Rowling ‘in with wrong crowd’ over trans row
An author who quit JK Rowling’s literacy agency has said the Harry Potter creator is ‘‘scared and fearful’’ of engaging with transgender people after falling in with ‘‘the wrong crowd’’.
Fox Fisher left the Blair Partnership with three other writers, arguing that the agency had refused to support the trans community after Rowling provoked outrage by sharing an essay arguing for the protection of women ‘‘as a pol- itical and biological class’’.
Fisher said that Rowling, 54, had not ‘‘opened her eyes’’ and was getting her opinions from sources in non-trans circles. Fisher also said that the Blair Partnership had retweeted ‘‘toxic’’ messages about the issue on Twitter.
‘‘I think she’s fallen in with the wrong crowd,’’ Fisher said on the BBC’s Today programme. ‘‘And that she is very scared and fearful of things when she just needs to spend some time with some transgender people who might also have been her fans.
‘‘I think when we are not transgender we get our information from other sources, including non-transgender people, and I think that information can be very flawed. I just think that if she opened her eyes and saw that transgender women are women then we’d be able to move forward.’’
Fisher, who is non-binary and uses the pronoun ‘‘they’’, added: ‘‘It is not an equal playing ground. JK Rowling is an absolutely huge author and the agency was created around JK Rowling. Even combined we’d never have the same sales as she does. Since December I’ve been trying to speak to the agency about JK Rowling’s tweets and while I’d never be able to change her views — or demand to — all we wanted really was an open conversation.’’
Rowling, who has sold more than 500 million books worldwide, has been represented by the Blair Partnership for almost a decade.
Fisher was joined by the other authors who left, Drew Davies and Ugla Stefania Kristjonudottir Jonsdottir, in denouncing the agency’s response to the controversy, saying that they were ‘‘saddened and disappointed’’.
They said in a joint statement that after Rowling’s comments they had asked the Blair Partnership to ‘‘reaffirm their stance to transgender rights and equality’’.
Rowling was criticised after she tweeted her bafflement about an article on an international development website that used the phrase ‘‘people who menstruate’’ rather than women. She wrote her essay in response to that criticism.
– The Times, London