What Rowling is tweeting about is a letter denouncing the transgender activists online who declared Rowling dead, #RIPJKRowling, because they believe her new novel is openly “transphobic.” The Sunday Times explains in ‘Literati rally to JK Rowling’s defence in row over Cormoran Strike book:’
Some of Britain’s most eminent entertainers and authors have rallied around JK Rowling after the Harry Potter writer was subjected to an onslaught of abuse and death threats on social media.
The Booker prize-winner Ian McEwan, the actress Frances Barber, the playwright Sir Tom Stoppard and the actor and writer Griff Rhys Jones are among 58 signatories to a letter in which they say she is a victim of “an insidious, authoritarian and misogynistic trend in social media”.
In the letter, triggered by her opponents declaring her dead on social media, they said it was “just the latest example of hate speech directed against her and other women that Twitter and other platforms enable and implicitly endorse”.
For more on this story, the letter, and its full list of signatories, read the article at The Independent online.
Will this letter in Rowling’s defense and contra online madness stop the Cancel Culture’s crazed attacks on Fortress Rowling? Almost certainly not.
Is it an encouraging sign? Absolutely.
If anyone had any doubt that Rowling is a ‘Witch that Will Not Burn,’ this letter of support from the elite of literary and artistic London in her support should extinguish it. That her readers continue to buy and love her work, too, despite the slander campaign of the Woke fundamentalist horde on social media and, let’s be honest, of most Harry Potter fan sites, is a measurable and undeniable fact; Troubled Blood, Rowling’s just published and longest and most challenging work to date, tops the bestseller lists in both the UK and US.
Thoughtful people, many of whom are my good friends, disagree with me on the subject of Rowling’s position about transgender women. I think I understand and appreciate their belief that Rowling has been insensitive in her exposition of her position and that the ‘science’ of gender realities suggests the issue is more nuanced than her black-and-white contention that transgender women are not biological women. We can and we have agreed to respectfully disagree on both those points.
I think wherever one chooses to stand on those subjects, however, the idea of declaring someone “dead” or “cancelled,” a virtual “She Who Shall Not Be Named,” is a different issue, one of free speech and the marketplace of ideas. Rowling, it turns out, is too big to be silenced. While she and I see eye-to-eye on very little outside literary matters (and perhaps not even there), I applaud her courage in standing against the tide of conventional opinion and I celebrate the support she received on Sunday contra the Cancel Culture tyrants.
Thank you for posting and very well said! The Cancel Culture tyrants have really run amuck–in these already rather dystopian days. Catching their ever ready attacks (do they have anything else in their life?) whenever anyone dares say something positive about JKR–my mind always goes to those other times in history that were plagued by Marauding Scolds–burning books and shutting down any and all who who won’t conform to their way of things.
I truly believe that it takes someone not easily crushed (JKR) to lead the way out of this current iteration of Marauding Scolds. We need more strong people to help us all get back to some measure of rationality and reclaim the public space where people can turn down the volume and act civilized again; instead of like frenzied lemmings heading for the nearest cliff.
Thanks for posting, John. Silencing others is not the answer.
Thank you for this sentence: “I think I understand and appreciate their belief that Rowling has been insensitive in her exposition of her position and that the ‘science’ of gender realities suggests the issue is more nuanced than her black-and-white contention that transgender women are not biological women.”
I appreciate you putting my own thoughts so clearly into words, John. Trying to plod through this issue and clearly explain the above sentiment has been challenging and especially with my 13 year old daughter has been such a challenge. She is a huge JKR fan and listens to a variety of podcasts that have led her simplistically astray on this matter.
Is there anywhere one can read the letter and its list of signatories (which, I understand, now includes John Cleese as well) without submitting to the gavage with cookies to produce the privacy foie gras so many relish feasting upon?