J.K. Rowling is once again taking issue with John Oliver, who addressed right-wing outrage over trans athletes who compete in women’s and girls’ sporting events on Sunday’s Last Week Tonight.
It’s a topic he also addressed in November following the presidential election, wherein Donald Trump defeated Kamala Harris. After taking office this year, Trump signed an executive order to ban transgender athletes from taking part in female-driven sports.
“In our post-election show, I said there are vanishingly few trans girls competing in high school sports anywhere, and even if there were more, trans kids like all kids vary in athletic ability, and there is no evidence that they pose any threat to safety or fairness,” Oliver said on Sunday’s show.
He went on to note that following the broadcast of that episode, Harry Potter mastermind J.K. Rowling posted “the single longest tweet I’ve ever seen in my life” in response.
Oliver read from her post: “I’m happy to watch females suffer injury, humiliation and the loss of sporting opportunities to bolster an elitist postmodern ideology.”
Joked Oliver: “Honestly, it feels a bit weird to catch that much heat from the creator of Harry Potter, especially when I clearly look like what would have happened to him if they’d just left him in that cupboard for the rest of his life.”
He continued: “I stand by everything I said in that episode, but I will concede that this subject is more complicated.”
On Monday morning, Rowling again shared her thoughts on the subject and criticized Oliver’s take. She reposted a message on X that read: “HBO aired a 45 minute episode of Last Week Tonight, in which John Oliver argued that men have only limited or no advantage over women in sports, and men winning in women’s sports almost never happens, on the same evening that a women’s pool final was contested between two men.”
In response, Rowling wrote: “I understand why men like Oliver, who’ve consistently mocked anti-science people on the right, sold out initially. They didn’t want to blow up their careers. Taking fashionable anti-women’s rights positions was the cost of doing business. But it’s time to read the fucking room.”
When a follower replied with, “I can’t imagine willingly appearing this stupid for the sake of political correctness,” Rowling responded: “They’re still regurgitating Twitter TRA talking points from 2020. I can’t imagine anyone being so far up their own backside they haven’t noticed that this nonsensical crap is facing a massive grassroots backlash, that it loses elections and that girls and women are being harmed.”
In November, Oliver criticized Harris and the Democrats for not doing more to publicly support trans people during the 2024 presidential campaign. He said that it should have been “pretty easy” to come up with a response to right-wing criticism.
“There are vanishingly few trans girls competing in high schools anywhere,” he said at the time. “Even if there were more, trans kids, like all kids, vary in athletic ability, and there is no evidence they pose any threat to safety or fairness. … And finally, if you genuinely want to address the biggest concern for most girls who play high school sports, you’d be less worried about this and more about the creepy assistant volleyball coach who keeps liking their posts on fucking Instagram.”
After that episode aired, Rowling posted that Oliver is “an undoubtedly intelligent person [who] spouts absolute bullshit to support something he wants to be true, but isn’t.”
“Again and again I’ve come up against men who argue exactly what Oliver does here, using the very same talking points,” Rowling wrote. “With a straight face, the ‘believe the science’ guys will say ‘actually, we don’t yet have enough data to say whether men and boys are stronger and faster than women and girls’. The ‘be kind’ crew can’t see what the issue is.”
She continued: “If you want to tell the world you’re happy to watch females suffer injury, humiliation and the loss of sporting opportunities to bolster an elitist post-modern ideology embraced by a minute fraction of the world’s population, fair enough; you’re allowed your opinion. But if you’ve just told girls they don’t deserve fair sport, maybe rethink using all too real and common sexual predation against young women as a punchline for your ‘edgy’ closing joke.”
Oliver and Rowling both hail from England (Oliver became an American citizen in 2019). They also both have ties with HBO: Oliver’s show is an HBO property, while the network is also working on a Harry Potter series for which Rowling serves as an executive producer.
Watch the Last Week Tonight segment below and read what Oliver had to say about Trump’s tariff plan.
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