JK Rowling’s transphobia isn’t news at this point. She’s been one of the internet’s loudest and proudest TERFs for years now, from trash-talking cisgender athletes for not meeting her standards of femininity to condemning Harry Potter actors for supporting trans rights. But her latest tirade against trans folks not only goes after some of the queer community’s most vulnerable members, but makes two ludicrous comparisons that have the internet up in arms.
In a post on X on December 28, Rowling replied to a comment that asked her to have a little sympathy for trans people. “I wish you would use your immense power for good,” reads the comment. “Your hateful focus on trans kids is hurtful and unnecessary.”
Rather than taking that concern in good faith, Rowling shut down the commenter’s very premise. “There are no trans kids. No child is ‘born in the wrong body,’” she wrote in a viral post. “There are only adults like you, prepared to sacrifice the health of minors to bolster your belief in an ideology that will end up wreaking more harm than lobotomies and false memory syndrome combined.”
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What an uplifting message to ring in the new year, right?
Rowling’s claim that “there are no trans kids” is, of course, patently false. As of 2022 in the United States alone, nearly 300,000 children between the ages of 13 and 17 identified as transgender, or 1.4% of all 13- to 17-year-olds, according to data from UCLA’s Williams Institute.
Always love it when other people erase my childhood. I guess I never existed, never had dysphoria, never had suicidal ideations.
— June Ⓐ☭ 🏳️⚧️👩❤️💋👩🏳️🌈🔞 (@SapphicSnuggles) December 30, 2024
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The mold has reached the yacht, I repeat: the mold has reached the yacht
But beyond Rowling’s ignorance of the facts, her assertion that trans folks will do “more harm than lobotomies and false memory syndrome combined” is so outlandish, the internet can’t believe it’s real. Lobotomies and diagnoses of false memory syndrome are two of the most notoriously abused medical practices in history. By equating them with transness, Rowling is either proving she doesn’t understand the scope of their legacy in medical history, or proving she still hasn’t looked into how being trans actually affects children’s lives. Either way, as one viral response put it, it seems like the black mold in her house has finally won.
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