JK Rowling has said she won’t forgive Harry Potter stars Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson after slamming celebrities who ‘cosied up to a movement intent on eroding women’s hard-won rights’.
The multi-millionaire author hit out at stars who use their ‘platforms to cheer on the transitioning of minors’ after the release of the long-awaited Cass report into gender treatment in the UK.
The vocal women’s rights campaigner said people who supported gender transitioning in children should apologise to ‘traumatised detransitioners and vulnerable women reliant on single sex spaces’.
Rowling has been vocal in her opposition of allowing children to change their gender, while Radcliffe and Watson have been outspoken in their support of the trans community.
It comes after a review, written by leading paediatrician Dr Hilary Cass, found that teenagers in Britain have been allowed to change their gender based on ‘remarkably weak evidence’.
In her report Dr Cass warned that there was a ‘lack of high-quality research’ on the effects of giving children puberty blockers and hormones and said that the toxicity in the debate over the issue has become ‘exceptional’.
Following the publication of her report many people who have expressed misgivings over allowing children to transition claimed they have been vindicated, including comedy writer Graham Linehan who lost his career, wife, friends and reputation over his views.
Writing on X, formerly known as Twitter, after the report was published, Rowling said it was a ‘watershed’ moment and that it ‘lays bare the tragedy’ of allowing children to transition.
When someone claimed that Radcliffe and Watson owe her ‘a very public apology… safe in the knowledge that you will forgive them’, Rowling responded by saying: ‘Not safe, I’m afraid.’
She added: ‘Celebs who cosied 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.’
In a series of tweets after following the report’s publication, Rowling wrote: ‘Over the last four years, Hilary Cass has conducted the most robust review of the medical evidence for transitioning children that’s ever been conducted. Mere hours after it was released to the press and public, committed ideologues are doubling down.
‘These are people who’ve deemed opponents ‘far-right’ for wanting to know there are proper checks and balances in place before autistic, gay and abused kids – groups that are all overrepresented at gender clinics – are left sterilised, inorgasmic, lifelong patients.
‘I understand that the review’s conclusions will have come as a seismic shock to those who’ve hounded and demonised whistleblowers and smeared opponents as bigots and transphobes, but trying to discredit Hilary Cass’s work isn’t merely misguided. It’s actively malign.
‘Even if you don’t feel ashamed of cheerleading for what now looks like severe medical malpractice, even if you don’t want to accept that you might have been wrong, where’s your sense of self-preservation? The bandwagon you hopped on so gladly is hurtling towards a cliff.
‘And if I sound angry, it’s because I’m bloody angry. I read Cass this morning and my anger’s been mounting all day. Kids have been irreversibly harmed, and thousands are complicit, not just medics, but the celebrity mouthpieces, unquestioning media and cynical corporations.
‘The consequences of this scandal will play out for decades. You cheered it on. You did all you could to impede and misrepresent research. You tried to bully people out of their jobs for opposing you. Young people have been experimented on, left infertile and in pain.
‘I thought the last tweet was going to be my last, but I just burst into tears. The #CassReview may be a watershed moment, but it comes too late for detransitioners who’ve written me heartbreaking letters of regret. Today’s not a triumph, it’s the laying bare of a tragedy.’
The report by Dr Cass, which was commissioned nearly four years ago, made a series of recommendations to overhaul NHS trans services to improve the care that children receive.
She found that there is a ‘lack of high-quality research’ on the effects of giving children puberty blockers and hormones, and recommended that NHS England establish its own research programme.
The report also called for the creation a separate service for those wanting to ‘de-transition’, where a gender transition is stopped or reversed, and recommended a ‘follow-through service’ for 17 to 25-year-olds to protect teenagers ‘falling off a cliff edge’ in care when they hit 17.
Dr Cass warned that her review had been hampered by how polarised the debate on trans care for children has become. She said medical professionals had been left ‘[too] afraid to openly discuss their views’.
The report found those who socially transition at an earlier age or before seeing a medical professional were ‘more likely to proceed to a medical pathway’.
She said ‘the importance of what happens in school’ cannot be over-estimated and said parents must not be excluded from conversations over their children’s welfare.
Unregulated private clinics were singled out for some of Dr Cass’s toughest criticism as she echoed GPs’ warnings over prescriptions issued by services based abroad.
The review said family doctors had ‘expressed concern about being pressurised to prescribe hormones after these have been initiated by private providers’.
Radcliffe, who played the titular character in Rowling’s hit Harry Potter series, has spoken out in the past to say adults are ‘condescending’ for expressing misgivings over gender transitioning in children.
Speaking in at a roundtable with six trans and non-binary children organised by LGBTQ suicide prevention charity The Trevor Project in 2023, the actor said: ‘there are also people who also have a slightly condescending but well-meaning attitude of, ‘people are young… and it is a huge decision.’
He asked the group of trans youths: ‘I would love to hear from all of you about why we can trust kids to tell us who they are.’
He added that there are ‘some people in the world who are not trying to engage in this conversation in any kind of good faith’.
Radcliffe said: ‘I think a lot of the time it’s just because people don’t know a young trans person so there’s just this theoretical idea about this in their head.’
The November before he had fired a thinly-veiled shot at Rowling by claiming young, queer and transgender fans of the franchise were upset by her stance.
His comments were a barbed reference to Miss Rowling’s tweets from June 2020 in which she ridiculed an article’s description of women as ‘people who menstruate’.
Responding to the online article’s headline, the Harry Potter creator then tweeted: ‘I’m sure there used to be a word for those people. Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?’
In response at the time, Radcliffe hit out at the author, saying: ‘To all the people who now feel that their experience of the books has been tarnished or diminished, I am deeply sorry for the pain these comments have caused you’.
Referencing Ms Rowling’s comments, Radcliffe – who at the time stated ‘transgender women are women’ – said that he wanted to let members of the LGBT+ community know ‘not everybody in the franchise felt that way’.
He added: ‘The reason I felt very, very much as though I needed to say something when I did was because, particularly since finishing Potter, I’ve met so many queer and trans kids and young people who had a huge amount of identification with Potter on that.
‘And so seeing them hurt on that day I was like, I wanted them to know that not everybody in the franchise felt that way. And that was really important.’
Meanwhile Watson, who became famous after playing Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter film series, has previously spoken out on the trans debate.
Ms Watson wrote: ‘Trans people are who they say they are and deserve to live their lives without being constantly questioned or told they aren’t who they say they are.
‘I want my trans followers to know that I and so many other people around the world see you, respect you and love you for who you are.’
Their fellow co-star Rupert Grint has also previously spoken up, telling The Times in 2020: ‘I firmly stand with the trans community and echo the sentiments expressed by many of my peers.
‘Trans women are women. Trans men are men. We should all be entitled to live with love and without judgement.’
In March the following year, he explained his decision to voice his opposition to Ms Rowling’s comments saying that while he has ‘huge respect’ for the author, he can still disagree with her views.
Speaking to Esquire, he added: ‘I am hugely grateful [for] everything that she’s done. I think that she’s extremely talented, and I mean, clearly, her works are genius.’
Elaborating on his reasoning, he went on: ‘But yeah, I think also you can have huge respect for someone and still disagree with things like that…
‘Sometimes silence is even louder. I felt like I had to because I think it was important to. I mean, I don’t want to talk about all that… Generally, I’m not an authority on the subject.
‘Just out of kindness, and just respecting people. I think it’s a valuable group that I think needs standing up for.’
MailOnline has contacted JK Rowling, Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson for comment.
James Parker is a UK-based entertainment aficionado who delves into the glitz and glamour of the entertainment industry. From Hollywood to the West End, he offers readers an insider’s perspective on the world of movies, music, and pop culture.
