Actor Rupert Grint has joined his former co-stars Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson in support of the trans people after Harry Potter creator J.K. Rowling penned a lengthy and personal essay in response to the outrage she drew for her comments on the community.
Rowling wrote a blog, in which she also came out as a sexual assault and domestic violence survivor, after she sparked controversy on Twitter when she criticised an opinion piece that used the phrase “people who menstruate” and posited that discussion of gender identity invalidates biological sex.
Grint, who played Ron Weasley in the Harry Potter films, said he echoes the sentiments expressed by his peers.
“I firmly stand with the trans community and echo the sentiments expressed by many of my peers. Trans women are women. Trans men are men. We should all be entitled to live with love and without judgement,” the 31-year-old actor said in a statement to The Times .
Radcliffe, who was the first actor from the Harry Potter film franchise to express his disagreement with Rowling’s remarks, wrote an essay for the Trevor Project , a non-profit dedicated to crisis intervention and suicide prevention for LGBTQ people.
“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,” the actor, who played the titular boy wizard, said.
Watson, who played Hermione Granger, shared her opinion on the controversy without naming Rowling.
“Trans people are who they say they are and deserve to live their lives without being constantly questioned or told they aren’t who they say they are,” she tweeted.
Eddie Redmayne, who plays Newt Scamander in Rowling’s Harry Potter spin-off Fantastic Beasts , said he wanted to make his stand on the topic clear.
“Respect for transgender people remains a cultural imperative, and over the years I have been trying to constantly educate myself. This is an ongoing process,” Redmayne said in a statement to Variety .
The actor, also known for his role as Lili Elbe, the first person in history to undergo a male-to-female sex reassignment surgery in The Danish Girl , said he would never speak on behalf of the community but understands that they are “tired of this constant questing” of their identities.
“I disagree with Jo’s comments. Trans women are women, trans men are men and non-binary identities are valid,” he added.
Many in Hollywood, including other Harry Potter actors like Bonnie Wright and Evanna Lynch, also spoke up in the support of the trans community.
Rowling’s explanation
In her essay, Rowling said if someone could read her mind, they would understand that when she reads about a trans woman dying at the hands of a violent man, she stands in “solidarity and kinship” with them.
“I have a visceral sense of the terror in which those trans women will have spent their last seconds on earth, because I too have known moments of blind fear when I realised that the only thing keeping me alive was the shaky self-restraint of my attacker.”
The writer said her decision to mention these details was not an attempt to garner sympathy but out of solidarity with the huge number of women with similar history, “who’ve been slurred as bigots for having concerns around single-sex spaces”.
