On Thursday evening, Twitter user Juan Mac apologised to Harry Potter writer JK Rowling for a “defamatory” tweet sent on July 16 which quoted an earlier post by the author.
In the now-deleted post from July, Mac, citing Rowling, wrote “I ignore porn tweeted at children,” attributing the quote to the author. While the six words were accurate, the tweet controversially excluded the rest of Rowling’s original 2020 message.
“This was entirely misleading as I took her words out of context. I was wrong to make this defamatory and untrue allegation and apologise to JK Rowling,” Mac wrote in his online apology.
In July 2020, Rowling had taken to Twitter to call out a social media user who accused her of describing people who take mental health medication as “lazy.” “I’ve ignored fake tweets attributed to me and RTed widely. I’ve ignored porn tweeted at children on a thread about their art. I’ve ignored death and rape threats. I’m not going to ignore this,” Rowling wrote in the first of 11 posts.
It has been alleged by many, including trans writer Dianna Anderson, that Rowling sued Mac for quoting her tweet out of context. Another writer and apparent anti-TERF warrior, Karen Geier, reinforced this allegation, “It costs about £20,000 to fight a defamation case in England and Jk Rowling targeted a queer person for screenshotting her exact words.”
One individual claimed Rowling’s defence of “transphobic free speech” was at odds with her decision to take offense with Mac, who describes himself as having “Nae Agenda But The Gay Agenda.” Another sarcastically called it a “real victory against silencing and cancel culture.”
Others said that if it wasn’t for Rowling’s legal team, they would never have heard about the now-infamous tweet which the writer had supposedly wanted to keep quiet.
Another commenter sarcastically congratulated Rowling for going from a much-loved children’s writer to a “hateful member of the 1% using her inordinate wealth to crush and silence twitter users who are of no threat to her.”
However, some backed the embattled writer, who was once again finding herself facing the wrath of LGBTQ+ community. “Should we be mad about ppl posting porn under threads made for children or should we be mad at jk rowling. what a hard question,” one Twitter user wrote.
Another concurred, writing that Rowling had ignored porn targeted at children to minimise their exposure to disgusting pornographic tweets. “To use her tweet to suggest she didn’t care about children is about as defamatory as you can get,” they added.
Rowling previously claimed that she reports every bit of porn that “so called trans allies” tweeted into threads aimed at children, notably one thread where kids were sending the writer artwork for her book ‘The Ickabog’.
The writer is no stranger to controversy and has frequently engaged in online battles with people from the LGBTQ+ community. The author has pleaded with women not to give in to trans people and their demands to use women’s safe spaces. She was also accused of being transphobic after suggesting women should be called women, and not “people who menstruate.”
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