The well-known author of the book series Harry Potter has presented the Ripple of Hope honor award by Robert F Kennedy Human Rights (RFKHR) organization. Just a year ago that was in December 2019, Rowling was presented with this prestigious award by Kerry Kennedy. However, recently she was in the news for returning this honorable award.
This sudden decision was taken by Rowling after she faced backlash on her comments regarding transgender. When she first tweeted in the month of June, the phrase in her tweet ‘people who menstruate’ created certain issues. She indeed subtly avoided the term women while referring to the same. In addition to that, she even posted a detailed post explaining her concerns about trans issues had increased after she survived exploitation.
She valued single-sex spaces and explained her views about the same. She went on to say that she had nothing against any trans people. She looked upon them as people of high esteem. However, at the same, she was of the opinion that she should have the individual freedom to state herself as a female and should not be disregarded for the same. We also saw that many popular cast members of the Harry Potter, including Eddie Redmayne, Daniel Radcliffe, and Emma Watson, chose to stay away from all of this controversy.
Why is Kerry Kennedy against JK Rowling’s Tweet?
Kennedy made a declaration saying she utterly regretted after seeing what Rowling had to say and informed her about the same. As per her, she is trying to belittle all the people who recognize themselves as either transgender or even nonbinary people. One is aware of the fact that such trans people already undergo a lot of brutalities, prejudiced attitudes, persecution, prohibition, which leads to an increase in the number of suicide rates, self-harm and are even banned from their own homes. The focus of hate comments seems to be on the black trans people along with trans youth. Kenny’s Organization instantly dismissed her sentence, saying that a person’s gender is determined to the right at the time of their birth.
As per Rowling, there seems to be no factor of disagreement between trans people and the ones standing for the rights of the women. In fact, she highlighted how thousands of women came forward to support her statement. They even wanted a debate about these topics, which are a lot many times not spoken about. In addition to women, clinicians, academics, therapists, teachers, social workers, the staff at the prisons, and even women refugees approached the author. Do you think JK Rowling did the right thing? State your views in the comment section below. We would love to hear it from you!