
Author J.K. Rowling came down hard on a man she previously admired for calling English Prime Minister Theresa May a “whore,” excoriating him for allying himself with men who can’t stand any woman who “displeases” them.
Without identifying the man, who the Harry Potter author described as someone “I thought was smart and funny,” Rowling launched into a tweetstorm calling out the overt sexism.
See below:
Just unfollowed a man whom I thought was smart and funny, because he called Theresa May a whore. 1/14
— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) June 9, 2017
If you can’t disagree with a woman without reaching for all those filthy old insults, screw you and your politics. 2/14
— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) June 9, 2017
I’m sick of ‘liberal’ men whose mask slips every time a woman displeases them, who reach immediately for crude and humiliating words 3/14
— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) June 9, 2017
associated with femaleness, act like old-school misogynists and then preen themselves as though they’ve been brave. 4/14
— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) June 9, 2017
When you do this, Mr Liberal Cool Guy, you ally yourself, wittingly or not, with the men who send women violent pornographic images 5/14
— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) June 9, 2017
and rape threats, who try by every means possible to intimidate women out of politics and public spaces, both real and digital. 6/14
— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) June 9, 2017
‘Cunt’, ‘whore’ and, naturally, rape. We’re too ugly to rape, or we need raping, or we need raping and killing. 7/14
— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) June 9, 2017
Every woman I know who has dared express an opinion publically has endured this kind of abuse at least once, 8/14
— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) June 9, 2017
rooted in an apparent determination to humiliate or intimidate her on the basis that she is female. 9/14
— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) June 9, 2017
If you want to know how much fouler it gets if you also happen to be black or gay, ask Diane Abbot or Ruth Davidson. 10/14
— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) June 9, 2017
I don’t care whether we’re talking about Theresa May or Nicola Sturgeon or Kate Hooey or Yvette Cooper or Hillary Clinton: 11/14
— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) June 9, 2017
femaleness is not a design flaw. If your immediate response to a woman who displeases you 12/14
— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) June 9, 2017
is to call her a synonym for her vulva, or compare her to a prostitute, then drop the pretence and own it: you’re not a liberal. 13/14
— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) June 9, 2017
You’re a few short steps away from some guy hiding behind a cartoon frog. 14/14
— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) June 9, 2017