Eddie Izzard Defends J.K. Rowling

Here’s what apparently went down: King retweeted a message from Rowling’s account. “Andrea Dworkin wrote: ‘Men often react to women’s words—speaking and writing—as if they were acts of violence; sometimes men react to women’s words with violence,’” Rowling tweeted on June 28, 2020. “It isn’t hateful for women [to] speak about their own experiences, nor do they deserve shaming for doing so.”

In response, Rowling sent a now deleted tweet praising the author. “I’ve always revered @StephenKing, but today my love reached – maybe not Annie Wilkes levels – but new heights,” she reportedly tweeted, according to Us Weekly. “It’s so much easier for men to ignore women’s concerns, or to belittle them, but I won’t ever forget the men who stood up when they didn’t need to. Thank you, Stephen.”

However, when a fan asked King to respond to Rowling’s transphobic statements, the author replied that, “Trans women are women.” 

According to fans on Twitter as well as to Us Weekly, Rowling deleted her tweet about King shortly after. 

What about the rant in July 2020? 

On July 5, 2020 Rowling went on another social media rant after a Twitter user called her out for liking a tweet that compared hormone therapy to antidepressants. 

“I’ve ignored fake tweets attributed to me and RTed widely. I’ve ignored porn tweeted at children on a thread about their art. I’ve ignored death and rape threats. I’m not going to ignore this,” Rowling wrote. “When you lie about what I believe about mental health medication and when you misrepresent the views of a trans woman for whom I feel nothing but admiration and solidarity, you cross a line.”

“Many health professionals are concerned that young people struggling with their mental health are being shunted towards hormones and surgery when this may not be in their best interests,” she continued. “Many, myself included, believe we are watching a new kind of conversion therapy for young gay people, who are being set on a lifelong path of medicalisation that may result in the loss of their fertility and/or full sexual function.”

She once again seemingly called into question the use of hormones. “The long-term health risks of cross-sex hormones have been now been tracked over a lengthy period,” she tweeted. “These side-effects are often minimised or denied by trans activists…None of that may trouble you or disturb your belief in your own righteousness. But if so, I can’t pretend I care much about your bad opinion of me.”

Her next book isn’t helping:

On September 14, 2020, her latest book, Trouble Blood, sparked another round of outrage after an early review began making the rounds. The book reportedly follows a detective on the hunt for a cis male serial killer who dresses as a woman in order to hunt and murder cis women. The Telegraph‘s review describes it as a “book whose moral seems to be: never trust a man in a dress,” per Pink News.