Recently, JK Rowling’s anti-trans tweets raised eyebrows and created a massive outrage as the Harry Potter fans started calling out Rowling for her works as well.
Responding well to the same, Daniel Radcliffe postrd a lengthy response on Monday.
“Transgender women are women,” Radcliffe wrote in an article for the website “The Trevor Project”, a non-profit dedicated to crisis intervention and suicide prevention for LGBTQ people.
He opened the statement telling that Rowling is responsible for his life but he felt the need to speak out.
“As someone who has been honored to work with and continues to contribute to The Trevor Project for the last decade, and just as a human being, I feel compelled to say something at this moment.”
He added that Transgender women are women.
“Any statement to the contrary erases the identity and dignity of transgender people and goes against all advice given by professional health care associations who have far more expertise on this subject matter than either Jo or I.”
“It’s clear that we need to do more to support transgender and nonbinary people, not invalidate their identities, and not cause further harm,” Radcliffe wrote, adding that 78%of transgender and nonbinary youth have reported they’ve been discriminated due to their identity.
He also apologized to Harry Potter fans for this experience.
“To all the people who now feel that their experience of the books has been tarnished or diminished, I am deeply sorry for the pain these comments have caused you,” he wrote.
“I really hope that you don’t entirely lose what was valuable in these stories to you. If these books taught you that love is the strongest force in the universe, capable of overcoming anything; if they taught you that strength is found in diversity, and that dogmatic ideas of pureness lead to the oppression of vulnerable groups; if you believe that a particular character is trans, nonbinary, or gender fluid, or that they are gay or bisexual; if you found anything in these stories that resonated with you and helped you at any time in your life — then that is between you and the book that you read, and it is sacred. And in my opinion nobody can touch that. It means to you what it means to you and I hope that these comments will not taint that too much.”
Radcliffe has previously supported LGBT rights and activism, pushing for marriage equality in the US before its legalization.
This is not the first time Rowling has faced backlash over her comments on trans people. She was liking a lot of transphobic tweets for a long time now.
US: JK Rowling’s book sales sees low after “transphobic” comments