The Harry Potter brats owe JK Rowling an apology

JK Rowling is furious. And who can blame her? The recently published Cass Review has proven what she has been saying – and demonised for – for years. On Wednesday, the author and philanthropist posted on X to suggest that she wouldn’t forgive the actors-cum-activists she made famous for turning on her.

Harry Potter stars Daniel Radcliffe (who played Harry in the blockbuster films) and Emma Watson (Hermione Granger) have both previously condemned the franchise’s creator for daring to point out the dangers of gender ideology. Now, in light of Dr Hilary Cass’s damning report, Rowling has said: ‘Celebs who cosied up to a movement intent on eroding women’s hard-won rights and who used their platforms to cheer on the transitioning of minors can save their apologies for traumatised detransitioners and vulnerable women reliant on single-sex spaces.’

Unfortunately, it seems unlikely that Watson or Radcliffe will be apologising to anyone. The pair have been committed to pushing gender ideology ever since they publicly broke with Rowling in 2020, issuing robotic soundbites in support of trans rights.

This came in response to an essay that Rowling published, in which she outlined her concerns about the threat to women’s rights and children’s health from trans activism. It was powerful, personal and compassionate. Not that any of this mattered to the celebrity set, who turned on the once-beloved children’s author immediately.

Luvvies are as one in their tendency to pick up luxury beliefs like fashion accessories. And for the past few years no cause has been more on-trend than protecting ‘trans youth’. This newly discovered group are, apparently, at unique risk from an evil cabal of haters. Trans lobby groups like Stonewall and Mermaids push the myth that gender-confused kids are at risk of committing suicide unless we unconditionally affirm their identities. By this logic, anyone who disagrees is a guaranteed villain. And so Rowling, a woman who wants to stop kids from being given experimental drugs, and to help them get the support they so clearly need, has been cast as a witch.

Thankfully, the Cass Review has vindicated everyone who sought to raise the alarm about the growing numbers of gender-confused children seeking a medical answer for their growing pains. As Rowling put it on X:

‘And if I sound angry, it’s because I’m bloody angry. I read Cass this morning and my anger’s been mounting all day. Kids have been irreversibly harmed, and thousands are complicit, not just medics, but the celebrity mouthpieces, unquestioning media and cynical corporations.’

Perhaps unsurprisingly, ‘celebrity mouthpieces’ like Watson and Radcliffe have been noticeably silent on any of this. The lives of these privileged brats, elevated to stardom by Rowling’s creative genius, could not be more different from those of the young people who have come to regret taking cross-sex hormones and undergoing surgeries.

To take one example, at around the time Watson was appointed as a visiting fellow at Oxford University’s Lady Margaret Hall in 2016, the then 19-year-old Keira Bell had been taking testosterone for just over two years. In 2017, the year that Bell had her healthy breasts surgically removed, Watson was getting hers out for a risqué Vanity Fair photoshoot. There is a gulf between the smug celebrities who parade around chanting about ‘trans rights’ and the vulnerable young people at the sharp end of these trendy crusades.

Generations of children have grown up immersed in the fantasy world of Harry Potter, where impossible things are true. While it’s charming when kids lose themselves in harmless make-believe, it is downright disturbing when influential adults do the same. Watson and Radcliffe really think that chanting magic phrases like ‘I identify as’ can change reality. And now that the harms of the trans experiment on children are being revealed, their continued silence is shameful.

Watson and Radcliffe would do well to remember that outside the worlds of Hollywood and Hogwarts, their actions have real consequences. Rowling is right: they owe the people harmed by trans ideology an apology.

Jo Bartosch is a journalist campaigning for the rights of women and girls.