J.K. Rowling falsely claims 'there are no trans kids'

In recent years, millions of LGBTQ+ fans of the Harry Potter series have watched with dismay as its author, J.K. Rowling, has become a prominent figure in anti-trans activism. Her increasingly hostile rhetoric has ranged from referring to a transgender woman journalist as "a man... cosplaying" to dismissing the historical targeting of transgender people during the Holocaust as “a fever dream.” On Saturday, Rowling escalated her attacks further, making the baseless and easily disprovable claim to her millions of followers that transgender youth do not exist at all—a falsehood that directly contradicts decades of research and lived experiences of transgender people.

Rowling, responding to a commenter who implored her to "use her power for good" and end her "hateful focus on transgender youth," denied the very existence of transgender youth. She replied: “There are no trans kids. No child is 'born in the wrong body.' There are only adults like you, prepared to sacrifice the health of minors to bolster your belief in an ideology that will end up wreaking more harm than lobotomies and false memory syndrome combined.”

Of course, Rowling’s statement is easily disprovable—there are hundreds of studies documenting the existence of transgender youth and the harmful impacts of the very laws she supports. The most recent and largest study of transgender youth, published in Nature Human Behavior, identified 60,000 such individuals, clearly “existing.” The study further revealed that anti-trans laws, including sports bans, bathroom restrictions, and gender-affirming care prohibitions, increased suicide attempt rates by up to 72% in some states. The data is unequivocal: transgender youth exist, and they fare significantly better in states that allow them access to medical care and social acceptance.

Transgender youth do not emerge “from nowhere,” nor are they “caused” by “kids watching TikTok videos,” as Rowling suggests in another comment. There is no evidence that transgender identities are “caused” by any external factor. Rather, transgender people have always existed as a natural part of human diversity. Transgender individuals comprise an estimated 0.5–2% of the U.S. population, and many of them have understood their identity from a young age. According to a Kaiser Family Foundation and Washington Post poll, 66% of transgender adults reported knowing they were transgender before the age of 18.

This is not the first time J.K. Rowling has spread disinformation about the existence transgender people. Earlier this year, she claimed that the Nazi book burnings at the Institute of Sexology—where groundbreaking research on transgender and LGBTQ+ identities was destroyed—were “a fever dream.” To bolster her claim, she linked to a fringe researcher’s thread dismissing transgender women targeted by the Nazis as “troubled males,” erasing their identities entirely. However, history is clear: transgender people existed in the 1920s and 1930s in Germany, were heavily persecuted by the Nazis, and many fled or survived to share their stories.

Though J.K. Rowling does not hold a formal political position, her influence over anti-trans politics—particularly in the United Kingdom—is undeniable. Her threads reach millions on platforms like Twitter, amplified by leading anti-trans activists and far-right figures. As of this writing, her post denying the existence of transgender youth has amassed nearly six million views, along with hundreds of thousands of comments, retweets, and likes. Disinformation of this nature is uniquely dangerous: by erasing the existence of transgender people, it lays the groundwork for stripping away their rights entirely, providing a chilling justification for policies of exclusion and even eradication championed by far-right politicians.

This article originally appeared on Erin in the Morning.