Amy Curtis September 25, 2025 7:30 PM – Townhall
Author JK Rowling has been a tireless champion for women’s rights, spending the last several years pushing back against the radical trans activists to ensure women have access to single-sex spaces and are free from persecution for standing up for their rights and biological truth.
It hasn’t been without difficulty. She’s received death threats, legal threats, and even lawsuits. She’s also been on the outs with several “Harry Potter” actors including Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson.
Last year, Rowling made it very clear she was not going to accept apologies from either of them, writing on X, “Celebs who cosied up to a movement intent on eroding women’s hard-won rights and who used their platforms to cheer on the transitioning of minors can save their apologies for traumatised detransitioners and vulnerable women reliant on single sex spaces.”
Now it seems Watson is hoping to get back into Rowling’s good graces:
“Harry Potter” star Emma Watson said in a podcast interview released Wednesday that she remains fond of series author J.K. Rowling despite their differences on transgender issues.
Appearing on the “On Purpose” podcast, Watson spoke about her rift with the “Harry Potter” creator, saying she strives to maintain affection for Rowling while rejecting her views of the transgender community.
…
Rowling’s relationship with “Harry Potter” film stars Watson and Daniel Radcliffe has deteriorated since the fantasy author took a public stance against transgender activism online.
Rowling began her public criticism of the transgender movement in 2020 with a viral X (then called Twitter) post that criticized an article mentioning “people who menstruate.” She argued the piece should use the word “women” instead.
Watson said on the podcast, “It’s my deepest wish that I hope people who don’t agree with my opinion will love me, and I hope I can keep loving people who I don’t necessarily share the same opinion with.”
Sorry, Hermione. That ship has sailed.
Back in 2020, when Rowling first started standing up for women’s rights, Watson posted on X, “I want my trans followers to know that I and so many other people around the world see you, respect you and love you for who you are.”
Back in May, Rowling penned a rather long post on X talking about the backlash in academia and arts over the UK Supreme Court’s ruling about women, and while she didn’t mention Watson or Radcliffe by name, they were undoubtedly two targets of her post.
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. 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.
I often wonder whether the signatories of such letters have to quieten their consciences before publicly boosting a movement intent on removing women’s and girls’ rights, which bullies gay people who admit openly they don’t want opposite sex partners, and campaigns for the continued sterilisation of vulnerable and troubled kids. Do they feel any qualms at all while chanting the foundational lie of their religion: Trans Women are Women, Trans Men are Men?
I have no idea. All I know for sure is that it’s a complete waste of time telling a gender activist that their favourite slogan is self-contradictory nonsense, because the lie is the whole point. They’re not repeating it because it’s true – they know full well it’s not true – but because they believe they can make it true, sort of, if they force everyone else to agree. The foundational lie functions as both catechism and crucifix: the set form of words that obviates the tedious necessity of coming up with your own explanation of why you’re one of the Godly, and an exorcist’s weapon which will defeat demonic facts and reason, and promote the advance of righteous pseudoscience and sophistry.
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 (though we can quibble whether they’re actually liberal at all, given the draconian authoritarianism that seems to have engulfed so many). Gender ideology could give medieval Catholicism a run for its money when it comes to punishing heretics, so isn’t it common sense to keep your head down and recite your Hail Mulvaneys?
But before we start feeling too sorry for any cowed and fearful TWAWites who’re TERFy on the sly, let’s not forget what a high proportion of them have willingly snatched up pitchforks and torches to join the inquisitional purges. Call me lacking in proper womanly sympathy, but I find the harm they’ve enabled and in some cases directly championed or funded – the hounding and shaming of vulnerable women, the forced loss of livelihoods, the unregulated medical experiment on minors – tends to dry up my tears at source.
History is littered with the debris of irrational and harmful belief systems that once seemed unassailable. As Orwell said, ‘Some ideas are so stupid that only intellectuals believe them.’ Gender ideology may have embedded itself deeply into our institutions, where it’s been imposed, top-down, on the supposedly unenlightened, but it is not invulnerable.
Court losses are starting to stack up. The condescension, overreach, entitlement and aggression of gender activists is eroding public support daily. Women are fighting back and winning significant victories. Sporting bodies have miraculously awoken from their slumber and remembered that males tend to be larger, stronger and faster than females. Parts of the medical establishment are questioning cutting healthy breasts off teenaged girls is really the best way to fix their mental health problems.
One seemingly harmless little white lie – Trans Women are Women, Trans Men are Men – uttered in most cases without any real thought at all, and a few short years later, people who think of themselves as supremely virtuous are typing ‘yes, rapists’ pronouns are absolutely the hill I’ll die on,’ rubbing shoulders with those who call for women to be hanged and decapitated for wanting all-female rape crisis centres, and furiously denying clear and mounting evidence of the greatest medical scandal in a century.
I wonder if they ever ask themselves how they got here, and I wonder whether any of them will ever feel shame.
Today, Rowling quoted that original post and reaffirmed that she hasn’t forgotten who led the mob against her, writing, “A little reminder for anyone who may be regretting their very public sprint to the front of the mob and is now trying to discreetly shove their pitchfork out of sight.”
Rowling is right. This isn’t an issue on which people can disagree in good faith.
The trans movement requires not only the suspension of biological reality and scientific fact, it has also led to the wholesale erasure and abuse of women. We went from being women — adult human females — to “womb havers,” “birthing persons,” and “inseminated individuals.” Women who object to such dehumanization are attacked as “TERFs” or driven out of their jobs.
In the UK, women who object to having to change in front of men in NHS locker rooms are fired and face legal consequences. In Brazil, a woman faced 25 years in prison for “misgendering” someone and was forced to go to Europe as a refugee to escape prison time.
Our daughters saw their sports teams infiltrated by boys and some of those boys would actively seek to harm their opponents. Payton McNabb was hit in the face by a volleyball spiked by a boy. She suffered a traumatic brain injury (TBI), partial paralysis, and other permanent injuries. In Illinois, middle school girls were forced by school officials to change in front of a “trans-identifying” boy in their locker room. Similar things happened in Texas and Wisconsin. In Loudoun County, Virginia, boys who objected to a “trans-identifying” girl in their locker room were punished for “harassment” and “sex-based discrimination” (even though the girl recorded them in the locker room).
On top of all of that, the trans movement has supported the mass mutilation and sterilization of far too many children. There are boys and girls — many of them gay or lesbian, some who are autistic, and others who have mental health issues or trauma — who have had their genitals removed, their natural growth stunted by puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones. They will face a lifetime of sexual dysfunction, infertility, expensive ongoing medical care, and difficulty forming relationships. And, despite the insistence from the Left that “gender-affirming care” saves lives, it doesn’t. Even the ACLU’s lawyer admitted before the Supreme Court that there was no evidence that such care reduced suicides. To the contrary, at least one study showed that those who have “gender affirming surgery” are twelve times more likely to commit suicide.
All of that is what Rowling and her fellow “TERFs” have fought against. For years. Despite threats, despite the possibility of losing our jobs and — in some countries — going to prison. Meanwhile, Emma Watson virtue-signaled on X and turned her back on the person who made her a celebrity in the first place.
Now that the culture is shifting back to sanity, Hermione doesn’t get to hide that pitchfork, and there can be no reconciliation with people who support such atrocities.
Lord Buckbeak: "Will you come into my parlor?," said the Spider to the Fly. 