Daniel Radcliffe “Sad” Over JK Rowling’s Transphobic Views

Former Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe has again addressed JK Rowling’s increasingly anti-trans outbursts on social media, asserting that he remains a committed LGBTQ+ ally.

The Harry Potter author first sparked controversy in 2020 when she lashed out at an article that spoke of “people who menstruate”, claiming that it was part of a trend seeking to erase “the lived reality of women globally…”

As a supporter of the LGBTQ+ youth suicide prevention organisation, The Trevor Project, Radcliffe responded in a statement at the time: “Transgender women are women. Any statement to the contrary erases the identity and dignity of transgender people.”

Rowling Supporters Expect an Apology From Radcliffe 

Rowling has since become increasingly vitriolic in her views, arguing that efforts to be inclusive of transgender people and transitioning are a threat to women’s and children’s safety, health and rights. She regularly engages in transphobic, dehumanising, and acrimonious social media spats on X.

A fan recently tweeted to Rowling that they were waiting for the day that Radcliffe and his co-star Emma Watson (who has also expressed support for the trans community) would “give you a very public apology.”

Rowling replied that she wasn’t personally interested in one, writing sanctimoniously: “Celebs who cozied up to a movement intent on eroding women’s hard-won rights and who used their platforms to cheer on the transitioning of minors can save their apologies for traumatised detransitioners and vulnerable women reliant on single-sex spaces.”

Radcliffe Restates Support for All LGBTQ People 

Speaking to The Atlantic, Radcliffe noted the criticism by Rowling’s supporters that he and his co-stars were ungrateful to the author who wrote the books that made them internationally successful actors.

He acknowledged that “Harry Potter would not have happened without her, so nothing in my life would have probably happened the way it is without that person,” but, he said, “that doesn’t mean that you owe the things you truly believe to someone else for your entire life.”

Radcliffe said what made him puzzled and “really sad” was that “the person that I met, the times that we met, and the books that she wrote, and the world that she created, and all of that is to me so deeply empathic.”

He added that, “I will continue to support the rights of all LGBTQ people, and have no further comment than that.”