“Many people don’t realize how much influence J.K. Rowling has on restricting trans rights”
Transphobia — Starting this week, the stage production
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child will be shown in the Netherlands. The creator of this wizarding world, J.K. Rowling, is nowadays mostly in the news because of her offensive statements about trans people. “Rowling uses her income to directly finance the dismantling of trans rights.”
Nine years after its premiere in London’s West End, the play
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child will have its Dutch premiere this weekend at the AFAS Circustheater.
Harry Potter continues to enchant audiences, but for many fans worldwide the author Rowling has fallen from grace. In recent years she has frequently been criticized for offensive remarks about trans people and for funding organizations that want to restrict the rights of trans people.
“There are no trans children. Children are not born in the wrong body,” Rowling said on the platform X. She often questions the existence of trans people on social media. The writer has since established her own fund to “protect” the rights of women who were born female (cis women). She also founded a center for women who have been victims of sexual violence, but trans women are not welcome there.
In the publication Theaterkrant, reviewer Jeroen van Wijhe wrote last week that the stage production
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is directly connected to discrimination against trans people. On social media and under the article, a lively debate among fans emerged about the issue.
“This production so clearly finances a reactionary agenda,” one response read. Someone else replied: “Hate the woman, not her work.”
Mare de Vries, spokesperson for the advocacy organization Transgender Netwerk Nederland (TNN), responded by email to questions from the newspaper NRC.
“Like all projects by J.K. Rowling, this production is inseparably connected with transphobia,” she writes about the play. “Like many people, I grew up with
Harry Potter, so it’s painful to say that. It’s not as simple as ‘separating the art from the artist,’ because a significant percentage of the income goes to Rowling. In doing so, she directly finances the dismantling of trans rights.”
Research by the The New York Times in 2018, when the play was running on Broadway, found that Rowling receives about
41 percent of the profits, in addition to the income she received as a producer of the play.
Stage Entertainment, the company that brought the production to the Netherlands, says it cannot comment on the financial agreements made with the rights holders of the play. A spokesperson for Stage Entertainment did say by phone that
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is so far
the company’s best-selling production ever. According to the spokesperson,
more than 150,000 tickets have already been sold.
Stage Entertainment—like many companies that express solidarity with sexual minorities, including the trans community, on social media during Pride Month—did not want to respond to questions from this newspaper about Rowling and the controversy surrounding her campaigns and statements. The production company limited itself to a short statement, saying it attaches “great importance to diversity and inclusion” and refrains from “commenting on the personal views of the original creators of the play.”
Rowling’s legal battle
In 2025, the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom ruled that the word “woman” in a Scottish equality law from 2010 refers only to people who were born female. The case had been brought by For Women Scotland, an organization partly funded by Rowling.
According to the human rights organization Human Rights Watch, the ruling “opens the door to discrimination and exclusion” of trans people. After the court’s decision was announced, Rowling posted a photo of herself on a luxury yacht holding a cocktail and a cigar. “I love it when a plan comes together,” she wrote with the post.
A month after the Supreme Court ruling, Rowling announced the creation of the
J.K. Rowling Women’s Fund. The fund provides financial support to individuals and organizations that are “fighting to protect women’s sex-based rights.” One of the conditions for applying for financial support reads:
“Have you experienced discrimination or loss of employment because of your belief that someone’s biological sex is immutable?”
According to the American LGBTQI magazine Them, the fund primarily serves the writer’s anti-trans agenda. Rowling finances the fund out of her own pocket.
“She really doesn’t need this anymore, she’s a billionaire”
Harry Potter fan Owen Egberink joined the debate about the new stage production on social media. The wizarding world was a major part of his childhood.
“It was a world you could go to and just fantasize,” he says.
He finds Rowling’s views “idiotic,” but he will still go see the play.
“Many more people work on the films and the play than just Rowling.”
He grew up with the films and only read the books later in life.
“When I read online about Rowling’s opinion on trans people, I did stop reading the books.”
But the 24-year-old does not believe a boycott would change anything.
“She really doesn’t need this anymore—she’s a billionaire.”
However, according to Mare de Vries, many people underestimate Rowling’s influence.
“In the United Kingdom she has played a major role in normalizing transphobia. Partly because of her efforts, media and politicians have become afraid to speak out against anti-trans hatred.”
She says that historically the rights of trans people in the Netherlands have had broad public support, but that they are now under pressure.
“The Netherlands was for a long time a frontrunner in the field of trans rights and trans healthcare. But populists now see that in the United Kingdom and the United States it has proven particularly effective to use trans people as a scapegoat.”
