J.K. Rowling Is Transphobic. Her Legacy Is Now Filled With Bigotry.
Her writing has lost its magic
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J.K. Rowling was once known for her creation of the fantastical wizarding world of Harry Potter, but recently she’s been making headlines because of her transphobic views — and it seems like bigotry is the legacy she is invested in leaving behind.
J.K. Rowling’s obsession with trans people became obvious in June, when she posted a long explanation for why, as many queer and trans activists had been flagging up, she had been liking transphobic content on Twitter. Her justification for engaging with a tweet that referred to trans women as “men in dresses” was that she was doing research for her upcoming novel. Rowling also included many transphobic views in her 3,000-word post, expressing concern over the “misogyny” of trans activists silencing cis women who do not accept that trans women are women. Drawing on her experience of being a domestic abuse survivor, Rowling wrote: “I believe my government is playing fast and loose with womens and girls’ safety,” and that she “refuses to bow down to a movement that I believe is doing demonstrable harm in seeking to erode ‘woman’ as a political and biological class and offering cover to predators like few before it.”
Months later, the real reasons behind Rowling’s research have come to light: In her latest novel, Troubled Blood, she has made the villain a murderous man in a dress. A review of the novel published by the Daily Telegraph on Sunday mused: “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.” An excerpt of the book revealed that the murderer Rowling created didn’t simply wear a dress to conceal his identity, he wears a burqa. Despite spending several sentences of her June statement insisting that she wants all trans people — particularly trans women of color — to be safe, Rowling has not hesitated in writing a boogeyman character that will further entrench transphobia and racism in society.
The “man in a dress” trope has fueled discrimination against trans and queer people for generations, ossifying the idea that trans women aren’t women, but male predators seeking to attack “real” women in women-only spaces. Contemporarily, this idea is constantly…
