00:00The comedian and television presenter, Sir Stephen Fry,
00:03who narrated all seven Harry Potter audiobooks, which I loved,
00:07criticised author J.K. Rowling, describing her as a lost corpse.
00:11Yes, he says she's been radicalised by TERFs,
00:14so basically a slur to describe transgender exclusionary radical feminist,
00:17which just rolls off the tongue, doesn't it?
00:19Well, it all comes as J.K. Rowling has become a leading voice in the transgender debate,
00:24hailing, of course, the Supreme Court's landmark ruling back in April
00:28and, of course, funding further campaigns to do with it.
00:31OK, well, we're joined by Executive Director of Sex Matters, Maya Forstater.
00:35Maya, has J.K. Rowling been radicalised? Is she a lost cause?
00:40Of course not. That's utter nonsense.
00:43Thinking that men are men and women are women is not a radical view,
00:46it's just reality and it's what most people in the country think.
00:50What she's done is stood up for women's rights.
00:52Has there not been a progression in, at the very least,
00:58how J.K. Rowling has come about talking about this issue?
01:03I mean, back in 2020, J.K. Rowling sent a tweet saying,
01:07I respect every trans person's right to live by any way that feels authentic
01:11and comfortable to them.
01:13And yet, this year, we see J.K. Rowling refusing to use the pronouns
01:20that trans people would like them to use,
01:22quote-tweeting lots of different trans women and calling them men.
01:27I mean, it seems, at the very least, the tone that she uses
01:30has shifted considerably in the last five years.
01:34I mean, you're doing a bait-and-switch there.
01:37She said that she respects people's right to live in any way
01:41that they feel comfortable, but what you're talking about
01:43is whether she has to call them by whatever pronouns they want to.
01:48Those are two different things.
01:49If somebody wants to call themselves something, you know,
01:51as J.K. Rowling treated in 2019 after my case,
01:55wear what you like, call yourself what you like.
01:58But that doesn't mean other people have to call you that.
02:00Other people can use the words that make sense to them.
02:03Right, but in 2019, in 2020, we didn't see instances
02:07of J.K. Rowling putting out messages to her millions of followers,
02:12calling trans women men, or being quite so, well, frankly,
02:16in my view, rude doing it.
02:18And yet now we do.
02:20She's become much more brazen, much more brash.
02:22Whether you agree with her or not, I mean,
02:24you might think hurrah for her for being much more brash
02:27at this moment in time.
02:29But clearly there's been a progression there.
02:32Yes, I think there has.
02:33And I mean, you say rude, I say honest.
02:36And what we've seen is that giving away language,
02:41calling men women, calling men she,
02:43is what then allows them to say that they have the right
02:46to be in women's sports, in women's spaces,
02:48in women's prisons and women's refuges.
02:50And in order to say no to them, it's a simple word,
02:53we need to be able to call them men.
02:55And if somebody says that's rude,
02:57then that's a precursor for rolling over women's rights.
03:02Yeah, I mean, Maya, it's quite extraordinary
03:03that a man who narrated all seven of her Harry Potter books
03:06for audio, presumably made quite a lot of cash out of it,
03:10is saying such things about her.
03:13She seemed to wake up or kick a hornet's nest of transphobia,
03:16which has been entirely destructive.
03:17I disagree profoundly with her.
03:19I'm angry she does not disavow some of the more revolting
03:22and truly horrible, destructive, violently destructive things
03:25that people say.
03:26She does not attack those at all.
03:28I mean, if you add that to all the other people
03:30who have made money off her talent and success,
03:32I mean, there's a lot of people, aren't there?
03:35Yes, and meanwhile, all she's done is be brave
03:38and speak up for women.
03:39I mean, the idea that she said anything violently destructive
03:42is just a nonsense.
03:44She has made fun of people.
03:46She has...
03:48Some might say mocked vulnerable people.
03:50Well, she tweeted when the Scottish government
03:53was bringing in its hate crimes legislation
03:57and women in Scotland were afraid of being arrested
04:00for saying that men are men.
04:02And J.K. Rowling said, come and get me, basically.
04:05And that protected lots and lots of women in Scotland.
04:10She's not just out there on Twitter being a troll
04:12or being mean for the sake of it.
04:14What she's doing is saying that we're allowed to say
04:17that men are men.
04:18We're allowed to believe our own eyes.
04:20We're allowed to be funny sometimes.
04:22Women are allowed to be funny.
04:24OK, Maya Forstater, thank you very much for your time.
04:27Executive Director of Sex Matters there.
04:30I just think it's quite exciting to go and say all of these things
04:33about a woman who's not there to defend herself.
04:36Hang on.
04:37Firstly, she's allowed to be brash.
04:38And then second, you can't say anything about someone
04:40because you can't defend...
04:41Well, he was a mate of hers.
04:43I wouldn't go and do an interview about you
04:48and say all these nasty things about you.
04:50It's completely clear to see that J.K. Rowling
04:53used to never talk about this issue.
04:55And over the course of the last five years,
04:56it's become the only thing she talks about.
04:57He's called her a transphobe.
04:58She's clearly been radicalised and she's clearly...
05:01No, Tom, it's just fact is fact.
05:02...not being polite to trans people.
05:04Fact is fact.
05:04You're the radical one.
05:06No, no, no, I'm the polite one.
05:07This stuff has only happened in the last few years.
05:08You're the radical one.
05:09People have been calling transgender people
05:12by the pronouns that they want to be called by for decades.
05:14Yada, yada, yada.
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