JK Rowling and the Anti-trans Panic: An evening with Gina Gwenffrewi and Sharon Cowan

This event is one of our Lighthouse Social launches, which includes a 1hour discussion with the author & audience Q&A, followed by 30mins to linger and chat, have a drink, be introduced to folk with shared interests. You can come just for the talk, or stick around, its entirely up to you!

Join us for an evening celebrating trans activism and trans joy amid adversity with the launch of Gina Gwenffrewi's new book: JK Rowling and the Anti-trans Panic!

"Blending analysis with her lived experience as a trans woman in a nation in the throes of an anti-trans moral panic, Gwenffrewi provides a necessary corrective to the 'about trans people, without trans people' mode of reporting that has become standard in UK media." —Fran Amery, author of Beyond Pro-Life and Pro-Choice: The Changing Politics of Abortion in Britain

In her talk, Edinburgh University lecturer and cherished friend of the bookshop, Gwenffrewi talks about her thoughts on JK Rowling's apparent radicalization as an anti-trans activist and the social and political factors in the UK that enabled it.

In conversation with her colleague, Professor Sharon Cowan, Gina will also talk about her chapters on Ricky Gervais, and the manufactured 'free speech' crisis that has been used to promote hate speech across the UK.

Gwenffrewi beautifully captures the light and dark of being out as trans in the city that—if it can fairly be called ground zero for anti-trans fervor—also embodies liberatory possibilities for trans people worldwide.