JK Rowling Celebrates Puberty Blocker Ban

JK Rowling celebrated England’s ban on puberty blockers for minors with a series of social media posts, reigniting the backlash against the Harry Potter author—who is known for her anti-transgender views.

The National Health Service (NHS) in England announced it would stop offering medication to postpone puberty to children with gender dysphoria on Tuesday. In a policy update posted on its website, the NHS stated: “There is not enough evidence” to support its clinical use. However, it will continue to provide the medication to non-trans children and adults.

Rowling posted an article on the topic to X, formerly Twitter, along with a 2019 quote from Professor Carl Heneghan, director of the Centre of Evidence-Based Medicine in Oxford, England.

“Given paucity of evidence, the off-label use of drugs […] in gender dysphoria treatment largely means an unregulated live experiment on children,” the caption read, with Rowling’s post sparking uproar.

Newsweek reached out to Rowling for comment via email.

This isn’t the first time the Scottish writer has faced backlash for her comments about transgender people, with the Harry Potter franchise previously facing boycott calls over her views.

Rowling also reshared an X post by India Willoughby, England’s first transgender news reader.

“My advice to families of trans kids is to seek out private sources of puberty blockers – which are totally harmless, and approved by countless legit health bodies,” Willoughby said. “If safe for cis kids, they’re safe for trans kids.”

Alongside a screenshot of the post, Rowling wrote: “Willoughby is propagating dangerous lies. Women who were put on Lupron [a type of hormone-suppressing medication] to delay puberty have suffered long-term harm.”

She also began responding to critics of her posts by screenshotting the comments and publicly sharing the images.

“Your lack of empathy is showing, bigot,” one poster said.

“Transphobe, stop spreading hate. You are untalented, nobody reads your books, and you were lucky to have a career. Shame on you,” wrote another.

However, the public outcry didn’t seem to affect Rowling.

“The evidence has been out there for years, for all who were prepared to open their eyes,” the 58-year-old said, reposting claims that puberty blockers “lock mainly gay/autistic youth into a treatment pathway that renders them infertile, and has adverse effects on IQ and bone density.”

Users also accused Rowling of “Holocaust denial,” after she reposted an article by online magazine Unherd claiming the “NHS puberty blocker ruling will save lives.”

“Experiments have been conducted on the bodies of children due to the political cowardice of adults,” Rowling captioned the post, quoting the article.

This led to a debate about medical consent, with Rowling appearing to compare treating gender dysphoria in minors to experiments conducted by the Nazis during World War II.

“Medics acknowledged children weren’t capable of giving informed consent but kept on operating and prescribing. Prison terms for doctors experimenting on troubled minors are more than fine with me,” she wrote, referencing the recent WPATH (World Professional Association for Transgender Health) leak.

The organization claims to provide “professional consenus” on the treatment of gender dysphoria, but came under fire on Thursday due to some of its member’s practices.

In response, one person asked Rowling: “The Nazis burnt books on trans healthcare and research, why are you so desperate to uphold their ideology around gender?”

“How did you type this out and press send without thinking,” the author replied, suggesting the commenter check their sources.

However, the Nazis did destroy books and research on transgender health care, according to Scientific American, effectively destroying Berlin’s revolutionary Institute for Sexual Research in 1933.

Rowling first caused controversy with her views on transgender people in 2018, when she “accidentally” liked a tweet that called transwomen “men in dresses.”

In 2019, Rowling received further backlash for supporting Maya Forstater, a British researcher who was fired after making anti-trans statements.

“Dress however you please. Call yourself whatever you like. Sleep with any consenting adult who’ll have you. Live your best life in peace and security. But force women out of their jobs for stating that sex is real?” Rowling said on social media at the time.

After the author shared more posts hitting out at transgender people, Harry Potter actors Daniel Radcliffe, Bonnie Wright and Emma Watson—who played Harry, Ginny and Ginny in the movies—denounced Rowling, with the writer not included in the 2022 Harry Potter Reunion Special.

Although her remarks have slashed her profits from the franchise, Rowling remains popular among Millennials who grew up with her books. However, several fan sites have distanced themselves from the creator, as have many transgender fans and allies.

In the podcast The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling, the writer told host Megan Phelps-Roper she is not concerned about how the furor has affected her reputation.

“I do not walk around my house thinking about my legacy,” Rowling said. “Well, what will my legacy be?’ Whatever, I’ll be dead.”