J.K. Rowling revealed that she is a domestic abuse and sexual assault survivor in a long blog post written in response to the recent controversy over her comments about transgender people. Rowling said her and other female assault survivors had been labeled bigots for trying to protect single-sex spaces. The author has faced backlash for tweeting a sarcastic response to an opinion article titled “Creating a more equal post-COVID-19 world for people who menstruate.” “I’m sure there used to be a word for those people. Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?” she tweeted before doubling down with a longer post arguing that it was wrong to “erase the concept of sex.”

Rowling said in her blog post that she saw the language in the opinion article as “degrading to women.” Daniel Radcliffe and Eddie Redmayne, who have both starred in Rowling’s films, denounced her comments, both stating that transgender women are women. Emma Watson also tweeted in support of transgender people Wednesday afternoon, stating that “trans people are who they say they are.”