J.K. Rowling is embroiled in a fresh row with another Harry Potter actor over transgender rights.
Following exchanges of fire with Daniel Radcliffe and others, Rowling has blasted David Tennant after the Goblet of Fire star voiced strident views on those who speak out against trans rights.
During an appearance at the British LGBT Awards over the weekend, he called on British equalities minister Kemi Badenoch to “shut up” after she advocated for banning trans women from entering women’s toilets and sports teams.
In an interview at the same event, Tennant called transgender critics “a tiny bunch of little whinging f*ckers who are on the wrong side of history, and they’ll all go away soon.”
Earlier in the week, Rowling branded people like Tennant the “gender Taliban.” In posts on X (once Twitter) on Friday, she expanded her comments to address Tennant’s “wrong side of history” quote.
Rowling wrote: “This man is talking about rape survivors who want female-only care, the nurses currently suing their health trust for making them change in front of a man, girls and women losing sporting opportunities to males and female prisoners incarcerated with convicted sex offenders.”
She added: “For a man who’s supposedly a model of compassion and tolerance, he sure does want a lot of people to cease to exist.”
Wait… The UK has a minister of Equalities and they’re against equality? What the fuck?
Welcome to thr Bizarro World of Tory politics. We’ve got an Environment Minister who doesn’t care that the rivers and overflowing with excrement. The Housing Minister hasn’t overseen much housebuilding. And on and on.
Yeah, this government is messed up. I don’t think there’s a single drop of humanity between them.
What till you see what the fairly resent exchequers did with money
Could the witch woman please shut up.
This man is talking about rape survivors who want female-only care, the nurses currently suing their health trust for making them change in front of a man, girls and women losing sporting opportunities to males and female prisoners incarcerated with convicted sex offenders.
It’s hilarious that she’s making these seem like widespread issues when most of them are literally just one incident, or aren’t happening at all. These are the best examples she can come up with of legitimate grievances against trans people?
How about “bullied to suicide, denied medical care, housing discrimination, employment discrimination, and getting violently hate crimed at enormous rates” for the other side of this issue? Even if you think trans identities are invalid, at least pretend to treat them with the same respect you would other human beings. But no, trans people who are just trying to survive day-to-day are nonchalantly grouped in with pedophile rapists, as if those two things are in any way equivalent.
It’s easy to hate someone when you just ignore what they really are and supplant it with something else entirely.
As a cis female rape survivor I would choose the care of a compassionate trans woman over a judgemental TERF anytime!
I 100% agree with your post. The issues she raises are nonexistent or extremely rare. In my personal life I believe and practice “trans-women are women” as for all intents and purposes it’s true.
I am however concerned that I don’t really have a response to anyone who doesn’t believe that, particularly women with some sort of past trauma that gives them an instinctual fear response. It feels insensitive to tell them to get over it or go to therapy. Particularly if they’ve been exposed to one of the extremely rare examples Rowling has presented. But I think going to therapy is probably what needs to happen.
My other conflicting thought is that therapy or condemnation it is what we would say to people being racist, but there seems to be a societal agreement that we need women only spaces. And we don’t say “get over it” in regards to men trying to enter a women’s shelter, we offer an amount of sympathy and understanding to the women and allow them that space. Which means there is some amount of gender discrimination is desired/needed. This also indicates there there should be a line or set of fuzzy criteria that determines if we treat trans-women as women or not. But this obviously also feels wrong, and I hate it.
Sorry if this was insensitive, I mostly just want to gather thoughts as I’m not confident in my thinking. I don’t think these issues deserve the amount of attention transphobes are giving them, but we’re here now, so I want to try and figure out a solution or response to more “reasonable” transphobes that I could potentially change the minds of
The irony is that the Taliban agrees with JK Rowling on matters of gender and sexuality lol.
Conservatives & Projection
Headline blasted by grammar “Nazis” for having “too many” quotes to be taken serious
This picture makes me think that David Tenant is actually trans JK Rowling.
they’ll all go away soon
I wonder what makes him think that.
I expect in a Rowling vs. Tenant fight, Tenant is gonna come out with a win every time. That woman has a damaged moral compass on a good day.
Glad to not see the usual “separate the art from the artist” crowd that can’t stop giving her money to continue to be a fucking plague on humanity.
The worst is, that she feels validated in her hateful opinions by the money she makes.
that can’t stop giving her money
well… I mean… you don’t have to
Most of them do, gladly. They just want to save face by saying they disagree with her.
What always gets me about those people is if it’s real art, the artist is putting their message into the story. When I was young and in the target demographic, I stopped reading halfway through because the message of the story was getting confusing or annoying. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a main character get more selfish in their character arc. I later found out that Harry’s solution to owning a house with severed heads everywhere was to put doilies over them during the holidays.
The books are bad and where probably only tolerable in the beginning because of the editor.
Duuude. You put it so well. They fell off hard after Goblet of Fire, not that the cracks weren’t showing before
Unpopular opinion, Voldemort is a boring villain with puddle deep motives. He should never have survived the first book.
That’s the thing though, that kind of works for kid lit
Harry Potter actor? This man is the Doctor.
He’s a national treasure.
To be fair his character in HP was a murderous psychopath.
Didn’t even know he was in it, so I had to look it up. Apparently he played Barty Crouch Jr. in the Goblet of Fire.
He was hardly in it, storywise he’s Mad Eye Moody for a whole year, but they didn’t hang any actual polyjuice potion for filming
yeah he was on screen there for a solid 3 or 4 short scenes. That man is the Doctor, not a side-ish character in one of the Harry Potter movies (Well technically the twist villain in the story but Tennant didn’t get to play him much due to shape-shifting shenanigans)
Yeah, that’s likely why I don’t even remember him being there. My guess is they mentioned his role in Harry Potter to make his relationship to Rowling more relevant to the story.
doctor who?
Exactly.
Won’t get fooled again
Strange
Maybe. But who am I to judge
Where can I get my membership card, shirt, and other swag as a member of David Tennant’s Gender Taliban
David Tennant’s Gender Taliban
New band name. We play LGBTQ+ Punkry & Western.
i think that’s called folk punk in the US
Ok, I didn’t get this joke until like 15 minutes later and had to come back to upvote it. Amazing. Punkry Western.
Putting all the politics aside, man I wish he got more roles. The purple man was the best part of Jessica Jones.
Broadchurch was a very strong performance as well.
Good Omens also fantastic and not just because of him
I’d be very surprises if someone wasn’t working on at least a t-shirt design right now.
Fuck you Joanne.
Rowling should have stopped saying things in like 2005 tbh
Celebrities should stick to what they good at. Her writing the book should give no authority to her opinions, even if we agreed with her.
No I’m glad she let us know who she really is
It’s not like she’s forcing anyone to listen. I agree that she’s a moron, but I don’t understand the celebrities shouldn’t have freedom of speech take.
All she had to do was hold onto the ball and run out the clock
Literally just take it to the corner flag and turn around
I don’t understand this sports metaphor but that’s on me for chiming in on a British community discussion of a British celebrity that I do in fact no a little bit about. The good news is you can tell me its from basically any sport y’all like on the isles and I’ll be like “wow so fascinating”
Haha that’s fair I realised afterwards that you probably weren’t talking about English football, but the concept I guess is the same - to waste time in a match where they’re ahead and only a few moments of the game remains, a football player might dribble the ball slowly and without a sense of purpose into the corner of the field. There is a flag in each corner of the pitch, marking the point where a corner kick can be taken. Are you American, by chance?
Yup! I was thinking basketball where once the shot clock no longer matters you stand at the top of the key dribbling and if anyone tries to steal it you pass to the corner
Tennant called transgender critics “a tiny bunch of little whinging f*ckers who are on the wrong side of history, and they’ll all go away soon.”
Is the real headline here. And good for him.
I’d rather not give what’s her name any more attention over this crap.
Also, calling Tennant a “Harry Potter actor”, while true, feels like a calculated insult to a man who has played Doctor Who, The Purple Man, and Crawley.
Also, calling Tennant a “Harry Potter actor”, while true, feels like a calculated insult to a man who has played Doctor Who, The Purple Man, and Crawley.
I’m not sure it’s a “calculated insult” but it did read a but oddly (I assumed initially that it was referring to someone else). I presume the writer or their editor went with that angle because because his having appeared in the Harry Potter movies is relevant to an article and fitted the wider context of JK Rowling falling out with HP cast members. I’m not convinced it was the right approach.
I’m not sure it’s a “calculated insult” but it did read a but oddly (I assumed initially that it was referring to someone else).
Yeah. My choice of words was a bit unnecessarily inflammatory. I struggled to find the words for how weird a choice of introduction it is, but don’t mean to actually assign malice.
I don’t really think the article author meant anything by it necessarily.
Your point about the context of the cat relationships makes sense. Probably why they went for it.
Tennant, who once lowered himself to appear in a Harry Potter film, stated…
Better?
He was also barely even in Harry Potter, if we are going by screen time pretty sure Harry potter is the least relevant part of his career.
I wasn’t even aware that he was in there.
He was in Goblet of Fire. Showed up briefly at the beginning and end of the movie, certainly easy to miss. More of a cameo appearance for David Tennant fans.
It’s the first time I learned who he was and I was so impressed with his performance, however short, that when I caught a Doctor Who episode and recognized him, I kept watching and became an instant fan.
Some of the best tongue-based acting I’ve ever seen
Another great show he’s in is Good Omens. Highly recommend if you haven’t watched it.
Highly recommend the book, much more than the show.
No worries if you haven’t had a chance to read yet…
I read the book at least 10 years ago, want season one of the show when it came out.
It’s a good adaptation but man, it just doesn’t hit quite the same as the book.
There’s a few butt-hurt TERFs here downvoting. I wonder if the endorphin rush from such a rebellious act will carry them through the day.
Transphobes are half the reason we got rid of downvotes over here. They’re simultaneously blowhards and too cowardly to speak.
too cowardly to speak
Have you considered making an effort to be a person they would like to speak with?
How about being a compassionate human being who tries to understand the conversation partner’s fears without bowing down to misinformation? If that’s not enough for them because they see debunking their bunk as personal attack, I don’t think anyone from outside of their cult is an acceptable conversation partner for them.
That works both ways. Everything you’ve said could be seen as applying from the perspective of either party.
Yeah, everyone is the hero in their own story, so from their perspective, they surely feel like they know things until they meet an actual biologist challenging them.
TERFs invoke half-remembered high-school level biology as if it was mathematical fact. In actual biological reality, nothing is binary or absolute. I don’t need a PhD in computational biology to know that, but if surely helps.
until they meet an actual biologist challenging them
I’m curious (perhaps against my better judgement) what you think a biologist could tell Rowling that would challenge her?
lmfao, who the fuck cares who TERFs like to speak with? I don’t like speaking with TERFs, all the better if they don’t speak to me.
who the fuck cares who TERFs like to speak with?
They should make the effort to be worth talking to.
That works both ways.
It really doesn’t.
I disagree.
As is your right.
