Tom Felton, an English actor best known for playing Draco Malfoy in the Harry Potter film series, got into problems in June 2020 after allegedly liking a tweet from author J.K. Rowling.
“My best friend just gave me a call. identifies as a butch lesbian. She was shouting fairly loudly, making it difficult to make out what she was saying, but I could just make out “[expletive] YES!” Rowling wrote in a tweet.
Again in response to the author’s earlier transphobic article, which read,
Following Felton’s alleged liking of the contentious message, numerous Twitter users immediately accused him of transphobia.
One of them claimed the actor was transphobic right away, writing, “Tom supported one of j.k. rowling’s numerous anti-trans tweets dated June 6, 2020. When he began to get criticism for his transphobia, he swiftly liked the tweet.”
Tom Felton is transphobic, then?
Many online users criticized Felton, but some supporters backed the 33-year-old actor, pointing out that he had used his Instagram Live to explain why he liked the message. When Tom went live, he apologized for liking J.K. Rowling’s tweet without reading it, a fan wrote.
The actor made the implication that he was not transphobic and had accidentally liked Rowling’s post. However, Felton’s supporters went over and beyond to demonstrate that the actor supported the LGBTQ+ community.
Felton was shown supporting the trans community on many events and platforms in a video that was shared by the actor’s TikTok fan account.
Controversial Tweets from J.K. Rowling Regarding the Transgender Community
Felton apparently received all the criticism and was labeled as transphobic only for having unintentionally liked one of the author’s divisive transphobic tweets.
Rowling faced criticism after publishing several divisive tweets about the transgender community. She retweeted an opinion piece on “those who menstruate,” questioning why the word “women” wasn’t used.
LGBTQ+ people and their allies strongly condemned the tweet. However, that didn’t stop the author from sharing her ideas with the world. She then tweeted a ton of positive and negative things about trans folks.
A few days later, she added a description to her website, as well as tweeted about the situation under the hashtag “TERF Wars,” which stands for a trans-exclusionary radical feminist.
It got to the point where actors like Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint, and Eddie Redmayne spoke out against her since many people were still not buying what she was saying.
