J.K. Rowling’s war on trans people won’t stop us from existing

On Wednesday morning, my social feeds showed me two stark reactions to a historic rolling back of trans rights in the United Kingdom. J.K. Rowling, author of the “Harry Potter” series and notorious anti-trans advocate, posted a photo of herself smoking a cigar and holding a glass of wine on her yacht. “I love it when a plan comes together,” the caption reads.

The photo struck a sharp contrast to what I saw from my trans friends in the U.K., many of whom posted about being terrified of their own government and wishing to flee the country.

That’s because the “plan” Rowling was referencing was a U.K. Supreme Court judgment that ruled trans women should not be considered women, essentially wiping out decades of civil rights advances for British transgender people. The judges heard from representatives of numerous anti-trans special interest groups, but no trans people or trans rights groups provided testimony, in part because individuals and organizations that fund and support trans rights thought they would not be believed and feared negative repercussions.

The exclusion of trans voices in the case matches what happened with the Cass Report, a document commissioned by the U.K. National Health Service purporting to investigate youth gender medicine, from last April, in which experts in trans health care were similarly disregarded.

There’s also a significant financial component, with Rowling reportedly donating £70,000 to For Scotland Women, the organization that brought the original suit.

The ruling comes in the same week HBO announced the initial casting for its upcoming “Harry Potter” series, featuring John Lithgow as Dumbledore. Lithgow’s career got a serious boost in the early 1980s after he was nominated for the best supporting actor Oscar for playing the trans woman character Roberta Muldoon in “The World According to Garp.” Now, he’s working on a project that could indirectly financially contribute to the marginalization of trans people in the U.K., should Rowling, who is an executive producer on the project and will earn royalties from the show, choose to contribute more of her earnings to anti-trans projects.

The ruling was another setback for trans rights in a year of particularly notable backtracking around the world. In the U.S., the federal government has been largely successful in purging trans people from the military, trans-related ideas and even words ascribed to trans people from government usage. Trans people in America are now unable to get accurate passports, and the Trump administration recently announced it would be cutting federal education funding from the state of Maine because the state refuses to ban two trans girls from playing girls high school sports in the state.

There is thankfully still some protection for those who live in more trans-friendly blue states, so the rights you have as a trans person depend largely on where, geographically, you live within the country.

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For trans folks in the U.K., Wednesday’s ruling will no doubt signal that the anti-trans lobby groups that currently have the ear of the Labour government in power can push even further. Though the court ruling didn’t expressly extend into specific policies, we will likely see a push to formalize policies like bathroom bans. Health Secretary Wes Streeting has taken the lead on rolling back access to transition care in the National Health Service. He responded to the now widely denounced Cass Report by instituting a ban on puberty blockers for all trans youth in the country and has directed general providers to withhold transition care like hormones for adults in order to push them into the country’s gender clinic system, which comes with a sometimes decadelong waiting time.

Sitting here as a trans person in the U.S. and watching what’s happening both here and across the pond, it’s difficult for me to say which country has it worse right now. Both countries have billionaire patron saints of the anti-trans movement, with Elon Musk in the U.S. and Rowling in the U.K., with no real financial counterweight on the trans rights side. But both countries are also full of talented, funny, wonderful trans people who simply want to live their lives without the government fumbling around in our underpants all the time.

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Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling releases new book ‘The Christmas Pig’ October 12, 2021 / 00:50

Here in the U.S. we get millions of dollars in political attack ads and conservative anti-trans activist like Riley Gaines launching a lucrative activist career after finishing tied for fifth with controversial trans swimmer Lia Thomas in a collegiate swim meet.

But the U.S. also has folks like Maine Gov. Janet Mills, who rather famously told Trump “see you in court” to his face when he asked her if her state would comply with his executive order banning trans girls from girls’ school sports. In the U.S., we at least have some Democratic leaders willing to stand up for us, like Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker.

This ruling may have been a significant setback, but there is still nothing that can stop us from simply existing as trans people.

The world has always had trans people, and always will. The J.K. Rowlings of the world come and go, but trans people are eternal, and that feels like a very comforting thought here in the eye of the storm in 2025.