Ralph Fiennes has defended Harry Potter author JK Rowling, saying that the "abuse directed at her is disgusting."
In an interview with the New York Times, Fiennes, who played the films' major antagonist Lord Voldemort, said: “JK Rowling has written these great books about empowerment, about young children finding themselves as human beings.
"It’s about how you become a better, stronger, more morally centered human being. The verbal abuse directed at her is disgusting, it’s appalling.”
He added: “I mean, I can understand a viewpoint that might be angry at what she says about women. But it’s not some obscene, uber-right-wing fascist. It’s just a woman saying, ‘I’m a woman and I feel I’m a woman and I want to be able to say that I’m a woman.’ And I understand where she’s coming from. Even though I’m not a woman.”
Over the last few years, Rowling has been accused of being transphobic, which she denies.
The British author came under fire after a tweet she posted in the summer of 2020 when she mocked the trans-inclusive term "people who menstruate".
The idea behind the term is that not all women have periods, for instance, trans women. And some men, as well as non-binary people, can have periods too.
However, Rowling took umbrage with the term on Twitter, sharing a link to an article that used it. She then implied that only cisgender women are able to menstruate.
She wrote: "'People who menstruate.' I’m sure there used to be a word for those people. Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?"
Naturally, in a world where trans people are being killed at alarming rates and are being discriminated against in various other ways, Rowling's flippant remark sparked outrage.
Rowling told her Twitter followers last year that "hundreds of trans activists have threatened to beat, rape, assassinate and bomb me, I’ve realized that this movement poses no risk to women whatsoever."
Just hours before detailing some of the threats she's received, she had screenshotted a vile comment directed at her from a troll who wrote: "I wish you a very nice pipebomb in [your] mailbox."
She captioned the screengrab: "To be fair when you can’t get a woman sacked, arrested, or dropped by her publisher, and canceling her only made her book sales go up, there’s really only one place to go."
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