JK Rowling battles writer in Twitter blast over Theresa May
Leave it to JK Rowling to deliver epics, after the Harry Porter series. The author unfollowed a left-wing writer John Niven on Twitter, then blasted him in a series of explosive posts for branding British prime minister Theresa May “a whore” over her deal with the right-wing Democratic Unionist Party. Niven, a Labour Party supporter […]
Leave it to JK Rowling to deliver epics, after the Harry Porter series.
The author unfollowed a left-wing writer John Niven on Twitter, then blasted him in a series of explosive posts for branding British prime minister Theresa May “a whore” over her deal with the right-wing Democratic Unionist Party.
Niven, a Labour Party supporter and Scottish screenwriter, with 58,000 followers on Twitter, raged about May’s deal with the Northern Irish DUP on Friday.
He tweeted: “May ‘our friends and allies in the DUP’.
“Straight face. The lot. The f****** balls on this whore.”
Fellow writer Rowling, with 10.6 million Twitter followers, unleashed an epic series of tweets, accusing Niven of resorting to “filthy old insults” and misogyny simply because he disagreed with a woman.
“If you can’t disagree with a woman without reaching for all those filthy old insults, s**** you and your politics.
“I’m sick of ‘liberal’ men whose mask slips every time a woman displeases them, who reach immediately for crude and humiliating words associated with femaleness, act like old-school misogynists and then preen themselves as though they’ve been brave.
I’m sick of ‘liberal’ men whose mask slips every time a woman displeases them, who reach immediately for crude and humiliating words 3/14
— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) June 9, 2017
When you do this, Mr Liberal Cool Guy, you ally yourself, wittingly or not, with the men who send women violent pornographic images and rape threats, who try by every means possible to intimidate women out of politics and public spaces, both real and digital.
“Every woman I know who has dared express an opinion publically has endured this kind of abuse at least once, rooted in an apparent determination to humiliate or intimidate her on the basis that she is female.
"I don’t care whether we’re talking about Theresa May or Nicola Sturgeon or Kate Hooey or Yvette Cooper or Hillary Clinton: femaleness is not a design flaw. If your immediate response to a woman who displeases you is to call her a synonym for her vulva, or compare her to a prostitute, then drop the pretence and own it: you’re not a liberal.
"You’re a few short steps away from some guy hiding behind a cartoon frog."
The 14-tweet epic has between retweeted more than 31,000 times and picked up nearly 114,000 likes.
Niven only replied in a dismissive single tweet, saying, “My bad X”
Just unfollowed a man whom I thought was smart and funny, because he called Theresa May a whore. 1/14
— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) June 9, 2017