On September 14th, the activist platform Pink News published an article summarising a book review of author JK Rowling’s latest piece of work. The 927-pages volume, titled Troubled Blood, is released this week under her pseudonym Robert Galbraith. The website zoomed into a reported subplot involving a male character who commits violence against women, whilst dressed in women’s clothes, to ignite a social media revolt against the author.

Within hours, thousands of people had taken to Twitter to celebrate the imaginary death of JK Rowling. It became a trending topic on the social media platform not only in the United Kingdom, but also internationally.

Wishing death on people is repulsive. There is no if, but or attenuating caveat to this statement. The vitriol displayed by those gleefully promoting the imaginary death of a woman, much of it written in the form of death threats, has no place in political discourse or social movements, particularly those which conceive themselves as liberatory in nature.

Throughout history, feminism has fought for women’s rights to write. That includes the right to publish work that other people may disapprove of or strongly object to. A perceived entitlement to exclusively sycophantic portrayals for any group of people in literature, under the peril that character assassination and death threats await any author who veers from this script is tyrannical, intolerant and, as such, incompatible with a democratic system.

On average, two women are murdered every week at the hands of men in the United Kingdom. Violence committed against men, at the hands of women, constitutes an exceedingly rare phenomenon usually resulting from self-defence on behalf of the women. Despite this, literature is awash with depictions of women as unhinged stalkers, deranged aggressors and violent abusers; a depiction that does not reflect the reality far too many victims of violence experience in real life. We note that at no point have women objected, en masse, against these skewed portrayals of themselves by wishing death upon their authors with a wrath so voluminous that it becomes an international trending topic on social media. Any 'movement' that prioritises the silencing and the vilification of women must be called out as unacceptable.

FiLiA stands in Solidarity with JKRowling.

We commend the courage and determination of all the women around the world who, regardless of status and position, continue to stand up in defence of their sex-based rights, in spite of the predictable, but nevertheless shocking, misogynist backlash prevalent in society.