New York Times staffers, celebs blast op-ed defending JK Rowling

The New York Times published an op-ed on Thursday defending author J.K. Rowling from accusations that the “Harry Potter” author is transphobic — just a day after the newspaper’s staffers and other celebrities criticized its “anti-trans bias.”

Pamela Paul, an op-ed contributor for the Gray Lady, penned a lengthy piece under the headline: “In Defense of J.K. Rowling.”

The op-ed was published a day after GLAAD — the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation — posted an open letter demanding that the Times “improve their coverage of transgender people.”

The letter was signed by several Times staffers as well as high-profile Hollywood celebrities, including Judd Apatow, Gabrielle Union-Wade, Jameela Jamil, Maragaret Cho and Lena Dunham.

Paul on Thursday criticized a “noisy fringe of the internet and a number of powerful transgender rights activists and LGBTQ lobbying groups” of whipping up a “campaign against Rowling” that is “as dangerous as it is absurd.”

She wrote that the accusations of transphobia that have been hurled against the best-selling British author have left Rowling vulnerable to “verbal abuse, doxxing and threats of sexual and other physical violence, including death threats.”

Paul wrote that Rowling’s critics have lashed out at her due to her touting “the right to spaces for biological women only, such as domestic abuse shelters and sex-segregated prisons.”

Rowling has “insisted that when it comes to determining a person’s legal gender status, self-declared gender identity is sufficient,” while “defend[ing]…detransitioners and feminist scholars who have come under attack from trans activists,” Paul wrote.

Paul insisted in her op-ed that “nothing Rowling has said qualifies as transphobic.”

“There is no evidence that she is putting trans people ‘in danger,’ as has been claimed, nor is she denying their right to exist,” Paul wrote of Rowling.

The GLAAD open letter doesn’t mention Rowling by name, though it does denounce Paul as a “noted cisgender heterosexual” who has been granted “space for her unfounded thoughts about how LGBTQ people should describe themselves…”

“For those of us who truly treasured the Times coverage for so many years, it is appalling to see how the news and opinion pages are now full of misguided, inaccurate, and disingenuous ‘both sides’ fearmongering and bad faith ‘just asking questions’ coverage,” the GLAAD letter read.

The group demanded that the Times “immediately” cease “printing biased anti-trans stories.” It also demanded that Times management agree to hold a meeting within the next two months during which the newspaper’s leadership “listen to trans sources, trans people, and organizations working with trans people.”

GLAAD also wants the Times to “hire at least two trans people on the opinion side and at least two trans people on the news side within three months.”

The Times warned staffers about signing the petition in a statement released Thursday.

“We do not welcome, and will not tolerate, participation by Times journalists in protests organized by advocacy groups or attacks on colleagues on social media and other public forums,” the statement said. 

Rowling, who became a billionaire after she wrote the best-selling seven-volume “Harr Potter” series of children’s books that was later adapted to a blockbuster movie franchise, has been a subject of controversy on social media over her stance on transgender women.

In 2020, Rowling penned an essay defending her previous comments wading into the hot-button issue of gender status and transgender people.

“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,” Rowling wrote. 

In June 2020, she criticized a news article that referred to “people who menstruate” instead of “women.”

In subsequent tweets, Rowling held firm on her stance.

“If sex isn’t real, there’s no same-sex attraction,” she tweeted. “If sex isn’t real, the lived reality of women globally is erased. I know and love trans people, but erasing the concept of sex removes the ability of many to meaningfully discuss their lives.”

Rowling added: “It isn’t hate to speak the truth.”

“The idea that women like me, who’ve been empathetic to trans people for decades, feeling kinship because they’re vulnerable in the same way as women — i.e., to male violence — ‘hate’ trans people because they think sex is real and has lived consequence — is a nonsense.”

Rowling was labeled online as a “TERF” — which stands for “trans-exclusionary radical feminist” — or someone who advocates for women’s rights while excluding transgender women.

The fierce backlash to Rowling’s comments prompted “Harry Potter” stars Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Eddie Redmayne to criticize her.