As a trans woman and a Harry Potter fan, every day brings fresh pain. She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named has written a new book (ironically, under a male pseudonym), and according to Pink News, it features a cisgender male serial killer who murders his victims while wearing women’s clothes. The wailing and gnashing of teeth from trans rights activists on Twitter has been immeasurable since Pink News imparted this information. It would seem that Rowldermort has finally decided to go full TERF and is not even attempting to hide her seething hatred towards the trans community.It’s probably no coincidence Rowling’s pen name for her amateurish yet unfathomably popular crime novel series is ‘Robert Galbraith’. Rowling has always maintained that she chose this name because it conflates her childhood fantasy name ‘Ella Galbraith’, with the name of her political hero Robert F. Kennedy. Hmmm. I call bullshit on this ‘explanation’. Like every other sentence which spews out of that woman (including her views on chromosomes), it’s most probably a complete work of fiction. In my opinion, the more likely reason she went with ‘Robert Galbraith’ was to pay homage to Robert Galbraith Heath. A scientist who pioneered, among other things, gay conversion therapy. He was a firm believer that organic defects were the result of mental illness. Sound familiar? All this time, Rowling has been leaving us a breadcrumb trail right up to the door of her dilapidated mind-shack where she keeps her despicable views. Like a hateful version of The Da Vinci Code, but with a more mature audience.In all honesty, I am no longer hurt by Rowling’s constant betrayal of the fanbase who made her a success, or her refusal to apologize for having deeply problematic and frankly murderous opinions. I have managed to separate the author from the magical world she created. The seemingly LGBTQ+ positive literary universe which helped me navigate my formative years. When she first came out as transphobic, it was as if a thousand Death Eaters had screamed ‘Avada Kedavra!’ into my basket of innocent hopes and dreams. But it seems as if an age has passed since she revealed herself to be a hateful gender critical muggle and the respect I held towards her initially, has transmogrified from intense loathing to a moderate indifference. Now, I feel nothing but pity for her. Sitting there, in her huge house(s). Surrounded by money. Like a trans-exclusionary Scrooge McDuck. Sad. However, today brought new anguish. In an interview in the Radio Times, Hagrid came out in support of his mistress:
‘I don’t think what she said was offensive really. I dunno why but there’s a whole Twitter generation o’ people who hang aroun’ waitin’ to be offended. They wouldn’ have won the war, would they? Tha’s me talkin’ like a grumpy ol’ man, but you just think, “Oh, get over yersel! Wise up, stand up straight and carry on.”’Imagine thinking like that! At first I was afraid, I was petrified. Kept thinking I could never live now Hagrid’s terfified. But then the more I pondered on it, the more it made sense. All the clues were there. In the very first book, Voldermort plans to capture Harry at Hogwarts, and who makes sure Harry gets his Hogwarts acceptance letter? Yes, that’s right. You guessed it. Hagrid. He was a Death Eater all along. Hiding in plain sight. Never admitting his true motives, and never apologizing for misleading his friends. The character of ‘Hagrid’ was most likely Rowling projecting her own duplicitous nature into her work. More breadcrumbs.
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I mean, it really hasn’t taken her very long to regress from an enchantingly inclusive world filled with magic and wizards, to a crime novel literally oozing deadly transphobic tropes. She’s hardly breaking new ground when it comes to her fictional literary prowess. The whole ‘serial killer dressing up as a woman’ theme has been done to death; Silence of the Lambs, Psycho, Dressed to Kill, Ed Gein. It’s not exactly original. It’s certainly no Ghostbusters (2016).I would urge any decent person who cares about the trans community to go out and buy several copies of Rowling’s new novel Troubled Blood, cast it on the fire and video it. Upload the videos to your social media feeds. Hit her where it really hurts and let her observe in horror as the pages of her ignorant bigotry go up in flames, slowly curling into blackened ash to be blown away by a new dawn of inclusivity.
