Author JK Rowling Faces Criticism for Misgendering Trans Newsreader India Willoughby

Harry Potter author JK Rowling is facing backlash for ‘misgendering’ trans newsreader and activist India Willoughby. Willoughby also reported Rowling to the police and urged them to take action against the author. Rowling has previously said she would not address trans people by their pronouns even if she has to go to jail.

“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,” Rowling said in a lengthy X post. Replying to that post, a user posted a video of Willoughby, asking: “Hi Joanne, so you are saying this lady should use the men’s locker room then?!”

Rowling responded by saying: “You’ve sent me the wrong video. There isn’t a lady in this one, just a man revelling in his misogynistic performance of what he thinks ‘woman’ means: narcissistic, shallow and exhibitionist”.

Rowling has been criticised for views on transgender rights. Willoughby, who was born male and underwent gender reassignment surgery in 2015, made a complaint to police over Rowling’s posts and is claiming the author definitely committed a crime.

The news anchor , who holds a gender recognition certificate, claimed to be “legally a woman” but Rowling said there is no law which compels her to “pretend” that Willoughby was a woman.

“If India Willoughby is a ‘misogynist’ why did she become a woman? Think,” the user said while replying to Rowling. The author responded by saying: “India didn’t become a woman. India is cosplaying a misogynistic male fantasy of what a woman is”.

Willoughby is the UK’s first transgender newsreader and the first transgender co-host of an all-women talk show, Loose Women on ITV.

“Genuinely disgusted by this. Grotesque transphobia, which is upsetting. I am every bit as much a woman as JK Rowling. Recognised in law, and by everyone I interact with every day. The debate about whether JK Rowling is a transphobe is over,” the news anchor said.

She also reached out to Northumbria Police and the police told UK-based news media outlets that they are waiting to speak to her.

“If I ever get murdered, you know who to blame. #StochasticTerrorism,” she said in a post, referring to the practice of popular figures demonising a person or a group of people to such an extent that pushes their supporters to commit a violent act against the target of the speech.

Rowling has however maintained that trans people should have the same protections when it comes to employment, pay, housing and freedom of speech. “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,” she said.

The author also said that a certain ‘dominant strain’ of trans activists “assert 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”.