“Harry Potter” writer JK Rowling revealed on Wednesday she has been a sufferer of home abuse and sexual assault.
The celebrated British author stated in a weblog publish that she was disclosing the data to offer context to her controversial past comments about transgender girls.
“This isn’t an easy piece to write,” Rowling stated in a 3,695-word essay on gender identification and her personal troubled previous.
“I’ve been in the public eye now for over twenty years and have never talked publicly about being a domestic abuse and sexual assault survivor,” Rowling wrote.
“This isn’t because I’m ashamed those things happened to me, but because they’re traumatic to revisit and remember.”
Rowling precipitated a scandal by tweeting final weekend about “people who menstruate”.
“I’m sure there used to be a word for those people. Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?”
The tweet compelled “Harry Potter” star Daniel Radcliffe to apologise to trans girls who could have been offended by Rowling’s comment.
“Transgender women are women,” Radcliffe wrote in a publish for The Trevor Project web site.
The feud dated again to feedback from December through which Rowling expressed assist for a girl who had misplaced her job over what her employer deemed to be “transphobic” tweets.
Rowling stated on Wednesday that “accusations and threats from trans activists have been bubbling in my Twitter timeline” ever since.
“Huge numbers of women are justifiably terrified by the trans activists; I know this because so many have got in touch with me to tell their stories,” she wrote.
Rowling ended her publish by affirming that she was “a survivor (and) certainly not a victim”.
“I haven’t written this essay in the hope that anybody will get out a violin for me, not even a teeny-weeny one,” she stated.
“I’ve only mentioned my past because, like every other human being on this planet, I have a complex backstory, which shapes my fears, my interests and my opinions.”
“Mentally sexless”
Rowling stated she had spent a few years enthusiastic about trans points due to her personal troubles with gender identification when she was younger.
“When I read about the theory of gender identity, I remember how mentally sexless I felt in youth,” she wrote.
“As I didn’t have a realistic possibility of becoming a man back in the 1980s, it had to be books and music that got me through both my mental health issues and the sexualised scrutiny and judgement that sets so many girls to war against their bodies in their teens.”
The 54-year-old stated she spent a interval feeling “ambivalence about being a woman” earlier than studying that “it’s OK to feel confused, dark, both sexual and non-sexual, unsure of what or who you are”.
She additionally argued that “the current explosion of trans activism” has resulted in too many individuals present process gender reassignment surgical procedure with out giving it enough thought.
“I want to be very clear here: I know transition will be a solution for some gender dysphoric people, although I’m also aware through extensive research that studies have consistently shown that between 60-90 percent of gender dysphoric teens will grow out of their dysphoria,” she stated.
“So I want trans women to be safe. At the same time, I do not want to make… girls and women less safe.”
But she additionally stood up for her proper to talk freely about a problem that she stated has been together with her all through life.
“As a much-banned author, I’m interested in freedom of speech and have publicly defended it, even unto Donald Trump,” she wrote.
Rowling’s books have been banned in elements of the world due to their affiliation in some cultures with witchcraft and the occult.
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