JK Rowling has hit out at Lorraine Kelly after the Scots television host appeared to dismiss concerns about biological men accessing female-only spaces.
Just days after the Harry Potter writer took a swipe at Boy George, the 1980s singer appeared on Lorraine during which the Glasgow-born television host turned to trans issues.
Bringing up JK Rowling and Boy George’s spat about trans issues the presenter, who claimed the singer ‘stood up’ for those without a voice, put her hands on her head as she declared it ‘always came down to toilets’ and ‘I don’t quite know why’
But Ms Rowling, who has long campaigned for women’s rights, took aim at the Scots host, and said: ‘”Why does it boil down to toilets, tee hee hee?”
‘It doesn’t, Lorraine. It boils down to intact male rapists in female prisons, men using supposedly female-only rape crisis centres, the decimation of women’s sports and the authoritarian attacks on freedom of speech and belief.’
Ms Kelly said it had been ‘very tough’ for people in the ‘trans community’, and told Boy George he had been ‘good’ when he has spoken out.
The host, 65, referenced his row with Ms Rowling, to which he described her as a ‘muggle’, and she asked: ‘Do you think that we will ever get to a case, where I would love to be, where it really, really doesn’t matter, and we just let people get on with their lives?’
Boy George, wearing a large pink hat with bright pink stars, told her: ‘Most people it doesn’t matter, it matters only whether you’re a nice person or a horrible person.
Boy George discussed his recent spat with JK Rowling on the Lorraine show
Ms Rowling berated Lorraine Kelly for encouraging ‘authoritarian attacks on freedom of speech and belief’
‘Nobody chooses to be trans or gay, no one chooses to have blue eyes, it just happens.’
The pair laughed as he waved down the camera barrel to Ms Rowling and told the writer to ‘get over it’.
Ms Kelly, whose show ITV bosses have cut back to 30 minutes from January next year amid a huge change to the daytime schedule, said: ‘Having friends who are trans and who are going through a really tough time it’s just like, let’s be fair about stuff, let’s talk, and we can all have our points of view, but at the end of the day we’re all just people blundering through and trying to get on with our lives.’
Boy George then told her: ‘But also no one goes into the loo to hang out, it’s a horrible place. Smelly, stinky, horrible place. Nobody goes in there to hang out.’
Ms Kelly said: ‘It always comes down to toilets doesn’t it? It always comes down to toilets, and I don’t quite know why.’
During the interview Ms Kelly said that Boy George, who shot to fame as lead singer in pop band Culture Club, was someone who had ‘always stood up for people who sometimes don’t have a voice for themselves’.
And Ms Rowling, 59, reignited her feud with the singer, and wrote on social media: ‘My favourite part is how a man who went to prison for tying up a fellow human being and whipping them with a chain is “someone who always speaks up for those without a voice”.’
The 64-year-old was jailed in 2009 for inflicting ‘wholly gratuitous violence’ in a cocaine-fuelled attack and handed a 15-month sentence.
Passing sentence Judge David Radford said the singer’s offence was ‘so serious that only an immediate sentence of imprisonment can be justified’.
Earlier this month Boy George branded her a ‘rich bored bully’, to which the Edinburgh-based writer quipped back: ‘I’ve never been given 15 months.’
