Clive Barker’s Hellraiser, based on his original novel, The Hellbound Heart, has always held a special place in the hearts of queer horror fans. While the original film wasn’t expressly queer, it’s long been considered queer allegory. As Pinhead is ambiguously gendered in the novella, when trans actress Jamie Clayton was cast as the iconic villain for the 2022 remake, it only confirmed what LGBTQIA+ fans have always argued about the 1987 film’s queer subtext. And Barker’s real-world actions only add fuel to that flaming hot theory, with the writer speaking out about J.K. Rowling and how she has impacted the transgender community.

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In an interview with The Telegraph, Barker discussed his opinion on Rowling’s misinformation campaign regarding the trans community.

“There’s a lot of pain among the transgender people that I know,” Barker stated in the interview. “They have a lot of issues in the world as it is, without a famous author opining on the subject. It just seems redundant. It just seems unkind.”

Then, noting Rowling’s financial success, Barker added that a person who has been validated and rewarded by the world as much as JKR ought to be excluded from discussing the rights of such a disenfranchised queer community.

“It really just seems redundant for a woman as successful, as validated in the world, as Ms. Rowling, to be negative, to be disruptive if you will, to a very beaten up subculture,” said Barker. “These are human beings. She has no right to opine, I think, upon the lives of human beings that she does not know.”

“I feel very protective of people who are on the edge of our culture as gay people still are,” Barker continued. “And certainly transgender people are on the edge of our culture. And here you have one of the most successful people in the frigging world – Ms. Rowling – going after a very emotionally vulnerable portion of our culture. It just seems unnecessary and unfair.”

Clive Barker Discusses Homophobia in Publishing

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He discovered the publishing industry was homophobic when he started writing books (the British writer started as a playwright), divulging that publishers told him not to print the story “In the Hills the Cities,” which appeared in the first volume of the horror anthology Books of Blood. According to Barker, when he submitted the story about two gay men who discover two cities where the citizens perform a ritual to bind themselves together to create communal giants every ten years, his publisher suggested “just” making the characters straight – or “destroy everything” he had.

“When a publisher comes along and tells you, ‘you can’t tell that story’, it is deeply painful,” Barker added. “It angered me greatly. They were very afraid that coming out or speaking positively about homosexuality would be destructive to my career, which is balls. Absolutely balls.”