JK Rowling sent a stern warning to politicians on Saturday, saying women are “outraged and angry” over the radical transgender lobby threatening their rights and safety.
Rowling warned politicians from Britain’s political parties that British women will no longer allow them to “threaten and intimidate them out of speaking publicly about their own rights”.
The Harry Potter author tweeted that women have been left “outraged and angry at the deaf ear turned to their well-founded concerns” about the dangers of radical transgender policy, such as the push to allow biological males to self-identify as women and access women only-spaces such as female changing rooms.
The one-time hero of the British left went on to call out the leader of the Labour Party, Sir Keir Starmer, and accuse him of “publicly misrepresenting equalities law, in yet another indication that the Labour Party can no longer be counted on to defend women’s rights”.
This accusation comes after Sir Keir, a former chief prosecutor, insisted on Friday that “trans women are women”, which he claimed was enshrined in the 2004 Gender Recognition Act and the 2010 Equality Act and was “the law in the United Kingdom” — which Rowling disputes.
The children’s author turned alleged “TERF” — trans-exclusionary radical feminist — also claimed that “women are organising across party lines, and their resolve and their anger are growing”.
Rowling suggested that her motivation for speaking out on this topic came from the “innumerable gay people” that have contacted her as “like women, they — especially lesbians — are under attack for not wishing to be redefined and for refusing to use ideological language they find offensive”.
Rowling’s bold statement came in response to the news that Lisa Townsend, the elected Police and Crime Commissioner for Surrey, was found by a local council panel to have breached the code of conduct of her office after supporting a tweet from Rowling that insisted that transgender rapists are not female.
The original tweet from the author had mocked Scottish police who had allowed a biologically male rapist with a penis to identify as female, with Rowling responding to the news with a reference from George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984.
“War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength. The Penised Individual Who Raped You Is a Woman”, Rowling said.
Townsend referencing this tweet triggered three men into reporting her to Surrey Council.
“It’s not a ‘niche’ issue, it’s not ‘hysterical’ of women to be taking to the streets about it. We will not accept this gaslighting from men who keep telling us they are women, or from those who enable them. #IStandWithJKRowling”, Townsend had said.
One of the complainees was a local Conservative MP, Crispin Blunt — who is also the chairman of the all-party parliamentary group on LGBT+ rights — who told Surrey Council that he believed Townsend — also of the Conservative Party — had “propagate[d] dangerous myths”.
Following the verdict, Townsend said it was “ridiculous that a middle-aged male MP should try to stop me speaking up for women’s rights”.
“If you’re a male who prefers to wear dresses, grow your hair long and you’d rather wear make-up, that’s great. You go for it, but that doesn’t make you a woman. I’ve said it before and I’ll go on saying it. It’s how an overwhelming number of my constituents feel,”, Townsend insisted.
Since speaking out against the radical trans lobby, the police and crime commissioner has reported that she has received 15 death threats from extremists.