J.K. Rowling

JK Rowling is best known for authoring the Harry Potter books, but she also frequently comments on gender issues.

J.K. Rowling Bias Rating Confirmed as Center in April 2025 Small Group Editorial Review

A group of three AllSides reviewers on the left, center, and right confirmed J.K. Rowlings's Center rating in an April 2025 Small Group Editorial Review.

There was some disagreement amongst panelists; the reviewed on the left rated her Lean Right based on her tweets criticizing the transgender movement; the panelist in the Center rated her Center, noting she is "gender-critical, but supports gay rights. Gender critical alone doesn't make her Lean Right," and the reviewer on the right rated her Lean Left, stating, "she opposed Brexit, supports the Labour Party, wanted the UK to remain in the EU, she liked Clinton and Obama, doesn't like Trump." The average of all ratings was Center.

Rowling is best known for her opposition to aspects of the transgender movement, such as trans women being allowed into women’s spaces, because she believes it conflicts with women’s rights. While some critics argue this view alone makes her a "fascist," our panelists looked at the totality of her positions, not just one issue. J.K. Rowling also:

• Supports gay marriage
• Opposed Brexit
• Supported Obama and Clinton, saying “both have been extraordinary”
• Criticized Donald Trump
• Supported accepting refugees into Europe
• Said Russia is “slaughtering civilians” in Ukraine
• Criticized Netanyahu while opposing a cultural boycott of Israel.

Rowling’s views span both traditionally liberal and conservative perspectives. While her stance on gender is a cultural flashpoint, our panel decided it’s not sufficient on its own to shift her rating to the right — especially given the lack of political consensus on where that issue falls ideologically.

On X, Rowling wrote,

You can keep telling yourself this, but you're simply wrong. I'm a left-leaning liberal who's fiercely anti-authoritarian, and if you couldn't deduce that from my work you haven't understood a word of it.

I'm not an ideologue. I mistrust ideologies. I've never met an ideologue who wasn't prepared to deny a bit of inconvenient truth to keep their world view intact and I include ideologies with which I find myself in broad sympathy. On the other hand, I am an idealist. I believe in human beings. We are undeniably capable of terrible acts, but the evidence is that we are astoundingly collaborative and mutually supportive, especially when times are hard.

My values haven't changed; what's changed is the political landscape. What was once my natural home (a pragmatic centre-left party focused on dealing with economic disparity, championing social liberalism and equal rights) is now dominated by an illiberal, identity-based strain of politics I consider elitist, harmful and out of touch with the day-to-day concerns of regular people, particularly women (and I've still lived more than half of my life as a non-wealthy woman, and some of that time was spent in poverty).

There are women with whom I make common cause in the TERF wars I disagree with on other things. Within obvious limits (sucking up to literal Nazis) I don't particularly care about their personal politics. The reality is that there's currently an assault on women's rights unparalleled in my lifetime, and it's coming from both left and right. If ever there was a time for women across the political spectrum to come together, it is now.

Rowling has said, "In light of recent open letters from academia and the arts criticising the UK's Supreme Court ruling on sex-based rights, it's possibly worth remembering that nobody sane believes, or has ever believed, that humans can change sex, or that binary sex isn't a material fact," and "Funny, isn’t it, how women who’ve been raped or beaten are accused of ‘weaponising’ their trauma when they ask for male-free spaces, but trans-identified men who claim using the Gents has a higher mortality rate than armed combat are met with credulity and simpering concern."