‘She can't be canceled’: JK Rowling supporters praise author for bagging 'Harry Potter' TV deal amid trans controversy
EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND: ‘Harry Potter’ author JK Rowling is reportedly having the last laugh over trans activists with a new ‘Harry Potter’ TV deal worth nearly $19 million, as per the Daily Mail. Critics of the author reportedly wanted to get her “cancelled” over her controversial views on the transgender community but remained unsuccessful in their attempt as Rowling’s deal with Warner Bros subsidiary, Max, will allow her to take center stage in the ‘Harry Potter’ TV reboot, the publication noted.
The TV reboot will reportedly be released over a ten-year period and each season will be based on one of Rowling’s seven books about the wizarding world, the Daily Mail noted. As an executive producer of the series, Rowling even has the final say on the actor who will play her titular character, Harry Potter. In the wake of Rowling’s latest victory, several of her friends and associates spoke to the publication and said the millionaire author will never be canceled despite facing consistent hate and criticism on social media.
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‘The tide has well and truly turned’
Rowling’s well-wishers believe that the former’s new TV deal shows that the tide has turned in the UK. “She can't now be cancelled because the vast majority of people agree with what she is saying and are able to see through the smears levied at her,” Lucy Masoud, a barrister at Staple Inn Chambers and funder of the Faisal Luke Pro Bono Project, which provides free legal advice to female victims of domestic violence, told the Daily Mail.
“The tide has well and truly turned in the UK from where we were only a few years ago, when women were being bullied into silence, risked losing their jobs and livelihoods if they spoke out and were publicly cancelled, to now where the public are understanding some of the dangers of extreme trans ideology, such as allowing men into women's prisons, sports and refuges,” she added. “It is not bigoted or transphobic to want women to have access to female-only spaces and not be referred to as ‘cervix havers,’” Masoud stated.
‘Can’t get much bigger than a ten-year television series’
Kate Harris, a member of the advocacy group LGB Alliance, which supports the rights of same-sex-attracted people and has faced accusations of transphobia in the past, describes Rowling’s new TV deal as an “endorsement.” “What Joanne says is something that 20 years ago everyone would have taken for granted, but to stand up against those who want to impose their cult-like beliefs on all of us is incredibly brave,” Harris told the publication.
“She feels it is her duty to do something and speak up. She knows what the misuse of power does and she is against it. She wants to step up and say: ‘I am not having this. You will not erase women,’” she added. “Joanne was willing to do that and now she has this huge endorsement. You can't get much bigger than a ten-year television series,” Harris continued.
Harris also recalled the first time she met Rowling in April 2022 at a lunch the latter hosted for women’s rights campaigners accused of being transphobic or having gender-critical views. “There were a lot of very brave women there who'd had to battle courageously, and she [Rowling] had arranged it to acknowledge us in the battle, which was wonderful — and then we all got somewhat drunk and it could not have been more wonderful,” she recalled. “The vast majority of people in this country believe quite simply that there are two sexes and you cannot change between them; and also believe we should let children grow up to be whatever they want to be, but let them go through puberty,” Harris mentioned while praising Rowling for speaking out fearlessly.
‘She decided to speak up for truth’
Another of Rowling’s supporters, Professor Kathleen Richardson, of ethics of culture and robots and AI at De Montfort University in Leicester, also spoke to the publication. She called Rowling a “figurehead” and said, “She could have abandoned women for a better life but she decided to speak up for truth. Reality is reasserting itself, and in the process demonstrating that sex is not made up with words.”
Rowling has continued to speak her opinion on the transgender community despite being dubbed a TERF (a trans-exclusionary radical feminist) and garnering mass criticism and hatred online. With her historic ‘Harry Potter’ books being set to be adapted on screen once again, it is likely that the author’s legacy is secure irrespective of the latest controversies surrounding her opinion on the transgender community.