JK Rowling has revealed that friends and family “begged her” to keep her anti-trans views to herself.
The Harry Potter author has been met with backlash in recent years over her outspoken stance on trans women, and her claims that trans women “are not women”.
In an extract from a new book, The Women Who Wouldn’t Say Wheesht, which contains more than 30 essays and photos from women in Scotland who claim to be on “the frontline of the battle for women’s rights”, Rowling wrote that she initially kept her thoughts on the matter to herself “because people around me, including some I love, were begging me not to speak”.
“So I watched from the sidelines as women with everything to lose rallied, in Scotland and across the UK, to defend their rights. My guilt that I wasn’t standing with them was with me daily, like a chronic pain.”
Rowling first made her stance on transgender women public in December 2019 when she tweeted in support of researcher Maya Forstater, who was fired from her job at a think-tank, Centre for Global Development, over a series of tweets questioning government plans to allow people to self-identify as another gender.