J.K. Rowling, author of the once beloved (and now thoroughly exploited) children’s media franchise Harry Potter, as well as many thousands of unhinged screeds against transgender people on X dot com, has issued a very firm public statement against one of the creators of a vastly cooler media franchise for comments her agent describes as “defamatory.”
On September 11, Variety published an interview with trans filmmaker Lilly Wachowski (The Matrix, V for Vendetta, Sense8), during which she discusses her struggles to find a home for queer films and television, the misappropriation of her work by fascists, and the ongoing war against our right to exist.
After they discuss the travesty that is Elliot Page’s lack of job offers (surely not a result of his public queerness, as the film industry is an immaculate meritocracy), interviewer Marlow Stern asks Wachowski, “Elon Musk and J.K. Rowling are two people who have inflicted an enormous amount of cultural damage on the trans community. What are your thoughts on them?”
Where does one even begin?
Wachowski starts strong, answering, “I mean… these people are Nazis. They’re literal Nazis.” She goes on to suggest that the rest of the world should consider shielding themselves from the loathsome cultural impact of rising neo-Nazism in the U.S. and the U.K., which I don’t disagree with, until the topic shifts to J.K. Rowling’s new HBO Potter adaptation.
“J.K. Rowling funds trans genocide, full stop,” Wachowski says. “So, if you support Harry Potter, you’re supporting trans genocide. The money that goes into you enjoying these products, a portion of that money goes to J.K. Rowling and that money goes into her funding anti-trans legislation all over the world… your enjoyment of these shows, and continued support of these shows, is supporting my eradication.”
The Variety article has since appended a statement from Neil Blare, Rowling’s agent, which reads in full:
“Freedom of speech is a principle we should all cherish. What matters is that J.K. Rowling’s views, as with anyone else’s, are represented accurately, fairly and respectfully and that individual opinion does not detract from those views.
To correct Lilly Wachowski, through The J.K. Rowling Women’s Fund, J.K Rowling supports women taking legal action in the UK to preserve their existing rights under the Equality Act 2010, which are often overlooked or threatened. She does not support legal actions aimed at harming transgender people or efforts to limit trans rights.
People are free to disagree with her views but seriously defamatory allegations of this nature, even outrageously invoking the Nazi’s [sic] and the genocide that they committed, should never be presented as fact when they are clearly fabricated and not based on any evidence.”
I meandered over to X, where I have an empty account that I use only to check up on freaks (pejorative) in situations like this, to see if Rowling has made any public comments about Wachowski. The answer is yes, sort of: Rowling has made two posts since September 11 saying that she would never claim to be “genocided,” despite receiving “thousands of death and rape threats.” Beyond that, she hasn’t named Wachowski specifically, or directly addressed her remarks.
Here are some quick, fun stats for you, though: Rowling has posted to X a measured 33 times since September 11, and 29 of those posts were about trans people. The four posts that weren’t about trans people were published around the time the Variety article came out, so she probably just hadn’t seen it yet.
Anyway, it’s nice to know somebody’s always thinking about us, I suppose!
So, was Lilly Wachowski right to call J.K. Rowling a Nazi? From a purely historical point, no, of course not. Rowling has never, to my knowledge, been a member of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party. It was dissolved approximately twenty years before she was born, precluding any involvement from the author.
A missed connection for the ages.
For the sake of clarity, I should say that Wachowski has been a repeat patron of Assigned Media. She has contributed funds directly to some of our donation campaigns, like the one that got us this lovely new website, and I am personally a huge fan of her work. The Matrix taught me to say “whoa” a lot; Cloud Atlas popularized “the true true” in the cultural lexicon; and I have a clip on my desktop of Joe Pantoliano saying, “Wake up, you fucking dyke,” in Bound that I send to my friend whenever I think she should stop being asleep.
Conversely, I consider Rowling to be a loathsome worm of a woman. I believe she shares more blame than anybody else on earth for the international proliferation of transphobia, and the resultant dramatic shift in culture that has stripped us of our rights worldwide. Assigned has published numerous unfavorable critiques of Rowling’s work and behavior, and frankly, we will almost certainly do it again.
What I’m saying is, you could conceivably accuse us of some bias on this topic.
I won’t relitigate Rowling’s entire heel turn, because I’ve done it before, and other people have done it better. What I will tell you is that Rowling announced a public women’s fund last year, which you can apply to if you believe you are “fighting to retain women’s sex-based rights” and need vast sums of cash to get the job done. There are no public records of Rowling’s benediction, but we do know that she funded anti-trans activist group For Women Scotland in their bid to overturn that country’s legal recognition of trans women back in 2024, to the tune of £70,000. It seems likely to me that she has provided scads of greenbacks to other noble soldiers in her war against the mere existence of trans people.
Her hatred of my community is widely known and well documented, so if Neil Blare has anything to say to me, well… oh god I’m so sorry, please don’t sue me! Please don’t do me like you did Amnesty International! I’m just a little guy, and it’s my birthday, please!
