Writes Clare Foges, 45
What’s that filling the summer air? It must be steam coming off the fingers of the woke mob as they furiously jab away at social media on their smartphones, venting at the latest person to have caused them offence.
Yes, those who constantly demand tolerance are struggling to show any yet again.
Their current target: none other than HM Queen Camilla, who has been called ‘deplorable’, ‘tone deaf’ and other words best not printed. Her monstrous crime was to appear in a photo with Harry Potter author JK Rowling.
It’s a picture that anyone over the age of 35 would hardly bat an eyelid at; our Queen standing next to Rowling in a blue sitting room at the Palace of Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh, having met to discuss ‘young children’s access to books’. One imagines scones, Earl Grey, polite reminiscing on the glories of AA Milne…
To any sane person this meeting between the UK’s bestselling living author and the Queen is a great thing: anything we can do to get young people off their phones and into books, eh?
But to Gen Z or Alpha – for whom even an Enid Blyton book would require extensive trigger warnings – it was an outrage.
This picture of Queen Camilla with JK Rowling is one that anyone over the age of 35 would hardly bat an eyelid at, says Clare Foges, but for the younger generation it was an outrage…
It is hard to overstate the venom many younger people reserve for Rowling, on account of her views on how women’s rights clash with the desires of trans activists.
For years she has stated what to the majority of British people is the bleeding obvious. No, we cannot allow biologically intact males into women’s changing rooms, women’s refuges and women’s sports. No, we must not be bullied into denying biological truth. No, we must not be cowed by those who dress up our objections as prejudice and discrimination.
Plenty in powerful positions have found the subject far too difficult to speak plainly on –waffling about ‘people who menstruate’ and women having penises. But Rowling has bravely stated the truth. Make- believe is for books, after all, not human biology.
Yet a very noisy minority cannot bear to see her speak out –including those whose fame and fortune only happened because of Rowling’s brilliance.
Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe has called her views ‘very sad’, while Emma Watson – who played Hermione Granger – has repeatedly criticised Rowling.
At the 2022 British Academy Film Awards, Watson declared on stage, ‘I’m here for all of the witches’, widely interpreted as not only a show of solidarity with the trans community but a jab at JK.
So vitriolic is the loathing of Rowling that merely appearing in a picture with her, even to promote the joy of reading, is perceived by many as a political act – which, of course, any member of the Royal Family is advised against.
Rowling’s battle began in 2019 when she tweeted her support for Maya Forstater, the tax specialist who was fired from the think-tank where she worked for what were deemed ‘transphobic’ tweets about proposed gender recognition laws. This triggered an avalanche of hatred, which hasn’t stopped.
She has since been subject to threats of torture, rape and death and has written of being ‘constantly worried for [her] family’s safety’. Yet she has continued to fight the good fight against all those who want to refute biological fact.
On one social media post captioned, ‘Repeat after us: Trans women are women’, Rowling replied ‘No’ and said she would ‘happily do two years [behind bars] if the alternative is compelled speech and forced denial of the reality and importance of sex’.
Again and again she has made the case that being accommodating and kind to trans women cannot slide into a future of unisex prisons, refuges, changing rooms and so on.
Why? Because ‘when you throw open the doors of bathrooms and changing rooms to any man who believes or feels he’s a woman… then you open the door to any and all men who wish to come inside.’
The fierceness of Rowling’s fight is rooted in her own story. As the survivor of domestic abuse and sexual assault, her interest in this is ‘intensely personal’. She knows what it is to feel terror at the hands of a man and to bear the scars.
‘The choice of Queen Camilla to host Rowling was a brave and brilliant one’, says Clare. ‘When it comes to women’s safety issues, the Queen is – like Rowling – speaking from experience’
That she has chosen to use her name to prevent another woman or girl suffering the same is hugely admirable. For lesser souls the path of least resistance – and enjoying that £975 million fortune in peace – would have been more appealing.
It is true that Rowling has sometimes seemed to enjoy provoking the trans mob. Last year, after the UK Supreme Court ruled that the legal definition of a woman is based on biological sex, she posed on a yacht with cocktail in one hand and cigar in the other, captioning it with the A-team catchphrase: ‘I love it when a plan comes together.’
It is posts like this that have made her public enemy No1 – queen of the TERFs (trans-exclusionary radical feminists) – for trans activists. But it isn’t Rowling who turned this into an unpleasant battle. It isn’t she who fires off death threats and other repugnant forms of abuse.
Rowling has always made clear that she means no ill will. In one essay, she wrote: ‘I want trans women to be safe. At the same time, I do not want to make natal girls and women less safe.’
Given all this, the decision of Queen Camilla to host Rowling was a brave and brilliant one.
She will have been well aware that this would cause a furore online – to press ahead suggests, to my eye, not only respect for JK as an author but solidarity with her as a campaigner. That might be because when it comes to women’s safety issues, the Queen is – like Rowling – speaking from experience.
Last year she spoke for the first time about a sex assault she suffered on a train as a teenager: ‘I was reading my book, and you know, this boy, man, attacked me, and I did fight back…’ The Queen reflected that the anger and fury around the assault ‘sort of lurked for many years’.
In this picture are two women who know how high the stakes are; who have experienced the horror of male-on-female assault and are – loudly and quietly, respectively – doing their best to ensure that other women don’t suffer a similar fate.
They say a picture speaks a thousand words and this one shouts, rather refreshingly, that The Queen will stand up for what she believes in, and stand by those she backs – whatever flak she gets.
Compare and contrast this attitude to our knee-bending, equivocating politicians. Can you imagine Andy Burnham, for instance, posing with JK Rowling? I think we know the answer.
So while the haters online are always going to hate, all I see here is two brilliant women who refuse to kowtow to the mob.
Now, your Majesty, if you could just have a word at the Palace about a Damehood for JK…
A PR faux pas of epic proportions
Writes Rosie Beveridge, 26
When I was nine, I sent my first (and last) celebrity fan mail. Six months later – practically a millennium for someone under ten – a reply came in the post.
It was a thick, heavy envelope holding a letter typed on paper that felt expensive. On the back was a matte-black sticker that looked like an ink blot which – when warmed by the heat of your hand – revealed a secret message.
It was a real life sliver of magic and the moment that I really fell in love with JK Rowling.
And I, of course, was far from the only one. Through Harry Potter, she built a fantastical world where odd-one-out children (and adults) felt like they could escape from the pressures of home or school, where misfits in the world could feel at home.
So it shocked, and arguably betrayed, an entire generation of fans – those who are now in our 20s – when in March 2018, Rowling liked a tweet referring to trans women as ‘men in dresses’.
My generation take as given that anyone who transitions from a man to a woman is a woman – a trans woman is a woman – that is not up for debate. Gender is regarded as a purely social construct. Saying otherwise is deemed offensive.
This is how Rowling began her eight-year reputational spiral, during which she has spearheaded an attitude towards trans people, which is disparaging on a good day and on a bad day, well…
Although Harry Potter made Rowling beloved by many (pictured with the cast), the author began a reputational spiral after liking a tweet which called trans women ‘men in dresses’
‘It makes me sad that someone who was capable of writing a seven-book ode to love can be quite so lacking in compassion’, Rosie Beveridge says of Rowling
Although she may remain a national treasure in the eyes of our grandparents, and in many cases parents, among my own predominantly Left-leaning age group, the consistent and aggressive airing of her views has made Rowling public enemy No 1.
Personally, I feel a bit sorry for her. She just seems so angry, so full of hate towards a group of people who are not out to hurt anyone.
It makes me sad that someone who was capable of writing what is a seven-book ode to love – the only thing in her magical Potter world that can stop a killing curse – can be quite so lacking in compassion.
Although Rowling seems to genuinely believe she is supporting women, it surprises me that she doesn’t stop to consider how her campaign attacks an already persecuted minority’s existence. A group of people who have struggled to find and fight for who they are and have rarely made the decision to transition lightly.
But my feelings towards Rowling are nothing compared to how others in Gen Z (those aged between 14 and 29) view her.
One friend told me: ‘She is a vitriolic billionaire who wrote some all right books and has since undertaken a gross misuse of concepts such as women’s safety to get her own agenda across.
‘I have friends who are trans, and she plays into this perception that trans people are creepy opportunists, mentally ill, or that something is wrong with them which is simply not the truth.
‘Worst of all, she seems to revel in Queer pain, which is a real look, isn’t it.’
They were referring to the picture Rowling posted on X on April 17, 2025 – the day after the UK Supreme Court ruled that the legal definition of a woman is based on biological sex – of herself smoking a cigar, drinking a glass of whisky, on her £113 million superyacht in the Bahamas with the caption: ‘I love it when a plan comes together.’
The post was smug at best, given the £70,000 she had donated to the campaign and the years of speaking out. So my eyebrows shot skywards on opening the paper yesterday morning when I saw who was standing shoulder-to-shoulder with JK Rowling… none other than Queen Camilla.
Given that the photo was posted to the monarchy’s official social media on June 30, the last day of Pride month, it seemed like a PR faux pas of epic proportions.
Surely advisers recognise the controversy that surrounds JK Rowling. Why not hold the post until July 1? What’s 24 hours in the name of tactfulness?
The Royals are meant to be above politics, why on earth would the Queen engage with anyone quite so controversial at a time earmarked to celebrate love?
Bearing in mind support for the monarchy among the younger generations is at an all-time low – 33 per cent of those between 18-34 compared to 74 per cent in 2013 – surely this ‘rage-bating’ stunt is seriously ill-advised.
