JK Rowling to Return Award from Organization Linked to the Kennedy Family

LONDON, KOMPAS.com - J.K. Rowling intends to return an award from a human rights group linked to the Kennedy family after the author felt she was labeled transphobic.

The president of the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights organization criticized J.K. Rowling’s comments about transgender issues.

The late senator’s daughter published a statement expressing her “profound disappointment” with the Harry Potter author’s comments.

“The statement incorrectly implied that I was transphobic, and that I am responsible for harm to trans people,” Rowling said on her website.

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“As a longstanding donor to LGBT charities and a supporter of trans people’s right to live free of persecution, I absolutely refute the accusation that I hate trans people or wish them ill, or that standing up for the rights of women is wrong, discriminatory, or incites harm or violence to the trans community.”

In a series of tweets in June, Rowling said she supported trans rights but did not believe in “erasing” the concept of biological sex.

Rowling said she refused to “bow down” to a movement seeking “to erode ‘woman’ as a political and biological class and offering cover to predators like few before it”.

In a post on her website Friday, she expressed “solidarity with those who have contacted me but who are struggling to make their voices heard''.

Rowling has previously said she was partly motivated to speak out about the issue because of her personal experience of abuse and sexual assault.