Former Culture Club singer Boy George has become embroiled in a social media altercation with the Harry Potter author JK Rowling after criticising her relentless campaign to preserve women-only spaces.
The 64-year-old musician called Rowling a “rich bored bully” in a post shared to X/Twitter, after she was dubbed “the person maybe most responsible for the push to take away trans rights” by another user.
Rowling, 59, has repeatedly come under fire for various comments about gender ideology over the past five years, with many, including stars of the Potter film adaptations, accusing her of transphobia.
In April, when the UK Supreme Court ruled that the terms “women” and “sex” in the Equalities Act refer to a biological woman and biological sex, Rowling shared a photo of herself smoking a cigar on a superyacht, alongside the caption: “I love it when a plan comes together.”
Following the X/Twitter user’s remarks that Rowling was “responsible” for diminishing trans rights, the author asked “which rights have been taken away from trans people?”, to which George replied: “The right to be left alone by a rich bored bully!”
The dig launched a lengthy response from the writer, in which she referenced the Culture Club frontman being sentenced to 15 months in prison in 2009 after he was convicted of the assault and false imprisonment of male escort Audun Carlsen.
“I’ve never been given 15 months for handcuffing a man to a wall and beating him with a chain,” Rowling wrote. “You yourself have been convicted of violent assault. The overwhelming number of people who commit crimes of violence are male, just like you.
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“That’s why I don’t want to see men identifying into women’s prison cells or any of the spaces mentioned above. Not all men are violent or predatory but enough are to make safeguarding necessary.
“As we both know, the safe, fashionable thing in the arts world right now is to do exactly what you’re doing: parrot TWAW [trans women are women] and sneer at the unenlightened plebs who think sex is important and matters.
“For a man who was once all about non-conformity, George, you couldn’t have become more predictably or more tediously conformist,” she concluded.
The Independent has contacted George and Rowling’s representatives for comment.
Following the Supreme Court's ruling that trans women are not legal women under the Equalities Act, transgender women with a gender recognition certificate can be excluded from single-sex spaces if “proportionate”.
While gender critical campaigners have hailed the ruling as a victory for biological women, there are concerns it will put trans people at risk and exclude them from public life.
George is not the first celebrity to criticise Rowling in recent weeks. In April, actor Pedro Pascal labelled the author a “heinous loser” following her celebration of the Supreme Court ruling.
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