There aren’t many laughs to be had in J.K. Rowling‘s heel turn into transphobia. The once-beloved Harry Potter author dropped an atom bomb on her reputation earlier this month when she tweeted a series of transphobic comments, shortly followed by a lengthy and bizarre article on the subject. As a result, she was condemned by the stars of the Harry Potter movies, alienated her young fans and has had to face industry professionals refusing to work on her projects.
As such, you can imagine that Rowling is currently not particularly happy and looking for validation, and for a brief moment, it appeared to her that she got that from horror master Stephen King when he retweeted part of another lengthy Twitter thread she made, resulting in a gushing response from Rowling.
“I’ve always revered @StephenKing, but today my love reached – maybe not Annie Wilkes levels – but new heights. It’s so much easier for men to ignore women’s concerns, or to belittle them, but I won’t ever forget the men who stood up when they didn’t need to. Thank you, Stephen.”
Rowling then presumably sat back in her fancy tweet-writing TERF chair, satisfied that at least one of the most famous authors in the world had her back. Or at least she did, until a fan asked Stephen King what he actually thought about the issue and he tweeted:
“Trans women are women.”
Rowling then swiftly deleted her tweet, her “love” for Stephen King having apparently evaporated the minute he stood up to support a marginalized and victimized minority. She quickly unfollowed King, too, and may have even blocked him (though the evidence for that is circumstantial). Unconfirmed eyewitness reports state that Rowling was later seen solemnly feeding her copies of IT, The Shining and The Stand into a massive industrial shredder and muttering something about bathrooms.
Oh well, at least she can still count on the support of moronic D-grade actor and terrible musician Laurence Fox. That’s almost as good as Stephen King… right?
It remains to be seen whether the last month will have a long-term impact on J.K. Rowling‘s popularity and the future of the Harry Potter franchise, but you have to imagine it’s causing major headaches for Warner Bros., especially as they try to course correct from Fantastic Beasts 2.
