there’s an avalanche of criticism of her latest Trans murderer character plus her using the name Robert Galbraith which apparently was the name of some historical anti gay figure. What do people think is the best way to counter this?
Her pen name is based on combining her political hero's Robert F Kennedy's first name with the surname of what she'd have liked to be called as a child - Ella Galbraith. In 2013.
ChickenonaMug linked to a Twitter thread by the journalist, who three years after JK Rowling picked the pen name Robert Galbraith wrote about the forgotten historical figure in question.
If you'd really like to inform yourself, here is a link to the fascinating article about Dr. Heath. I highly recommended it and thank you to ChickenonaMug for the Twitter thread.
So, the thing is that this man had been forgotten. His work forgotten to such an extent that the deep brain stimulation techniques he pioneered in the 1950s and 60s are now claimed to have been invented in 1987.
No one called him "Robert Galbraith Heath" btw. No one. He was first famous, then infamous, as Dr. Bob Heath. His middle name was not used.
And Dr. Heath was not an "anti gay figure" either, although attempts are being made to argue that he was. He worked in an era when homosexuality was still considered a mental illness. He was a doctor who treated patients with mental illnesses. He wrote a paper about using the stimulation of the pleasure area of the brain to "initiate heterosexual behaviour in a homosexual male". It was both more and less controversial than other gay conversion therapies of the day (less because it didn't involve shaming, guilt, pain or punishment and more because it involved experimental deep brain stimulation via electrodes implanted in the brain), but it wasn't a focus for his work. As evidenced by the fact that only 2 out of the 425 papers he wrote during his career focused on the subject. His former colleagues strenuously deny that he was homophobic and wanted to eradicate homosexuality - Dr. Heath was obsessed with the pleasure area of the brain and how to use it to influence behaviour, an interest which briefly intersected with the question of whether homosexuality is learned (and can therefore be unlearned) or not. Apparently at the request of the homosexual patient in question.
But none of that matters, really. The only thing that matters is that because this doctor's work was by the end extremely controversial, his whole work and the person were very purposefully swept under the rug. The journalist who wrote the article himself states the man had been completely forgotten until he published the piece in 2016. And he would know, because he had to work hard to research him.