar understanding, to be extended to the many millions of women whose sole crime is wanting their concerns to be heard without receiving threats and abuse."

"I have to assume [they] thought doxxing me would intimidate me out of speaking up for women's sex-based rights. They should have reflected on the fact that I've now received so many death threats I could paper the house with them, and I haven't stopped speaking out. Perhaps, and I'm just throwing this out there, the best way to prove your movement isn't a threat to women, is to stop stalking, harassing and threatening us."

"War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength. The Penised Individual Who Raped You Is a Woman."

"The law Nicola Sturgeon is trying to pass in Scotland will harm the most vulnerable women in society — those seeking help after male violence/rape and incarcerated women. Statistics show that imprisoned women are already far more likely to have been previously abused."

"The most searing, heartfelt and courageous response yet to Shona Robison's astounding claim in the Scottish parliament that there is no evidence sexual predators "have ever had to pretend to be anything else". Susan, as a fellow survivor, I salute you."

"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. #IStandWithUkraine"

"A strange new form of temporary blindness has broken out among Scottish politicians. None of them could read placards calling for violence against women while standing inches away from them, yet they were instantly cured when photos of them posing with the signs hit the press."

"Never forget, Sturgeon, her government and supporters have insisted that it is ludicrous to imagine anyone would dress in women's clothes to get access to vulnerable women and girls. Wouldn't happen. Everyone is who they say they are. To question this is hate."

"[To Labour frontbencher Lisa Nandy] You said rapists should be transferred to women's prisons if they self-identify as women."

"Given that you're one of the biggest reasons many women on the Left no longer trust Labour to defend their rights, do you stand by these comments?"

"I've looked around and realised that it has to be someone who can take the hit. And it has to be me. I can afford it."

"This has never been about trans rights. [...] This is about women’s rights and activists' demands to dismantle those rights. 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."

"There is a huge appeal, and I try to show this in the Potter books, to black and white thinking. It's the easiest place to be and in many ways it's the safest place to be. If you take an all-or-nothing position on anything, you will definitely find comrades, you will easily find a community. "I’ve sworn allegiance to this one simple idea." What I've tried to show in the Potter books, and what I feel strongly myself, is that we should mistrust ourselves most when we are certain."

"[In the United States, during the early 2000s, Rowling's books were burned by Evangelical Christians because they were perceived as promoting witchcraft.] Book burners, by definition, have placed themselves across a line of rational debate. There is no book on this planet that I would burn, including books that I do think are damaging. Burning, to me, is the last resort of people who cannot argue."

"[The project eventually became Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (1997). Rowling's first husband] knew what that manuscript meant to me because at a point he took the manuscript and hid it. That was his hostage. When I realised I was definitely going to go, I would take a few pages of the manuscript into work every day, just a few pages so he wouldn't realise anything was missing, and I would photocopy it. Gradually in a cupboard in the staff room, bit by bit, a photocopied manuscript grew and grew because I suspected that if I wasn’t able to get out with everything he would burn it or take it and hold it hostage. That manuscript meant so much to me and it was the thing that I prioritised saving. The only thing I prioritised beyond that was my daughter but at that point she was still inside me so she was as safe as she can be in that situation."

"There is something about a mass of human beings. There's always an edge in a crowd. Always."

"[Something] I explore in the Potter books [is that] a sense of righteousness is not incompatible with doing terrible things. You know, most of the people in movements that we consider hugely abhorrent, many many many of the people involved in those movements understood themselves to be on the side of righteousness. Believed they were doing the right thing. Felt themselves justified in what they were doing."

"I never sat out to upset anyone. However, I was not uncomfortable with getting off my pedestal, and what has interested me over the last ten years, and certainly in the last few years, the last 2-3 years, particularly on social media: "You've ruined your legacy. Oh, you could have been beloved forever but you chose to say this." And I think you could not have misunderstood me more profoundly."

"I'm sick of this s--- [shit]. This is not a woman. These are #NotOurCrimes."

"Crime statistics are rendered useless if violent and sexual attacks committed by men are recorded as female crimes. Activists are already clamouring for this sadistic killer to be incarcerated in a women’s prison. Ideologically driven misinformation is not journalism."

"When I've asked what the lack of female-only spaces would mean for women of certain faith groups, or survivors of sexual violence, the response is an almighty shrug. Over and again I've heard "no trans person has ever harmed a woman or a girl in a female space", the speakers' consciences apparently untroubled by the fact that they are parroting an easily disprovable lie, because there's ample evidence that men claiming a female identity have committed sexual offences, acts of violence and voyeurism, both inside women's spaces and without. Indeed, the Ministry of Justice's own figures show that there are proportionately more trans-identified males in jail in the UK for sexual offences than among male prisoners as a whole. When this inconvenient fact is raised, I'm sometimes told trans-identified sex offenders "aren't really trans, they're just gaming the system”. Well, yes. That's the point. If a system relies on an unfalsifiable sense of self rather than sex, it's impossible to keep bad faith actors out."

"Kemi Badenoch and I might not agree on a lot, but how often are male politicians called "spiteful"? And what's the issue with her manner? Did she fail in womanly sweetness, kindness and deference?"

"[To Alastair Campbell, former spokesman for Tony Blair, who had commented Badenoch was not speaking about her role as Secretary of State for Business and Trade] Badenoch is also minister for women and equalities. Thanks once again for highlighting Labour's complacency and indifference towards the rights of half the electorate."

"[Rosie Duffield] and I share more than the occasional meal and a fairly sweary WhatsApp thread. Last month, a man received a suspended prison sentence for sending both of us death threats. Rosie was to be taken out with a gun; I was to be beaten to death with a hammer. The level of threats Rosie has received is such that she's had to hire personal security and was recently advised not to conduct in-person hustings. Is this what [[Keir Starmer|[Keir] Starmer]] meant, when he talked about toxic, divided debate? A female MP in his own party being intimidated and harassed? Or was he referencing the activists in black masks who turn up at women’s demonstrations with the declared intention of punching "Terfs", an intention that has more than once translated into action? Was he perhaps thinking of the trans activists who sang "f*** you" over a microphone as women from all over the world queued outside FiLia, the feminist conference, to discuss issues like female genital mutilation? It didn’t seem so. The impression given by Starmer at Thursday’s debate was that there had been something unkind, something toxic, something hard line in Rosie’s words, even though almost identical words had sounded perfectly reasonable when spoken by Blair."

"[Referring to Emma Watson] Like other people who've never experienced adult life uncushioned by wealth and fame, Emma has so little experience of real life she's ignorant of how ignorant she is."

"Adults can't expect to cosy up to an activist movement that regularly calls for a friend's assassination, then assert their right to the former friend's love, as though the friend was in fact their mother."

"Emma’s 'all witches' speech was a turning point for me, but it had a postscript that hurt far more than the speech itself. Emma asked someone to pass on a handwritten note from her to me, which contained the single sentence: 'I'm so sorry for what you're going through.' She has my phone number. [...] This was back when the death, rape and torture threats against me were at their peak, at a time when my personal security measures had had to be tightened considerably and I was constantly worried for my family’s safety. Emma had just publicly poured more petrol on the flames, yet thought a one-line expression of concern from her would reassure me of her fundamental sympathy and kindness."

"[From a letter, originally in German, sent to author Gabriele Kuby] It is good that you enlighten us on the Harry Potter matter, for these are subtle seductions that are barely noticeable, and precisely because of that have a deep effect and corrupt the Christian faith in souls even before it could properly grow."

"Amanda Craig, the novelist, has been accused of unkindness and bigotry after signing a letter in support of JK Rowling, who in turn has been ostracised by some former friends and colleagues over her support for women’s rights over gender ideology. Dropped as a competition judge by the women’s literary magazine Mslexia, she was accused of threatening the magazine’s climate of “welcome and inclusivity”. The letter in question objected to ... hate speech towards Rowling."

"The ultimate model for Harry Potter is Tom Brown's School Days by Thomas Hughes, published in 1857. The book depicts the Rugby School presided over by the formidable Thomas Arnold, remembered now primarily as the father of Matthew Arnold, the Victorian critic-poet. But Hughes' book, still quite readable, was realism, not fantasy. Rowling has taken Tom Brown's School Days and re-seen it in the magical mirror of Tolkein. The resultant blend of a schoolboy ethos with a liberation from the constraints of reality-testing may read oddly to me, but is exactly what millions of children and their parents desire and welcome at this time."

"In psychoanalytic terms, having projected his childish rage onto the caricature Dursleys, and retained his innocent goodness, Harry now experiences that rage as capable of spilling outward, imperiling his friends. But does this mean Harry is growing up? Not really. The perspective is still child's-eye. There are no insights that reflect someone on the verge of adulthood. Harry's first date with a female wizard is unbelievably limp, filled with an 8-year-old's conversational maneuvers."

"Auden and Tolkien wrote about the skills of inventing secondary worlds. Ms. Rowling's world is a secondary secondary world, made up of intelligently patchworked derivative motifs from all sorts of children's literature."

"We did not intend to suggest that JK Rowling was transphobic or that she should be boycotted. We accept that our comparisons of JK Rowling to people such as Picasso, who celebrated sexual violence, and Wagner, who was praised by the Nazis for his antisemitic and racist views, were clumsy, offensive and wrong. Debate about a complex issue where there is a range of legitimate views should have been handled with much more sensitivity and more obvious recognition of the difference between fact and opinion. We unreservedly apologise to JK Rowling for the offence caused, are happy to retract these false allegations and to set the record straight. We shall be making a financial contribution to a charity of JK Rowling’s choice."

"Last year, initially The Scotsman newspaper — being Scottish and J. K. Rowling being Scottish [sic] — and because of the English tendency to try and tear down their idols, they kept trying to build stories which said J. K. Rowling ripped off Neil Gaiman. They kept getting in touch with me and I kept declining to play because I thought it was silly. And then The Daily Mirror in England ran an article about that mad woman who was trying to sue J. K. Rowling over having stolen muggles from her. And they finished off with a line saying [something like]: And Neil Gaiman has accused her of stealing. Luckily I found this online and I found it the night it came out by pure coincidence and the reporter's e-mail address was at the bottom of the thing so I fired off an e-mail saying: This is not true, I never said this. You are making this up. I got an apologetic e-mail back, but by the time I'd gotten the apologetic e-mail back it was already in The Daily Mail the following morning and it was very obvious that The Daily Mails research consisted of reading The Daily Mirror. And you're going: journalists are so lazy."

"J.K. Rowling, thinking of a name of white character: Albus Dumbeldore, Hermione Granger, Minerva McGonagall. J.K. Rowling, thinking of nonwhite character: Cho Chang"

"I didn't feel she ripped me off, as some people did, though she could have been more gracious about her predecessors. My incredulity was at the critics who found the first book wonderfully original. She has many virtues, but originality isn't one of them."

"This campaign against Rowling is as dangerous as it is absurd. The brutal stabbing of Salman Rushdie last summer is a forceful reminder of what can happen when writers are demonized. And in Rowling’s case, the characterization of her as a transphobe doesn’t square with her actual views."

"[N]othing Rowling has said qualifies as transphobic. She is not disputing the existence of gender dysphoria. She has never voiced opposition to allowing people to transition under evidence-based therapeutic and medical care. She is not denying transgender people equal pay or housing. There is no evidence that she is putting trans people "in danger," as has been claimed, nor is she denying their right to exist."

"Experience is the best teacher."