Screenwriter Dustin Lance Black had an epic take-down of J.K. Rowling’s new book, which is about a man who dresses up as a woman in order to kill women.
“She’s a pretender. A thief. A fraud. And likely always has been,” Black said of the anti-transgender writer in response to her newest book.
Related: Hagrid comes to J.K. Rowling’s defense because trans people are “waiting to be offended”
Rowling has spent the better part of this year promoting anti-transgender sentiment online, even publishing a long, rambling essay where she says protections for transgender people will inevitably lead to “any man who believes or feels he’s a woman” assaulting women in public restrooms.
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Her latest book – Troubled Blood, a detective story published under her pen name “Robert Galbraith” – is about two detectives who investigate “a transvestite serial killer,” effectively taking her political view that transgender women are a threat to cisgender women and turning it into a book.
“JK’s work has always been jammed full of ‘borrowed’ old tropes,” Black wrote on Twitter, responding to a tweet about the book. Black is perhaps best known for writing the 2008 film Milk, for which he won an Academy Award.
“It was just that she ‘borrowed’ tales many enjoyed revisiting. Her new well: long disproven, discriminatory old tropes and lies sewn by bigots.”
JK’s work has always been jammed full of “borrowed” old tropes. It was just that she ”borrowed” tales many enjoyed revisiting. Her new well: long disproven, discriminatory old tropes and lies sewn by bigots. She’s a pretender. A thief. A fraud. And likely always has been. https://t.co/Fgn0B2rxMO
— Dustin Lance Black (@DLanceBlack) September 15, 2020
While Rowling has occasionally liked – and written – anti-transgender tweets over the past few years, her transphobia took center stage this past May when she liked an extreme tweet making fun of a transgender woman, tweeted an obscene and transphobic message at a nine-year-old fan, and finally in early June published a 3700-word essay about why she doesn’t like transgender women.
Since then, she has spent the year defending her views on Twitter and getting condemned by celebrities who worked on the Harry Potter films while fansites cut ties with her, authors flee her literary agency, and writer Stephen King denounced her.
