(Long, probing article on Rowling's evolution toward transphobia.)
At the time, transgender rights were becoming a lightning rod in the U.K. The British government called for a public consultation on the country’s Gender Recognition Act in 2018, which moved the issue to the center of national debate. In the Labour Party infighting Rowling had joined, the “trans-rights activist” had become a figure discussed in much the same way as the “Bernie bro” across the Atlantic: They were young, they were angry at their Establishment elders, and, crucially, for many prominent British feminists, this anger was coded as misogyny. British feminism’s leading voices, writers who had been setting the feminist agenda in Britain’s major papers for years, advanced the view that trans rights were an attack on women’s rights (or even an attempt at “female erasure”), that trans women were men seeking to invade women’s spaces, that trans men were women lost to homophobia and self-loathing, and that all this represented a grave threat to “natal” women and girls. On Mumsnet, a popular British parenting site, anxiety over the dangers of trans rights overtook the “Feminism” message board.
The divide here between mainstream British feminists and their American counterparts is striking: American opponents of trans rights tend to be right wing. The difference reflects, perhaps, the relative insularity and homogeneity of British feminism. In America, challenges from feminists across marginalized groups have increasingly pressed those who would speak on behalf of “women” to reexamine whom they mean.
Fans began to note with alarm that Rowling followed vocally anti-trans Twitter accounts. Some had also taken note of certain things in Rowling’s crime novels — like the trans character her detective hero taunts by saying that jail “won’t be fun … not pre-op.” All of this mostly passed beneath widespread public notice, however. More prominently controversial was Rowling’s support for Johnny Depp. Set to star in a new/Fantastic Beasts/movie, he stood accused of domestic abuse. In a statement, Rowling said that, based on her understanding of his case, she was “genuinely happy” to have Depp stay on. Others may disagree, she acknowledged, but “conscience isn’t governable by committee.” Depp was her peer in a rarefied world; they had (at different times) owned the same yacht.
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