“Harry Potter” author JK Rowling has reignited her ongoing feud with presenter and trans woman India Willoughby with two posts on Mother’s Day, which is celebrated in Great Britain on Sunday (March 10).
“Happy Mother’s Day to everyone whose eggs have been fertilized and produced little people; whose gender was determined by doctors with a lucky hand,” said Rowling on the short message portal X. She received strong reactions for making fun of trans definitions. The writer then published an update with a sarcastic tone.
“I am devastated and stunned that my embrace of inclusive language has also alienated her most enthusiastic supporters,” Rowling said. “Let’s just say: Happy Mother’s Day to all the women who have raised children!”
In numerous skirmishes and counter-attacks in the past, Rowling had defended herself against a strict and normative interpretation of “integrative language”.
The background to this new round of verbal boxing is also criticism from British TV presenter India Willoughby for alleged transphobic statements. Willoughby underwent gender reassignment surgery in 2015. She now claims Rowling intentionally “mislabeled” her.
Rowling, in turn, says Willoughby’s “obsessive attacks on me over the past few years could amount to the legal offense of harassment.”
“I ignored this advice because I had no desire to give India the publicity he so clearly craves,” Rowling wrote on X. “Aware that lying to law enforcement is a criminal offense, “I’ll just have to explain to the police that, in my opinion, India is a classic example of a male narcissist who lives in a state of constant rage at his inability to get women to take him on his own terms.”
On Sunday (March 10) on “X,” Rowling also criticized trans women being allowed into women’s locker rooms and mentioned Willoughby in her post. The author wrote: “India has not become a woman. India reenacts a misogynistic male fantasy of what a woman is.”
A police spokesman for the county of Northumbria, which lies on the border with Scotland, has since stated that Willoughby’s current accusation “does not reach the threshold of criminal liability”.
In an interview with Byline TV, 58-year-old Willoughby said: “JK Rowling has definitely committed a crime. I am legally a woman. She knows I’m a woman and she calls me a man. This is defined by law.”