• partial_accumen@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    JK Rowling’s pen name is a reference to Robert Galbraith Heath, a psychiatrist who experimented with gay conversion therapy in the 60s and 70s using surgically implanted electrodes on gay men’s brains.

    Unless thats some conservative dog whistle I don’t know about, (and I’m no JKR apologist) your statement directly contradicts her own official answer as to the origin of the name:

    Why the name Robert Galbraith?

    I chose Robert because it’s one of my favourite men’s names, because Robert F Kennedy
     is my hero and because, mercifully, I hadn’t used it for any of the characters in the
     Potter series or The Casual Vacancy.
    
    Galbraith came about for a slightly odd reason. When I was a child,
     I really wanted to be called ‘Ella Galbraith’, and I’ve no idea why.
     I don’t even know how I knew that the surname existed, because
     I can’t remember ever meeting anyone with it. Be that as it may,
     the name had a fascination for me. I actually considered calling
     myself L A Galbraith for the Strike series, but for fairly obvious 
    reasons decided that initials were a bad idea.
    
    Odder still, there was a well-known economist called 
    J K Galbraith, something I only remembered by the time it was
     far too late. I was completely paranoid that people might take 
    this as a clue and land at my real identity, but thankfully nobody
     was looking that deeply at the author’s name.
    

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