JK Rowling has strongly criticized actress Emma Watson after the former Harry Potter star suggested she wanted to reconcile with the author despite years of criticizing her over her views on transgender issues.
Watson, who appeared on a podcast last week, said she still valued Rowling even after her outspoken stance on protecting women’s spaces from biological men who identify as women. She had previously condemned Rowling following her 2020 essay on transgenderism.
Rowling responded on X, accusing Watson of being “ignorant of how ignorant she is.” The author wrote, “Like other people who’ve never experienced adult life uncushioned by wealth and fame, Emma has so little experience of real life she’s ignorant of how ignorant she is.”
“I wasn’t a multimillionaire at fourteen,” Rowling continued. “I lived in poverty while writing the book that made Emma famous. I therefore understand from my own life experience what the trashing of women’s rights in which Emma has so enthusiastically participated means to women and girls without her privileges.”
“The greatest irony here is that, had Emma not decided in her most recent interview to declare that she loves and treasures me — a change of tack I suspect she’s adopted because she’s noticed full-throated condemnation of me is no longer quite as fashionable as it was — I might never have been this honest,” she wrote.
Rowling went on to point out that it is inappropriate for Watson to side with an activist moment that called for her assassination, only to then try to maintain a friendship.
“Emma is rightly free to disagree with me and indeed to discuss her feelings about me in public — but I have the same right, and I’ve finally decided to exercise it.”
