JK Rowling says she has faced ‘avalanche of death, rape and torture threats’ over trans views

JK Rowling has pledged to keep speaking out and funding women's legal cases, revealing she has faced "an avalanche of death, rape and torture threats" over "trans activism".

The author described being "shocked and disgusted" that "large numbers of women" had "spent the last few years vilifying members of their own sex for fighting to retain their hard-won rights and single-sex spaces".

Writing in an essay on Wednesday, she asserted that "trans activism" is "elitist to its core" and primarily harms unprivileged women.

Rowling condemned "wealthy women who repost the vogueish mantras while sitting in dressing rooms guarded by private security guards" and "headline-hungry female politicians".

Film stars Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint have earlier distanced themselves from the author's statements.

Last year, she claimed Watson, who played Hermione Granger in the series, had "so little experience of real life she’s ignorant of how ignorant she is".

Rowling added in September 2025: “I’d be astounded if she’s been in a high street changing room since childhood. Her ‘public bathroom’ is single occupancy and comes with a security man standing guard outside the door.”

More recently, the author’s views have been met with a wave of protests and boycotts by trans rights activists targeting Harry Potter-themed events and locations.

Several protesters rushed the red carpet ahead of the gala performance of Harry Potter And The Cursed Child at the Palace Theatre in London.

Rowling said her latest piece this week is an update to her 2020 essay on the subject in which she had told how she was partly motivated to speak out because of her experience of abuse and sexual assault.

The writer strongly denies being transphobic, stating that “without question” there are “vulnerable trans people”.

But she added: “The current, dominant strain of trans activism bears no resemblance whatsoever to the great social justice movements of the twentieth century.”

Rowling said: “Of course, all men aren’t rapists, voyeurs or flashers, but enough are to make safeguarding necessary. That’s why women and girls want separate changing rooms and public bathrooms.

“That’s why women need male-free spaces when seeking to recover their sense of self and safety after rape.

“Not because we hate trans people, not because we want them dead, not because we want them somehow eradicated from existence, but because women and girls have specific issues and needs that men do not, even if they’re calling themselves women and even if they’ve taken cross-sex hormones.”

She said the sexual violence support centre she founded had been “defamed” by Amnesty International which had, in a now-withdrawn briefing, included it in a list of organisations it labelled “anti-rights”.

Beira’s Place was established in Edinburgh in 2022 by Rowling to provide women-only support for women who have experienced sexual violence.

In her essay, Rowling wrote: “It’s true, of course, that trans activism doesn’t impact all women negatively. In fact, the more privileged you are, the less it tends to affect you, and the more it might benefit you.

“Aside from an avalanche of death, rape and torture threats, it hasn’t noticeably affected my life. Nor does it hurt wealthy women who repost the vogueish mantras while sitting in dressing rooms guarded by private security guards.

“It doesn’t hurt women in the upper echelons of media, publishing and academia, who don’t need a changing room at work and who feel a snobbish disdain for working class women who don’t want to strip off in front of heterosexual males who’ve ‘identified’ into the women’s changing room.

“Trans activism doesn’t hurt headline-hungry female politicians whose attitude to women’s rights is ‘whatever is good for me personally’. On the contrary, trans activism has been good for those women. It’s fashionable, and keeps them popular with their progressive tribe, and costs them, personally, absolutely nothing.”

She claimed that “large numbers of women who’ve never been poor, who’ve never worked the kind of job where they’d be vulnerable to predatory men and who’ve never needed a rape crisis centre have spent the last few years vilifying members of their own sex for fighting to retain their hard-won rights and single-sex spaces, in ways that have shocked and disgusted me”.

Rowling added: “I freely confess that I feel an extra layer of abhorrence for any woman who claims to be a feminist while doing it.

“And so I’ll continue to speak out, continue to use my money to help women who otherwise couldn’t afford to go to court, and continue to ensure that women in my area can still access female-delivered, female-centred support after rape.”