Good Morning Britain host Piers Morgan engaged in a fiery debate on Wednesday's show over JK Rowling's new book and the controversy over a cross-dressing character.
JK's new unreleased book, Troubled Blood, features a male killer who dresses as a woman in order to disguise himself and kill, which many have deemed offensive and transphobic.
Social media users called to boycott the book, with #RIPJKRowling trending on Twitter.
Journalist Benjamin Butterworth joined Piers and Susanna Reid, George Galloway and trans activist Rose of Dawn in a row over whether the book was offensive or not to trans people.
Piers told Benjamin there was no transphobia in the book, quoting a review that said: 'Tranvestisim barely features, and when it does, nothing is made of the fact that the killer wears a wig and a woman's coat, not a dress, as a disguise when approaching one of his victims".
Benjamin said the character contributed to "whipping up hatred and fear" of trans people, who are rarely represented in art.
"JK Rowling has been tweeting derogatory comments about trans people for some months now, some years," he said.
"A lot of people, myself included, are incredibly worried about how this smears trans people."
Piers argued that to "cancel" JK Rowling, who he added he did not actually like as a person, was taking away her free speech.
Benjamin replied: "JK Rowling has not been cancelled, the myth of cancel culture is not alive and well, that's the only thing that's dead today."
Piers said to criticise the character is "complete load of nonsense", and claimed it upheld inequality to only allow fictional killers to be straight white men.
Bejamin replied: "The point is, that when people know so little about trans people, when they are so rarely covered in books like this, the only supposed representation of transgender people is that they are a killer who dresses as a woman in order to kill is the problem."
George Galloway argued that you cannot ban art, and brought up the example of Norman Bates in Psycho, who he said no one ever noticed was a cross-dresser.
Rose of Dawn also said the book was not offensive to trans people, and said there is only one line in the book where the killer's cross-dressing is actually mentioned.
"There is no trans rhetoric coming out of this book at all," she said.
Shouty Piers cut off the interview after a long rant about Benjamin being intolerant, and then began singing and playing air guitar.
* Good Morning Britain airs weekdays on ITV at 6am
