An online mob descended upon Harry Potter author JK Rowling, accusing her of being transphobic for featuring a transvestite killer in her latest novel.
Rowling’s latest effort, Troubled Blood — written under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith — was released on Tuesday and centres around a fictional cold-case of a woman who was murdered in 1974 by a man who has a fetish for wearing female clothes.
The new character in the Cormoran Strike series, Dennis Creed, “fetishes women’s clothing… and disguises himself as a woman to trick the person he’s abducting”, a publishing source told The Sun.
The online outrage mob picked up on a review of the book in the Sunday Telegraph, by Jake Kerridge who wrote: “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.”
Celebrities and activists quickly took to social media to denounce Rowling as a ‘transphobe’ for writing the plotline, causing the hashtag #RIPJKRowling to trend on Twitter, forcing the tech giant to add a disclaimer to notify the public that the Harry Potter author was still alive.
Former Nickelodeon actress and singer Kira Kosarin wrote: “RIP JK Rowling, she’s not dead, we just don’t acknowledge transphobes in this house.”
Twitter adds a label to the #RIPJKRowling hashtag to clarify she is, indeed, not dead pic.twitter.com/W9IudFIW5C
— Jack Brewster (@jbruce218) September 14, 2020
British actor Robbie Coltrane, who stared as Hagrid in the Harry Potter film series, came to the defence of Rowling, saying that he did not believe her previous statements on transgenderism and feminism were offensive.
“I don’t think what she said was offensive really. I don’t know why but there’s a whole Twitter generation of people who hang around waiting to be offended,” Coltrane told the Radio Times.
“They wouldn’t have won the war, would they? That’s me talking like a grumpy old man, but you just think, ‘Oh, get over yourself. Wise up, stand up straight and carry on,'” he added.
JK Rowling has increasingly become a target of leftist activists — despite being a left-wing feminist herself — after she defended the concept of biological sex in June, saying that “it isn’t hate to speak the truth”.
Sharing an article entitled: “Opinion: Creating a more equal post-COVID-19 world for people who menstruate,” Rowling replied: “‘People who menstruate.’ I’m sure there used to be a word for those people. Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?”
On Monday, former Sex and the City star Cynthia Nixon lashed out at Rowling over the comments, saying that they were “really painful” for her 23-year-old transgender son, who was born as a woman but now identifies as a man.
Rowling Warns on Trans Therapy for Kids: ‘We’re on Brink of a Medical Scandal’ https://t.co/A9PCt9V0vV
— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) July 27, 2020
Follow Kurt Zindulka on Twitter at @KurtZindulka
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