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J.K. Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter book series, returned a 2019 Ripple of Hope Award she received from the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights organization after receiving criticism from RFK’s daughter Kerry Kennedy.

In a scathing statement, posted Aug. 3 on the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights site, the organization’s president Kerry Kennedy condemned Rowling for her June tweets as “transphobic” and “deeply troubling.”

Kennedy continued to dismiss Rowling’s views, saying “Over the course of June 2020 — LGBTQ Pride Month — and much to my dismay, J.K. Rowling posted deeply troubling transphobic tweets and statements. On June 6, she tweeted an article headlined "Opinion: Creating a more equal post-COVID-19 world for people who menstruate."

Kennedy claims that Rowling was glib and dismissive about transgender identity. Rowling said, "People who menstruate.’ I’m sure there used to be a word for those people. Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?”

“From her own words, I take Rowling’s position to be that the sex one is assigned at birth is the primary and determinative factor of one’s gender, regardless of one’s gender identity—a position that I categorically reject. The science is clear and conclusive: Sex is not binary,” Kennedy responded.

Kennedy also cited Rowling's “like” of a tweet that opposed a bill to ban conversion therapy (both sexual orientation and gender identity) in Canada.

She also referenced a Rowling tweet that stated, “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.”

J.K.Rowling statement

In a statement that appeared on Aug. 27 on the J.K. Rowling website, the author denies the charge of transphobia. 

Rowling described a newly-formed Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine (SEGM), a group of 100 international clinicians. And she continued to make her case claiming that “well-meaning pursuit of short-term relief of symptom” can lead to “devastating long-term results” and that the “gender affirmative” model can commit young people to lifelong medical treatment. 

She adds that many brave de-transitioned young women have risked the anger of activists by speaking up about a movement they say has harmed them. And that her interactions with these women and “a wide range of professionals” have forced her to the unhappy conclusion the result will be an ethical and medical scandal.

“I believe the time is coming when those organizations and individuals who have uncritically embraced fashionable dogma, and demonized those urging caution, will have to answer for the harm they’ve enabled.”

The statement ends with Rowling announcing she will return the Ripple of Hope Award that was given to her for her international non-profit NGO Lumos which was founded to move children worldwide out of orphanages and institutions and into loving family care by 2050.

J.K. Rowling denounces cancel culture mentality

On July 7, Rowling along with writer Margaret Atwood and 150 other writers, academics, and activists signed an open letter published by Harper’s critical of the cancel culture and “restriction of debate” in today’s world.

The letter was titled “A Letter on Justice and Open Debate,"  and claimed that this creeping cancel culture will harm the most “vital causes of our time” by silencing “good-faith” disagreement.

The letter claims that “The free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted.”

It added: “We uphold the value of robust and even caustic counter-speech from all quarters. But it is now all too common to hear calls for swift and severe retribution in response to perceived transgressions of speech and thought.”

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