‘This is just mediocre drivel’: JK Rowling is now bullying random non-binary strangers online

One-time beloved author JK Rowling, now the de facto leader of the TERF movement in Britain, clearly has nothing to do with her time anymore.

She’s a billionaire, so she could conceivably do anything she wanted. Go relax on a private island! Go scuba-diving on a sunny beach! Buy another castle, one that doesn’t have mold in it this time! But no. Rowling’s favorite hobby is to find, screenshot and pick on complete strangers who are trans or non-binary.

Take what happened yesterday, Oct. 21. Rowling posted a screenshot of a post saying, “Four years ago today, I chose my name. Four years ago today, I finally realized who I was. Four years ago today, I came out as non-binary. Happy anniversary to me!” Accompanying the post were heart emojis in the color of the non-binary flag.

A non-binary person expressing joy? Not on Rowling’s watch. She screenshotted the post, thankfully cropping out the name of the person who posted it, and posted it to her much-followed X account with a snarky comment. “Little known fact: in ancient times non-binary people chose their names by selecting the herb or periodic table element with the exact same number of letters as their Enneagram type. Should I decide to abandon the binary, I will go by Thyme or Boron,” she wrote. Maybe she should pick something else ending in -oron.

So of course, now a bunch of Rowling’s most unhinged followers are making fun of this unnamed person, who has done absolutely nothing wrong other than, you know, exist in public. The original tweet has been made private, and hopefully they can weather the storm. But they shouldn’t have to! It’s completely infuriating that Rowling can just harass people for no reason and get away with it.

This isn’t the first time Rowling has done this, either. Back in May she came into the orbit of a trans football manager named Lucy Clark — a woman who Rowling appears to never have met or have any connection with whatsoever — and she felt the need to bully her in reply to a post about her successes, saying sarcastically, “When I was young all the football managers were straight, white, middle-aged blokes, so it’s fantastic to see how much things have changed.” When people objected, she claimed, “Crossdressing straight men are currently one of the most pandered-to demographics in existence, and women are under no obligation to applaud the people caricaturing us.” In real life, of course — you know, that place Rowling doesn’t go to anymore — trans women and especially Black trans women are disproportionately victimized.

And we can’t talk about Rowling’s bullying without bringing up the case of Imane Khelif. When Khelif competed in the 2024 Olympics, lies spread that she was “really a man.” In truth, Khelif had failed one, very murky, Russian-set gender test and no other. She was cleared to participate in the Olympics and is not transgender, intersex or non-binary — but Rowling seemed furious at her very existence. She accused Khelif of cheating and claimed she was “enjoying the distress of a woman he’s just punched in the head,” using male pronouns to refer to her. Khelif has now launched a lawsuit against Rowling and the other people who harassed her. It’s clear to most people now that Rowling doesn’t know what a woman is. She certainly doesn’t know what non-binary is. But most crucially of all she doesn’t know what common decency is, either.