J. K. Rowling
Hogwarts Legacy, the first open world adventure in the Harry Potter universe, is scheduled for release next year (Windows, Xbox One/SX/Playstion 4/5). The announcement of the game caused some anticipation among fans.
Despite J.K. Rowling making transphobic statements in the past, gamers will be able to play trans people in the new game. The body, voice, and address (wizard/witch) by other characters are likely to be freely definable and decoupled.
Following a decision made by students at Seaford Head School in East Sussex, United Kingdom, one of the houses will no longer be named after JK Rowling. The reason named is "her recent words about the trans community".
In addition, former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill has been removed as name-giver as "a figure who promoted racism".
Perth bookshop Rabble Books and Games has announced they will stop stocking JK Rowling's Harry Potter books to make the shop a "safer place" for its customers. This comes after Rowling came under fire for her comments about transgender people and her misleading portrayal of cross-dressing in her recent book "Troubled Blood".
"While stocking a book isn't an endorsement (good grief, that would be a minefield), and we will always take orders for books that aren't in stock, there are more worthy books to put on the shelf – books that don't harm communities and won't make us sad to unpack them," so the store's statement. "We know that HP means a lot to a lot of people and that often you want to share them with the youngsters in your life. We will always be happy to order them in for you, as with any books we don’t stock," they wrote and added that all the profits of those sales will be going to the Australian organisations TransFolk of WA.
Around 150 public figures have signed an open letter titled "A Letter on Justice and Open Debate" warning of the spread of "censoriousness" and "intolerance of opposing views" in today's culture. Among the signatories are writer and activist Gloria Steinem and authors J.K. Rowling and Margarete Atwood.
The letter states that "powerful protests for racial and social justice are leading to overdue demands for police reform, along with wider calls for greater equality and inclusion across our society," but that this has also led to "a new set of moral attitudes and political commitments that tend to weaken our norms of open debate and toleration of differences in favor of ideological conformity."
"The free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted. [...] But it is now all too common to hear calls for swift and severe retribution in response to perceived transgressions of speech and thought," the letter continues.
Author J.K. Rowling was accused of making transphobic on Twitter over the weekend. The author of the Harry Potter series enraged several people with the comment on an article that stated that 1.8 billion people — girls, women, and gender non-binary people — menstruate. "People who menstruate. I am sure there used to be a word for those people. Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?" wrote Rowling.
This is not the first time Rowling is involved in controversy as last year she was criticised for showing support for Maya Forstater, a researcher who stated that people cannot change their biological sex.
The author of the Harry Potter series, J.K. Rowling, has launched a new website where she has started publishing a children's book that she initially wrote for and read to her own children years ago. On the website she states that the book called "The Ickabog" will be released in instances of one to three chapters over the course of seven weeks. The book is free to read and the first two chapters are already available.