JK Rowling suggests taking pictures of trans women in toilets and posting them online

Author JK Rowling has suggested policing women’s toilets by taking and sharing pictures of people using them.

Rowling, well-known for her views on trans rights, made the comment on X/Twitter, after she was asked how she was “planning to police public toilets”.

The question came after many organisations, bodies and services have updated their policies so that single-sex facilities, such as toilets, can be used only by people of the corresponding “biological” sex, following the Supreme Court’s gender ruling in April and subsequent interim guidance issued by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC).

“Quite easily, really,” Rowling replied. “Decent men will stay out, as they always have, so we can assume all who don’t are a threat, given their disregard for women’s and girls’ safety, privacy and dignity. Photographing, reporting and disseminating such men’s images online will be a piece of cake.”

Quite easily, really. Decent men will stay out, as they always have, so we can assume all who don't are a threat, given their disregard for women's and girls' safety, privacy and dignity. Photographing, reporting and disseminating such men's images online will be a piece of cake. pic.twitter.com/3qm4eJ3Hgk

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) June 21, 2025

Rowling’s supporters backed the idea while others criticised the idea of taking pictures of people in a private space.

One X user wrote: “JK Rowling now openly incites public harassment of trans women and others who don’t meet her personal test of ‘decency’. Photographing strangers and posting their image online as presumed threats? That’s not feminism. It’s a vigilante call to action, rooted in paranoia.”

Another asked: “You want to take pictures of people using the restroom? Do you not realise how sick and f**ked-up that sounds?”

Someone else proclaimed: “Joanne [the author’s first name], what you are encouraging people to do is illegal. Photographing people going about their day then sharing the images without their consent is a flagrant violation of their right to privacy.”

In recent months, gender policing of trans people in toilets has had an adverse effect on other members of the LGBTQ+ community, including cisgender lesbians who do not fit into stereotypical definitions of female beauty. Among those to face problems was a woman who was removed from a female toilet by a male security guard in a Boston hotel in May, after being accused of being a man.

The partner of children’s author Jessica Walton has also faced ordeals, as has poet Eloise Stonborough.

During Lesbian Visibility Week, which immediately followed the Supreme Court decision, Labour MP Kate Osborne said she was “frequently misgendered” because of how she looks, and voiced her concern at how it will only get worse in the future. 

In the wake of the verdict, which decreed that the 2010 Equality Act’s definition of women and sex referred to “biological women” and “biological sex”, the EHRC guidance called for access to single-sex spaces to be based on “biology”, meaning a trans woman would not be allowed to use a female toilet, and a trans man couldn’t enter a male one.

In “some circumstances”, trans women should also be banned from men’s facilities, and trans men from women’s, the guidance went on to say.

The Football Association, the England and Wales Cricket Board, the Scottish parliament and the Financial Conduct Authority have already taken steps to ban trans people from single-sex spaces that align with their gender identity, and EHRC chairwoman baroness Kishwer Falkner said a transgender person’s right to privacy “doesn’t apply” when it comes to accessing gendered facilities.

Falkner appeared before the parliamentary Women and Equalities Committee earlier this month and said the EHRC had taken legal advice which agreed that Article 8 as incorporated into the Human Rights Act did not apply did not apply when looking at trans people’s rights in this situation.

However, the equalities watchdog admitted that a clause in the guidance, which claimed it was “compulsory” for employers to provide single-sex toilets, was not accurate.

Responding to a pre-action letter from Good Law Project, lawyers acting on behalf of the EHRC clarified that the clause meant to say: “Where separate facilities are lawfully provided for ‘men’ and ‘women’, this means for biological men and women”, and where a toilet “is in a separate room, the door of which is capable of being secured from inside,” the employer will satisfy its obligations.

The EHRC is holding a six-week consultation on changes to its Code of Practice, which aims to “support service providers, public bodies and associations to understand their duties under the Equality Act and put them into practice”.

The commission was criticised for originally only giving people two weeks to respond, and extended the time frame to six weeks, which comes to an end on 30 June. A trans group is set to lobby parliament five days before that.

Organisers have said they expect it to be the largest LGBTQ+ mass lobby of MPs since the fight against Section 28.

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