JuristaFeminista

Publicado en español en La Voz del Sur, 16/09/2025

It is a universal constant that every time women demand advances in rights or rebel against setbacks, a severe persecution and punishment operation against feminists is activated among other reprisals, with dissuasive purposes. In addition to the usual physical and verbal violence and threats, currently this has escalated further, equating feminists with Nazis and accusing us of hate crimes for the mere fact of defending our rights, evidencing an Orwellian inversion of democratic values.

J.K. Rowling: When Threats Are Disguised as Activism

Among all Western women suffering harassment and violence in all its forms for defending women’s rights, J.K. Rowling stands out particularly, as she is a woman who is world-famous for creating the Harry Potter universe and whose saga’s success has made her a multimillionaire woman who, nevertheless, is not invulnerable to the gratuitous attacks she must unjustly face, which occasionally include death threats, recently reiterated.

The assassination of Charlie Kirk, the ultra-conservative activist close to Trump, has unleashed a dangerous spiral of rhetorical violence on social media. Among the most alarming and unusual reactions are the threats directed toward British writer J.K. Rowling, who has become the target of a new wave of hostility for her unwavering defense of sex-based women’s rights and freedom of expression. Although the writer has no connection to Kirk and condemned political violence while defending basic democratic principles, she has not been able to prevent this latest wave of digital hatred from reaching her once again.

Defending Women’s Rights Is Not Hatred

Defending one’s own rights is a legitimate act and a binding obligation, which makes it inconceivable that women who defend women’s and girls’ rights could be accused of hatred. In this regard, it is necessary to clarify a point that is systematically distorted in public debate: J.K. Rowling has firmly and substantively defended the sex-based rights of women and girls, in accordance with the regulations that protect us, fulfilling the duty that all women have to preserve them; but she has not attacked trans people nor has she promoted hatred toward any group.

Her public statements have always been respectful and legitimate, exercising her freedom of expression and focused on three fundamental pillars on which women’s and minors’ rights are based: the right to biological definition of sex, a position recently backed by the British Supreme Court; the preservation of safe spaces for women and girls; and the protection of minors against irreversible medical and surgical treatments performed on girls, boys, and adolescents who self-identify as trans through self-diagnosis.

Rowling’s position on these issues is founded on science and the norms that protect women and minors and is shared by multiple professionals in Law and relevant sciences and disciplines, both in the United Kingdom and in much of the world. And, most importantly, none of her positions constitutes «hate speech» in any way. It is simply feminism: defense of women’s and girls’ rights and freedoms.

Silenced Feminism: When the Strategy Is Intimidation

What we are witnessing against J.K. Rowling, and all women critical of gender identity, is a systematic strategy to silence feminist voices that do not align with the queer dogma narrative. Women who express concerns about the emptying of sex-based rights face: coordinated discrediting campaigns, accusing them of «transphobia» or «intolerance,» and even «Nazism»; threats and physical and verbal violence; professional cancellation, with loss of jobs, contracts, and academic opportunities; digital harassment, which sometimes extends to threats against their families, among others. This misogynistic intimidation tactic is not only morally reprehensible but constitutes a flagrant violation of fundamental rights to freedom of expression and women’s political participation, violating the most basic constitutional and international laws and norms on which democracy is founded.

If There Is Violence, Legitimacy Is Lost

Verbal and physical aggressions, death threats, incitement to dismissals, cancellation, and systematic violence and harassment against feminists are not conducts included in freedom of expression and are not protected by any constitutional safeguard. In the United Kingdom, where Rowling resides, this type of conduct is criminalized in various laws that should protect the writer and that impose a legal duty on British authorities to investigate and prosecute these threats, under penalty of incurring a serious omission of the duty to comply with and enforce the laws that protect women.

For their part, social media has become instruments used to exponentially amplify the capacity to coordinate harassment, threat, and cancellation campaigns. Social media has the legal and ethical responsibility to remove content that constitutes threats or violence, as well as suspend accounts that participate in coordinated harassment campaigns, implement algorithms that do not amplify violent content, cooperate with authorities in investigations, and act in compliance with the law to avoid becoming complicit with those who are violent against women, as dictated by British laws: Communications Act 2003, Protection from Harassment Act 1997 and, among others, the Public Order Act 1986, against incitement to violence.

Reasons to Love Joanne Rowling

Joanne Rowling is not only one of the most influential and successful writers, with more than 600 million copies sold worldwide (third of all time) and the architect of millions of girls and boys becoming fond of reading; but she is also a fierce defender of women’s and girls’ rights and a true patron of feminism. As a survivor of male violence, Rowling has used part of her personal fortune to finance causes that save lives. In 2021, she secretly donated hundreds of thousands of pounds to evacuate more than 100 Afghan female lawyers and their families (508 people in total) threatened by the Taliban regime. Through her Volant (2000) foundation, she provides care for women and minors at risk; and through her Beira’s Place (2022) foundation, she offers shelter for victims of sexual violence.

Similarly, she has allocated significant funds to women’s legal defense. In 2024, she donated £70,000 to For Women Scotland, contributing to the cause that ended in victory at the UK Supreme Court, whereby it was reaffirmed that the definition of sex under the Equality Act 2010 is linked to biology. In 2025, she launched the JK. Rowling Women’s Fund with £1.2 billion to finance litigation defending women’s rights.

A Heroine of Our Time

In a free and democratic society, women should be able to express ourselves without fear of reprisals, violence, persecution, and sanctions. Rowling’s case reveals an unacceptable paradox: in the name of «inclusion,» the exclusion, attacks, and systematic silencing of women who defend our own rights is being allowed.

Through her fight for our cause, J.K. Rowling has involuntarily become a symbol of resistance against ideological totalitarianism and institutional and online misogyny. The threats against her are not only attacks against one woman; they are attacks against the very right of all women to participate in public debate about our own rights and to exercise the right and duty to preserve them. For this reason, it is just to stand on the side of J.K. Rowling, one of the greatest defenders of the fundamental democratic principles of the West, of which feminism forms part, the movement for women’s emancipation that strives for the recognition of the equal dignity and humanity of women and men.

J.K. Rowling with several feminist women sharing lunch, April 2022. Taken by «The Proud Legacy of JK Rowling». The photo was taken in «The Proud Legacy of JK Rowling» from the blog of Julie Bindel.

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