'Elitist to Its Core': Rowling Reflects on the Trans Movement and Her Fight for Women's Rights

On October 21, Rowling published a new essay reflecting on the journey.

I wrote a new piece about women’s rights and whether or not I want trans people dead. (Spoiler: I don’t)👇https://t.co/BfxVLo0AD1

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) October 21, 2026

Here's some of what Rowling wrote:

Even outside those women’s cultural bubble, you’ll find plenty of people – particularly men – denying that trans activism poses any threat to women or to fundamental freedoms of speech and belief. On the contrary, it’s just one more champion-the-underdog cause, right?

Well, no, I don’t believe it is. Are there vulnerable trans people? Without question. But the current, dominant strain of trans activism bears no resemblance whatsoever to the great social justice movements of the twentieth century.

When it came to civil, gay and women’s rights, ordinary people who had little to no individual power organised at a grassroots level to challenge powerful institutions, from government downwards, on their entrenched prejudices, and campaigned to change harmful, discriminatory treatment.

Twenty-first century trans activism is the very inverse of those movements. It is elitist to its core. Spawned in philosophy and gender studies departments, it has taken over cultural, political and state-run institutions, which have then attempted to impose it, top down, on regular people who never voted for it and, as all available polls show, do not believe in it. Powerful, well-funded lobby groups such as Stonewall, which have received sizeable amounts of British tax-payer money in the past, have succeeded in convincing both corporations and state institutions that women no longer have a right to single-sex spaces, and that the desire of trans-identified men to access those spaces is the progressive cause du jour.

I have said for years that you don't hear about 57 genders or trans ideology from your plumber, and there's a reason. In a world where we are privileged and, for lack of a better word, coddled more than our forebears could ever imagine, we were essentially left with a struggle vacuum. The problems faced by past generations were largely solved by improved technology, increasing wealth, and human advancement.

This is truest in those philosophy and gender studies departments Rowling mentions, and every other elite, white-collar profession where the hardest struggle those workers will ever have is choosing between a pumpkin spice latte and a flat white from the local Starbucks en route to their office.

For those of us who still live in the real world, where life is better but not devoid of struggles, we don't have time to cotton on to such nonsense. 

And Rowling is correct, you are not the oppressed minority or the underdog when the government, non-profit groups, and other institutions of power have your back and will use their power and influence to silence the people who dare question or — heaven forbid — actively oppose your agenda.

While I doubt Rowling and I would see eye to eye on much, we agree on this issue: women have rights, those rights are based in our immutable gender, and they're being usurped, diminished, and erased by men. I spent the entirety of my childhood hearing about "the patriarchy" from feminists who told me I needed a husband like a fish needed a bicycle, or who told me I should abort my sons to end that patriarchy.

Then these women turned around and, aided by powerful forces, decided I'm not a woman anymore. I'm an "egg producer," a "womb owner," a "birthing person," an "inseminated individual." And — more than that — I no longer had the right to say no to men in my locker rooms, men in my safe spaces, men in my prisons. I'm not a lesbian, but I also feel tremendously bad for them, who have been told they must date "trans women" or be deemed transphobic, to the point where they're threatened with rape and job loss if they refuse. Some have even been kicked off lesbian dating apps for objecting to the inclusion of men (what happened to "you can't help who you love"?)

While we have made strides in America against this nonsense, make no mistake: Democrats will bring this insanity back, codify it, and punish women like me and Rowling with the full, crushing weight of the state if we object.

"As George Orwell said, 'freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two is four. If that is granted, all else follows,'" Rowling writes at the end of her article. "If a man can be a woman, there is no such thing as a woman. That might not matter to you personally, but it matters to millions of women who don’t have the luxury of pretending that their sex doesn’t matter. I remain on their side."

Amen.