JK Rowling’s feud with Butlin’s is a sad new low – and tells us everything we need to know about her

The Harry Potter author’s views on trans people have completely undermined a legacy that was initially built on tolerance and respect, writes Ryan Coogan

There’s a conflict brewing that could bring the UK to its knees. On one side we have a beloved British cultural institution that has helped create happy memories for children all over the UK and brought joy to millions. On the other: JK Rowling. It’s a real clash of twee, middle-England titans.

Yes, if you haven’t heard, JK Rowling has done that thing again. No, not written a book. The other thing. This time she’s feuding with Butlin’s, after the holiday camp franchise suspended security staff for ejecting transgender women from one of its ladies’ bathroom facilities at its park in Skegness. Staff were accused of “violently” dragging the five women from one of its bathrooms, to which the company later issued an apology, claiming it is an “inclusive business”.

After getting wind of the incident, Rowling took to her Twitter/X account – the place she does most of her best fantasy writing nowadays – to slam the company: “Does Butlins think the desire of cross-dressing men to enter women-only spaces is more important than women’s and girls’ right to privacy and dignity? Hopefully Butlins will explain their policy, so women and families can make an informed choice about where to go on holiday.”

I was a huge Harry Potter fan growing up. I read those books over and over again throughout primary and high school. I still have a pair of quidditch pyjamas that I refuse to throw out because they’re the comfiest thing I own. I’m still a bit gutted that I missed out on the original Cursed Child run on the West End (I had tickets and everything, but work commitments meant I had to give them away).

A big part of the reason I and many other people identified with that series was because it was a very simple story of good vs evil. It was about a group of people rising up and fighting back against a hyper-conservative cult motivated by hate and prejudice. The lesson of those books is comically straightforward: abusing your position of power to attack the weak is something that cowardly, evil people do. People identified with that message so much that it made Rowling (and many others) disgustingly rich.

To go from that to obsessively campaigning against a marginalised group, and slating them as “cross-dressing men”, is a type of cognitive dissonance that shouldn’t even be possible. Did she write those books in a fugue state? Were we supposed to be on Voldemort’s side the whole time? Watching Rowling deliberately misgender people on social media really makes me re-evaluate what I was supposed to take away from the Death Eaters’ use of “mudblood”.

Let’s be crystal clear, here: Rowling’s stance on trans people is problematic because it assumes an entire group of people to be a) homogenous and b) inherently dangerous. She constantly talks about “protecting” these spaces from trans people, as if they can cause harm by their very existence, or are only motivated by a desire to cause harm. That is, by definition, a form of bigotry.

If she said the same thing about a group to which we already grant those protections, we would rightly recognise it as such – but because we exist in a period wherein trans right are still a matter of debate instead of settled morality, we have to go through this pantomime of pretending those views are legitimate instead of harmful. We did the same thing during the gay marriage “debate”, and we’ll probably do it with some other poor marginalised group down the line, because that’s how moral panics work.

It’s why I find it hard to have sympathy when a trans rights group does something like oh, say, unleash a plague of crickets on an event Rowling is speaking at. While speaking at a meeting of the LGB Alliance this week, some enterprising protesters decided to step in and get a little Old Testament on a gathering where you can elicit a chorus of cheers for declaring “lesbians don’t have penises”. Hey, it could have been worse – at least it wasn’t toads.

It’s difficult to know exactly what radicalised Rowling so much that it was worth throwing away decades of millennial goodwill to earn to approval of what is, in my opinion, a hate movement. I imagine she genuinely believes she’s doing what’s right, which is honestly even sadder than if she was entirely motivated by spite.

But the effects are the same, regardless of motivation: another entitled billionaire using their vast resources and reach to bully and undermine a group for which every day is already a struggle. The fact that she doesn’t seem to understand the harm she’s doing, both to the trans community and to herself, is tragic – but if she ever feels like learning, there are a few books I could recommend.