‘Trans women are women’, roars Twitter after JK Rowling’s tweet hits a wrong note

‘Harry Potter’ author JK Rowling has landed herself in hot water, yet again, due to her controversial tweets on the LGBTQ community. On Sunday, the author took to Twitter to criticise an opinion piece from Devex, a media platform. The headline of the opinion piece read, ‘Opinion: Creating a more equal post-COVID-19 world for people who menstruate.’

Rowling retweeted the post and wrote, “‘People who menstruate.’ I’m sure there used to be a word for those people. Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?”

Rowling’s tweet, a sarcastic one at that, was meant to make a point that the headline of the opinion piece should have referred to women instead of calling them ‘people who menstruate’.

The best-selling author faced major backlash for her tweet, with several netizens pointing out that women are not the only ‘people who menstruate’, as there are several trans women who menstruate and several women who do not.

Rowling’s tweet was called ‘transphobic’ and the author was soon at the receiving end of the transgender community.

The Twitter handle of ‘I Support The Girls’, an organisation that helps distribute menstrual hygiene supplies to girls responded to Rowling’s tweet, writing, “Not all women menstruate and not all who menstruate are women. There are many girls, non-binary folx, trans boys, and trans men who also get a period.”

The official Twitter handle of Clue, a period-tracker app also responded to Rowling’s tweet, arguing that using non-gendered language is about moving beyond the idea that ‘woman=uterus’. “Feminists were once mocked for wanting to change sexist language, but it’s now common to say firefighter instead of fireman,” read the tweet.

‘Women are not defined by their periods,’ wrote this Twitter user.

Rowling then took to Twitter to clarify her earlier tweet but that didn’t stop the backlash. Instead, the entire debacle then snowballed into a debate about sex and gender. “If sex isn’t real, there’s no same-sex attraction. If sex isn’t real, the lived reality of women globally is erased,” wrote Rowling in her tweet.

“I respect every trans person’s right to live any way that feels authentic and comfortable to them. I’d march with you if you were discriminated against on the basis of being trans. At the same time, my life has been shaped by being female. I do not believe it’s hateful to say so,” Rowling said.

Rowling's tweets caused a firestorm of responses from the LGBTQ community and others who were upset with her words.

LGBTQ celebrities Jameela Jamil and Jonathan Van Ness took Rowling to task for her tweets. Jamil tweeted out a link to a GoFundMe page, asking Rowling to ‘share her $650 million mega wealth’ with the charity for homeless black transgender women.

In a scathing tweet, Jonathan Van Ness wrote, ‘Trans women are women’.


GLAAD issued a response on Twitter, calling Rowling's tweets “inaccurate and cruel.”

The advocacy body dedicated to LGBTQ equality then asked those upset by the author's comments to support organisations that help black transgender people.