In the ongoing saga of every millennials’ childhood being ruined, Robbie Coltrane, who played beloved groundskeeper Rubeus Hagrid in the Harry Potter films, has come to the defense of J.K. Rowling’s transphobic comments.
In a recent interview with Radio Times, Coltrane said that he didn’t find Rowling’s recent remarks offensive, continuing, “I don’t know why but there’s a whole Twitter generation of people who hang around waiting to be offended. They wouldn’t have won the war, would they?” (Not sure what war Coltrane is referring to exactly, but it’s not as if activists young and old have spent an entire summer marching in the streets and getting tear-gassed, which is a chemical weapon banned in war. Nothing of the sort!)
The author who must not be named has been accused of transphobic acts of escalating degrees in recent years. It began with mere hints in the form of liking TERF-y tweets in 2018, which her representatives called a “middle-aged moment” and attributed to the way she held her phone. At the time, Katelyn Burns characterized Rowling’s transphobia in an op-ed for them. as the insidious sort that lives inside all cisgender people by virtue of the systemic hatred of trans people that characterizes British society (and also everywhere).
But then in December 2019, however, You-Know-Who upped the ante by expressing her support for Maya Forstater, who lost her job as a researcher with the Center for Global Development after a series of transphobic tweets calling the slogan “trans women are women” a “literal delusion,” among other things.
Her firing, also known as “actions having consequences,” did not sit well with Rowling, which she made evidently clear to the world via Twitter.
And yet, this was still not enough for the author, who is rumored to be worth at least $670 million. In June, she remarked on Twitter that she took umbrage (pun intended) with the phrase “people who menstruate,” saying: “I’m sure there used to be a word for those people. Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?” This is despite the fact that it costs zero dollars and zero cents to use inclusive language that makes life just a little easier for a lot of people.
Rowling followed her tweet with a literal 3,000 word essay explaining why she hates trans people, in spite of the fact that absolutely no one asked for this: “I know it’s time to explain myself on an issue surrounded by toxicity. I write this without any desire to add to that toxicity.” (The latter statement, it must be said, is a bald-faced lie.)
Since then, Rowling has alternated between sharing pictures of children’s fan art of her new book on Twitter, comparing transitioning to conversion therapy, posting absolutely deranged studies debating the ethics of giving trans children the right to bodily autonomy. Not that anyone’s bodily autonomy needs to be validated by any institution, but the official journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics has recommended that trans and gender nonconforming youth ought to be “treated” with clinical, social, and educational gender identity support measures.
Her latest book, Troubled Blood, somewhat ironically published under the alias Robert Galbraith, has been criticized for featuring a cross-dressing serial killer, a trope as old as Michael Caine’s wig. You would think that a woman who wrote one of the best-selling fantasy series of all time would have a creative capacity beyond queercoding that’s been done to death, but it appears that none of us can have nice things; Rowling seems determined of that.
