Trending today, alongside political articles on Ed Miliband and scientific discoveries of extraterrestrial life on Venus is once again, J.K. Rowling. Yes, that's right, she's put her foot in her mouth again. But what for this time as she was so apologetic about her previous slanderous comments towards those in the LGBTQIA+ community? Yup, you guessed it, more transphobia.
#RIPJKRowling came up on my Twitter feed and at first gave me a bit of a jolt of despair - thinking mainly of a childhood of Harry Potter and not recent outbursts. Rowling's recent comments on transphobia had a lot of us in uproar with no inclination that she would again be so "free with her views" to put innocent people once again in a negative light - we were wrong. Upon further inspection I found that the cause of the trend was due to backlash over her upcoming release 'Troubled Blood (Cormoran Strike, #5)'.
Private Detective Cormoran Strike is visiting his family in Cornwall when he is approached by a woman asking for help finding her mother, Margot Bamborough - who went missing in mysterious circumstances in 1974. Strike has never tackled a cold case before, let alone one forty years old. But despite the slim chance of success, he is intrigued and takes it on; adding to the long list of cases that he and his partner in the agency, Robin Ellacott, are currently working on. And Robin herself is also juggling a messy divorce and unwanted male attention, as well as battling her own feelings about Strike.
As Strike and Robin investigate Margot's disappearance, they come up against a fiendishly complex case with leads that include tarot cards, a psychopathic serial killer and witnesses who cannot all be trusted. And they learn that even cases decades old can prove to be deadly...
Sounds quite intriguing, right? What the description leaves out is the cis male serial killer our protagonist Cormoran Strike is investigating. According to an early write-up, the killer dresses as a woman to kill his cis female victims. The first review for 'Troubled Blood' (the fifth entry in Rowling's 'Cormoran Strike' series' penned under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith), has described it as a "book whose moral seems to be: never trust a man in a dress".
The second in the series, 'The Silkworm', has previously been criticised over its depiction of a trans character described as "unstable and aggressive". In the book, the woman, Pippa, stalks Strike before attempting to stab him. After the attack, the titular detective manages to trap Pippa in his office, where her trans identity and deadname are revealed. At this point, JK Rowling describes the character's Adam's apple and hands, with the Strike character warning her that prison "won't be fun for you... Not pre-op".
Trans journalist Katelyn Burns reviewed the passage for them in 2018, writing: "It's an entirely common though insulting trope about trans women - that they are aggressive and unable to overcome their masculine nature, not to mention villainous - that has become all too common from cisgender authors with only a passing knowledge of trans people."
The 944 paged crime thriller has had a lot of abuse already and only reiterates Rowling's transphobic views for which she has recently been slated.
The publication date being tomorrow and Waterstones ALREADY offering it out for only £10 - half price - just shows how badly this book is doing before it's even been released to the general public. I'm still not sure if Rowling actually believes the things she says or just does it for the publicity, but I for one, will be buying this book.
Seriously woman, put the pen down please.
Victoria Marie. X
If you're interested in supporting some actual trans and non-binary authors who aren't going to offend and ridicule the LGBTQIA+ community, then have a look here. Here are some trans charities to support too.
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