Author who quit JK Rowling’s agency over transgender row says Harry Potter author has ‘fallen in with the wrong crowd’ and needs to ‘open her eyes’
- Fox Fisher, Drew Davies and Ugla Stefanía Kristjönudóttir Jónsdóttir resigned from The Blair Partnership
- A fourth author is understood to have quit but wished to remain anonymous
- Fox Fisher has complained JK’s success meant it was ‘not a level playing field’
- They said: ‘I just think that if she opened her eyes and saw that transgender women are women then we’d be able to move forward’.
A transgender author who quit JK Rowling’s literary agency today declared she had ‘got in with the wrong crowd’ who had made her ‘very scared’ of trans people.
Fox Fisher and three other writers resigned from The Blair Partnership, which has long represented the Harry Potter author, who has been criticised for defending a Scottish researcher who was fired for claiming that ‘men cannot change into women’.
Fisher said today that Ms Rowling had failed to ‘open her eyes’ on the issue and claimed The Blair Partnership had refused to release a public statement in support of transgender people and claimed it had retweeted ‘toxic’ tweets on the issue from an official account.
Fox also suggested that because of JK’s huge sales the agency ‘is not an equal playing ground’ for trans authors because it was ‘built around her’.
Trans author Fox Fisher and three other writers resigned from The Blair Partnership, an agency ‘built around’ JK Rowling, and said today that because of JK’s huge sales the agency ‘is not an equal playing ground’ for trans authors
Gender activist Ugla Stefania Kristjonudottir Jonsdottir – known as Owl – and partner Fox Fisher, a self-styled ‘trans queer artist’, as well as their novelist friend Drew Davies, announced they were not convinced the literary agency ‘supports our rights at all avenues’. The fourth author asked to remain anonymous.
Speaking to the BBC today Fox Fisher said of Ms Rowling: ‘I think she’s fallen in with the wrong crowd. And that she is very scared and fearful of things when she just needs to spend some time with some transgender people who might also have been her fans.
‘I think when we are not transgender we get our information from other sources including non-transgender people and I think that information can be very flawed.
‘I just think that if she opened her eyes and saw that transgender women are women then we’d be able to move forward’.
Fisher identifies as a non-binary trans person, meaning they prefer to use the pronoun ‘they’ rather than ‘he’ or ‘she’.
They added: ‘It is not an equal playing ground. JK Rowling is an absolutely huge author and the agency was created around JK Rowling. Even combined we’d never have the same sales as she does. Since December I’ve been trying to speak to the agency about JK Rowling’s tweets and while I’d never be able to change her views – or demand to – all we wanted really was an open conversation’.
It came after Miss Rowling expressed ‘deep concerns’ about transgender activism in an essay earlier this month, in which she described being a victim of domestic violence and sexual assault.
Jónsdóttir, also known as Owl Fisher and co-author of the Trans Teen Survival Guide, suggested the agency should conduct staff training with the group All About Trans while their novelist friend Drew Davies (right) has also quit
Harry Potter film stars Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint issued statements in support of transgender people, pointedly not backing Miss Rowling.
A handful of staff at publishers Hachette involved in her new children’s book, The Ickabog, also staged a rebellion.
The Blair Partnership has said it could not compromise on the ‘fundamental freedom’ of allowing authors the right to express their thoughts and beliefs.
A spokesman said: ‘We believe in freedom of speech for all; these clients have decided to leave because we did not meet their demands to be re-educated to their point of view. We respect their right to pursue what they feel is the correct course of action.’
Ms Rowling, 54, had first clashed with gender activists after appearing to ‘like’ a post on Twitter saying that trans women are ‘men in dresses’, which she said was an accident. Then last year she faced the biggest backlash of her career after defending a female researcher who was fired for claiming that ‘men cannot change into women’.
This month, she made a jibe at an article titled ‘Creating a more equal post-Covid-19 world for people who menstruate’.
She tweeted: ‘I’m sure there used to be a word for those people. Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?’
Some staff at Hachette told bosses they were unhappy working on The Ickabog. In response, they were told that while they would not be forced to work on books they disagreed with, they should not down tools over views that were nothing to do with the book in question, a fairytale.
Hachette issued a statement siding with Miss Rowling’s right to freedom of speech.
Jonsdottir, 29, was one of the youngest people in Iceland to undergo a medical transition in 2010. The co-author of the Trans Teen Survival Guide suggested The Blair Partnership should conduct ‘staff training’ with a group called All About Trans but ‘these requests weren’t met positively by the management’.