J.K. Rowling is not backing down from her opinions on the trans community.
Last week, several “Harry Potter” actors including Eddie Redmayne, Paapa Essiedu and Katie Leung signed a pro-trans open letter after the UK Supreme Court ruled that the terms “woman” and “sex” refer strictly to a biological woman and biological sex.
Rowling, 59, publicly supported the ruling in an essay shared on X (formerly Twitter) Saturday, and called out “back-stabbing colleagues” who she said are “motivated by fear.”
“In light of recent open letters from academia and the arts criticising the UK’s Supreme Court ruling on sex-based rights, it’s possibly worth remembering that nobody sane believes, or has ever believed, that humans can change sex, or that binary sex isn’t a material fact,” the author wrote.
“These letters do nothing but remind us of what we know only too well: that pretending to believe these things has become an elitist badge of virtue,” Rowling added.
She continued: “Some argue that signatories of these sorts of letters are motivated by fear: fear for their careers, of course, but also fear of their co-religionists, who include angry, narcissistic men who threaten and sometimes enact violence on non-believers; back-stabbing colleagues ever ready to report wrongthink; the online shamers and doxxers and rape threateners, and, of course, the influential zealots in the upper echelons of liberal professions.”
Later in her essay, Rowling wrote that “court losses are starting to stack up” against the trans community and “women are fighting back and winning significant victories.”
To conclude her message, Rowling again called out the people who signed the pro-trans open letter, though she didn’t name them.
“I wonder if they ever ask themselves how they got here, and I wonder whether any of them will ever feel shame,” she wrote.
There were more than 2,000 signatories on the open letter which argued the court’s ruling “undermines the lived reality and threatens the safety of trans, non-binary and intersex people living in the UK.”
Redmayne, 43, signed the letter. He starred in the “Harry Potter” spin-off prequel franchise “Fantastic Beasts.”
Leung, another signatorie, played Cho Chang in the original “Harry Potter” films.
And Essiedu, who also signed the letter, is set to portray Severus Snape in HBO’s upcoming “Harry Potter” series, which Rowling is serving as an executive producer on.
Other British actors who signed the letter include “The Last of Us” star Bella Ramsey, “The Brutalist” actor Joe Alwyn and “Bridgerton” star Nicola Coughlan.
Rowling’s divisive rhetoric about the trans community has caused fans to threaten to boycott the “Harry Potter” TV show.
But HBO CEO Casey Bloys recently promised that the series will not be “secretly infused” with the author’s controversial views.
“I think it’s pretty clear that those are her personal political views. She’s entitled to them,” Bloys said on “The Town” podcast.
The HBO exec added: “And if you want to debate her, you can go on Twitter.”
John Lithgow, who will star as Albus Dumbledore in the new “Harry Potter” series, revealed that he’s already received significant backlash for joining the project because of Rowling’s views.
“I thought, ‘Why is this a factor at all?’ I wonder how J.K. Rowling has absorbed it,” the “Conclave” actor, 79, said to the Times of London.
“I suppose at a certain point I’ll meet her, and I’m curious to talk to her,” he added.