(The Lion) — Among the notable critics of transgender ideology, few are more famous than J.K. Rowling of Harry Potter fame.

The best-selling author traded fan adoration for a relentless campaign of harassment to say what she believed was obvious: men are not women.

“If sex isn’t real, there’s no same-sex attraction. If sex isn’t real, the lived reality of women globally is erased,” she wrote in a post on X that went viral six years ago. “I know and love trans people, but erasing the concept of sex removes the ability of many to meaningfully discuss their lives. It isn’t hate to speak the truth.”

Since then, Rowling has faced uncountable “threats of murder, rape and violence” against herself and her family. Despite these attacks, she has continued to “speak the truth” in an effort to defend women, whose rights, she argues, have been utterly dismissed.

“I grew up in an era when mainstream women’s magazines told girls they needed to be thinner and prettier. Now mainstream women’s magazines tell girls that men are better women than they are,” she wrote in a post on X, responding to Glamour magazine’s recognition of biological men as “women of the year.”

Blunt but factual

Some have called Rowling’s words blunt, which she describes as “using accurate, factual language to describe what [is] going on.” She presents her arguments in the traditional “either or” style, rejecting culture’s grey mindset that denies facts in the name of inclusion.

“Either a man can be a woman, or he can’t,” she wrote in December. “Either women deserve rights, or they don’t. Either there’s a provable medical benefit to transitioning children, or there isn’t.”

As a word-wizard, Rowling returns to the basics, understanding that all arguments begin with definitions and statements.

“A woman is someone who doesn’t need to put in any work to become a woman, because she’s already a woman,” she posted in October.

Transgender movement has abandoned women

Rowling argues the transgender movement has forsaken women, leaving them vulnerable to sexual abuse, which she herself experienced. Opening women’s bathrooms to public access for “any man who believes or feels he’s a woman” immediately endangers women, she says, countering the common claim that women are unbothered by such policies.

“If you were actually a girl or a woman, you’d know exactly why nobody’s challenged you in the bathroom,” she wrote in response to a trans identifying, biological male claiming no one has confronted him in public women’s restrooms.

Women manage discomfort to prioritize safety, Rowling says. In Rowling’s country, 1 in 3 U.K. sports centers refuse to offer sex-specific bathrooms, and police data reveals the majority of sexual assault crimes occur in these mixed-sex restrooms, as previously reported.

“Bear with me here, but it’s almost as though girls and women who want female-only spaces aren’t scaremongering, hysterical, lying bigots after all,” Rowling said sarcastically in a December post.

Innocent victims include children

But women are not the only victims of the trans movement. In fact, while Rowling is often hailed as a feminist fighting transgenderism, she defends children as much or more.

Recently, Rowling signed a petition calling for the end of a U.K. trial that would give children puberty blockers for clinical research.

“I’ve signed. This is an unethical experiment on children who can’t give meaningful consent,” Rowling posted on X in early January.

She has also argued – with supporting research – that children who struggle with gender dysphoria often overcome this confusion and doubt through the natural process of puberty.

“The vast majority of children grow out of gender dysphoria if allowed to go through puberty,” she posted, in a dispute with a doctor and a pro-trans activist. “The single best cure is letting nature take its course.”

A shift toward common sense

After more than a decade of experimental mutilation, the victims, whose natural, biological processes were hijacked and altered in the name of expression, are crying out. At the beginning of February, Fox Varian, a 22-year-old detransitioner who suffered a double mastectomy in a transition surgery, won the first lawsuit against doctors for medical malpractice.

Rowling celebrated the victory in a lengthy post on X.

“This will go down in history as one of the worst medical scandals of all time. Adults inside and outside the medical profession sold troubled young people like Varian the idea that all of their complex trauma would be resolved by removing healthy body parts,” she wrote.

“As more and more detransitioners arrive in court, the public will learn the full extent of the harm done to kids in the name of an ideology. Clinicians performing these ‘treatments’ will go down in history as barbarous activists who betrayed a sacred oath: to do no harm.”

But she also warned that trans activists won’t fall without a fight.

“As the floodgates open, and more and more detransitioners sue the clinicians who subjected them to an unregulated medical experiment, gender identity activists will almost certainly continue to ignore any evidence that fails to support their preferred narrative,” she said.

“They’ll keep insisting that hardly any transitioned people regret their irreversible procedures, that gender clinicians know exactly what they’re doing, that surgeries, cross-sex hormones and puberty blockers are of proven benefit and that minors who’re denied these treatments will kill themselves. All of this is a lie.”

Rowling recognizes the long path ahead, saying that all those who propagated such an agenda – the doctors, activists, politicians and celebrities – must be held responsible. She stated as much more than a year ago, anticipating this slow admittance of reality.

“A full reckoning on the effects of gender ideology on individuals, society and politics is still a long way off, but I know this: the receipts will make very ugly reading when that time comes, and there are far too many of them to sweep politely under the carpet,” she said.

While national medical institutions are finally admitting the truth, they are only doing so to cover their own reprehensible hides. For years, Rowling, and numerous others with her, have sacrificed societal standing, personal privacy and safety to proclaim common sense. The stakes are lower now, but the truth has always been consistent.