JK Rowling mocks gender-neutral language in Mother’s Day post
JK Rowling. (Getty)
JK Rowling has come under fire once again after she shared a Mother’s Day message mocking gender-neutral inclusive language.
The Harry Potter author pushed back on inclusive language in an X/Twitter post on Mother’s Day, which was celebrated on Sunday (10 March) in the UK.
“Happy Birthing Parent Day to all whose large gametes were fertilised resulting in small humans whose sex was assigned by doctors making mostly lucky guesses,” she wrote.
Several people online called out Rowling for the post.
Star Trek star and LGBTQ+ icon George Takei said it “saddened” him to read such remarks.
Broadcaster Narinder Kaur, who also appeared on the reality TV show Big Brother, wrote it was “sad” that Rowling “chose to pick on” an “already very demonised group of people”.
In response to the backlash, JK Rowling post a follow-up to the original post, writing, seemingly sarcaastically, that she was “devastated and bewildered” her alleged “embrace of inclusive language has angered its most enthusiastic devotees”.
Rowling’s Mother’s Day posts came just days after the author deliberately misgendered India Willoughby, who is Britain’s first out trans newsreader.
In a post on social media, Rowling accused Willoughby of “cosplaying a misogynistic male fantasy of what a woman is”.
Willoughby was “genuinely disgusted” by the “grotesque” comments, and she cited that she’s “every bit as much a woman as JK Rowling”.
JK Rowling has leaned hard into sharing her views on the trans community in the past few years. This led to scores of fans and stars from the expanded Harry Potter universe denouncing the author’s anti-trans remarks.
She has also mocked gender-neutral inclusive language multiple times in the past.
In 2020, Rowling retweeted an op-ed piece that discussed “people who menstruate”, and she apparently took issue with the inclusive language featured in the article.
“I’m sure there used to be a word for those people. Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?” she wrote.
Then, on International Women’s Day in 2022, she claimed the holiday would become “We Who Must Not Be Named Day” under a Labour government.
JK Rowling claimed in a 2023 podcast, titled The Witch Trials of JK Rowling, that she “never set out to upset anyone” with her remarks about the trans community”. However, she was “not uncomfortable with getting off [her] pedestal”.
