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J.K. Rowling threw her support behind Sophie Cunningham's comments on transgender athletes
Sophie Cunningham’s recent comments about transgender athletes have found a prominent supporter in J.K. Rowling, arguably the highest-profile anti-trans activist in the world. Rowling took to social media to throw her support behind Cunningham and her comments about youth trans athletes.
J.K. Rowling, the author of the iconic Harry Potter series, has over 13 million followers on X/Twitter, where she exclusively engages in political and culture war discourse, and is particularly outspoken about the LGBTQ community and trans people.
Rowling’s divisive views are one of the main — although far from the only — reasons the upcoming HBO adaptation of Harry Potter such a controversial project.
Harry Potter J.K. Rowling publicly backed Sophie Cunningham’s comments about transgender athletes in youth sports
Given Rowling’s obsession with the topic, she found Sophie Cunningham’s comments like a moth to a flame and made sure to publicly back them on social media.
— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) July 23, 2026
“She’ll weigh in on how to ‘protect women’s sports,’ she says, because she’s in that world and feels qualified to speak to that world. ‘I got a lot of negative feedback about me hating trans. And I’m like, I never once said that, she says. ‘I think that I am here to extend love. But I also think with that love is truth, being honest. And I want to protect young girls in a locker room, or young girls in sport who shouldn’t have to go against biological men.'” [via ESPN]
Regardless of your opinion on transgender athletes in youth sports, the cultural firestorm surrounding the issue is wildly disproportionate to its actual scale and impact on the lives of Americans.
While trans people are estimated to make up 1% of the population of the United States (approximately 3.4 million people), they represent less than 0.002% of college athletes (10 out of every 500,000) in the country, according to SF.gov. To put that number into context, .002% if also the percentage of Americans that get bitten by venomous snakes each year, per the CDC.
Additionally, a study from UCLA’s Williams Institute found that “as many as 122,000 transgender youth could be participating in high school-level team athletics,” which would represent less than one percent (roughly 0.75%) of the current high school population in the United States (approximately 15 to 17 million people). This number would also include both transgender boys and girls.
Given the current political landscape around the WNBA — elected Republican are probing the league over the “potentially racially motivated” treatment of Caitlin Clark — and the country in general, Cunningham and her team surely knew what the reaction to her comments would be, so perhaps everything is unfolding according to her plan.