JK Rowling apologises after accidentally tweeting ‘f**k up some TERFs’ while responding to a 9-year-old’s drawing
JK Rowling suffered criticism for “accidentally pasting” a comment on a trans woman in a tweet. (John Phillips/Getty Images/Twitter)
JK Rowling weathered criticism Friday afternoon (May 29) after she “accidentally” tweeted a message that read “f*ck up some TERFs” in response to a child’s drawing.
The British author is currently releasing a new children’s book, The Ickabog, in chapters online, and has asked children to send in illustrations of the characters.
In a since-deleted tweet sharing one such artwork, Rowling wrote: “I love this truly fabulous Icakbog, with its bat ears, mismatched eyes, and terrifying bloodstained teeth!”
The tweet continued: “In court, Wolf claimed the Facebook post in which he’d said he wanted to ‘f***k some TERFs’ was just ‘bravado’. #TheIckabog.”
JK Rowling’s since-deleted tweet. (Twitter)
Rowling quickly removed the tweet, but it wasn’t long before confusion transformed into outrage.
Detractors criticised the text’s apparent misgendering of Tara Wolf, a trans woman convicted for assaulting radical feminist Maria Maclachlan during a protest in London’s Hyde Park in 2017.
JK Rowling speaks out over ‘accidental’ tweet about trans woman.
The intense uproar towards her tweet prompted a two-pronged apology from Rowling.
She first reuploaded the original tweet – sans comment about Wolf – and wrote: “Sorry about the random and totally unconnected sentence that made its way in there.
(Sorry about the random and totally unconnected sentence that made its way in there. I accidentally pasted in part of a very un-Ickaboggish message I'd just received 😳)
— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) May 29, 2020
“I accidentally pasted in part of a very un-Ickaboggish message I’d just received.”
This “accidentally pasted” message referenced how Wolf, prior to attending the Hyde Park rally, wrote on Facebook how she planned to “f**k some TERFs” (trans-exclusionary radical feminists).
When contacted by PinkNews, Rowling’s representatives echoed this. They stressed that it was “a cut and paste error, unrelated to the intended message, and originating from a message the author had received”.
In subsequent exchanges to followers Rowling said she was “mortified” to have “cut and paste” the message.
It didn't… I'm mortified! This is what happens when you're not paying attention and accidentally cut and paste from an ENTIRELY different kind of message.— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) May 29, 2020
The Harry Potter author later elaborated on the reaction the tweet provoked.
“I’m going to say this once and I’m going to say it calmly and politely,” she wrote.
“I certainly didn’t mean to paste a quotation from a message about the assault of Maria Maclaughlin into a tweet to a child, especially given the language used by the person convicted of the crime.
“However, I am not – as many of the people now swarming into my mentions seem to think – ashamed of reading about the assault.
“You should know by now that accusations of thought crime leave me cold. Take your censorship and authoritarianism elsewhere.
“They don’t work on me.”
However, I am not – as many of the people now swarming into my mentions seem to think – ashamed of reading about the assault. You should know by now that accusations of thought crime leave me cold. Take your censorship and authoritarianism elsewhere. They don't work on me.— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) May 29, 2020
