Rowling exposes troll’s pipe bomb threat

The author revealed the death threat to show the hate mail she has received since discussing the importance of biological sex.

British author JK Rowling. Picture: AFP

J.K Rowling has mocked an online troll who threatened her with a pipe bomb over her views on gender.

The author tweeted a screenshot of the death threat as a demonstration of the hate mail she has received since discussing her thoughts on the importance of biological sex.

Rowling, who has kept quiet about her views since last year, shared a message from a Twitter user called Sam, whose profile describes a genderfluid lesbian and a “cybermarxist”.

Sam wrote to Rowling: “I wish you a very nice pipebomb in mailbox.”

Rowling remarked: “To be fair, when you can’t get a woman sacked, arrested or dropped by her publisher, and cancelling her only made her book sales go up, there’s really only one place to go.”

To be fair, when you can’t get a woman sacked, arrested or dropped by her publisher, and cancelling her only made her book sales go up, there’s really only one place to go. pic.twitter.com/MsNWXhWlyc

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) July 19, 2021

Rowling also shared a message from another person asking whether the hate mail was related to her concerns about the safety of women in lavatories “if men can use them by simply saying they identify as a woman”.

She replied: “Yes, but now hundreds of trans activists have threatened to beat, rape, assassinate and bomb me I’ve realised that this movement poses no risk to women whatsoever.”

Rowling’s titles have risen in popularity during the pandemic, as have book sales in general. An article in Newsweek suggested that her sales in the US had lagged behind the rest of the market, increasing by 10.9 per cent in June last year, compared with 31.4 per cent for all fiction titles. However, this would also have been true for many authors who had not produced new work.

Her crime novel Troubled Blood, written under the name Robert Galbraith and featuring a male killer who dresses as a woman, sold 65,000 copies in its first five days last September.

Rowling provoked anger in June last year when she tweeted about a headline that referred to “people who menstruate”. She wrote: “I’m sure there used to be a word for those people. Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?”

Gender neutral toilets at Etihad Stadium.

Her remark, and subsequent ones explaining why she believed that biological sex was important, prompted hundreds of thousands of accusations of transphobia.

She wrote an essay on her website highlighting instances of people who regretted undergoing transition, and the importance of women’s lavatories as safe spaces.

“If sex isn’t real, the lived reality of women globally is erased,” she said. “I know and love trans people, but erasing the concept of sex removes the ability of many to meaningfully discuss their lives. It isn’t hate to speak the truth.”

All of the principal actors in the film adaptations of her Harry Potter books distanced themselves from her comments.

Rowling declined to comment when she returned a humanitarian award given to her by the family of Robert Kennedy. Kerry Kennedy, the late senator’s daughter, said she had spoken to Rowling “to express my profound disappointment that she has chosen to use her remarkable gifts to create a narrative that diminishes the identity of trans and non-binary people”.

Rowling thanked her supporters yesterday, saying that she was working on another of her Cormoran Strike detective novels.

“Got to get back to my chapter now, but to all the people sending me beautiful, kind, funny and supportive messages, thank you so much,” she wrote.

“Wish I had time to answer all of you, but Strike and Robin are at a tricky stage of their investigation, so I need to drop a few clues.”

The Times