J.K. Rowlings new children's book, "The Ickabog", is already giving people the creeps, but not for the reasons she'd like.
J.K. RowlingPhoto: Shutterstock
The staff at the Hatchette Book Group publishing company are reportedly
rebelling against working on J.K. Rowling’s new children’s book,
The Ickabog, because of her
continued transphobic screeds.
Daniel Radcliffe and
other actors from the Harry Potter film series already denounced Rowling’s needlessly transphobic rants, but now the discontent is spreading to others handling her work.
Related: “Harry Potter” author J.K. Rowling continues support for extreme anti-transgender rhetoric
“Staff in the children’s department at Hachette announced they were
no longer prepared to work on the book,” said one source. “They said
they were opposed to her comments and wanted to show support for the
trans lobby.”
Another said, “It was a handful of staff, and they are entitled to
their views…. But this is a children’s fairy tale. It is not the end of
the world. They will all be having chats with their managers.”
Hatchette, the book’s publisher, said in a statement that it was
“proud” to publish Rowling’s fairy tale and said it respected its
employees’ right to hold views different from their authors.
But while the company said it’d never force employees to work on
books whose content they found upsetting for personal reasons, it said,
“We draw a distinction between that and refusing to work on a book
because they disagree with an author’s views outside their writing,
which runs contrary to our belief in free speech.”
Hatchette made headlines last year when its staff walked out in
protest of its plans to publish the memoir of Woody Allen, the longtime
director accused of sexually abusing his daughter Dylan Farrow. The
company eventually dropped the title, calling it a “difficult” decision
but calling the book’s publication “not feasible.”
Last month, Rowling’s transphobic tweets messed up Rowling’s
The Ickabog a bit more. She asked children to submit drawings of the fairy tale creature, and Rowling accidentally copied and pasted
transphobic text and an f-bomb into her reaction to a 9-year-old’s drawing.
Rowling later apologized for dropping an f-bomb on a child, but she
has never apologized for her transphobia. In fact, she recently defended
it
in a rambling 3,700-word essay that wasn’t worth publishing either.
source: By
Daniel Villarreal www.lgbtqnation.com
