JK Rowling has hit out at reports calling a transgender cat killer and convicted murderer a woman.
Reacting to a Sky News clip on X, formerly Twitter, about the case, the “Harry Potter” author wrote: “I’m so sick of this shit. This is not a woman. These are #NotOurCrimes.”
“Crime statistics are rendered useless if violent and sexual attacks committed by men are recorded as female crimes,” she added in a following post.
Rowling was reacting to a story about Scarlet Blake, 26, a transgender woman who was sentenced to life in prison with a minimum 24-year term at a UK court after she was found guilty of murdering Spanish national Jorge Martin Carreno in July 2021.
Blake lured the 30-year-old to a secluded area, struck him in the head with a vodka bottle, and attempted to strangle him before finally pushing him into a river, where he drowned.
She also pleaded guilty to criminal damage and animal cruelty in the killing of a cat, an act which she live-streamed months before the murder.
During the legal proceedings, the court heard that Blake had taken “grotesque pleasure” in dissecting the cat and putting it into a blender, the BBC reported.
“There are several aspects of this case that have been truly disturbing to see, hear, and deal with,” Jon Capps, a Thames Valley Police detective, said in a press release.
“This defendant showed calculated cruelty. The acts Blake has been convicted of are barbaric and chilling,” he added.
It is not the first time Rowling has aired her views on transgender issues.
Rowling first joined the debate in 2019 when she tweeted her support of Maya Forstater, a woman who lost her job for a series of tweets suggesting people could not change their biological sex.
Speaking on The Witch Trials of JK Rowling podcast in March 2023, the author said that she “absolutely knew” that her views would make people “deeply unhappy” with her but that she was “troubled” by what she believed was “a cultural movement that was illiberal in its methods and was very questionable in its ideas.”
“Time will tell whether I’ve got this wrong,” she said. “I can only say that I’ve thought about it deeply.”
Many “Harry Potter” fans and actors have since spoken out against Rowling’s comments.
In a 2020 statement released via The Trevor Project, Daniel Radcliffe, who played the films’ titular character, said: “Transgender women are women. Any statement to the contrary erases the identity and dignity of transgender people and goes against all advice given by professional healthcare associations who have far more expertise on this subject matter than either Jo or I.”
Meanwhile, a transgender prisoner was found dead in their cell a year after a proposed move to a women’s prison was blocked in Scotland.
Tiffany Scott, also known as Andrew Burns, died on Thursday aged 32, the Scottish Prison Service confirmed, per The Telegraph.
