The stars of Queer Eye stopped by Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen, where Jonathan Van Ness directed J. K. Rowling-anti-trans comments at the beginning of this month. This is not the first time that the Harry Potter author share transphobic comments on Twitter, where Daniel Radcliffe and Eddie Redmayne both spoke against it — and now, JVN weighs.
Cohen shared a question with Van Ness submitted by a fan named Lisa D: “You spoke about J. K. Rowling-anti-trans comments at the beginning of this month. Can you talk about why your comments were so harmful and what people can do to help Black people trans?”
Van Ness, remarked that “J. K. Rowling has come out many times on the side of the oppression of a trans person; siding with the idea of oppressing trans folk, and, basically, only the questioning of the validity of trans people’s gender identity.”
He continued, “the fears around the idea of gender are rooted in white supremacy, and they have been for a very long time. Because your feminism is not cross-sectional, which means that if you are a trans woman, she does not believe that you deserve the same rights and protections that a cisgender woman. So, really, she is hanging on the biology and really hung up on the binary of biology, which also ignores people who are intersex. The biology of sex is not binary, there are intersex people. So, I think that very in the meantime — because the Black Lives Matter movement it is so important — but also Black trans people are more specific and additional to the marginalized. And to take advantage of this time, in a platform such as J. K Rowling, to spread this kind of transphobic vitriol and sew this type of discord, I think that is very disappointing. So, I think that, in the meantime, it is about the donation of The Okra Project, donate to organizations that are doing the work on the ground to help the people who really need it. It’s just discouraging to talk about J. K. Rowling when we have lost three trans lives in the last two weeks.”
