Comedian Eddie Izzard has become the latest high profile person to defend JK Rowling amid backlash over her trans stance.
Eddie Izzard, who recently announced she is gender-fluid and identifies with she/her pronouns, defended JK Rowling in a new interview with The Telegraph.
“I don’t think JK Rowling is transphobic,” she said, “I think we need to look at the things she has written about in her blog.”
“Women have been through such hell over history. Trans people have been invisible, too. I hate the idea we are fighting between ourselves, but it’s not going to be sorted with the wave of a wand. I don’t have all the answers. If people disagree with me, fine, but why are we going through hell on this?”
Izzard’s comments come off the back of fellow comedian John Cleese also appearing to share his support for Rowling.
Back in September, Cleese revealed that he had signed a letter of support for Rowling after she faced critisism for her stance on transgender people.
After being asked to clarify his stance on the issue by a Twitter user in November, Cleese responded that he is “not that interested in trans folks.”
“I just hope they’re happy and that people treat them kindly,” he said.
The controversy surrounding Rowling’s views stems from an essay published on her website in June last year.
Within it, Rowling said she refuses to “bow down to a movement that I believe is doing demonstrable harm in seeking to erode ‘woman’ as a political and biological class and offering cover to predators like few before it.”
Responding to the piece, GLAAD President and CEO Sarah Kate Ellis called it a “misinformed and dangerous missive about transgender people” that “flies in the face of medical and psychological experts and devalues trans people accounts of their own lives.”
