JK Rowling caught liking transphobic tweet targeting woman with beard in probably another 'middle-aged moment'
JK Rowling has found herself in hot water once again after she appeared to like anti-transgender tweets targeting a trans woman who has been the target of online bullies for several years.
The 'Harry Potter' author was caught in a screenshot liking a message that misgendered and spread false claims about Alex Drummond, a psychotherapist and photographer who has been mocked by transphobic activists because she has a beard.
The tweet, posted by Fred Sargent, an activist linked to the anti-transgender LGB alliance, read, "This is Alex Drummond, an adult human male who claims to be a lesbian (yes, he’s kept his dangling bits and skipped the hormones) and believes that real lesbians who aren’t into penises are transphobic and should be excluded from the lesbian community. Yeah, this guy."
Pink News reported that Drummond has been in a long-term committed relationship and that she has made no such claims about transphobic lesbians.
While a spokesperson for the author has refused to comment on her recent gaffe, this is not the first time that Rowling has been accused of transphobia. MEA WorldWide (MEAWW) previously reported that she had been criticized for supporting a transphobic activist.
"Dress however you please. Call yourself whatever you like. Sleep with any consenting adult who’ll have you. Live your best life in peace and security. But force women out of their jobs for stating that sex is real?" she wrote, before hashtagging it with “I Stand With Maya” and “This Is Not A Drill."
That tweet was in support of Maya Forstater, a researcher who lost her job at a thinktank after tweeting that transgender women cannot change their biological sex. Her role was not renewed in March 2019 after a dispute over publicizing her views on social media. The views were deemed to be “offensive and exclusionary."
Forstater had opposed the government proposals to reform the Gender Recognition Act to allow people to self-identify as the opposite sex, tweeting opinions like “men cannot change into women."
Rowling's defense of Forstater had been slammed by Charlotte Clymer, press secretary for rapid response at the Human Rights Campaign, an American LGBTQ civil rights organization, who wrote on Twitter, "It’s so strange to me that someone with enough imagination to portray people irreverently drinking a potion to turn into someone of a different gender somehow refuses to recognize the enormous body of scientific and medical experts validating trans folks w/ evidence."
"This is not an overstatement: every major medical and scientific authority affirms transgender people. There is a consensus among experts, not a debate."
In March 2018, her representatives had to say she had a "clumsy and middle-aged moment" after she liked a tweet that referred to trans women as "men in dresses."
"I was shouted at by men at my first Labour Party meeting aged 18 because I asked them to remove a Page 3 calendar. I’ve been told to be louder, stronger, independent. I’ve often not felt supported. Men in dresses get brocialist solidarity I never had. that’s misogyny," the message had read.