As of last Friday, J.K. Rowling — the anti-transgender billionaire author behind the Harry Potter book series — has a transgender politician representing her in Scotland’s Parliament.
Dr. Q Manivannan, the newly elected member of Scottish Parliament (MSP), will represent Edinburgh and Lothians East electoral region, where Rowling lives, Them reported. Manivannan joined Iris Duane as the two newly elected trans MSPs; both are members of the Scottish Green Party. Duane will represent Glasgow.
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“This is what diversity looks like in power,” Manivannan said during their victory speech, according to The Independent. “My name is Dr. Q Manivannan, I am a transgender Tamil immigrant, my pronouns are they/them.”
Manivannan is nonbinary, moved from Tamil Nadu, India to Scotland in September 2021, and was elected while on a temporary student/graduate visa (rather than holding permanent U.K. residency).
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“I am to some in this country — everything that the hateful despise — and I am standing here as your MSP now with care,” they said in their victory speech.
“Hope. All we ask for is hope,” Duane, who uses she/her pronouns, wrote on Instagram Stories in response to the “historic moment” of her election, People magazine reported.
After their election, Rowling shared a post on X supporting Dr. Pam Gosal, a transphobic politician who lost her re-election to remain an MSP. Gosal supported the April 2025 U.K. Supreme Court decision saying that trans women aren’t covered under the 2010 Equality Law — Rowling funded the anti-trans organization involved in the court ruling.
After the trans MSPs’ victory, Rowling also published another X post criticizing U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer for appointing pro-trans ally Harriet Harman as his official advisor on women and girls.
J.K. Rowling uses her fortune to fund anti-trans legal attacks
Rowling has a long history of transphobia. In 2019, she first revealed her anti-trans views by tweeting her support for an anti-transgender activist. Since then, she regularly spreads fearmongering misinformation about how trans women would potentially commit assaults if allowed in women’s restrooms, has written long essays denigrating trans women, repeats baseless conspiracy theories about kids being coerced into transitioning, and promotes transphobic merchandise vendors on social media.
Additionally, Rowling has come out in support of conversion therapy for trans people and claimed that almost everyone agrees with her, even as famous people that she has worked with condemned her words. She also published a book about a man who wears dresses in order to kill women and has encouraged people to photograph women in toilets just in case they might be trans.
Rowling has used her vast wealth, mostly accumulated through the success of her Harry Potter franchise and its many multimedia spinoffs, to personally fund legal cases aimed at diminishing rights and protections for transgender women in the U.K. and Ireland.
A spokesperson for Rowling confirmed that the author’s JK Rowling Women’s Fund (JKRWF) has been quietly operating since late 2024, managing “her ongoing financial support for legal cases involving women’s and girls’ sex-based rights.”
The fund is just her latest effort to end trans women’s rights in the U.K. In February 2024, she pledged a £70,000 (about $89,000) to For Women Scotland (FWS), the anti-trans organization behind the legal challenge that resulted in the U.K. Supreme Court’s ruling that excluded trans women from the country’s law prohibiting sex-based discrimination.
Since late 2024, she has also used JK Rowling Women’s Fund (JKRWF) to offer financial legal support to cisgender women who “have lost their livelihoods or are facing tribunals” due to their anti-trans beliefs, as well as individuals and organizations that are “being forced to comply with unreasonable inclusion policies regarding single sex spaces and services, or female-only clubs and events” or “are challenging legislation which takes away the freedoms or protections [cisgender] women are entitled to.”
HBO is currently producing a Harry Potter reboot to which Rowling will serve as an executive producer. Casey Bloys, HBO’s gay CEO, has repeatedly dismissed concerns about her toxic transphobia, saying that Rowling is “entitled” to “her personal political views.”
According to The Guardian, the Harry Potter franchise is worth an estimated $25 billion. In a May 28, 2025 Bluesky post, British barrister Jolyon Maugham wondered how much of Rowling’s fortune would be spent “oppressing a minoritised group she doesn’t like.”
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