JK Rowling is no bully

I see JK Rowling is being cruel again. Her nasty streak is off its leash. She’s bullying random people and engaging in ‘unedifying’ behaviour. What monstrous utterance has she issued this time? What fresh bigotry has spewed from her tweeting fingers? Brace yourselves: she called a man a man.

Yes, hold the front page: a woman has accurately described a member of the male sex. I’m old enough to remember when a public figure had to crack a racist joke or say something nice about Hitler in order to hit the headlines. Now they just have to use the word ‘bloke’ about a bloke.

It was over the weekend that Rowling committed her blasphemy. She was responding to the news that Lucy Clark, a man who identifies as a woman, has become ‘the first trans manager in the top five divisions of English women’s football’. With epic pithiness, Rowling tweeted: ‘When I was young all the football managers were straight, white, middle-aged blokes, so it’s fantastic to see how much things have changed.