With several instances that have been indicative of her morals leading up to this summer, author of the beloved “Harry Potter” series, J.K. Rowling, really utilized her downtime in early June to out herself as a transphobic TERF (trans-exclusionary radical feminist), despite the wholesome and progressive visage she had been trying to hide behind throughout her career.
Making several comments, which stated that menstruation is a process that belongs solely to women, before being called out, and then playing the victim and using her past abuse as a defense for her behavior, Rowling really just dug herself deeper and deeper into a hole whilst the actors that portrayed her well-known characters did what they could to stand by the trans community.
For a while after her outbursts, she remained fairly quiet. Her presence on social media was slim to none, and there had been nothing in the press to draw attention to anything she had said or done during that time.
All of that came to a screeching halt this week.
The 55-year-old writer hailing from Yate, United Kingdom, decided to release the topic of her most recent book, “Troubled Blood,” on Monday, Sept. 14, which now solidifies her transphobia in permanent ink.
The fifth installation in her crime series, “Cormoran Strike,” “Troubled Blood” tells the story of a cisgender man (the term for someone whose gender identity matches the sex they were assigned at birth), Dennis Creed, who dresses as a woman to commit haneous acts of murder against cisgender women.
In an early review done by The Telegraph, the reviewer states, “One wonders what critics of Rowling’s stance on trans issues will make of a book whose moral seems to be: never trust a man in a dress.”
While she will ultimately try to deny any of the implicit and explicit transphobia that she has littered across the pages of her novel, the aforementioned reviewer isn’t wrong in the question they posed regarding public response to the work.
Though the villanous character is not directly labled as a transgender woman, the book directly comes for transgender women’s existence by representing gender-nonconforming people, specifically those who present in a traditionally feminine manner, in a way that alludes to them them being dangerous and a threat, particularly to cisgender women.
To answer The Telegraph’s question, her audience was not about to tolerate any of it.
Readers, celebrities and the press alike have been incredibly quick in addressing why the entire premise of this book is so disturbingly wrong. So quick, in fact, that by Monday afternoon, the hashtag #RIPJKROWLING (shout out to the New York Post who published an article to assure us that she is, in fact, not dead) was already trending on Twitter.
Cynthia Nixon, known for her role as Miranda Hobbes on the HBO sensation, “Sex and the City,” chimed in, explaining how Rowling’s “baffling” comments and actions are “really painful” for her transgender son, Samuel, who grew up with the “Harry Potter” series.
“The books seem to be about championing people who are different, so for her to select this one group of people who are obviously [made to feel] different and sort of deny their existence, it’s just… it’s really baffling,” Nixon explained in an interview with The Independent. “I know she feels like she’s standing up for feminism, but I don’t get it.”
Others chimed in with the same sentiments, stating that “Harry Potter” was a franchise which laid the foundation for their understanding of the world and everyone in it. Many claimed that it contributed to the way they choose to approach peoples’ differences and stand up for people in other communities.
And now the author of those stories is turning around and repeatedly and actively calling for an attack on a community she tries really hard to pretend that she cares about, creating a massive and ever-growing rift between herself and the fan base that she raised to take down people who behave the way that she has.
I dare say, she couldn’t have written better irony herself.
Ali Kochik is a third year English Writings major, with both a journalism and women’s and gender studies minor. AK908461@WCUPA.EDU