The thing about bored celebrities taking pops at trans people isn’t so much what they say: we have heard it all before. It’s that their celebrity means we hear it again and again and again.

I don’t follow JK Rowling, whose opinions on trans people are well known (and no longer explained away as “middle-aged moments” by panicky PRs). But I’ve seen her latest tweets several hundred times this morning already. Not just on Twitter, but in my news app, my RSS reader app, on Reddit and in my social news app. And they’ve caused a whole bunch of cisgender people to come into places such as trans-friendly subreddits hurling abuse and demanding “debate me, cowards!” And over the next few days we’ll see the second wave in the press and online as various right-wingers and anti-LGBT+ groups hail Rowling as a hero for refusing to be “silenced” by the “wokerati”.

Celebrity gives people a platform. It’s a shame some people choose to use it as a bully pulpit.