JK Rowling has lashed out against Emma Watson after the Harry Potter star recently addressed their relationship amid the author’s anti-trans sentiments.
Posting on X, the Harry Potter author criticized Watson for her privilege, writing, “Emma has so little experience of real life she’s ignorant of how ignorant she is.”
Rowling posted that the 35-year-old actress has “never experienced adult life uncushioned by wealth and fame,” detailing things that Watson will never need to experience like staying in a homeless shelter, being in a mixed-sex public hospital ward, changing in a “newly mixed-sex changing room” at a local pool and “sharing a prison cell with a male rapist who’s identified into the women’s prison.”
“I wasn’t a multimillionaire at fourteen,” Rowling wrote of Watson, who was cast as Hermione Granger in the hit franchise. “I lived in poverty while writing the book that made Emma famous. I therefore understand from my own life experience what the trashing of women’s rights in which Emma has so enthusiastically participated means to women and girls without her privileges.”
Watson has often used her platform as an advocacy space for women’s rights, including posting resources for workplace harassment and violence against women, platforming a book about surviving sexual violence and posting about ending the gender gap. In 2014, Watson was made a UN Women Goodwill Ambassador, serving on the UN’s HeForShe campaign that promotes gender equality.
Rowling’s X response came in the aftermath of Watson’s appearance on the podcast “On Purpose With Jay Shetty.” There, Watson—who has publicly condemned Rowling’s anti-trans sentiments before—noted that while she still disagrees with Rowling’s beliefs, she doesn’t hate her as a person.
“I really don’t believe that by having had that experience and holding the love and support and views that I have, means that I can’t and don’t treasure Jo and the person that I had personal experiences with,” Watson said. “I will never believe that one negates the other and that my experience of that person, I don’t get to keep and cherish. To come back to our earlier thing—I just don’t think these things are either or. I think it’s my deepest wish that I hope people who don’t agree with my opinion will love me, and I hope I can keep loving people who I don’t necessarily share the same opinion with.”
Rowling explained in her tweet that this comment made her speak up, claiming that Watson only said she cared for the author because “full-throated condemnation” of her is “no longer quite as fashionable as it was.”
“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 continued. “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.”
This podcast, however, wasn’t the first time Watson had addressed Rowling’s beliefs regarding the transgender community—an issue the author has publicly faced since 2018, when she had to explain liking a tweet that referred to transgender women as “men in dresses.”
Rowling went on to become embroiled in more transphobic controversy after following an anti-trans YouTuber and publicly supporting a woman who was fired for anti-trans statements.
However, it wasn’t until the summer of 2020 that the allegations against Rowling for being transphobic reached a boiling point. She once again had to defend herself for liking anti-trans tweets and took to social media to mock a scientific article that didn’t use the word “women” and instead used the wording “people who menstruate.”
During this time, many Harry Potter stars spoke out against the author and her beliefs. The franchise’s leading man, Daniel Radcliffe, wrote a blog post for The Trevor Project, stating, “Transgender women are women. Any statement to the contrary erases the identity and dignity of transgender people and goes against all advice given by professional health care associations who have far more expertise on this subject matter than either Jo or I.”
Rowling then took to her website on June 10, 2020 to publish over 3,600 words expressing her stance on sex and gender issues. In it, the author wrote about her concerns regarding “the huge explosion in young women wishing to transition and also about the increasing numbers who seem to be detransitioning.”
She also explained that she was a victim of sexual assault and domestic abuse, which made her hesitant to opening “bathrooms and changing rooms to any man who believes or feels he’s a woman.”
That same day, Watson tweeted, “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.”
Despite acknowledging that she isn’t “owed eternal agreement from any actor who once played a character I created” and that she believes “Watson and her co-stars have every right to embrace gender ideology,” Rowling struck out at Watson and Radcliffe for their comments.
“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. Years after they finished acting in Potter, they continue to assume the role of de facto spokespeople for the world I created,” she wrote.
“When you’ve known people since they were ten years old it’s hard to shake a certain protectiveness,” she continued. “Until quite recently, I hadn’t managed to throw off the memory of children who needed to be gently coaxed through their dialogue in a big scary film studio. For the past few years, I’ve repeatedly declined invitations from journalists to comment on Emma specifically, most notably on the Witch Trials of JK Rowling. Ironically, I told the producers that I didn’t want her to be hounded as the result of anything I said.”
In Rowling’s long social media response to Watson’s interview, she also attached a clip from Free Speech Nation, where author Fiona McAnena said that Watson was careful “not to go too far” but that she “can’t sit on the fence.” Host Josh Howie then attacked Watson’s 2022 BAFTA presentation, where she opened by saying she was here “for all the witches” and then seemingly mouthed “but one.”
At the time, the internet believed that Watson was making a dig at Rowling, something which Rowling addressed in her tweet, adding a behind-the-scenes moment she claims occurred between the two.
“The television presenter in the attached clip highlights Emma’s ‘all witches’ speech, and in truth, that was a turning point for me, but it had a postscript that hurt far more than the speech itself,” she wrote. “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). 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.”
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