“I’m not owed eternal agreement from any actor who once played a character I created,” Rowling opened, before reiterating that “Emma Watson and her co-stars have every right to embrace gender identity ideology.” What she takes issue with, however, is the fact that “Emma and Dan in particular have both made it clear over the last few years that they think our former professional association gives them a particular right – nay, obligation – to critique me and my views in public.” Watson has arguably done this very little. In 2020, Watson posted, “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,” without mentioning Rowling by name as the author’s transphobia ramped up online. Two years later, she said she was here for “all the witches” in a BAFTA speech Rowling directly referenced in today’s post.
That speech, which again, did not mention Rowling by name, was apparently a “turning point” for the author, but it “had a postscript that hurt far more than the speech itself.” “Emma asked someone to pass on a handwritten note from her to me, which contained the single sentence ‘I’m so sorry for what you’re going through’ (she has my phone number),” Rowling’s post continued. “This was back when the death, rape and torture threats against me were at their peak, at a time when my personal security measures had had to be tightened considerably and I was constantly worried for my family’s safety. Emma had just publicly poured more petrol on the flames, yet thought a one line expression of concern from her would reassure me of her fundamental sympathy and kindness.”
Rowling then went on to imply that Watson is “ignorant of how ignorant she is” because “like other people who’ve never experienced adult life uncushioned by wealth and fame, Emma has so little experience of real life.” To Rowling, that life Watson hasn’t experienced includes “mixed sex public hospital ward[s]” and the possibility of “sharing a prison cell with a male rapist who’s identified into the women’s prison.” These are all things Rowling understands, of course, because she “wasn’t a multimillionaire at fourteen” and “lived in poverty while writing the book that made Emma famous.”
“Adults can’t expect to cosy up to an activist movement that regularly calls for a friend’s assassination, then assert their right to the former friend’s love, as though the friend was in fact their mother,” Rowling’s post concluded. “Emma is rightly free to disagree with me and indeed to discuss her feelings about me in public – but I have the same right, and I’ve finally decided to exercise it.” It doesn’t seem like this spat will be over any time soon.
