The beloved public figure has broken his silence on the Harry Potter author’s rhetoric
BY LARA IQBAL GILLING, IMAGE BY TABLET ERASER (WIKIMEDIA COMMONS)
Author and comedian Stephen Fry has condemned JK Rowling’s views on trans people, in a change from his previously neutral stance.
“She has been radicalised I fear and it maybe she has been radicalised by TERFs, but also by the vitriol that is thrown at her,” Stephen said to Andrew Keates in an episode of The Show People podcast.
He claimed that JK has stirred up “a hornet’s nest of transphobia which has been entirely destructive” and added that she “seems to be a lost cause”.
Stephen described himself as “really angry” and said he disagrees “profoundly” with her views. “She says things that are inflammatory and contemptuous, mocking and add to a terribly distressing time for trans people.”
A gay man himself, Stephen spoke in 2021 of his trans and intersex friends who were “deeply upset” by JK’s comments. But, until now, he had not denounced her views.
Stephen narrated the Harry Potter audiobooks, the last of which was recorded in 2007. In 2020, he was the voice for the audiobook of JK’s fairytale The Ickabog. He said he and JK used to be friends, and in 2021 claimed that they would remain close in spite of JK’s views on trans people, which were making headlines. He said: “She’s a friend and will remain a friend.”
JK supported the April Supreme Court ruling which defined “woman” by biological sex in the 2010 Equality Act, and in May this year created The J.K. Rowling Women’s Fund to finance legal representation for “individuals fighting to retain women’s sex-based rights”.
On 15 June, she posted on X: “I find it highly offensive when women are told they must pretend some men are the same as they are, that their right to tell the truth about sex must be set aside in favour of affirming men’s fantasies about themselves.”
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