J.K. Rowling Will Not Be Silenced, Says We're 'Living Through a Nightmare'

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Acclaimed Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling has taken her fair share of slings and arrows for her views on biological women and the need for their protection, but she’s not backing down. In fact, she’s hitting back, and in an interview with Suzanne Moore at her Substack, Letters from Suzanne, Rowling let loose:

If you’d have shown me when I was 18 what young girls would be dealing with now – what we’d all be dealing with, but particularly young girls – I would have been horrified. Because when you’re 18, you assume this can only get better – like, we’ve got these rights and we’ve got all these amazing women doing feminist analysis, and it will change, it really will change. By the time I’m my mother’s age, I thought, my daughters will have it so much easier.

But now I think we’ve gone backwards. I think we’re living through a nightmare. [Emphasis mine.]

Her issue? She acknowledges that biologically born women are different than biologically born men who transition, and that biological women have physical and mental concerns that affect them and them alone. RedState’s Kira Davis reported Monday on Rowling’s plans to open a women-only shelter for sexual abuse victims; when Rowling says women-only, she means born female only. Naturally, as Davis pointed out, the progressive meltdown quickly ensued:

JK Rowling is ontologically evil pic.twitter.com/zdsqDAacGV

— Victoria 🎀 🦃 (@EuphoriTori) December 13, 2022

Points for you if you knew the definition of “ontologically.” Rowling, however, is wary of groups and factions and communities where believers become so overzealous that they will even knowingly deny truth to advance their goals:

Rowling: “I don’t like ideologies of any kind: I have never met an ideologue who wouldn’t suppress a little bit of truth.”

It’s unsayable, I [author Suzanne Moore] counter, that ideologies always suppress truth.

Rowling: “Well, I just said it.

“But you’re right: you pick your tribe, you chant the mantras, and you defend everything to the death. Even if logic has to be convoluted.”

I envy people like that, I tell her, with their certainty. It’s almost religious.

Rowling: “Sure, you leave your brain at the door.

“I’ve been thinking about this so much over the last five, maybe 10, years. The old definitions of Left and Right seem to have blurred so much. I feel we’re currently waging a cultural war between what I would see as authoritarians and liberals. And those categories seem to me to cut across the old Left/Right divide.”

“Women standing up for women are now routinely considered transphobic,” Moore writes, “a term we both hate.” Rowling responded that she has no animosity for transgenders:

I have no irrational fear of or hatred towards trans people in the slightest – as, God knows, I’ve said so many times. But if you’re going to say it’s “hate” not to believe in a gendered soul, then we cannot have a discussion. We can’t. There’s nowhere to go. The tactic has been no debate, but it is changing.

Despite enduring constant attacks on social and print media, Rowling has refused to do what so many others have: namely, issue one of those wimpy apologies saying, “I’m sorry if I hurt anyone’s feelings; it was not my intent.” But considering she’s unbelievably wealthy and successful, why would she even risk going out on a limb, knowing some will devote themselves to canceling her?

“That’s what made Rowling speak up,” Moore writes. “Three years ago, she saw this happening and she realized: ‘It’s going to have to be, me, isn’t it? Because I will always be able to feed my kids, even if everyone boycotts my books for the rest of my life. That is a phenomenally privileged position to be in. I consider myself one of the most fortunate people on Earth.'”

Rowling is even able to laugh about the whole situation:

The only time I’ve ever made reference to being canceled, my book sales went up. Why am I even laughing? I can’t believe I’m saying these words. But you have to mock them. I do not consider myself canceled.

Rowling is incredibly brave for taking on this issue and should be applauded for it. Many of us have no hate or fear in our hearts against transgender people, but we still are against gender surgeries performed on kids and biologically born males playing sports against biologically born females, or being housed with them in prisons and shelters. It does not make us “haters” and “transphobic.” According to Rowling, it makes us feminists—at least as the term used to be defined.

If you read the mainstream media, you’d come away thinking that virtually everyone condemns the author of some of the most beloved books of all time. As with so many things we’re told these days, that’s simply not true; many people support her voice: