J.K. Rowling Fires Back at Paralympian Valentina Petrillo’s Claim

J.K. Rowling snapped back at a visually impaired, transgender Paralympian after she spoke about the author in a newspaper article.

Rowling is best known as the author the Harry Potter series of books and The Cormoran Strike crime series under the pen name of Robert Galbraith. She has become known more recently for her prolific posting about transgender issues, which some people have labeled as transphobic.

Her latest thoughts on transgender people come after Italian Paralympian Valentina Petrillo spoke about Rowling in an interview with The Times.The athlete competed at the Paris 2024 games and was the first openly transgender person to compete at a Paralympics.

Petrillo competed in the T12 200m and 400m races for visually impaired athletes, managing to reach the semi-finals in both events. But backlash over her participation came in thick and heavy during the games, including from Rowling, who posted on X, formerly Twitter account, describing her as a “out and proud cheat.”

The row over transgender people participating in sports, particularly in women’s sports, has escalated in recent years, with some claiming they have an unfair advantage because they were assigned male at birth.

Petrillo opened up about the backlash to The Times.

“It was a surprise because I’m not used to this. I don’t know how to handle it. Before I was focused on my performance so I didn’t know [the full extent of] what was happening around me,” Petrillo told the newspaper.

She also set her sights on Rowling, saying the author “is only concerned about the fact that I use the female toilet,” but she “doesn’t know anything about me.”

Rowling responded to that quote about the “female toilet,” when she shared the article to her X account.

She wrote in response to Petrillo: “Yeah, no. That’s not the only thing I, or any of the other millions of women concerned about the destruction of female categories, boundaries and rights, are concerned about.”

Petrillo pointed to her lack of success on the athletics tracks at the Paris 2024 games as proof that concern about transgender women in sports is exaggerated.

“All of this fear that trans people will destroy the world [of women’s sport] does not exist. People said men would go to compete as women just so they could win, but that has not happened at all. It is just transphobia,” she said.

While there are many opponents to transgender women competing in sports with cisgender women, many advocacy groups have said they should be allowed to.

“To date, the only established driver of athletic advantage in men over women is testosterone. Further, the existing literature suggests that treatment to lower testosterone may be sufficient to erase that advantage in at least some athletic activities,” Joshua D. Safer, executive director of the Mount Sinai Center for Transgender Medicine and Surgery, wrote in a 2022 report.

“In addition, there is a need to prioritize the need to motivate people to participate in sport for better health.”