This is the year of JK Rowling's triumph and it is such a joy to watch
She later gave her support to Maya Forstater, a researcher who had been sacked for posting her belief that someone cannot change biological sex. Writing on her website, Rowling wrote: 'I knew perfectly well what was going to happen when I supported Maya. I must have been on my fourth or fifth cancellation by then. I expected the threats of violence, to be told I was literally killing trans people with my hate, to be called c--- and b---- and, of course, for my books to be burned, although one particularly abusive man told me he'd composted them.'
Since then, Rowling has endured many more threats and insults. She is the queen 'Terf' (trans exclusionary radical feminist) – the insult the trans lobby coined for people who don't accept that men can be women just by saying so. (Terf has become a badge of pride among those with the label; and Britain, for a time, was known among fans as Terf Island).
As the mass drubbing in public really took off after 2020, she found that even the young actors whose careers she made – the stars of the Harry Potter franchise – had turned against her,
coming out with sanctimonious statements about how 'trans women are women' and how 'Jo' had got it wrong.
Emma Watson, who played Hermione in the films, sniped that trans people 'are who they say they are and deserve to live their lives without being constantly questioned'. Daniel Radcliffe, aka Harry Potter himself, said that he was 'really sad' at the rupture caused by Rowling's stance. Eddie Redmayne – who starred in Potter spin-off Fantastic Beasts – was the most sanctimonious. 'I disagree with Jo's comments. Trans women are women, trans men are men and non-binary identities are valid.'
But the great Rowling has won: she bravely hoisted the mad world on her shoulders and shifted it to saner ground. The Cass Report drew a line in the sand about puberty-blockers and the clinics that prescribe them: they are no longer routinely offered in Britain. And as the hailstorm of adolescent girls transitioning to boys and seeking body-altering surgery to that effect has slowed, some of them are 'detransitioning', realising that their apparent gender dysphoria was more to do with other issues from undiagnosed autism to lesbianism. In the US, the new administration has declared war on the trans lobby.
Without her bravery in speaking the truth bluntly, to politicians, Twitter terrorists and journalists – as well as that of her coterie of close friends, including the Telegraph writers Julie Bindel and Suzanne Moore – the right of biological women to spaces reserved for them would never have been recaptured. Biological men can no longer compete in most women's sport. Most people would have surrendered to the sustained assault on their mental health and basic safety. But she endured. In refusing to kowtow to the trans lobby, she has made it OK, and less dangerous, to say true things of vital importance.
And now, despite the original cast's intolerable ingratitude, despite a whole generation of trans activists pretending she is the devil incarnate, there is now a new Harry Potter series – made for HBO this time – scheduled to hit screens in 2027 and set to air over the course of a decade. More than 31,000 children sent in audition tapes.
It wasn't quite the case that she was ostracised. Rowling has written about the outpouring of letters from people who were grateful to her for speaking up about what they also recognised was a terrifying and pervasive trend: the denial of women's sex-based rights, and all that that entailed. It meant allowing self-identifying 'women' into women's changing rooms, prisons, and hospital wards.
Rosie Duffield, the Canterbury MP who quit Labour in part over its stance on trans rights, was and is one of Rowling's most steadfast supporters.
And there's her tight knit buddies – Bindel, Moore, also ex-Sussex philosophy professor Kathleen Stock and Maya Forstater – known to the world after they posted pictures of themselves having a Terf-themed lunch at the River Cafe in 2022.
Their loyalty to Rowling is legendary: all are tight-lipped about the friendship. But it's obvious from her sauciness that 'Jo' is good fun. I enjoyed her response to the prospect of a two-year jail term for misgendering a trans person, imagined under the (then) forthcoming Labour government.
'Bring on the court case, I say. It'll be more fun than I've ever had on a red carpet.'
As for her preferred prison job: 'Hoping for the library, obviously, but I think I could do OK in the kitchens. Laundry might be a problem. I have a tendency to shrink stuff/turn it pink accidentally. Guessing that won't be a major issue if it's mostly scrubs and sheets, though.'
The Harry Potter books came out while I was an undergraduate, and a recent attempt to read one backfired: I hated it. No matter: Rowling is one of the greats, whether you think it's for her world of wizards, or the way she forced a bit of sanity back on a culture that is distinctly short on it.
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