Another day, another Twitter feud. This time, horror novelist Stephen King got candid about why Harry Potter author J.K Rowling blocked him on the social media app.
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Speaking with The Daily Beast, King explained that the feud has to deal with King’s assertion that he believes trans women are women.
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When Rowling saw what King had written, she blocked him and then went back and deleted an earlier tweet that had praised him.
“Jo canceled me,” the 73-year-old bestselling horror writer said. “She sorta blocked me and all that.”
King, who is no stranger to Twitter feuds, said he knows his opinion is right and that Rowling—who has come under fire because of her transphobic comments in the past—is wrong. Organizations such as GLADD have previously criticized Rowling, saying that “Rowling continues to align herself with an ideology which willfully distorts facts about gender identity and people who are trans.”
“Here’s the thing: She is welcome to her opinion. That’s the way that the world works,” King said. “If she thinks that trans women are dangerous, or that trans women are somehow not women, or whatever problem she has with it — the idea that someone ‘masquerading’ as a woman is going to assault a ‘real’ woman in the toilet — if she believes all those things, she has a right to her opinion.”
“And then someone tweeted at me, ‘Do you think trans women are women?’ and I said, ‘Yes, I do.’ And that’s what she got angry about—my opinion. It’s like the old saying, ‘I don’t agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.’ So, nobody has ‘canceled’ J.K. Rowling. She’s doing fine,” King added.
Rowling has decided, apparently, that this is the hill she’s willing to die on.
The writer has been a vocal and consistent source of transphobic rhetoric for years, alienating many of her most dedicated fans—especially Harry Potter fans who are trans.
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Most notably, Rowling penned an essay in which she said she was “deeply concerned about the consequences of the current trans activism” in particular “the huge explosion in young women wishing to transition.”
She also employed the stereotypical anti-trans argument about bathrooms: “When you throw open the doors of bathrooms and changing rooms to any man who believes or feels he’s a woman – and, as I’ve said, gender confirmation certificates may now be granted without any need for surgery or hormones – then you open the door to any and all men who wish to come inside.”
King didn’t seem to be very bothered by the unfollowing.
“I just felt that her belief was, in my opinion, wrong,” he said. “We have differing opinions, but that’s life.
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*First Published: May 24, 2021, 11:41 am
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