JK Rowling insists age 14 is too young for people to decide to change gender

JK Rowling has said she believes a 14-year-old girl is too young to decide whether or not to transition, having described how she questioned her sexuality as a teenager.

The billionaire Harry Potter author said she didn’t think people this young could “really understand what loss of fertility is.”

Mrs Rowling too revealed that friends ‘begged’ her not to express her views on Transgender problems and he said he was warned not to get involved in the controversy because of the backlash he would face.

However, she said that she felt that women were being ‘shut down’ and that she could not have lived with herself if she had not spoken up.

Speaking on a new podcast, The Witch Trials of JK Rowling, the Edinburgh-based writer said: “As a teenager… I questioned my sexuality, thinking, ‘Well, I can say my friends are pretty. Does that mean I ?’ I’m gay?”

She said she grew up “to be a straight woman” but never forgot the anxiety around her body.

Ms Rowling said that at 14 she would have said she didn’t want children, but that being a mother has been “the most wonderful and happy thing in my life” and that she could not have “understood that and would have had no idea”. what she was giving up on,’ the Times reported.

She said that growing up in a misogynistic household, she said she didn’t feel like she fit in. The writer said that she looked “very androgynous” at 11 or 12 and that she had short hair.

“I was very anxious about the changes in my body and realized that I was attracting attention that I didn’t like, particularly from the kids at school,” she said.

Rowling has suffered backlash after expressing concern that dismissing biological sex in favor of focusing on gender identity would harm women’s rights.

He first expressed his views in 2019 when he tweeted his support for Maya Forstater, a tax expert who was fired for tweeting that “men can’t become women.”

A year later he explained his position in an essay in which he also revealed that he had been a victim of domestic violence and abuse in his first marriage.

“I wanted to join the public conversation because I was seeing women shut down,” Ms Rowling said.

“People are terrified to talk, so I was really starting to feel this moral obligation. I knew what was coming.

‘There are other people who, if I’m being honest, probably could talk and don’t want to talk.

“They’re not going to lose their livelihoods, but there are a lot of women who are forced not to speak out because they literally can’t pay the rent.

‘He wanted to speak and join the conversation before I did. I didn’t stop, but there were people close to me who were begging me not to.

“I think it was out of concern about what that would mean, they had looked at what had happened to other public figures and there was certainly a feeling of ‘This is not a smart thing to do, don’t do it.'” ‘

Rowling, 57, recounted how she decided to speak out for other women who were too scared to do the same, saying she didn’t care if it led to a boycott of her books.

In 2020, Rowling wrote an essay explaining her views on gender issues. She also revealed that she had been a victim of domestic violence and abuse in her first marriage.

She accepted that she was “protected” to some degree because of her wealth, but said the issue was also very personal to her.

“So I have this great concern, I see women being shut down and harassed, their employers being targeted by a movement that I see as authoritarian and anti-liberal,” she said.

“I can absolutely say that I was living in a state of real stress similar to when I was planning to leave my ex-husband because even though I’m not physically in danger, I feel like the right thing to do here is to try to force this conversation.

‘I am protected in ways I never dreamed I would be protected. I’m also exposed to threats that other people aren’t exposed to, but it’s more than that.

‘No matter what, if everyone decides ‘You’re a wicked witch, we’ll never buy your books again’, I can feed my family, my world doesn’t collapse, my kids don’t go hungry.

“There came a point where I felt compelled because the climate of fear scared me more than talking.

“I got to a point where I thought ‘I can’t live with myself if I don’t say something’, so it was personal too, I have to talk.”

‘Believe me, I didn’t feel any sense of joy in it. I didn’t think “I can’t wait for this, this is going to be amazing.”

“I really thought ‘This is going to be horrible, but I have to do it, so I did it.'”

Rowling told the podcast that she has been the target of death threats in recent years because of her comments.