August 21 2025, 08:15 
Transphobic gay author John Boyne is complaining about being “cancelled” in a column that he recently published on The Telegraph, a U.K. publication with over 2.3 million daily readers. Boyne’s book Earth was nominated for the Polari Prize, the U.K.’s leading LGBTQ+ book award. However, 10 other nominees withdrew in protest of Boyne’s past transphobic comments.
On July 26, The Irish Independent published an article in which Boyne celebrated the 60th birthday of his friend, transphobic billionaire J.K. Rowling. Rowling is the famed author of the Harry Potter fantasy book series, who has used her wealth to finance court cases that have resulted in the rollback of trans civil rights across the U.K.
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In the article, Boyle referred to himself as a “fellow TERF” (a transgender-exclusionary radical feminist), and said women who support trans rights are “complicit in their own erasure” and “ready to pin down a handmaiden as her husband rapes her” (a reference to woman-assisted sexual assault in the dystopian TV series The Handmaid’s Tale).
Boyne has called trans women “men,” claimed that they’re stealing opportunities from female students and athletes (even though the actual number of trans competitors remains incredibly small), called gender-affirming care “experimentation” (even though most major medical associations have considered the care safe and essential for decades), and claimed that the people criticizing Rowling’s transphobia are undersexed and middle-aged straight men, “indoctrinated” young people who “fail to recognize actual misogyny and homophobia,” and grown women who don’t know any better.
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After 10 authors withdrew their nominations and numerous social media commenters questioned why an LGBTQ+ literary award would include an anti-trans writer, the Polari Prize initially issued a statement on August 7. It said in part, “We do not eliminate books based on the wider views of a writer, we regret the upset and hurt this has caused,” adding, “We can at times hold radically different positions on substantive issues.”
However, after continued public backlash, the Polari Prize announced on August 18 that it would “pause” its 2025 award. The announcement reiterated the prize’s commitment to inclusion and condemnation of “all forms of transphobia.”
“What was supposed to be a celebration of exceptional LGBTQ+ literature has been overshadowed by hurt and anger, which has been painful and distressing for all concerned, and we apologize to everyone who has been affected,” the statement said.
The award’s organizers also promised to increase representation of trans and gender non-conforming judges on its panels and to undertake a governance and management review.
“We will also explore discussions about the tensions between the claims of freedom of expression and the need to create inclusive and supportive spaces in a world hostile to our trans community members and our community at large,” the award organizers added.
Boyne reacted to the entire incident by publishing the aforementioned opinion column in The Telegraph. In it, he claimed he was unaware his book was nominated until he learned that a transgender judge on the Polari Prize panel had resigned due to his book’s inclusion.
He also wrote that he “invited the judges to release Earth from any further consideration should those who left, return” to participate in the awards.
“My olive branch was rejected, however, and a petition begun to have me exiled to Elba [the island that French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte was famously exiled to], which supposedly garnered 821 signatures,” Boyne wrote. “For a time, I called it the Loch Ness Monster of petitions – everyone had heard of it, but no one had actually seen it – but then, at last, I managed to procure a copy and realized why it had never, in fact, seen the light of day. To be polite, it lacked a certain name recognition factor.”
He said that the Polari Prize’s most recent announcement “worries” him.
“It suggests that gays and lesbians who do not conform to a specific gender ideology will be rooted out and excluded from future consideration, the court effectively stacked against them in this obsessive need to amplify the voices of trans people, a strange fixation,” he wrote.
“It’s worth considering how this new emphasis might damage younger LGB writers and their right to both hold and express perfectly valid, entirely legal opinions on any subject,” he wrote, adding that he never considered withdrawing his own book because “to have done so would have endorsed a mob mentality,” and ensured that future nominees would have their past publications and social media posts “vetted by their colleagues for wrongthink” and for “anything that went against the orthodoxy.”
This, he wrote, would amount to “the death of ideas” brought about by “raging tantrums of people who, I suspect, have not read anything with more than 280 characters for many years,” a reference to people who spent most of their time on X and other microblogging platforms, where he received much criticism.
He also said that, while he doesn’t feel any ill will towards the authors who withdrew their own nominations, “I do think they should reflect on how they would like to be treated should their names ever be maligned, their characters misrepresented, or their words twisted out of all context.”
“We operate in the books world. We’re supposed to believe in free speech and freedom of thought,” he concluded. “We’re meant to treat each other with respect, not look for ways to tear each other down. To value the written word and not denigrate, insult, and push people to a point where those who are emotionally vulnerable might not survive their attacks. Most of us have the maturity to understand that, but it’s clear that some, particularly those at the start of their careers, still have to learn it.”
Studies suggest that more than 40% of transgender adults in the U.S. have attempted suicide in their lifetime, and 30% of trans youth have attempted suicide in the past year, according to the National Institutes of Health. Psychologists say that trans people’s elevated suicidality primarily results from the violence and harassment they face from a disapproving public.
J.K. Rowling uses her fortune to fund anti-trans legal attacks
Rowling has used her vast wealth, mostly accumulated through the success of her Harry Potter franchise and its many multimedia spinoffs, to personally fund legal cases aimed at diminishing rights and protections for transgender women in the U.K. and Ireland.
A spokesperson for Rowling confirmed that the author’s JK Rowling Women’s Fund (JKRWF) has been quietly operating since late 2024, managing “her ongoing financial support for legal cases involving women’s and girls’ sex-based rights.”
The fund is just her latest effort to end trans women’s rights in the U.K. In February 2024, she pledged £70,000 (about $89,000) to For Women Scotland (FWS), the anti-trans organization behind the legal challenge that resulted in the U.K. Supreme Court’s ruling that excluded trans women from the country’s law prohibiting sex-based discrimination.
HBO is currently producing a Harry Potter reboot to which Rowling will serve as an executive producer. Casey Bloys, HBO’s gay CEO, has repeatedly dismissed concerns about her toxic transphobia, saying that Rowling is “entitled” to “her personal political views.”
According to The Guardian, the Harry Potter franchise is worth an estimated $25 billion. In a May 28 Bluesky post, British barrister Jolyon Maugham wondered how much of Rowling’s fortune would be spent “oppressing a minoritised group she doesn’t like.”
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