JK Rowling has hit back at Last Week Tonight host John Oliver after he dedicated the majority of his show this weekend to defending trans athletes.
The pair first clashed last November, after Oliver said on his show that there are “vanishingly few trans girls” competing in school sports and there is “no evidence” trans athletes “pose any threat to safety or fairness.”
At the time, Rowling responded with a lengthy post on X/Twitter that referred to Oliver as “an undoubtedly intelligent person” who “spouts absolute bulls*** to support something he wants to be true, but isn’t.”
In a new episode of Last Week Tonight broadcast on Sunday, Oliver returned to the topic to examine why MAGA supporters have an “obsession” with banning transgender competitors in school sports.
During the segment he jokingly mentioned Rowling’s response to his prior reporting, saying: “It feels a bit weird to catch that much heat from the creator of Harry Potter, especially when I clearly look like what would have happened to him if they left him in that cupboard for the rest of his life.”
Oliver went on to maintain that he “stands by” everything he said last year, and argued that “you can basically say anything you want about trans people, as long as you tag on ‘in sports’ after it.”
Responding to this latest episode earlier today, Rowling tweeted: “I understand why men like Oliver, who’ve consistently mocked anti-science people on the right, sold out initially. They didn’t want to blow up their careers. Taking fashionable anti-women’s rights positions was the cost of doing business.
“But it’s time to read the f***ing room.”
Rowling has long had outspoken views on gender issues that have seen her called transphobic by activists, which she has denied. Last year, the bestselling author revealed that her loved ones had pleaded with her to keep her polarising views on transgender women to herself.
In a book of essays, The Women Who Wouldn’t Say Wheesht, Rowling wrote that she initially kept her thoughts on the matter to herself “because people around me, including some I love, were begging me not to speak.”
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“So I watched from the sidelines as women with everything to lose rallied, in Scotland and across the UK, to defend their rights. My guilt that I wasn’t standing with them was with me daily, like a chronic pain.”
Her name has become so associated with the cause that last week, a university professor had to tell an employment tribunal that sticks saying “I Love JK Rowling” were not a “dog whistle” for transphobia.
