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In the latest episode of the podcast JK Rowling’s Witch Trialswhich was released today, the Harry Potter the author spoke about reactions to her 2019 tweet expressing support for Maya Forstater, a British researcher who was fired for comments interpreted as anti-trans, for which she drew condemnation from GLAAD.
At the time Harry Potter The author took to Twitter to speak out in support of Forstater, saying: “Dress what you want. Call yourself what you want. Sleep with any consenting adult who wants you. Live your best life in peace and safety . But forcing women out of their jobs to say sex is real? #IstandWithMaya #ThisIsNotADrill”
“I knew it was going to cause a massive storm,” Rowling said in today’s podcast, saying what came to her was “absolute fury.” The author related responses to her tweet, with some commenters calling her a TERF – an acronym that stands for “trans-exclusionary radical feminist” – with another writing: “pretty sure you and Maya share the same beliefs as Hitler and the Nazis. .. the gassed trans people” and yet another who wrote, “too bad you’ve become the evil you taught us to stand up to. You’re on the wrong side of history with this one.”
But the author said: “A lot of Potter fans were still with me. And actually a lot of Potter fans were grateful for what I said.” Rowling said she received thousands of emails of support to her private email address. Still, she says on Tuesday’s podcast that the backlash actually affected her.
“Personally, it has not been fun and I have at times feared for my own safety and, overwhelmingly, for the safety of my family. Time will tell if I was wrong. I can only say that I have thought long and hard about it and I have listened, I promise, to the other side.”
But Rowling also said she has no regrets. “I stand by every word I wrote there, but the question is, what is the truth? And I argue against people who literally say that sex is a construct.”
The first two episodes of JK Rowling’s Witch Trials debuted February 21, with the remaining five rolling out each week thereafter. In one of those debut pieces, the Harry Potter author said she doesn’t worry about thoughts of legacy or how she’ll be remembered.
“I don’t walk around my house thinking about my legacy,” she said. “You know that pompous way of living your life walking around thinking, ‘What’s going to be my legacy?’ Either way, I want to be dead. I care now. I care for the living.”
The podcast is produced by the media company Free Press founded by Bari Weiss and hosted by Megan Phelps-Roper, a former member of the notoriously homophobic Westboro Baptist Church. Phelps-Roper, who has denounced the teachings of the church, explains in the first episode that she was drawn to the subject of Rowling after realizing that the author, once condemned as satanic by the extremist right-wing Westboro, was now condemned. of the left wing.