JK Rowling under fire for book about YouTube creator who is murdered for being transphobic

Aug 31 2022, 8:48 pm

JK Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter books, is facing backlash for transphobic sentiments in her latest book The Ink Black Heart.

The book, written under Rowling’s oft-used writer pseudonym Robert Galbraithe, officially hit shelves on Tuesday.

Critics are calling it out for featuring a transphobic, racist, and ableist character that appears to be a reflection of JK Rowling herself.

Named Edie Ledwell, the character is a creator on YouTube who makes a cartoon about a “hermaphrodite worm” and is persecuted relentlessly by critics for it. Ledwell is doxxed — her private information, including her address, is posted online — and ultimately, she’s killed by the bullies.

In the past, Rowling has received backlash and threats for her thoughts on transgender people, particularly trans women. She’s also been criticized for racist bits in her work.

The book is over 1,000 pages long.

Since its release and a review in Rolling Stone, Rowling has been spending hours on Twitter responding to critics.

While the hashtag #IStandWithJKRowling has trended several times on the microblogging website before — mostly by people who have the same thoughts as the author on transgender people — many are now using the hashtag #ICantStandJKRowling to air out their reservations about the author’s politics and the effect her work can have on persecuted minorities.

After an altered screenshot of a potentially transphobic tweet from Rowling went viral, the author threatened the person who shared it with legal action, resulting in them making their account private and deleting the tweet.

In an interview with Graham Norton, Rowling denied basing the character on herself.

“I should make it really clear after some of the things that have happened the last year that this is not depicting [those],” she said.

“Everything this woman writes and speaks is vitriol disguised as prose,” wrote a commenter under the interview video.

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