Then, in June 2020, J. K. Rowling wrote a series of tweets that set off a media hullabaloo. She began by
sarcastically commenting on an article that used the term
people who menstruate, before
doubling down in ways that many criticized as anti-trans.
A few days later, Radcliffe
issued a personal statement through the Trevor Project. “I realize that certain press outlets will probably want to paint this as in-fighting between J. K. Rowling and myself, but that is really not what this is about, nor is it what’s important right now,” he began, before moving on to say: “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.”
He expressed hope that readers’ experiences with the
Harry Potter books needn’t be tarnished by this, and argued that what people may have found within those books—for instance, “if they taught you that strength is found in diversity, and that dogmatic ideas of pureness lead to the oppression of vulnerable groups”—remains between readers and the books, “and it is sacred.”
“I’d worked with the Trevor Project for 12 years and it would have seemed like, I don’t know, immense cowardice to me to not say something,” Radcliffe says when I raise this subject. “I wanted to try and help people that had been negatively affected by the comments,” he tells me. “And to say that if those are Jo’s views, then they are not the views of everybody associated with the
Potter franchise.”
Since those June 2020 tweets, Rowling has proclaimed, again and again, her belief in the importance of biological sex, and that the trans-rights movement seeks to undermine women as a protected class. Radcliffe says he had no direct contact with Rowling throughout any of this. “It makes me really sad, ultimately,” he says, “because I do look at the person that I met, the times that we met, and the books that she wrote, and the world that she created, and all of that is to me so deeply empathic.”
During the blowback, he was often thrown in together with his
Harry Potter co-stars Emma Watson and Rupert Grint, who both also
expressed their support for the trans community in response to Rowling’s comments. In the British press particularly, he says, “There’s a version of ‘Are these three kids ungrateful brats?’ that people have always wanted to write, and they were finally able to. So, good for them, I guess.” Never mind that he found the premise simply wrongheaded. “Jo, obviously
Harry Potter would not have happened without her, so nothing in my life would have probably happened the way it is without that person. But that doesn’t mean that you owe the things you truly believe to someone else for your entire life.”
Radcliffe offered these carefully weighted reflections in the early months of this year, before Rowling (who declined to comment for this article) newly personalized their disagreements. In the second week of April,
Rowling wrote a series of posts on X in response to the publication of a
British-government-funded report that notes, as just one of a wide-ranging series of findings, that “for the majority of young people, a medical pathway may not be the best way” to help young people “presenting with gender incongruence or distress”; Rowling touted this as vindication of her views. When one of her supporters
replied on X that they were “just waiting for Dan and Emma to give you a very public apology,” further suggesting that Radcliffe and Watson would be safe in the knowledge that Rowling would forgive them,
she leaped in: “Not safe, I’m afraid,” she wrote, and characterized them as “celebs who cosied up to a movement intent on eroding women’s hard-won rights.” In response, Radcliffe told me: “I will continue to support the rights of all LGBTQ people, and have no further comment than that.”