Martina Navratilova and Judy Murray endorse JK Rowling post that misgenders trans people
Martina Navratilova and Judy Murray showed support for a new JK Rowling social media post. (Canva/Getty)
Former tennis star Martina Navratilova and Judy Murray, mother of British player Andy Murray, hve endorsed a new post from JK Rowling that misgenders trans women while outlining her views on trans inclusion.
In recent posts on social media, Rowling deliberately misgendered several trans women before challenging police to arrest her if she fell foul of Scotland’s new hate crime laws. However, Police Scotland said the remarks were not criminal.
On Saturday (6 April), Rowling lambasted the new Scottish legislation yet again in a lengthy post on X/Twitter, delving further into her views on the alleged clash between trans rights and the rights of women.
She claimed that women are women due to the “fact of being born in a body, assuming nothing has gone wrong with her physical development”, is “geared towards producing eggs” and “begetting children”.
JK Rowling later acknowledged gender dysphoria is a “real and very painful condition”. She felt “nothing but sympathy for anyone who suffers from it”.
But she didn’t believe gender-affirming healthcare, which can include surgeries as well as hormone replacement therapy, could “turn a person into the opposite sex” or that people can have a gender identity that differs from what they were assigned at birth.
She added that she’s “strongly against women’s and girls’ rights and protections being dismantled to accommodate” trans women, whom she misgendered while using an anti-trans dog whistle term.
Judy Murray, who is the mother of Scottish tennis player Andy Murray and is a tennis coach, shared her support for JK Rowling. Murray shared Rowling’s social media post alongside the word “preach”.
Navratilova, who has faced backlash for posting anti-trans remarks before, also commented on Rowling’s post. She wrote: “Right on JK !!!”
Scotland’s new law expanded existing hate crime legislation. It also created a new offence criminalising actions that stir up hatred based on a list of protected characteristics which includes trans identities.
Just a week after the legislation kicked off, there have been media reports that Police Scotland has been “overwhelmed” by a deluge of complaints.
The force reportedly received over 3,000 hate crime reports within two days of the legislation going into force. The Observer reported that neo-Nazi and far-right figures are using the law to make vexatious complaints in an attempt to spam police systems.
Scotland’s First Minister Humza Yousaf has defended the legislation, saying it’s needed to “protect people against the rising tide of hatred we see right across the world”.
Yousaf also commented on JK Rowling’s remarks about the new law. He said her posts didn’t “meet a threshold of criminality” under the legislation, but he thought they were “offensive, upsetting and insulting to trans people”.
