The J.K. Rowling Index

List of all J.K. Rowling's writings.

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I believe a woman is

Index ID: IBAWI — Publication date: April 6th, 2024

Note: J.K. Rowling published this on Twitter. Original post: https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1776616861888655835

You’ve asked me several questions on this thread and accused me of avoiding answering, so here goes.

I believe a woman is a human being who belongs to the sex class that produces large gametes. It’s irrelevant whether or not her gametes have ever been fertilised, whether or not she’s carried a baby to term, irrelevant if she was born with a rare difference of sexual development that makes neither of the above possible, or if she’s aged beyond being able to produce viable eggs. She is a woman and just as much a woman as the others.

I don’t believe a woman is more or less of a woman for having sex with men, women, both or not wanting sex at all. I don’t think a woman is more or less of a woman for having a buzz cut and liking suits and ties, or wearing stilettos and mini dresses, for being black, white or brown, for being six feet tall or a little person, for being kind or cruel, angry or sad, loud or retiring. She isn’t more of a woman for featuring in Playboy or being a surrendered wife, nor less of a woman for designing space rockets or taking up boxing. What makes her a woman is the fact of being born in a body that, assuming nothing has gone wrong in her physical development (which, as stated above, still doesn’t stop her being a woman), is geared towards producing eggs as opposed to sperm, towards bearing as opposed to begetting children, and irrespective of whether she’s done either of those things, or ever wants to.

Womanhood isn’t a mystical state of being, nor is it measured by how well one apes sex stereotypes. We are not the creatures either porn or the Bible tell you we are. Femaleness is not, as trans woman Andrea Chu Long wrote, ‘an open mouth, an expectant asshole, blank, blank eyes,’ nor are we God’s afterthought, sprung from Adam’s rib.

Women are provably subject to certain experiences because of our female bodies, including different forms of oppression, depending on the cultures in which we live. When trans activists say ‘I thought you didn’t want to be defined by your biology,’ it’s a feeble and transparent attempt at linguistic sleight of hand. Women don’t want to be limited, exploited, punished, or subject to other unjust treatment because of their biology, but our being female is indeed defined by our biology. It’s one material fact about us, like having freckles or disliking beetroot, neither of which are representative of our entire beings, either. Women have billions of different personalities and life stories, which have nothing to do with our bodies, although we are likely to have had experiences men don’t and can’t, because we belong to our sex class.

Some people feel strongly that they should have been, or wish to be seen as, the sex class into which they weren’t born. Gender dysphoria is a real and very painful condition and I feel nothing but sympathy for anyone who suffers from it. I want them to be free to dress and present themselves however they like and I want them to have exactly the same rights as every other citizen regarding housing, employment and personal safety. I do not, however, believe that surgeries and cross-sex hormones literally turn a person into the opposite sex, nor do I believe in the idea that each of us has a nebulous ‘gender identity’ that may or might not match our sexed bodies. I believe the ideology that preaches those tenets has caused, and continues to cause, very real harm to vulnerable people.

I am strongly against women’s and girls’ rights and protections being dismantled to accommodate trans-identified men, for the very simple reason that no study has ever demonstrated that trans-identified men don’t have exactly the same pattern of criminality as other men, and because, however they identify, men retain their advantages of speed and strength. In other words, I think the safety and rights of girls and women are more important than those men’s desire for validation.

I sincerely hope that answers your questions. You may still disagree, but as I hope this shows, I’m more than happy to have this debate.


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April Fools’ Day 2024

Index ID: AFD — Publication date: April 1st, 2024

Note: J.K. Rowling published this on Twitter. Original post: https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1774747068944265615

Scotland’s Hate Crime Act comes into effect today. Women gain no additional protections, of course, but well-known trans activist Beth Douglas, darling of prominent Scottish politicians, falls within a protected category. Phew!

Lovely Scottish lass and convicted double rapist Isla Bryson found her true authentic female self shortly before she was due to be sentenced. Misgendering is hate, so respect Isla’s pronouns, please. Love the leggings!

Fragile flower Katie Dolatowski, 6’5″, was rightly sent to a women’s prison in Scotland after conviction. This ensured she was protected from violent, predatory men (unlike the 10-year-old girl Katie sexually assaulted in a women’s public bathroom.)

Samantha Norris was cleared of exposing her penis to two 11-year-old girls. Hooray! Unfortunately she was then convicted for possession of 16,000 images of children being raped and sexually assaulted. Be that as it may, Sam’s still a lady to me!

Scottish woman and butcher Amy George abducted an 11-year-old girl while dressed in female clothing. No idea why this was mentioned in court – of course she was wearing women’s clothing, she’s a woman! Amy took the girl home and sexually abused her over a 27-hour period.

But most women aren’t axe-toters or sex offenders, so let’s talk role models! Guilia Valentino (in red) wanted to play on the women’s team ‘because of sisterhood, validation and political visibility’. Naturally, she was given some boring cis girl’s place. Yay for inclusion!

Mridul Wadhwa, head of a Scottish rape crisis centre, says, ‘sexual violence happens to bigoted people as well.’ She has no gender recognition certificate, but was still appointed to a job advertised for women only. Time to be ‘challenged on your prejudices’, rape victims!

Munroe Bergdorf isn’t just a pretty face! Public campaigner for a children’s charity until safeguarding concerns were raised, she was appointed UN Women’s first ever UK champion. ‘What makes a woman “a woman” has no definitive answer,’ says Munroe. Great choice, UN Women!

Katie Neeves has been appointed as the UN Women UK delegate. She switched from straight man to lesbian at the age of 48 and, in a leaked 2022 webinar, described how she used to enjoy stealing and wearing her sister’s underwear. A truly relatable representative!

Last, but least, TV’s India Willoughby proves we women can call a black broadcaster a ‘nasty bitch’ who ‘wouldn’t be anywhere without woke’, dub lesbians men, insult the looks of a female Olympic swimmer, ‘joke’ about kidnapping feminists, and STILL get airtime! What a gal!

Only kidding. Obviously, the people mentioned in the above tweets aren’t women at all, but men, every last one of them.

In passing the Scottish Hate Crime Act, Scottish lawmakers seem to have placed higher value on the feelings of men performing their idea of femaleness, however misogynistically or opportunistically, than on the rights and freedoms of actual women and girls. The new legislation is wide open to abuse by activists who wish to silence those of us speaking out about the dangers of eliminating women’s and girls’ single-sex spaces, the nonsense made of crime data if violent and sexual assaults committed by men are recorded as female crimes, the grotesque unfairness of allowing males to compete in female sports, the injustice of women’s jobs, honours and opportunities being taken by trans-identified men, and the reality and immutability of biological sex.

For several years now, Scottish women have been pressured by their government and members of the police force to deny the evidence of their eyes and ears, repudiate biological facts and embrace a neo-religious concept of gender that is unprovable and untestable. The re-definition of ‘woman’ to include every man who declares himself one has already had serious consequences for women’s and girls’ rights and safety in Scotland, with the strongest impact felt, as ever, by the most vulnerable, including female prisoners and rape survivors.

It is impossible to accurately describe or tackle the reality of violence and sexual violence committed against women and girls, or address the current assault on women’s and girls’ rights, unless we are allowed to call a man a man. Freedom of speech and belief are at an end in Scotland if the accurate description of biological sex is deemed criminal.

I’m currently out of the country, but if what I’ve written here qualifies as an offence under the terms of the new act, I look forward to being arrested when I return to the birthplace of the Scottish Enlightenment.

If you agree with the views set out in this tweet, please retweet it.

#ArrestMe #AprilFools #HateCrimeActScotland


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Statement from J.K. Rowling, 14th March 2024

Index ID: SJKR14M — Publication date: March 14th, 2024

Note: Published on JK Rowling's official website.

While I’m used to the gross distraction techniques used by the more extreme faction of trans activism, the claim that I am a holocaust denier is baseless and disgusting. As can be easily seen from my own Twitter (X) account, I have always been a staunch supporter of the Jewish community and have spoken out consistently and repeatedly against antisemitism. I’m familiar with such activists’ assertions that transgender people have been uniquely persecuted and oppressed throughout history, but claims that trans people were ‘the first targets’ of the Nazis – a claim I refuted on X, and which led to these accusations – and that I ‘uphold [Nazi] ideology around gender’ is a new low.


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The word ‘transphobic’, as used here…

Index ID: WTUH — Publication date: March 7th, 2024

Note: J.K. Rowling published this on Twitter. Original post: https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1765822003246768198

The word ‘transphobic’, as used here, does not mean an irrational fear or dislike of trans people. It means refusing to use gender identity ideology’s jargon, refusing to parrot its slogans, refusing to accept that sex doesn’t matter when it comes to sport and single-sex spaces, refusing to believe a bearded heterosexual man becomes a lesbian when he declares himself one, and refusing to believe an abusive, misogynistic male is a woman because he likes to wear mini-dresses and pout in selfies.

Like every other gender critical person I know, I believe everyone should be free to express themselves however they wish, dress however they please, call themselves whatever they want, sleep with any consenting adult who wishes to sleep with them, and that trans-identified people should have the same protections regarding employment, housing, freedom of speech and personal safety every other citizen is entitled to.

But this isn’t nearly enough for the dominant strain of trans activism, which asserts that unless freedom of speech is removed from dissenters, unless trans-identified men are permitted to strip away women’s rights, with particular reference to single sex spaces like rape crisis centres, prison cells, hospital wards, changing rooms and public bathrooms, until we all bow down to their neo-religion, accept their pseudo-scientific claims and embrace their circular reasoning, trans people are more oppressed, and more at risk, than any other group in society.

This is nonsense. 99.9% of the world knows it’s nonsense. The emperor is naked. He might be wearing lipstick, but his balls are swinging in plain sight.


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Some time ago, lawyers advised me that…

Index ID: STALAMT — Publication date: March 6th, 2024

Note: J.K. Rowling published this on Twitter. Original post: https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1765516978314219723

Some time ago, lawyers advised me that not only did I have a clearly winnable case against India Willoughby for defamation, but that India’s obsessive targeting of me over the past few years may meet the legal threshold for harassment.

I ignored this advice because I couldn’t be bothered giving India the publicity he so clearly craves. Nevertheless, we must all do our bit to combat hate, so India will be glad to know I’ve taken note of his homophobia, racism, and humane stance on immigration.

Nor have I forgotten India’s shocking transphobia. It appears to have slipped what passes for India’s mind that he’s previously called a fellow trans woman a man on this very site.

Surprisingly for such an eminent legal authority, he appears to have forgotten that the Forstater ruling established that gender critical views can be protected in law as a philosophical belief. No law compels anyone to pretend to believe that India is a woman.

Aware as I am that it’s an offence to lie to law enforcement, I’ll simply have to explain to the police that, in my view, India is a classic example of the male narcissist who lives in a state of perpetual rage that he can’t compel women to take him at his own valuation.


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We don’t leave our doors and windows wide open…

Index ID: ODWWO — Publication date: March 3rd, 2024

Note: J.K. Rowling published this on Twitter. Original post: https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1764388015118442533

We don’t leave our doors and windows wide open when we go out because ‘thieves will find a way in, anyway.’ Strangely, I’ve never heard anyone say ‘let’s stop background checking teachers, because paedophiles will always find a way to interfere with kids.’

When men – all men, however they identify – are banned from women’s spaces, those who disregard the ban can be challenged, inside the space and out. They mark themselves out as suspicious by breaking a rule decent men respect. Nobody claims the rule has successfully kept out every single man who wants to commit voyeurism or sexual assault. What we’re saying is that allowing males into female only spaces on the basis of their claim to be a women removes an obstacle that has hitherto been *proven* to increase women and girls’ safety.

88% of sexual crimes committed in changing/locker rooms happen in those that are unisex. Why? Because malign men don’t have to justify their presence near unclothed women and girls. They can’t be challenged. They don’t stand out. This is obvious to all but the terminally naive.

It is too seldom noted that every single man arguing for the removal of single sex spaces is arguing for his *own* right to enter those spaces. I know from experience that they feign outrage when this point is put to them, gibbering that they’re just being good, virtuous progressives who’re standing up for trans women, that they *personally* won’t be availing themselves of the new opportunities afforded them. The fact remains that instead of calling out male violence against trans women, and working to make male spaces safer, these men have thrown their energy into the fight to remove women’s and girls’ rights to safety, privacy and dignity.

And if anyone genuinely believes none of these enthusiastic heterosexual, non-trans-identified male ‘allies’ aren’t personally enthralled by the idea of women and girls losing basic protections, I have several bridges to sell you.


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For years now, women have been saying…

Index ID: FYWS — Publication date: March 3rd, 2024

Note: J.K. Rowling published this on Twitter. Original post: https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1764257944089006482

For years now, women have been saying that self-ID will be exploited by predators and we’ve been told ‘no predator would bother to pretend to be a woman.’ Yet here we are – again.

This paedophile didn’t receive the leniency he hoped for because he claimed to be a woman, but plenty have, including Katie Dolotowski, who, in a very similar case, filmed a 12-year-old in a bathroom cubicle and attempted to rape a 10-year-old in a women’s bathroom, and served his sentence in a women’s prison.

The wilfully blind continue to insist that what is already happening couldn’t possibly happen. They wriggle like eels trying to find a loophole through which they can escape with their precious ideology intact. ‘He wasn’t really trans, though.’ ‘All groups have bad apples.’ ‘You can’t blame all trans people because some of them are rapists.’

So determined are you to cling to your absolutist slogans and your circular reasoning, you’re indifferent to the proven increased risk to women and girls. I watch you lying, equivocating and contorting yourself into knots trying to justify the unjustifiable, and I wonder when, if ever, shame will finally find you.


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It is possible to want trans people to be safe and happy…

Index ID: WTPSH — Publication date: March 2nd, 2024

Note: J.K. Rowling published this on Twitter. Original post: https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1763906117636141528

It is possible to want trans people to be safe and happy while recognising that there are risks to women and girls in eradicating single sex spaces. Women and girls are being pressured to surrender their hard-won rights to a group that poses a proven danger to them.

Quoted tweet:
I am 100% with you in fighting violence againt women. I just think it can be better achieved through allyship with a group that’s also experiencing oppresion because of the patriarchy! which doesn’t = excusing crimes by tw, much like you dn’t advocate excusing crimes by ciswmn

The statistics don’t lie. Some – not all – trans-identified males have committed sexual and violent offences against women and girls. Some male predators have capitalised on gender identity activism to claim a trans identity they never espoused pre-conviction or assault.

Telling women and girls they must accept increased risk to themselves to appease male feelings is the very definition of the patriarchy you claim to stand against. Vulnerable women are paying the price for a fashionable fallacy that has serious, real world consequences.


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The trans activist outrage that ensues on here…

Index ID: TAOE — Publication date: February 2nd, 2024

Note: J.K. Rowling published this on Twitter. Original post: https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1759940576340770987

The trans activist outrage that ensues on here whenever I share my belief that jailed women shouldn’t be used as validation tools or emotional support props for trans-identified male sex offenders is as revealing as it’s predictable.

Such activists can’t bring themselves to concede that a man who was convicted of harming women/girls ought not to be incarcerated with the demographic to whom he is a proven danger, because if they do, all their stock arguments (‘no sexual predator would bother to pretend to be trans’, ‘no trans woman has ever harmed a woman in a women’s only space’, ‘there is no danger in making all single sex spaces unisex’) are exposed as the lies they are. If they admit that even a single man isn’t a woman because he says he is, the entire edifice of gender identity ideology crumbles. This leaves activists who rely on bullying and slogans with nowhere to go but ‘you hate all trans people’, ‘so you’re saying all trans people are rapists’ and, of course, ‘you are causing a trans genocide.’

I think this particular issue also causes conniptions because it threatens the activists’ self image. These are people who preen themselves on their kindness and virtue, so acknowledging the truth – that they’re indifferent to vulnerable women being assaulted or traumatised – threatens the idea they have of themselves. They therefore double down. The prisoners complaining aren’t really afraid of rape or voyeurism or violence at all, they say. They’re ‘not exactly delicate flowers’, as one self-identified empath put it.

If you support putting violent and sexually predatory men into women’s prisons, you are knowingly forcing those women to live in fear of, and, in some proven cases, to suffer abuse that many of them will have endured pre-incarceration. You are not kind. You are not righteous. Women have the basic human right not to suffer cruel and unusual punishment. #WomensRightsAreHumanRights


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Response to Chris Kourakis

Index ID: RSCK — Publication date: November 6th, 2023

Note: J.K. Rowling published this on Twitter as a response to a statement from the honourable Chris Kourakis, Australian lawyer and judge. Original post: https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1721506268798452195

The Honourable Chris Kourakis has issued a statement referring to my ‘anxiety’ about the use of female pronouns for men standing trial for violence against women and rape. He states that ‘a victim of crime would never be asked to address an accused person in a way which caused the victim distress.’

That assurance is welcome, although I note that he’s addressed the matter only after it was raised publicly. No such exemption is mentioned in the Practice Note, which takes the ideological position that the ‘use of preferred gender pronouns is a matter of respect’. The natural inference is that a woman would be considered guilty of disrespect if she, alone in the courtroom, described her male attacker as a man, while all court officials were addressing and describing him as a woman. This is not a hypothetical situation. The judge will be aware, if he’s informed himself – as he implies I have not – that I’ve already cited an example where a 60-year-old woman was violently assaulted by a 26-year-old trans-identified male. She was chided by the judge for displaying ‘bad grace’ by not using her attacker’s preferred pronouns.

The Practice Note does not acknowledge that in sexual and violent crimes committed by men against women, there is a clear clash of rights. The woman has a right – indeed, a legal duty – to speak truthfully about the male violence/sexual violence to which she was subjected. Meanwhile the Practice Note says that court officials should respectfully use female pronouns for the attacker if he says he identifies as a woman. The likely effect on a traumatised woman of hearing her attacker addressed and described as a female by the court is neither mentioned nor addressed in the Practice Note. Respect, it seems, goes only one way.

Millions of women are losing confidence in judicial systems that have adopted an ideological position with which they do not agree. In the very place where they go to seek justice, a woman may now be obliged to listen to court officials asserting they were raped or beaten by a fellow woman. Such women are not merely ‘anxious’, they are furious, about the apparent inability of certain men, judges or not, to understand how dystopian this situation seems to those of us who have suffered male sexual violence.


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