JK Rowling opens up as 'domestic abuse and sexual assault survivor', defends tweets

Amid scathing backlash following her controversial statement about transgenders, Harry Potter author JK Rowling has defended her views on gender identity through a 3600-word long essay published on her website, revealing her personal struggles domestic abuse and sexual assault. The author sparked controversy a few days ago when she shared an opinionated article and pointed out the lack of terminology for 'people who menstruate'.

JK Rowling had tweeted, "‘People who menstruate.’ I’m sure there used to be a word for those people. Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?”

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"All I'm asking -- all I want -- is for similar empathy, similar understanding, to be extended to the many millions of women whose sole crime is wanting their concerns to be heard without receiving threats and abuse", said Rowling as she responded to criticism of her comments by disclosing that she was “a domestic abuse and sexual assault survivor”.

The celebrated author spoke of her own struggles with sexism and misogyny as she recalled being "mentally sexless" as an adolescent after reading theories on gender identity.

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Rowling empathised with trans women who have faced abuse as she opened up about her personal experiences with abuse as well as the motivation behind her beliefs. "If you could come inside my head and understand what I feel when I read about a trans woman dying at the hands of a violent man, you’d find solidarity and kinship," she wrote.

"I have a visceral sense of the terror in which those trans women will have spent their last seconds on earth, because I too have known moments of blind fear when I realised that the only thing keeping me alive was the shaky self-restraint of my attacker... Like every other domestic abuse and sexual assault survivor I know, I feel nothing but empathy and solidarity with trans women who’ve been abused by men," she added.

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The 54-year-old writer said she spent a period feeling "ambivalence about being a woman" before learning that "it's OK to feel confused, dark, both sexual and non-sexual, unsure of what or who you are". 

JK Rowling also argued that "the current explosion of trans activism" has resulted in too many people undergoing gender reassignment surgery without giving it sufficient thought. She added this has been instrumental in bringing back memories of the trauma that she has had to undergo in her youth.

JK Rowling wrote, “I’m mentioning these things now not in an attempt to garner sympathy, but out of solidarity with the huge numbers of women who have histories like mine, who’ve been slurred as bigots for having concerns around single-sex spaces”.

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