Do we like J.K. Rowling?
Our score: 2 out of 10. A long run of her own words and funding aimed at trans people's legal status, with a genuine record of charity to set against it.
Rowling is the woman who wrote Harry Potter and became one of the most successful authors alive. Her fortune bankrolled a neurology clinic at the University of Edinburgh named after her mother, so the money has always had a purpose beyond the mansion. I couldn't open a full profile of her early years in this run, so the rags-to-riches story is left to the other biographies.
The row people mean is about trans people. In April 2025 the UK Supreme Court case brought by For Women Scotland was decided, and Rowling toasted it on X with a post that called the day “TERF VE Day”. She also confirmed she had given money to the group behind the case, and a £70,000 donation from a user named “JK” had been reported on its crowdfunder in 2024.
That wasn't a one-off. In May 2025 she said she would give financial backing to any woman who wanted to sue over being locked up with a man in prison, and wrote that saying these things is “not hate, but truth”. She has said biological sex is “real” and “immutable”. She denies being transphobic, and says she respects every trans person's right to live as they choose, but critics say her campaigning shrinks that right in law.
In 2022 she opened Beira's Place, an Edinburgh support centre for survivors of sexual violence that serves and employs only women. Its website says it refers trans women and men elsewhere. Rape Crisis Scotland said trans and non-binary people need access to rape crisis support and noted its services had supported trans women for 15 years without a reported case of misuse. Her supporters see a safe space for women, and her critics see a wall against trans women, so where you land depends on that.
The harm test is about acts and money, not belief, and here the pattern is her own: donations, public cheering of court wins and pledges to fund lawsuits. I found nothing on her working with the kind of studios and personalities that would tip a lean-no by association; she's the headline act herself. The Epstein claim in February 2026 is a different matter, and it didn't hold up: her name turned up in newly released files, and she denied ever being in contact with him.
The recent thing is the red carpet stoush. Protesters lay on the carpet at the Palace Theatre before the gala, and security removed them quickly. The theatre has been a protest site before, with trans people leaving hundreds of chalk messages outside in January. It shows the row has followed her from the internet into the foyers of her own franchise.