J.K. Rowling Remains Popular With Millennials Despite Trans Outrage

J.K. Rowling remains a huge hit among millennials, according to a new YouGov survey.

The controversial author of the Harry Potter series has made headlines over the past couple of years over her comments about transgender women.

She has publicly supported women who question the legitimacy of transgender women’s gender identities, including U.K. tax specialist Maya Forstater, and frequently spoken out on the issue on Twitter. In 2020 she published an essay on her personal website called, “Her Reasons for Speaking out on Sex and Gender Issues.”

In the same year, she was once again accused of transphobia when she mocked an op-ed piece when it referred to “people who menstruate” rather than “women.” The term is used to refer to people from different gender identities who menstruate, including non-binary, trans men, and intersex people.

Rowling’s Harry Potter books have sold hundreds of millions of copies. Her production company, Brontë Film and TV, which makes adaptations of her work, reported a 74 per cent drop in profits last week, putting it down to the closure of theaters during COVID lockdown.

Rowling’s stance on transgender issues have earned her many critics.

Despite the controversy, Rowling remains popular with millennials—people born between 1981 and 1996.

A YouGov poll tracks the popularity of the book, J. K. Rowling: A Biography, and its most recent results show that it was most well known and popular amongst millennials. The book is one of many unauthorized biographies written about the famous author.

The book got 48 points in terms of popularity and 66 points for fame in the millennials age bracket, compared to 18 and 50 points for Gen X.

Transgender writer and co-founder of the Trans Writes news site, Gemma Stone, was “not surprised” at the poll’s findings, but was left “incensed” at the plight of transgender people.

“With a media landscape that works so diligently to keep trans people out while elevating the voices of those who are outright spreading hateful lies about us; I am not surprised or shocked to find that most people haven’t worked to distance themselves from Rowling or Harry Potter,” she told Newsweek.

“They don’t know because the people who should be informing them actively work to muddy the waters instead. Take the BBC for example, the U.K.’s state broadcaster.

“They will rush to apologize to J.K. Rowling for referring to her as transphobic, but they are still refusing to apologize for working to associate trans women with sexual violence via the transphobic and rather misogynist trope that we are “coercing lesbians” into sex with us.

“This despite numerous protests outside of their offices which the BBC did not at all report on.”

Millennials were the target audience of the Harry Potter book and film series as they were in their formative years when the books were released between 1997 and 2007.

BLK INK editor-in-chief, Casira Copes, mused the reason millennials are so nostalgic for Harry Potter is because of “the liminal space between the advent of the internet and the dominance of social media is where a lot of millennials did their growing up.”

Copes argued in her Medium essay that the advent of the internet gave millennials their first opportunity to interact with like-minded people and this coincided with the release of the popular books and films.

“For a group of young people who were looking to connect with others over shared interests, as well as form online identities without revealing too much about themselves, Harry Potter was a goldmine,” she wrote.