You know, @jk_rowling, there have been a lot of troubling instances — likes, comments, language used — suggesting that you harbor some really hostile views around transgender people.

You keep digging your heels in, but what are you doing to *actively* support that community?

There are plenty of organizations supporting transgender folks that you could be donating to. There are countless meaningful, substantive gestures you could make to begin repairing your relationship to this community.

There are plenty of transgender advocates you could invite to the table, in conversation, around your growth edge on this. You could clarify your stance in any number of formats, including the written word, which you seem quite prolific at!

And yet...

I'm confused on why you haven't done so if you detest these "accusations" so much that you'd call on lawyers to defend your name.

I'm confused on why you haven't done so, when the only meaningful actions we can discern are those aligned with folks who'd rather we didn't exist.

I'm not accusing you of a "thought crime" or being "authoritarian."

I'm accusing you of breaking the hearts of vulnerable young people who looked to you as a source of solace, magic, and joy.

I'm accusing you of cowardice for not answering to them.

I'm not tweeting you as a disappointed fan. As a child, I couldn't finish the first book because reading about Harry living under a stairwell reminded me too much of the abuse I was actually living as a closeted trans kid.

His escape came by an owl... and mine never did.

It was too painful to read. But I know so many other transgender people who were swept up in the magic of those books, and for a little while, had someplace else to go. An entirely different world that they cherished so much.

I hate seeing that world shattered for them.

It reminds me so often of how, time and time again, transgender people have that magic taken away from them. When we discover something shimmering — a necklace, a new name, a brother's old shirt — only to be told it wasn't ours, could never be ours.

And when you're chipped away at, made to feel unlovable as you truly are, more and more of you is stowed away until none of you is left.

What did you call it? Evanesco.

You cosigned someone referring to human beings as a "dimorphic" species, with only two distinct forms.

How sad that someone who imagined a hat that, when worn, could know the true essence of someone's being can't fathom a world beyond a constructed binary based on parts.

Humanity is more than the sum of its (literal) parts, more than the bone and muscle that frames and carries us.

We're a magical alchemy of softness, strength, creativity, tenderness, dogged determination, fearfulness, curiosity, rage, mischief, love.

And what I know to be true of transgender people is that they know who they are beneath the confines of the body and the limited imagination of those who can't see past it.

They are deeply in touch with their own magic, even in a world that refuses to see it.

A writer who can imagine a mirror that shows your heart's most desperate desire, yet can't imagine the pain of looking in the mirror *every day* and seeing your greatest fear and knowing your heart's desperate longing at the same time.

The anger you're receiving online right now is the pain of children, many grown now, who looked to you for hope that there could be more to the world than what they were told.

You don't owe them anything. But their pain is still real.

The pain of children who can't step back into a sacred space they once retreated to, without knowing that the bringer of that magic may never have wanted them to experience it for themselves, had she known who they are.

That this pain is now etched into every word you wrote.

I have to wonder why, in the face of that pain, you've chosen to sidestep meaningful gestures and conversations, and instead "calmly and politely" gaslight anyone who questions why you would sit on the fence instead of assuring trans people that their dignity matters to you.

I think a lot of us are wondering that. I wish you'd answer them — not calmly, not politely, but with empathy and heart. Answer not as a writer carefully tending to their public image, but as a human being who understands the immense impact her words (and lack thereof) have.

With so many choices available to you, I'd ask you to pause and consider the ones you've made so far.

Pause.