JK Rowling used a trope from 1984 in her tweet about Police Scotland and their Orwellian decision to allow rapists to be classified as women if that's what they wanted. Now Orwell strikes again, as Rowling is disappeared:
JK Rowling’s name has been “erased” from a trailer for the new Fantastic Beasts film she helped to write, as the author faces becoming involved in a new row over transgender rights.
The trailer for Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore was released on December 14 in the wake of renewed online accusations that Rowling is “transphobic” after she criticised police rules allowing suspects to self-identify as women.
The author’s name barely features in the trailer compared to previous promotional material for the franchise, despite her having co-written and co-produced the new film set in the fictional universe she created.
Kiri Tunks, co-founder of campaign group Woman’s Place UK, said: “This attempt to detach a female author from her own creative achievement is astonishing but it is just the latest episode in a long history of women being erased.
“It won’t work. Not only is JK Rowling renowned for creating the world of Harry Potter, she is now a hero to women all over the world for speaking up in the face of intimidation and abuse.”
The trailer for the first release in the Fantastic Beasts series in 2016 included captions saying “JK Rowling invites you” and credits her with writing and producing the film.
Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, released in 2018, included the caption “from writer JK Rowling” along with brief production and writing credits.
But the trailer for The Secrets of Dumbledore instead carries the caption “Warner Bros invites you”, with a minor publishing rights note at the end of the two-minute video bearing Rowling’s name, and a mention for her Wizarding World media franchise.
The degree to which the film world is prepared to turn its back on Rowling continues to be a disgrace. All those pathetic child stars who owe their careers to Rowling, happily betraying her to parade their virtue….
Rowling, like many, is aghast at this [Police Scotland's] decision for a number of reasons: The idea that a rape victim may have to refer to her rapist as “she” in court, the chance that this person then, if convicted, be put into the female prison estate, the privileging of a rapist’s sense of identity over the actual violation of a woman’s body. That’s just for starters.
For holding such views as these Rowling is seen by some as evil incarnate. Any woman who does not go along with increasingly bonkers gender ideology – where people can self-identify as whatever gender they choose, even if they don’t “have a full gender recognition certificate”, is subject to bullying, harassment, threats to their livelihoods and their lives. I know of what I speak and I have had only a tiny fraction of the abuse that Rowling gets….
Rowling goes her own way – she courted controversy in 2014 when she was vocally against Scots Independence, she was also anti-Brexit. The SNP though, led by Nicola Sturgeon, who claims she “is a feminist to her fingertips”, clearly wants to appear more “radical” than Labour and is using trans rights as a totem.
This all serves to encourage a constant stream of abuse aimed at Rowling and Warner Bros obviously now thinks her name taints the very brand she created. The actors she made famous have lined up to betray her. Not such fantastic beasts after all.
On Twitter there is the usual trashing from delusional fools who love Harry Potter but now want to destroy his maker. Their identities are indeed confused. One wrote of her “sh*tty failed franchise”.
Funny that. As I just had to meet a friend in Kings Cross where, as ever, excited children were queuing to get their picture taken on Platform 9¾ and the Harry Potter shop was full.
You can leave Rowling’s name off a trailer but you cannot ignore the real world, where most of us know that the rights of women are more important than the rights of rapists. You can call the likes of Rowling and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie TERFs (trans-exclusionary radical feminists), but you cannot deny their power.
But in reality TERF stands for Tired of Explaining Reality to Fools, doesn’t it?
To think you can undermine women’s hard-won rights and disappear the likes of JK Rowling is magical thinking indeed.
Mick Hartley 
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