John Lithgow on JK Rowling

[QAOPspaceman]

basically admits he hasn’t bothered thinking about her position on gender identity. The Harry Potter books are about tolerance so her stance is ‘inexplicable’, yet he’s never met her and only ‘read about her views’.
Read her for yourself pal! Do your own fucking thinking!

www.theguardian.com/books/2026/feb/02/john-lithgow-says-he-finds-jk-rowlings-stance-on-trans-rights-ironic-and-inexplicable?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

The lazy, tribal thinking and thirst for virtue cookies is strong with this one.

Fuck sake. Another coward.

Sounds like throwing a bone to those heaping vitriol because he had the audacity to accept a part written by The Bad Woman.

A part he's looking forward to and wishes everyone would stop going on about.

The Guardian printing their usual anti- JKR rubbish.

Inexplicable? When she has made her points so eloquently?

The two paragraphs about Rowling are actually fair. But as with most of their coverage, the whole tone is ‘Kind Man says Nasty Woman must be nasty because no smoke without fire’

Inexplicable when she has explicated at length?
Donkey brain (apologies to donkeys).
Wonder what he thinks about her stance on wimpunds rights, no scrub that, thinking would be a stretch.
Aw, and he's upset, still getting the job and getting paid.

I await the posters who will come and tell us all about how she shouldn’t respond to her abusers and to those who abuse other women and girls.

They never quite realise what it says about them when they defend abusers and censure, vilify and demonise the abuser’s victim because they think she should absorb the abuse and not respond. Because to them, her success means she should simply STFU when she is abused and should not point out abuse of those other women and girls when she sees it.

He is 80(?)

he grew up when women in the US and UK were being subjected to open casual sexual harrassment and abuse in the work place.

He continues to work in an industry which has a specific name for sex abuse and coercive control.

Like fuuuuuuk is he having problems working out why men in womens single sex spaces is a problem.

Wants the money and the fame of the HP role.

How can people read what JKR's position is and not realise how reasonable her position is? What exactly is so abhorrent about thinking that women should have sex-based protections in law?

And what is the point of listing all the HP actors who have "distanced" themselves from her views? Who gives a shit what these cowards say? Why doesn't it mention the HP cast members who have backed her?

I wonder if JKR will ever write an autobiography? It would be amazing.

When did people stop being embarrassed when they make total tits of themselves?

How can people read what JKR's position is and not realise how reasonable her position is?

Many people go out of their way not to read that and to remain in comfortable self-righteous ignorance.

Well, those on the RSOH will be on him like a ton of bricks, won't they?

You can't play both sides in this game - and typically it is an older white man telling women they are mean and nasty.

Yawwwnnnnn.

I am going to watch the series (well i will 2nd screen it) just to make sure it gets viewing figures.

Wow, John Lithgow is upset - I'm sure the money will ease his pain

Why bother reading what she says when the answer is that it wasn’t what she said, it was how she said it?

I really wish he'd get fired for shit like this - you don't have to agree with JKR but don't trash talk someone who is bankrolling you without even having bothered to read the statements you're opining on. Agreeing that women should have human rights in law isn't a big ask.

JKR’s stance on Trans Rights is the same as most people. They should not be discriminated against for being Trans.

Her views on Women’s Rights is what actually upsets them. Not that they can ever admit that.

That is the irony if it. They can come out with this type of bilge because they know JKR won't get them fired for it. Unlike the "be kinders" they are pandering to.

Yes, and I've also seen them proclaim they know what she says because they been told about it but they cannot possibly read it for themsleves because it will harm them. Eyes roll out of head.
They'd probably get ostracised if they actually did, it's all of a piece with reading Mein Kampf literally makes you Hitler.
Terribly Fahrenheit 451, and so we go on merrily inventing the wheel again.

A few years ago my brother told me he didnt understand why I still liked JKR as her views were so awful. I asked if he'd read them. He hadn't. Like John Lithgow he'd only "read about them". So he googled it there and then. Read her original essay, realised she hadn't said anything like what she was being accused of and apologised to me for being a twat.

Why so many people are still so quick to bad mouth her without reading and thinking about what she said for themselves is the only inexplicable thing here.

Has he actually read about her views in her words or her views in other people's words? I think I know which but I'm not clicking that crappy rag's link.

Exactly. She has more integrity and class than to go round demanding people are fired because they don't agree with her.

But why bother pandering? The TRAs will still hate him for taking the part regardless of what he says, so why bother saying anything at all?

Probably like most people who have done this, using her name for cheap shots as an easy way to whip up publicity for themselves. Lazy and crass.

The Harry Potter books are about tolerance so her stance is ‘inexplicable’,

He's wrong twice over. The books are .mainly about courage. Courage to do the right thing - even if it makes you unpopular, even if means standing up against your friends, even if it makes you an outcast or gets you killed. Courage to oppose the crowd, if the crowd is wrong. Courage to protect the weak against the strong.

Which makes her stance completely explicable.

It shows a rather unpleasant misogyny. That a man thinks someone as fiercely intelligent and articulate as JKR could veer so wildly off piste from what is the main theme of 7 entire wildly successful books that I presume Lithgow has read (if he's going to be acting in a show about them). On a feminine whim, presumably.

When in reality of course her position on women's rights is entirely consistent with the central themes of the HP books. Truth, honesty, fairness, fighting for justice even when it's hard, extreme bravery in the face of people shouting you down.

I mean she couldn't have predicted more clearly what's happened to her in the treatment of Harry when he's speaking the truth and everyone's smearing him for it.

The fact it doesn't cross his mind that things people have told him about JKR might in fact be wrong and in fact her views may be entirely consistent with the HP universe and doesn't bother to find out for himself out of pure self interest is just misogyny on steroids.

There is no fucking way he'd be saying the same thing about a male author.

Cross post with the professor!

Although actually, JKR's got rather more death threats than Harry did, IIRC. I suppose it was a children's book.

It very much sounds as if he’s just talking out of his arse until he comes out with “transphobic sensitivities”, which is a nasty accusation that can’t be ignored as easily as the rest of it.