WATCH: Gender critical activist blasts 'utter nonsense' after Stephen Fry's brutal JK Rowling swipe

GB News

Maya Forstater, executive director of Sex Matters, has launched a fierce defence of JK Rowling after Stephen Fry branded the Harry Potter author "radicalised" and "a lost cause" over her views on transgender issues.Speaking to GB News, Forstater dismissed Fry's characterisation as "utter nonsense", insisting that "the idea that men are men and women are women is not a radical view".READ THE FULL STORY HERE

Transcript

00:00The comedian and television presenter, Sir Stephen Fry,

00:03who narrated all seven Harry Potter audiobooks, which I loved,

00:07criticised author J.K. Rowling, describing her as a lost corpse.

00:11Yes, he says she's been radicalised by TERFs,

00:14so basically a slur to describe transgender exclusionary radical feminist,

00:17which just rolls off the tongue, doesn't it?

00:19Well, it all comes as J.K. Rowling has become a leading voice in the transgender debate,

00:24hailing, of course, the Supreme Court's landmark ruling back in April

00:28and, of course, funding further campaigns to do with it.

00:31OK, well, we're joined by Executive Director of Sex Matters, Maya Forstater.

00:35Maya, has J.K. Rowling been radicalised? Is she a lost cause?

00:40Of course not. That's utter nonsense.

00:43Thinking that men are men and women are women is not a radical view,

00:46it's just reality and it's what most people in the country think.

00:50What she's done is stood up for women's rights.

00:52Has there not been a progression in, at the very least,

00:58how J.K. Rowling has come about talking about this issue?

01:03I mean, back in 2020, J.K. Rowling sent a tweet saying,

01:07I respect every trans person's right to live by any way that feels authentic

01:11and comfortable to them.

01:13And yet, this year, we see J.K. Rowling refusing to use the pronouns

01:20that trans people would like them to use,

01:22quote-tweeting lots of different trans women and calling them men.

01:27I mean, it seems, at the very least, the tone that she uses

01:30has shifted considerably in the last five years.

01:34I mean, you're doing a bait-and-switch there.

01:37She said that she respects people's right to live in any way

01:41that they feel comfortable, but what you're talking about

01:43is whether she has to call them by whatever pronouns they want to.

01:48Those are two different things.

01:49If somebody wants to call themselves something, you know,

01:51as J.K. Rowling treated in 2019 after my case,

01:55wear what you like, call yourself what you like.

01:58But that doesn't mean other people have to call you that.

02:00Other people can use the words that make sense to them.

02:03Right, but in 2019, in 2020, we didn't see instances

02:07of J.K. Rowling putting out messages to her millions of followers,

02:12calling trans women men, or being quite so, well, frankly,

02:16in my view, rude doing it.

02:18And yet now we do.

02:20She's become much more brazen, much more brash.

02:22Whether you agree with her or not, I mean,

02:24you might think hurrah for her for being much more brash

02:27at this moment in time.

02:29But clearly there's been a progression there.

02:32Yes, I think there has.

02:33And I mean, you say rude, I say honest.

02:36And what we've seen is that giving away language,

02:41calling men women, calling men she,

02:43is what then allows them to say that they have the right

02:46to be in women's sports, in women's spaces,

02:48in women's prisons and women's refuges.

02:50And in order to say no to them, it's a simple word,

02:53we need to be able to call them men.

02:55And if somebody says that's rude,

02:57then that's a precursor for rolling over women's rights.

03:02Yeah, I mean, Maya, it's quite extraordinary

03:03that a man who narrated all seven of her Harry Potter books

03:06for audio, presumably made quite a lot of cash out of it,

03:10is saying such things about her.

03:13She seemed to wake up or kick a hornet's nest of transphobia,

03:16which has been entirely destructive.

03:17I disagree profoundly with her.

03:19I'm angry she does not disavow some of the more revolting

03:22and truly horrible, destructive, violently destructive things

03:25that people say.

03:26She does not attack those at all.

03:28I mean, if you add that to all the other people

03:30who have made money off her talent and success,

03:32I mean, there's a lot of people, aren't there?

03:35Yes, and meanwhile, all she's done is be brave

03:38and speak up for women.

03:39I mean, the idea that she said anything violently destructive

03:42is just a nonsense.

03:44She has made fun of people.

03:46She has...

03:48Some might say mocked vulnerable people.

03:50Well, she tweeted when the Scottish government

03:53was bringing in its hate crimes legislation

03:57and women in Scotland were afraid of being arrested

04:00for saying that men are men.

04:02And J.K. Rowling said, come and get me, basically.

04:05And that protected lots and lots of women in Scotland.

04:10She's not just out there on Twitter being a troll

04:12or being mean for the sake of it.

04:14What she's doing is saying that we're allowed to say

04:17that men are men.

04:18We're allowed to believe our own eyes.

04:20We're allowed to be funny sometimes.

04:22Women are allowed to be funny.

04:24OK, Maya Forstater, thank you very much for your time.

04:27Executive Director of Sex Matters there.

04:30I just think it's quite exciting to go and say all of these things

04:33about a woman who's not there to defend herself.

04:36Hang on.

04:37Firstly, she's allowed to be brash.

04:38And then second, you can't say anything about someone

04:40because you can't defend...

04:41Well, he was a mate of hers.

04:43I wouldn't go and do an interview about you

04:48and say all these nasty things about you.

04:50It's completely clear to see that J.K. Rowling

04:53used to never talk about this issue.

04:55And over the course of the last five years,

04:56it's become the only thing she talks about.

04:57He's called her a transphobe.

04:58She's clearly been radicalised and she's clearly...

05:01No, Tom, it's just fact is fact.

05:02...not being polite to trans people.

05:04Fact is fact.

05:04You're the radical one.

05:06No, no, no, I'm the polite one.

05:07This stuff has only happened in the last few years.

05:08You're the radical one.

05:09People have been calling transgender people

05:12by the pronouns that they want to be called by for decades.

05:14Yada, yada, yada.

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