A group of prominent British authors, writers, actors, and artists signed an open letter defending author J.K. Rowling against another recent surge in online attacks for her feminist, pro-woman views that defy the dogma of the transgender mob.
Published in this weekend’s The Sunday Times, the letter calls the “hate speech” lodged at the “Harry Potter” author an “insidious, authoritarian and misogynistic trend in social media.” Signatories include authors Ian McEwan, Lionel Shriver, and Susan Hill, actors Griff Rhys Jones and Frances Barber, and TV writer Graham Linehan.
“Rowling has consistently shown herself to be an honourable and compassionate person, and the appalling hashtag #RIPJKRowling is just the latest example of hate speech directed against her and other women that Twitter and other platforms enable and implicitly endorse,” the letter reads.
For more than a year now, Rowling has critiqued transgender ideology, explaining how denying biological reality hurts women. She doubled down on her beliefs in the face of intense backlash this summer, self-publishing a long essay on why she is speaking out on sex and gender. “Harry Potter” fans and transgender activists called the essay “devastating.”
The idea that women like me, who’ve been empathetic to trans people for decades, feeling kinship because they’re vulnerable in the same way as women – ie, to male violence – ‘hate’ trans people because they think sex is real and has lived consequences – is a nonsense.
— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) June 6, 2020
On Wednesday, actor John Cleese, of “Monty Python” and “Fawlty Towers” fame, tweeted that he would also add his name to the list of those in solidarity with Rowling.
Dear Twits, I have added my name to the signatories of the letter in solidarity with JKRowling
Proud to be in the distinguished company of Ian McEwan, Andrew Davies, Frances Welch, Lionel Shriver, Ben Miller, Tom Stoppard, Frances Barber, Griff Rhys-Jones and Matthew d'Ancona
— John Cleese (@JohnCleese) September 30, 2020
Cleese has previously stood up to the “woke” crowd as a defender of comedy and free speech, as well as a critique of sex and race as a “social construct.” In June, Cleese spoke out against the removal of a “Fawlty Towers” episode now deemed “problematic.” Last summer, Cleese posted a series of tweets taking aim at political correctness and the evidence-free claim of a sexual “spectrum.”
True. Many folk believe there's only one sex too
I've also hear there's a lot to be said for the idea that the North pole and the South pole are virtually indistinguishable
Everything's on a spectrum now. And quite right, too
So that should settle our differences https://t.co/CanzzabaUQ
— John Cleese (@JohnCleese) June 3, 2019
