Harry Potter author JK Rowling is being criticised after appearing to express anti-transgender opinions on Twitter today.
It came after the author criticised an opinion piece using the term “people who menstruate” instead of women.
Ms Rowlings later tweeted: “If sex isn’t real, there’s no same-sex attraction. If sex isn’t real, the lived reality of women globally is erased.
“I know and love trans people, but erasing the concept of sex removes the ability of many to meaningfully discuss their lives. It isn’t hate to speak the truth,” she wrote.
She said she respected “every trans person’s right to live any way that feels authentic and comfortable to them”.
“I’d march with you if you were discriminated against on the basis of being trans.
“At the same time, my life has been shaped by being female.”
It prompted a Twitter user to call her a “a gross TERF (trans-exclusionary radical feminist)”.
Another tweeted in response that “saying that your life has been shaped by being a female is 1000000% implying that you don’t believe trans women are women and that IS hateful”.
“I feel so much empathy and sadness for your trans readers,” they continued.
It follows criticism in December last year after Ms Rowling tweeted in support for Maya Forstater, a researcher who lost her job after tweeting transgender women couldn’t change their biological sex.
Employment judge James Tayler ruled Ms Forstater’s views were: “absolutist” and that “it is a core component of her belief that she will refer to a person by the sex she considered appropriate even if it violates their dignity”.
In response to the ruling, Ms Forstater said: “This judgment removes women’s rights and the right to freedom of belief and speech.”
Ms Rowling tweeted at the time: “Call yourself whatever you like … but force women out of their jobs for stating that sex is real?”
In 2018, Ms Rowling appeared to ‘like’ a tweet that referred to trans women as “men in dresses” . At the time, the author’s reps said she had liked the tweet by accident.
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