‘She’s a crusty old TERF’: J.K. Rowling takes aim at John Oliver in unhinged transphobic rant

As if 2024 couldn’t get any weirder, disgraced Harry Potter scribe J.K. Rowling is attacking John Oliver for standing up for trans athletes—even though he literally never mentioned her. Not even once!

You know you’re in for a bad time when you see J.K. Rowling’s name in the headlines these days, and unsurprisingly, this latest incident is no exception. Rowling, who’s been constantly under fire since 2018 for making defamatory remarks about the transgender community, has only dialed her ignorance up to 11, crowning herself the unofficial spokeswoman of TERFs (trans-exclusionary radical feminists) worldwide. And boy oh boy, has she taken issue with comedian John Oliver’s stance on trans athletes.

J.K. Rowling completely misses the mark in her latest anti-trans tangent

For context, the latest episode of Last Week Tonight With John Oliver saw the late night host analyzing why Vice President Kamala Harris’ platform failed to attract more progressive voters. During his monologue, Oliver expressed his disappointment with the Harris campaign’s silence on transgender rights—specifically in the very hot debate arena that is athletics.

“There are vanishingly few trans girls competing in high schools anywhere,” Oliver said during the segment. “Even if there were more, trans kids—like all kids—vary in athletic ability and there is no evidence they pose any threat to safety or fairness.” He concluded: “Finally, if you genuinely want to address the biggest concern for most girls who play high school sports, you’d be less worried about this and more about the creepy assistant volleyball coach who keeps liking their posts on f—ing Instagram.”

Of course, Oliver’s comments immediately tingled Rowling’s unhinged Spidey senses, leading her to pen a long-winded X (a.k.a. Twitter) post full of her usual song-and-dance of hate and bigotry. In her rant, Rowling dubbed Oliver an “Undoubtedly intelligent person” who “Spouts absolute bulls—t,” following it up with, “If you’ve just told girls they don’t deserve fair sport, maybe rethink using all too real and common sexual predation against young women as a punchline for your ‘edgy’ closing joke.”

Whether or not Oliver championing trans athletes is a test of his “progressive credentials,” is Rowling not doing…essentially the same thing? By trying to place herself above the masses with the same kind of “free-thinker” rhetoric spewed by Elon Musk, Rowling continues to pander to her alt-right supporters, spreading misinformation about “fair sport” and boosting conspiracy theories about the “woke” media.

It’s an exhausted argument, especially for the trans folks out there whose very identity gets people raged up for absolutely no reason. Understandably, the internet is calling Rowling out on the latest in her anti-trans crusade, with one user even flat-out dubbing her a “Crusty old TERF.”

The “culture war” continues to give me a headache

You don’t need me to tell you that statistics, fact-checking, and basic human empathy have all gone to the wayside. With Donald Trump set to return to the White House for a second term, I fear anti-trans sentiments like these are going to become more and more commonplace—I mean, a quick scroll through X will prove that we’re already pretty much there.

Rowling deciding to attack Oliver over an issue that doesn’t particularly pertain to her isn’t even surprising at this point after she caused an uproar about Imane Khelif, an Algerian boxer who competed in the 2024 Paris Olympics. Khelif was harassed online after Rowling, Musk, and other prolific commentators in online fringe communities questioned her gender even though she was born a female. Justice might be served, however, as Rowling and Musk were both named in a cyberbullying lawsuit filed by Khelif back in August. Even then, that still wasn’t enough to shut Rowling up.

At this point, I genuinely think that Rowling has a terminal case of victim’s disease, as it would’ve been so, so easy to just…not say anything about Oliver’s monologue? Blaming “woke” Hollywood elites and trying to stitch together some grand conspiracy about how trans athletes are ruining women’s sports is just peddling hatred and bullying, and it has no place coming from an author whose books were supposed to be about combatting bigotry. The call is coming from inside the house, truly.