JK Rowling has criticised Sky News for referring to a convicted murderer as a woman in its reporting of the case. Scarlet Blake was sentenced to life imprisonment after being found guilty of murdering Jorge Martin Carreno. Prior to this, Blake streamed a video in which she killed a cat, an act that the judge in the case said was partly inspired by the Netflix documentary, Don’t F*** With Cats.
The court heard Blake had watched the Netflix documentary in which a man kills kittens before filming the murder of a human. Following reports that the killer had transitioned to female, Rowling criticised Sky News for referring to her as a woman. She wrote on Twitter: “I’m so sick of this shit. This is not a woman. These are #NotOurCrimes.”
Rowling also shared a complaint by journalist Louise Tickle to The Guardian editor Kath Viner, saying “Every word of this”. Tickle argued that referring to Blake as a woman was a “failure of transparency” and “failures of editorial judgement and process”. A user on social media who criticised Rowling’s response to Sky News said: “What does it matter how this person identifies?” Rowling replied: “1. Crime statistics are rendered useless if violent and sexual attacks committed by men are recorded as female crimes. 2. Activists are already clamouring for this sadistic killer to be incarcerated in a women’s prison. 3. Ideologically-driven misinformation is not journalism.”
The author has faced criticism in the past for remarks that have been perceived as transphobic. Harry Potter stars Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint have spoken out against her views and defended transgender women and men. Rowling said last year she would “happily” go to prison rather than refer to transgender women as “women”, and in October 2023, she posted an image on Twitter which showed the slogan, “Repeat after us: trans women are women,” with the caption: “No.” Despite the controversy around Rowling’s views, she will be an executive producer on the forthcoming Harry Potter TV series being developed by HBO
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