I have read several reviews online of the history of Rowling’s conflict with Gender Theory ideologues, whom she refers to as “fundamentalists.” One common point they share is to offer the views of the Harry Potter film franchises’ actors and actresses who came out against the author’s views as a kind of counter-weight, as if those voices balanced out Rowling’s supposed “transphobia.” Rowling has not responded to the criticism of those thespians, but she has been absent from public events and filmed reunions in which they were featured players.
Last week, in an exchange with dancer Rosie Kay on Twixter, Rowling made it fairly clear that she despises those she feels betrayed her at a time when she was being piled on by all the usual suspects. It seems that there won’t be any reconciliation or cameos on the HBO+ adaptations of the Potter books.
To understand Rowling’s comments to Kay, it helps to know the dancer’s tweet, in which she struggled to “deal with feelings of betrayal.”
The “small business” she refers to, I think, is the Rosie Kay Dance Company, of which she was the founder, choreographer, and principal. It’s website no longer exists though its pages can be found on the Wayback Machine. It may have been “small,” but it was a rising cultural landmark. It disappeared when Kay was forced to resign from her positions at her company after complaints were made by some of her dancers to the board. They felt she needed to be canceled because of her “transphobic” opinions, in essence, that she thought men and women are different. You can read the long painful story of her resignation in the face of this usurping of place here, here, here, and here.
A July 2022 profile in The Times shared how much Rowling’s support meant to Kay at the time of her cancellation:
Kay said a supportive tweet from JK Rowling helped rescue her from the deep depression that followed the loss of her company. In March, the Harry Potter author wrote: “Rosie, you proved you were ready to lose everything in this fight and I couldn’t admire you more”, adding three clapping emojis….
Kay, who said it had been “heartbreaking” having to resign from the company she had founded, said: “I did think I was going mad. It made me ill and I could not sleep or eat. I saw a psychiatrist. I was like: ‘Have I got this wrong?’
“Then I realised . . . there are amazing intelligent women saying what I am saying. There was a tweet from JK Rowling supporting me. Yes, I got caught up in the culture wars and, yes, that was difficult. This stuff can feel like the end of the world but it has not broken me. I am coming back bolder than ever.”
This week, Kay, 46, is celebrating her defiant return, with the launch of the K2CO dance company.
It should be no surprise, then, that Rowling responded to Kay’s tweets about her struggles today as she labors to recover from breast cancer and treatments for that condition. Given Rowling’s recent staged conversations with other like-minded women on Twixter this month, perhaps Kay was prompted to post her tweet in order for Rowling to share it with her millions of followers — and for the author to check in with her thoughts about those who had turned their backs on her in 2020. Regardless of its having been staged or not, Rowling’s comments and follow-ups reveal that she has neither forgiven nor forgotten those who chose to join in the “pile-on:’
Gillian Philip was a successful writer of fantasy fiction whose life was turned upside-down (and her publishing contract with MacMillan canceled) after she expressed her support for Rowling on Twitter. Her husband had recently died and she was forced to become a lorry driver to support her family. Read the horrible details of her cancellation for the thought-crime of thinking men cannot become women at The Daily Mail. In a tweet to Kay and Rowling, Philip shared her thoughts about the “dehumanization” theme Rowling discussed in light of her recently being diagnosed with ovarian cancer.
Rowling’s response is the closest she has come, I think, to saying “I hate those among my ‘friends’ who chose not to stand with me when I needed their help:”:
Philip then cues her to spell out these feelings or just to mock the “non-sociopaths” who wouldn’t take a public stand even just for Rowling’s right to say what she thought to be true:
And the conversation returned in the end to Rowling’s categorization of the Gender Theorist tribe as “fundamentalists,” her preferred term of dismissal for everyone with whom she disagrees, presumably because of its religious coloration and her understandable discomfort with people of ardent faith consequent to the Potter Wars:
A friend who has watched all the BBC television adaptations of The Ink Black Heart tells me that a character in the online fandom who turned on the murdered creator of the show she loved looked an awful lot like a young Melissa Anelli; the actress chosen by Rowling’s Bronte Studios, according to this viewer, seemed to have been picked because of that likeness. If true, that has to sting, especially as Anelli seems recently to have stepped back from her most strident denunciations of The Author Who Must Not Be Named; see her comments last December in Variety for a sample of that. Could she be someone that Rowling is thinking of beside Emma, Daniel, and Rupert?
Here is hoping that Rowling, however closely held her beliefs are about sex and gender, does not fall to the “fundamentalism” of her current circle of friends and admirers so that those who disagree with her are not shown “kindness or respect.”
