What Is J.K. Rowling Trying to Prove?
By: Shannon Ashley
Tags: Women, Books, LGBTQ, Film, Culture

In what appears to be a shockingly tone-deaf attempt to get the world to agree with her ideas about transgender people, J.K. Rowling has done something really strange.

She’s turned herself into a villain.

In her latest book under the pen name Robert Galbraith, she’s written a cross-dressing male murder suspect inspired by the real-life serial killers Jerry Brudos and Russell Williams. Brudos had a fetish for women’s shoes and murdered four women in Oregon in the late 1960s. Williams broke into more than 80 women’s homes to steal their underwear and committed at least two counts of rape and murder.

On the new book’s website, Rowling writes that “The suspects in Dr Bamborough’s disappearance include a womanising patient who seems to have developed feelings for her, a passive-aggressive husband who wanted her to quit her job to become a full-time mother, and a sadistic serial killer active in the 60s and 70s, who was loosely based on real life killers Jerry Brudos and Russell Williams — both master manipulators who took trophies from their victims.”

Within the novel itself, detective Cormoran Strike fears the missing GP Margot Bamborough is the victim to Dennis Creed, a man called a 'transvestite serial killer' for murdering his victims while wearing female clothing.

So, here’s the thing. It doesn’t really matter whether or not a “transvestite serial killer” is the perpetrator by the end of the book. The damage has already been done because we have an author who was once lauded for her inclusion now going out of her way to tell readers that trans women aren’t real women and that men are routinely dressing up as women, just to victimize “biological females.”

In a statement to CNN, a British charity called Mermaids, which supports transgender children and their families, expressed concern about Rowling’s new book:

“This is a long-standing and somewhat tired trope, responsible for the demonization of a small group of people, simply hoping to live their lives with dignity.”

Mermaids also pointed out that this isn’t the first time Rowling has used a transgender character for a murder suspect:

“We are disappointed to hear that the author might be propagating the same, long-standing and hurtful presentation of trans women as a threat.”

Frankly, I’m having a hard time seeing the end game here. The Harry Potter author seems dead set upon proving her theory to the world that trans women can’t be trusted. It is, apparently, imperative in her mind that people admit that sometimes men who hurt women also crossdress as women or take their clothes as trophies. I mean, okay, but more often than not, the men who hurt women don’t crossdress at all. Seriously. The vast, vast majority of men who assault women are cisgender and not wearing any sort of female clothing.

So, why is she so hellbent on pretending that a rare occurrence is actually the norm? Worse yet, why is she so determined to conflate “crossdress killers” with trans women at all?

Honestly, I don’t understand where she’s coming from. I don’t understand if the comments she’s made about transitioning are coming from her genuine thoughts, or if her thoughts on the matter have been muddled by some sort of fear, shame, self-loathing, or basic misogyny.

Yes, I understand that J.K. Rowling repeatedly brings up women’s rights and appears to paint her views as staunchly feminist. But in reading through her very abrasive comments and that now-infamous blog post, I can’t help but feel a certain level of… internal conflict.

“The writings of young trans men reveal a group of notably sensitive and clever people. The more of their accounts of gender dysphoria I’ve read, with their insightful descriptions of anxiety, dissociation, eating disorders, self-harm and self-hatred, the more I’ve wondered whether, if I’d been born 30 years later, I too might have tried to transition. The allure of escaping womanhood would have been huge. I struggled with severe OCD as a teenager. If I’d found community and sympathy online that I couldn’t find in my immediate environment, I believe I could have been persuaded to turn myself into the son my father had openly said he’d have preferred. When I read about the theory of gender identity, I remember how mentally sexless I felt in youth. I remember Colette’s description of herself as a ‘mental hermaphrodite’ and Simone de Beauvoir’s words: ‘It is perfectly natural for the future woman to feel indignant at the limitations posed upon her by her sex. The real question is not why she should reject them: the problem is rather to understand why she accepts them.’ As I didn’t have a realistic possibility of becoming a man back in the 1980s, it had to be books and music that got me through both my mental health issues and the sexualised scrutiny and judgement that sets so many girls to war against their bodies in their teens. Fortunately for me, I found my own sense of otherness, and my ambivalence about being a woman, reflected in the work of female writers and musicians who reassured me that, in spite of everything a sexist world tries to throw at the female-bodied, it’s fine not to feel pink, frilly and compliant inside your own head; it’s OK to feel confused, dark, both sexual and non-sexual, unsure of what or who you are.”

It’s hard to read that section of her blog post and not feel a great deal of pain and longing in her voice. Without a doubt, it’s offensive how she’s painted transgender as a choice kids pick up because they’re depressed, unhappy, or easily persuaded by the media or peer pressure. It’s undoubtedly gross that she’s hurling the same accusation that’s long been used on queer folk — as if their identity isn’t real, and there’s some “cult” that seeks out new recruits and “converts.”

“They’re going to turn you gay,” is another tired trope, but I suppose, “They’re going to turn you trans,” is just the next stage of discrimination. So, I certainly don’t want to downplay the pain and hurt J.K. Rowling has caused (and continues to cause) by such barbed remarks.

Initially, her arguments reminded me a lot of the “All lives matter,” or “Blue lives matter” crowds. She’s so fixated on being right that she’s completely missed the point. Nobody is saying that safe spaces for women don’t matter. But statistically speaking, she’s siding with those who would make all of us women much less safe.

Even so, I keep coming back to that section of the blog post where she posits that she would have liked to be a man when she was young and struggling with her place as a woman. Tone-deafness aside, it’s interesting, right?

Transfeminist writer Julia Serano says in her book, Whipping Girl, that transphobia is fueled by the insecurities people have about gender and gender norms. One thing J.K. Rowling has made clear in all of this drama is that she’s got a lot of her own baggage about gender and being a woman.

She sounds pretty damn insecure, actually.

What sucks is that in all of her own baggage, she’s so busy bringing others down. But given her apparent commitment to a transphobic “logic” that clearly makes no sense, I can’t help but think that the one person she’s trying the hardest to convince is really herself.