Children's news website apologises to JK Rowling over trans tweet row
A news website aimed at British schoolchildren has agreed to pay an unsubstantiated amount after it implied that JK Rowling’s comments on gender caused harm to trans people.
The Day, which is recommended by the Department for Education and is designed to prompt teenagers to discuss current affairs, faced legal action from the Harry Potter author after publishing an article entitled: “Potterheads cancel Rowling after trans tweet”.
In the article, which some schools issued as homework, children were told that Rowling had objected to the use of the expression “people who menstruate” in place of “women”. It also referenced objections to Rowling’s recent comments from Harry Potter actors such as Daniel Radcliffe.
The original article in the Day asked teenagers to consider whether it is possible still to enjoy great works of art by “deeply unpleasant people” such as Pablo Picasso and Richard Wagner.
It said: “Since the 1950s, the civil rights movement has used boycotts to take money and status away from people and organisations harming minorities and shame them into change [sic] their behaviour. Online it is often called ‘cancelling’.”
The Day, which was founded and is run by the former Daily Express editor Richard Addis and is sold through subscriptions to around 1,500 schools, has now apologised after Rowling hired libel lawyers. The Day said: “We accept that our article implied that what JK Rowling had tweeted was objectionable and that she had attacked and harmed trans people. The article was critical of JK Rowling personally and suggested that our readers should boycott her work and shame her into changing her behaviour. Our intention was to provoke debate on a complex topic.
“We did not intend to suggest that JK Rowling was transphobic or that she should be boycotted. We accept that our comparisons of JK Rowling to people such as Picasso, who celebrated sexual violence, and Wagner, who was praised by the Nazis for his antisemitic and racist views, were clumsy, offensive and wrong.
“Debate about a complex issue where there is a range of legitimate views should have been handled with much more sensitivity and more obvious recognition of the difference between fact and opinion. We unreservedly apologise to JK Rowling for the offence caused, are happy to retract these false allegations and to set the record straight. We shall be making a financial contribution to a charity of JK Rowling’s choice.”
Rowling, 54, recently set out her views in a lengthy essay, in which she revealed that she had been a victim of domestic abuse, while saying she objected to proposals in Scotland to simplify the process by which transgender people can change the sex on their birth certificates.
Rowling’s comments on gender were condemned by LGBT charities and the leading stars of her Harry Potter film franchise. Last month the Guardian revealed that four authors at Rowling’s literary agency had resigned in protest after the company refused to issue a public statement of support for transgender rights, saying that “freedom of speech can only be upheld if the structural inequalities that hinder equal opportunities for underrepresented groups are challenged and changed”.
Rowling and hundreds of other writers, including Margaret Atwood, Salman Rushdie and Martin Amis, signed a letter published in Harper’s magazine criticising “an intolerance of opposing views, a vogue for public shaming and ostracism” online.
The letter said: “The free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted.”
Despite calls for a boycott of Rowling’s works, her publisher, Bloomsbury, said that sales of her Harry Potter books had increased during the lockdown as parents bought copies to read with their children during the pandemic.
Rowling was approached for comment.