Harry Potter creator JK Rowling has again been accused of transphobia after she tweeted her support for a British woman sacked for criticising government plans to let people self-identify their gender.
The author came to Maya Forstater's defence on Friday morning after the former tax expert at the think tank Centre for Global Development lost an employment tribunal after a judge ruled her views were "absolutist".
"Dress however you please," Rowling wrote in her first tweet since November.
"Call yourself whatever you like. Sleep with any consenting adult who'll have you. Live your best life in peace and security.
"But force women out of their jobs for stating that sex is real? #IStandWithMaya #ThisIsNotADrill."
Rowling's tweet quickly stirred up controversy on Twitter, with many people claiming to have once been loyal fans calling her views "harmful".
"I cannot believe someone who wrote books that were so filled with humanity would espouse these views," one user wrote.
"It is both a scientific and a medical fact that intersex individuals do exist and gender is not as binary as mainstream society is set to believe," another said.
Ms Forstater was let go from her job in March, arguing "framing the question of transgender inclusion as an argument that male people should be allowed into women's spaces discounts women's rights to privacy and is fundamentally illiberal".
She then compared it to "forcing Jewish people to eat pork".
Ms Forstater then contested her termination at an employment tribunal, but Judge James Tayler ruled against her, calling her remarks "offensive and exclusionary".
"Even paying due regard to the qualified right to freedom of expression, people cannot expect to be protected if their core belief involves violating others' dignity and creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating, or offensive environment for them," he said.
The incident was not the first time Rowling was accused of being transphobic; the author has also come under fire in the past for 'liking' anti-trans tweets from other users.
