When I was twelve, I read the Harry Potter series in secret because J. K. Rowling was too feminist for my household. Oh, how the Overton window has shifted.

When I was twelve, I had to read the Harry Potter series in secret because J. K. Rowling was too feminist for my household. Now, she’s being lumped in with conservatives for standing up against critics for single-sex women’s spaces and roasting musician Boy George in a Twitter war over transgender ideology.

Oh, how the Overton window has shifted. 

When English music artist Boy George called Rowling “a rich bored bully” earlier this week for questioning transgender ideology, Rowling’s response broke into the news cycle:

There are many differences between us, George, but some are particularly relevant to this debate. 1. You’re a man and I’m a woman. 2. You’ve been wealthy and famous since your early 20s. I didn’t become well known until I was well over 30. 3. I’ve never been given 15 months for handcuffing a man to a wall and beating him with a chain. 4. I believe in freedom of speech and belief.

Rowling hasn’t changed. The culturally progressive movement that used to back her has come full circle to reverse the accomplishments of the classical feminism she represents. 

For those who haven’t kept up with the timeline, Rowling was cancelled in 2019 for supporting Maya Forstater, a tax specialist who lost her job for “transphobic” tweets. In a 2020 essay responding to her cancellation, the author explained why she does not support so-called transgender rights. In doing so, she called the current moment the most misogynistic period she had lived through, citing backlash against feminism, language referring to women as “menstruators,” and a growing online porn culture that dehumanizes women. 

One portion of her essay describes her own struggle with femininity as a young girl:

Fortunately for me, I found my own sense of otherness, and my ambivalence about being a woman, reflected in the work of female writers and musicians who reassured me that, in spite of everything a sexist world tries to throw at the female-bodied, it’s fine not to feel pink, frilly and compliant inside your own head; it’s OK to feel confused, dark, both sexual and non-sexual, unsure of what or who you are.

At a basic level, this is what Rowling’s brand of feminism used to tell women. Now, the narrative has changed: If you don’t feel pink and frilly, you just might be a boy. 

Rowling’s feminism is simple: Women have rights and those rights should be protected against men who try to infringe upon them. These ideas require a biological basis for distinguishing women from men, and Rowling is able to see that and articulate it with more wit and clarity of thought than virtually any other public figure.

Again: Rowling is not a conservative; last I checked, she is pro-abortion, for example. But at least she’s not completely mental.