JK Rowling, Gloria Steinem, Margaret Atwood sign letter denouncing cancel culture

The Harry Potter author was among 150 notable figures, including Gloria Steinem and Margaret Atwood, who signed the letter. Photo / Getty Images

JK Rowling is among 150 public figures who have signed an open letter denouncing cancel culture.

The 54-year-old Harry Potter author has Salman Rushdie, Margaret Atwood, Gloria Steinem, Malcolm Gladwell and Noam Chomsky, among others, to sign the letter, published in Harper's Magazine, complaining about "a vogue for public shaming and ostracism".

The letter states: "The free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted.

"We uphold the value of robust and even caustic counter-speech from all quarters.

"But it is now all too common to hear calls for swift and severe retribution in response to perceived transgressions of speech and thought.

"Whatever the arguments around each particular incident, the result has been to steadily narrow the boundaries of what can be said without the threat of reprisal."https://t.co/4zPjuQ5yt2

— Harper's Magazine (@Harpers) July 8, 2020

"We are already paying the price in greater risk aversion among writers, artists, and journalists who fear for their livelihoods if they depart from the consensus, or even lack sufficient zeal in agreement.

"As writers, we need a culture that leaves us room for experimentation, risk-taking, and even mistakes. We need to preserve the possibility of good-faith disagreement without dire professional consequences.

I was very proud to sign this letter in defence of a foundational principle of a liberal society: open debate and freedom of thought and speech.https://t.co/noh8VRHMyN

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) July 7, 2020

"Editors are fired for running controversial pieces; books are withdrawn for alleged inauthenticity; journalists are barred from writing on certain topics; professors are investigated for quoting works of literature in class; a researcher is fired for circulating a peer-reviewed academic study; and the heads of organisations are ousted for what are sometimes just clumsy mistakes."

Rowling shared a link to the article on Twitter and wrote: "I was very proud to sign this letter in defence of a foundational principle of a liberal society: open debate and freedom of thought and speech."

Her involvement with the open letter comes after she faced criticism for invalidating transgender people, when she took to Twitter to slam an article for using the phrase "people who menstruate" rather than "women".

She later shared a personal essay on her website, in which she doubled down on her beliefs and was also recently condemned for comparing transgender hormone replacement to gay conversion therapy.