"An Overly-Emotional Look at Why JK Rowling is Bad" Transcript

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(This transcript was created from the original script uploaded as closed captioning. Differences where James skipped overdiverged from the script are highlighted.)

“Ms. Rowling, of Edinburgh, Scotland, was proud to say that she was a TERF, thank you very much”.

[slams book shut]

Sigh

So here we are. Honestly didn’t think I’d end up making this video. In fact, I said in a few livestreams that I wouldn’t. But, it’s just been nagging and nagging at me. I’d made my video about queer themes in Harry Potter back in 2018, the halcyon days of when you could give Joanne Rowling the benefit of the doubt.

And boy did I ever give her the benefit of the doubt. And why wouldn’t I? She was a powerful female author who used her voice to raise money for charity and vocally support marginalized communities. Crimes of Grinldewald hadn’t even come out yet, so I was flying high on the potential for gay representation in the magical world.

Then the movie came out. Then she started retweeting things. Then she wrote the essay. Then she wrote the book. And on and on. Sigh I don’t think I need to go into all the gory details of Rowling’s descent into TERFism. Contrapoints made a fantastic video doing that, so just go watch that if you want an actual trans person’s opinion. I’m just a cis guy holding a grudge.

The TL;DR version is that Rowling has spent the last several years positioning herself as TERF, (Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist) numero uno on the internet. She’s been very good at doing that thing we all associate with racists. You know. “I’m very good friends with trans people, but…” “I’m not transphobic, but…”

Now before some of ya’ll jump down my throat, no I’m not calling her racist. The way she codes certain characters of colour in her books is… questionable, but she hasn’t done anything out and out racist, as far as I know. (Though her appropriation of native American beliefs for Fantastic Beasts was… contentious.)

No, she’s instead, been laser focused on trans people. It’s much safer to be transphobic than racist these days anyway. People might give you dirty looks, or even stop talking to you if you’re too racist too publicly. (At least in semi-civilized circles.) Same for homophobia, really. Imagine if Rowling went full homophobe. She’d have no choice but to write under a psyudenum ^{[sic: pseudonym]} next time!

But not so when it comes to trans people. Even a lot of people who support trans rights aren’t willing to risk their social cache on defending them, especially to someone like Rowling. Some celebrities, such as the younger cast of the Harry Potter movies did come out and declare “trans women are women”, which is good. Though the older actors all seem to be in lockstep with Rowling’s more… conservative point of view. (The ones who have spoken out, anyway.)

Some of the actors of the Fantastic Beasts movies even came out against her transphobia. But. It’s not like they left the movies. And before you say they couldn’t because of contractual obligations… contracts between actors and studios have Morality clauses. That’s why Johnny Depp isn’t in the Fantastic Beasts anymore. Studios can nullify contracts if an actor does something morally reprehensible (Murder, sexual assault, spousal abuse, etc), and actors can nullify the contract if they believe producers of a film are committing acts that go against their own morals.

And since JK Rowling IS a producer on the Fantastic Beasts movies, this leaves the actors wide open to drop the franchise like the steaming pile of mediocrity it is. But they haven’t so to hell with them. If box office numbers are any indication, the franchise isn’t long for this world anyway.

And don’t start with the (high pitched voice)“Crimes of Grindlewald made 654 million dollars world wide, its a success”. No. That movie had a 200 million dollar production budget, plus over a hundred million in advertising spend. That’s three hundred million dollars spent. The studio only gets, roughly, 50% of the box office gross because theaters keep the other 50% (Chinese theaters keep around 70%), so Warner Bros made a profit of roughly 26 million dollars off that movie, if you’re being generous. A precipitous drop from the highs of the Harry Potter franchise.

And since the next movie is going to be releasing into a world where people may or may not be comfortable going back to theatres, I can only imagine it will be making even less. How did this become a seminar on the minutea ^{[sic: minutiae]} of the film industry? Back to Rowling.

I can’t wrap my head around how all of this happened. Honestly. How this woman who wrote books that’s defined my adolescence, and the adolescences of queer people around the world, became so toxic? How did she, so quickly, go from being the author held up by millions as an example of wokeness… to this?

Well, It’s a long story. See I discovered the books in 2001, just before the first movie came out, and only about a year after I myself came out. Other than getting a rock off the back of the head and some minor brain damage, nobody really had a problem with my being gay.

But my god I was lonely. Not only was I gay in a small town but I was fat and gay in a small town. I knew that even if I did manage to find other gay people they probably wouldn’t want anything to do with me. So I escaped that shitty world for the magical one she created.

Out of order, mind you. I started with Prisoner of Azkaban, then Chamber of Secrets, then Philosopher’s Stone, then Goblet of Fire. After that I read the books as they were released. I was one of the kids who made his parents drive him to a book store at midnight so he could buy the newest entry in the adventures of Harry, Hermione, and Ron.

I’m the one who started studying mythology because of the off-hand references that Rowling sprinkled throughout the books. I was at every preview screening of the movies, which was pretty hard to pull off living 40 minutes away from the nearest movie theatre. But I was there. Sometimes I was there all alone because my parents were busy and my friends weren’t into Harry Potter.

Growing up in a small town, I had next to no exposure to anyone who wasn’t white, straight, and catholic. I never even met a black person until I was sixteen. So I could have come dangerously close to becoming a close-minded bigot. I certainly wouldn’t have been the only one in the area.

But that didn’t happen. Instead I was open to new ideas, new people of different races and backgrounds. People who saw the world differently than me. Who had a different lived experiences than me.

Because I got to escape to Hogwarts. Where being different didn’t mean you were bad. Where being weird meant you were special, not deviant. Where students of different races and nationalities came together to bring down a villain hellbent on destroying pluralism. Who wanted the world to be exactly as he saw it, and would kill anyone who stepped out of line.

So because of seven books and eight movies, I had my mind forced open to the fact that people who are different from me are not less than me. Something I appreciated when I got to film school and was surrounded by the types of people I’d only ever seen on tv and in movie up until then. And I thanked Rowling for that. She helped this lonely gay kid feel not so alone, that there was a group of people out there, somewhere, who would accept me. Who would welcome me in and make me feel like a part of something bigger than just my small town.

And I thanked her for that by spending as much money on Harry Potter merchandise as I could. I loved it all. Different house scarves. Lego. Collectors edition sets of the books and movies. Over-priced wands. I was even saving up to pay an exorbitant amount of money for tickets to see the Cursed Child play before I read it and realized it was horrible. But it wasn’t written by Rowling, so that explained everything!

As far as I was concerned everything she touched was gold. And then… (Sigh) things started to rust.

First came The Crimes of Grindlewald. I don’t think I’ve ever given a movie so much leeway in my life. Leading up to the release I, and many other people, were incredibly excited to finally get on screen confirmation of the relationship between Dumbledore and Grindlewald, something Rowling had confirmed after the release of the final Harry Potter book.

And then the director said we wouldn’t be getting it in this movie and then the movie came out and… well, we didn’t get it. But that was ok, I said. We'd... We’d get it eventually.

And I fought with so many people on the internet saying that “no no no, of course they weren’t going to have Dumbledore and Grindlewald making out in this movie. They’d save that until the finale! Movie 5. Because that way you’d be less likely to lose the family audience throughout the series.” Marketing brain at work.

Nevermind that the script for Crimes of Grindlewald was a disaster that absolutely reeked of first draft sickness. But I defended the movie and Rowling online to no end. I spent hours figuring out how they could confirm the relationship between Grindlewald and Dumbledore in some physical way that could retain the PG-13 rating, and be easily removable for markets like China and Russia. I was invested in convincing other people that they were wrong to criticize her. That she was playing the game as best she could.

After it was a box office disappointment, I made the argument that it should go to a streaming service, like Netflix or the eventually announced HBO MAX. Since HBO MAX doesn’t exist in, well, anywhere outside the US, let alone in China and Russia, you wouldn’t have to worry about the movie being banned in countries with homophobic governments. And you wouldn’t have to worry about parents groups losing their shit about gay wizards because the HBO MAX subscription model had already locked them in for a year or more. And by the time it came up for renewal, they’d have forgotten about it and stayed subscribed for a DC show or a Game of Thrones show or something like that.

But as I was busy defending her, and trying to figure out ways Warner MediaBrothers could make money, she’d been busy doing other things. Unfortunately, it wasn’t taking screenwriting classes.

JK Rowling had been busy on Twitter. Starting out simply by retweeting some transphobic tweets that her PR representatives deemed a “clumsy and middle-aged moment”. I bought the spin of course, because how on earth could the woman who helped ensure I didn’t grow up to be a bigot be, well, a bigot? Obviously it was a mistake. She hadn’t seen these people’s other, way more transphobic tweets.

This happened right around the time that Lego started releasing Harry Potter sets, including a piece by piece recreation of Hogwarts that you can see behind me. So, of course, I bought each set immediately upon release. All the while defending her to gay friends but, keeping quiet about her to my trans friends.

Underneath my adoration for her I was starting to feel… embarrassed. But it was easy enough to just keep buying the merchandise, because the lego was being released during a time when Rowling had mostly disappeared from social media. Taking a self imposed break after the backlash that followed the initial retweets of transphobes. Only popping up once and a while with cryptic posts about upcoming projects, or confirming fan theories about Harry Potter that she never bothered to write into the books.

And then came the tweets. They started relatively benign enough, with Rowling being frustrated over the term “People who menstruate”. A term that’s trying to be inclusive of certain trans men but just sounds…does sound a bit off. In the right light it does sound a tad bit dehumanizing, so I could see why people would be put off by it.

Then she started retweeting loud and proud TERFS like Maya Forstater and the shit completely hit the fan. When some of her followers criticized the tweet as being off-color or even possibly transphobic Rowling responded by saying:

[Tweet shown on-screen]:

“Dress however you please. Call yourself whatever you like. Sleep with any consenting adult who’ll have you. Live your best life in peace and security. But force women out of their jobs for stating that sex is real?”

Later saying:

[Tweet shown on-screen]:

“If sex isn’t real, there’s no same-sex attraction. If sex isn’t real, the lived reality of women globally is erased. I know and love trans people, but erasing the concept of sex removes the ability of many to meaningfully discuss their lives. It isn’t hate to speak the truth.”

And out came the “If sex isn’t real” argument. This is something that TERFs love to do. Equate sex and gender. Either because their ignorant of the difference, too dumb to tell, or just assholes.

Essentially, sex is biological in nature. It’s determined on a chromosomal level. Masculine and feminine sexual characteristics are, for the most part, determined by this. I say "for the most part" because intersex people also exist, despite what TERFs willseem to be willing to admit, and really ought to be included in the conversation. Not everyone in the whole wide world fits into the neat little binary of XX or XY chromosomes.

So sex is biological. Immutable. Whereas gender is a social construct. Man and woman. Something that a lot of people think is innate in nature but isn't. Even thoughBecause for for thousands of years there have been third genders recognized all over the world. Non-binary genders. In many places people who didn’t fit neatly into the male or female category were considered closer to god because of it.

But TERFs have a hard enough time wrapping their head around the idea of someone born into a feminine body can transitioning, binarily, into a masculine one. Or vice versa. Can you imagine their heads exploding at the concept of not having to be male or female? Wingardium Levi-o-shit!

On top of that, she used the argument that “If sex isn’t real, there’s no same sex attraction”. The loudest dog whistle in the world to try and pit cisgender gays and lesbians against trans people. Almost threatening us that “If you let transgenders be a thing, that completely delegitimizes everything you’ve fought for”. It doesn’t, by the way. She was just trying to win over some not entirely intelligent allies.

And then she doubled down, and tripled down, and quadrupled down until finally publishing a thousand page detective novel with a serial killer who dresses up like a woman in order to ubduct^{[sic: abduct]} and murder them.

I mean I know she’s well known for pulling themes and creatures from mythology for Harry Potter, but did she have to pull out a lazy thriller trope that’s even older than she is? That was played out before the first Harry Potter book was published. Silence of the Lambs did this and is one of the best movies and books ever made or written. You’re not going to do better. And you know you’re not going to do it better, right? So why try?

Could it be that you’re delusional enough to think that you can write a thriller that’s better than Silence of the Lambs? Or, maybe, are you doing it because you have an agenda? It’s the second one, btw. Just In case I’m being too subtle.

But how did this happen? How did the woman who told an entire generation of kids that being their true selves is good, and the right thing… end up doing a 180 and completely disavowing a whole group of people that are just trying to live their lives?

I mean it came as a hell of a shock to me but it wasn’t all that shocking to people who know what’s going on in current mainstream British feminism. An anti-trans strain of feminism has always simmered under the surface, but it’s really come to light over the last few years in Englandthe U.K., especially after the proposed changes to the nation’s Gender Recognition Act.

The Gender Recognition Act, a law put on the books in 2004, sets up the legal process for trans people to change their legal gender on their birth certificates. Because at the time that decision was not made by you, or your doctor, but by an anonymous group of beurocrats.^{[sic: bureaucrats]}

In 2017, the government announced a possible reform that would let trans people make a legal declaration that they pledged to live the rest of their lives as their transitioned gender. But there was a hell of a lot of backlash from TERFs, people who generally hate trans people, and the very transphobic English press who had a habit of running stories with dead names.

[On screen]: "TERFs" "Assholes" "Rich Assholes"

These reporters falsely claimed that allowing trans people to “self-ID” meant that a personpeople could declare themselves a man on Monday and a woman on Friday, allowing rapists to gain access to women’s only spaces like bathrooms and changing rooms.

Now, I’ve never been sexually assaulted, but I do know a disturbing amount of women who have. I’ve been the one taking them to the hospital, the cops, or the counciling^{[sic: counseling]} sessions. And something I’ve discovered through all of this is… rapists don’t go through that much effort. There's not a lot of thinking behind it. They just do it. It’s a power thing. Men who believe they’rethey are more powerful than women are not going to dress up as a woman in order to assault herthem. They’re too lazy for that, don’t give them that much credit. But I digress.

The campaign of lies in the press soon moved on to spread more lies, now about trans children. That kids were being forced to transition by ultra-woke parents and experimental doctors. As a result, a large proportion of mainstream British feminists started loudly proclaiming that it’s not possible to change biological sex. Always ALWAYS focusing on biology and not sociology.

No one, to my knowledge, has claimed that a trans person can change their chromosomal sex. Only in a perfect world. BUT, one can change their gender, because that is simply how you are perceived by society. Lavern Cox may have an X and a Y chromosome, but if you’re lucky enough to see her walking down the street, you’re not thinking anything but woman.

Meanwhile, in most mainstream North American feminist circles, speaking out against trans women and men is not considered feminism at all. It’s considered being a dick head.

But trans-exclusionary radical feminist (TERF) ideology has been helped along in the UK by false media campaigns lead by the likes of Rupert Murdoch, the Australian billionaire who birthed Fox News. Any opposition to gender-critical or TERF thought in the UK brings accusations of “silencing women”, leading to Australian TERF Sheila Jeffreys going before the UK Parliament in March of 2018 to declare that trans women are “parasites,”. Charming.

Vox.com reported that According to Erin Greensmith, who studies the modern gender-critical movement, gender-critical feminism in the UK grew out of a toxic mix of historical imperialism, and any concept that looks at gender as anything but biologically determined. Those who rose to prominence in the movement did so through “Call out culture”, attacking trans men and women online.

Declaring trans women to be male perverts, and trans men to be lost lesbian sisters. Nevermind that trans men can also be gay or bisexual. Another fact TERFS don’t like acknowledgingto acknowledge.

[Quote scrolling on-screen]:

“Anti-trans feminists think they have science on their side,” Greensmith said. “It is bananas how ascientific their rhetoric is, and yet literally they say, ‘Biology isn’t bigotry.’ In fact, biology has been used as bigotry as long as biology has been a thing.”

Biology has been used to hold people down for thousands of years. Holding down women, people of color - You name a non-white-male group and biology has been used to bring the boot down on them at some point. And the biology narrative has only grown in the UK.

TERFism has become so prevalent there that many liberal pundits even blamed the conservative Tory victory in the last parliamentary election on trans people, saying that trans issues are just a hyper-woke product of a political left that has simply gone too far. BREXIT was even blamed on trans people.² Donald Trump’s election win in 2016 was blamed on trans people! By British people!

So English feminists, of which JK Rowling considers herself a proud member, were already at a tipping point when Maya Forstater sued the Centre for Global Development, a non-profit think tank that decided not to renew her expiring contract when they discovered that she’d been spreading TERFY shit all over the internet.

After a hearing with a UK employment tribunal, Judge James Tayler (good name) ruled that Forstater’s gender-critical views did not represent a legally protected philosophical belief. He said:

[Quote scrolling on-screen]:

“I consider that the Claimant’s view, in its absolutist nature, is incompatible with human dignity and [the] fundamental rights of others.”

That’s when the “Dress however you please” tweet came out, and it’s just been downhill ever since. Including J.K. Rowling publishing an overly long essay basically explaining why she thinks trans people aren’t valid. Mostly has to do with bathrooms, because of course it does.

[Seemingly to Nick off to the side:] It is ironic that I'm saying that her thirty-five-hundred word essay is "overly long" when this one is ten-thousand words. Double standards!

One person replied to her tweets, writing:

[Quote on-screen]:

“As a physician, I want people to know that sex exists on a bimodal biological spectrum just like gender exists on a bimodal sociological spectrum. While most identify as either female or male, there are intersex and trans individuals whose identities are just as valid and real.”

Rowling proceeded to block them.

And ever since then she has been more than happy to spout off about her ignorant beliefs whenever given the chance. Like in her 3600 word blog, “TERF Wars”. Oh she’s so funny. “TERF Wars” aha ha ha ha oh so clever...

In the blog, Rowling writes about her struggles with sexism and misogyny, adding that reading accounts of gender dysphoria in trans men had made her wonder:

[Quote on-screen]:

“if I’d been born 30 years later, I too might have tried to transition”.

Also writing:

[Quote on-screen]:

“Many, myself included, believe we are watching a new kind of conversion therapy for young gay people, who are being set on a lifelong path of medicalization.”

Some readers took this as her actually comparing gender confirmingconfirmation therapies to gay conversion therapy, which has been labeled as torture by many in the psychological professionals. You didn’t have to stretch very far to see the comparison.

Her response to this was:

[Tweet shown on-screen]:

“I’ve ignored fake tweets attributed to me and RTed widely. I’ve ignored porn tweeted at children on a thread about their art. I’ve ignored death and rape threats. I’m not going to ignore this.”

Well at least she’s got her priorities straight. Then she signed an open letter condemning cancel culture. The billionaire author who lives in a castle and was about to have another book hit #1 on the New York Times Best Seller list… complaining about being cancelled.

Warner Bros official statement regarding her repeated infractions was:

[Quote scrolling on-screen]:

“The events in the last several weeks have firmed our resolve as a company to confront difficult societal issues. Warner Bros position on inclusiveness is well established, and fostering a diverse and inclusive culture has never been more important to our company and to the audiences around the world. We deeply value the work of our storytellers who give so much of themselves in sharing their creations with us all. We recognize our responsibility to foster empathy and advocate understand of all communities and all people, those we reach through our content.“

Couldn’t use the word transgender once?, huh? I mean they might have well said, “we believe in people” for how much sense and genuine emotion this statement had. But, Warner Bros hasn’t been known for making a lot of sense lately. So... it's their brand.

There has been some backlash, mostly from queer inclusive groups. But the most interesting response has actually been from the fans. To a very large extent, fans of Harry Potter have been beside themselves… ourselves,,, with her actions. While some just wish she’d stop, and go back to the Rowling we thought we knew and loved… many are not afraid of letting her know how they feel on social media.

And it’s gotten under her skin too. She threatened to sue some people for calling her a bigot on Twitter³, and apparently hasn’t spoken to Emma Watson since the actress posted this photo of herself on Instagram with a shirt declaring “Trans rights are human rights”.

The thing is though, Rowling is pretty insulated from most negativity toward her. She’s surrounded herself with fellow TERFs who agree with her. She’s fabulously wealthy. If she didn’t make one more single solitary penny for the rest of her life, her family could live in luxury for centuries. I mean she lives in a literal castle.

So she couldn’t care less if people are angry with her about her opinions on trans people. She’s got money. She’s got influence. Her books are still #1 bestsellers, even when her name isn’t on them.

Funnily enough, book wise, she’s been careful with her name. The book about the cross dressing serial killer was published under her non-de-plum, Robert Galbraith, creating a little layer of insulation for her, at least among the uninformed. Her name, these days, only gets branded onto things that have to do with Wizards, but even that isn’t set in stone.

When the first Fantastic Beasts movie came out the branding behind it was “JK Rowling’s Wizarding World”. But by the time the sequel hit theatres it was just “Wizarding World”. And that’s how it’s stayed ever since.

Back in 2018 she’d already started in with the so called “Middle aged moments” by retweeting people calling trans women “men in dresses”. So I wouldn’t be surprised if Warner Bros, who owns a massive stake in the Harry Potter brand, had a hand in removing her name from the series branding. Not because they’re so trans friendly, but because they didn’t want to risk it becoming a public relations issue.

And for the most part, it worked. People, even those in the queer community, still love Harry Potter. Despite Rowling. People have been able to separate the author from the creation so that they can continue to enjoy the world she created without supporting her personally. This was my take on things as late as last summer. To some extent I guess it still is. If I had completely disowned her creations I probably wouldn’t have a thousand dollars worth of Hogwarts lego behind me.

But the TERF wars article kind of broke me. I couldn’t pretend that supporting her creations wasn’t supporting her anymore. I started coming at this a bit differently than a lot of people, especially my fellow cis people. I’ve found that trans folks are far more willing to drop her and everything she’s created, which makes a lot of sense. She’s been using her vast influence to hurt the trans community for years now.

But I also have some trans friends who have actually gotten tattoos of the deathly hallows or harry’s glasses just to spite her. Because they love the wizarding world. It helped them feel accepted at a time when they couldn’t even accept themselves and they’ll be damned if they’re going to let her take that away from them.

It’s a really weird situation... all around. The way I’ve come to looking at it is… I can’t spend another dimeany more money on branded Harry Potter merchandise. Even though there’s some lego sets I desperately want.

But plenty of people, even trans people, disagree with me on that. You see, things like lego and action figures and scarves and puzzles and video games… companies signed licenses for thosethese things long before she went full TERF, at least publicly.

They could use the morality clause in their contracts to sever ties with her, but they’ve spent so much money on the products already that the projected loss of revenue would have their stockholders abandoning ship. One could argue that buying the merchandise though just reinforces companies willingness to work with transphobes. That they can work with TERFs and bigots because, when it comes to the trans community, it won’t mean any lost sales.

But from another point of view, NOT buying Harry Potter stuff because she’s apparently a rabid bigot is really only hurting the companies producing the products. Because she already got paid. She got paid when the contracts werewas signed. She doesn’t get royalties from sales, she gets an upfront licensing fee, and it's a big fee.

Take for instance the upcoming Hogwarts Legacy video game from Avalanche Studios. They’re a great little studio that have made a lot of fun games over the years. Their bread and butter was actually doing video games for Disney, like the super fun Disney Infinity series, but they almost had to close down when Disney shuttered Disney Interactive.

The companyies and its employees were pretty much left out to dry until they lucked out and got the chance to work on Hogwarts Legacy in 2017, saving the company from bankruptcy. A year before JK Rowling made the first “men in dresses” retweet. And Avalanche, to their credit, has made it VERY clear that Rowling has absolutely NO involvement with the game’s development.

So, if you’re interested in the game, and if you want to play it when it eventually gets released, is it fair to boycott it because of the rotten things Rowling has said?

I don’t have the answer to that, but it’s a question worth asking.

Because there is a very valid argument that says the by buying Harry Potter merchandise, you’re not necessarily making her richer, since she’s already been paid for it, but that you’re continuing to make her relevant. And her being relevant to the cultural conversation gives her power and influence. A lot more power and influence than her just being rich.

A lot of people make the argument that buying Wizarding World merch is putting more money in her pocket. A fair argument but… She’s already so rich that taking a few sales away from her will have a net zero effect on her life. But if you love Harry Potter, if it means something to you, removing it from your life entirely might actually have an effect on you.

Because for many of us, Harry Potter represents something more than just a book we read as kids or teens. It became a part of our identity because it exists in a very rarified place of cultural importance. Formative literature.

Formative Bigotry You may have noticed that this is a bit of a sore spot for me, and that given that I’m a self-identified Harry Potter fan or a… recovering Harry Potter fan. Or a… Harry Potter fan in remission? [Shrugs] Anyway, this isn’t me blasting Rowling because I’m trying to hide the fact that I love the franchise in order to make it seem like I’m publicly distancing myself from her and it.

The point is that I’m getting so flustered over this not because I’m putting on airs, but because I've kind of taken it personally. how all of this has gone. Or rather, I feel kind of personally attacked. By Rowling. Like she went out of her way to whip me into a defensive frenzy to absolve her of any perceived wrongdoing. Specifically me. But then I have to ask myself.

Why is it that I, at the time, and others who — to this day — continue to defend Rowling against all criticism? I mean I jumped ship when she said the quiet part loudly enough, even then I might have held out for longer than I should have. But why do people still defend her when she’s shown her true colours?

And not even the turfy-kinda veneration of her gender criticalpolitical beliefs, or people who dismiss the issue altogether, but why do so many people still continue to argue that she isn’t, in fact, transphobic? Why go through the mental gymnastics of explaining how her poorly-edited, gender-critical tirades are in fact not only reasonable, but in fact trans-inclusive?

Well, She gives them a reason to, though. To this day JK Rowling continues to insist that she loves and respects trans people. But i think she feels that trans gender identity is this kind of... variant of an assigned birth gender? Kinda like a trans-woman exists as a variant of man, and vice versa.

And she’s made it clear she’s willing to love and support that. As long as trans women continue to identify as men, she’s on board for that. I can see her as one of those white women who insist that drag is cultural appropriation of women.

The thing is, love and support is Rowling’s brand. That’s kind of the identifiable niche she carved out for herself, not only by making Hogwards^{[sic: Hogwarts]} visually diverse — if a little stereotypical to the point of ignorance — but the brazen theme of the books is diversity. And she kept that rolling throughout her correspondence with both the press and her audience.

I couldn't help but wonder... why is it that her fandom clung to this brand for as long as they did?so long? And… is there anything she could do to stick the last nail in the coffin of her own career.

The thing with Rowling and Harry Potter is that these are children’s books. While at the same time it was accessible, it also didn’t talk down to it’s audience and laid out character intentions and feelings that were easy to understand for children but complex enough to keep older readers engaged. And this isn’t to absolve Rowling of wrongdoing because she wrote a good book. Yegch. That bothers me a lot. When people who don’t like Rowling stack on and act like the Harry Potter books are trash either because she’s trash or because the books are popular.

But Harry Potter is also… well… kind of a special case as far as book series go. At the time, nothing like it had ever happened before. It STARTED as a children’s book… and then grew up with the audience. First, finding a niche in that young adult period, and then by book seven kind of even reached toward the New Adult genre.reaching into the adult market.

Not only did these books generate a paradigm shift in the publishing industry, but they did so while managing to keep a group of children interested in a series well into their teens or even twenties. When it comes to serialized children’s literature, young readers who follow the series usually drop itoff as they grow out of the content.

It isn’t until the series comes to a completion that you get an audience who can read the entire backlog at once while they’re still young. So… if harry potter had stayed as child-focused as it started, then a lot of us probably would have cut and run before book five. Especially before book five.

But Harry Potter grew up with us. And we got to see the complexity of the books unfold as our own lives were becoming more complex and independent. So not only was Harry Potter beloved to our childhood, but also our mid-and later teenage years — depending on how old you were when you first started reading it. And for those who had the opportunity to read the whole series at once, you could see a very… realistic progression of a developing teenaged identity.

So in either case, the books stick with you, and so you stick with the book from beginning to end. And in the process of being involved with a series for seven instalments, that’sthere's a lot of time and thought devoted to processing this media. Critically, at a period in your life where you do not have a super developed capacity for critical thinking.

At the same time that you are able to recognize the morals of the story, you cannot recognize the way that this narration is conditioning you to act a certain way. And these morals are so very clearly directed at cooperation, acceptance of the other, and the strength and importance of the individual existing within a community. We see those values and we like those values.

So, until some of us are conditioned into Randian⁴, personal-gain, kind of objectivist thinking, we do lean towards inclusion as an innate state of default. We don’t understand the social constructs of why person from Racist group A can’t interact with person from diverse group B. This kind of segregation, as many have remarked, is learned behaviour.

So the inclusive values in Harry Potter feel natural to us as children. And because most children don’t understand the history of the IRA, and the colonial occupation of Ireland, they aren’t going to be able to critically discern WHY it’s a little problematic that the ONLY real Irish student at Hogwarts is constantly making things explode.

Same thing with the goblins. We LEARN about the Holocaust and antisemitism and stereotypes around Jewish people later. So we do not have the innate ability to think critically about the depiction of Goblins being disturbingly close to how the Nazis portrayed Jewish people in propaganda. Instead, we let this media shape us. Because a) we like it and b) it speaks to values that we internally hold as truths.

But we also do not have the ability to critically think in a way where we can accept media and separate the values we like from the values we dislike. It’s either all good, or all bad. And quite frankly, a lot of adults are not that well versed in critical thought either.

So as we accept Harry Potter as a component of our formative development of values and worldview, it, essentially, becomes a component of our identities. And Harry Potter especially, because it was produced and presented to the public on the cusp of ana very... world-shaking era.

The year after The Deathly Hallows was released the stock market crashed. Many of us immediately started getting called lazy, expecting handouts, entitled, wanting a trophy for showing up.

Before then We were told that if we just did what we loved, everything would work out. We were told that fulfilment was the most important part of getting a career. And that money wasn’t as important as happiness.

…And then we were told to take that job at starbucks, getting berated and verbally abused by customers, and we were told to be grateful we had anything at all. Our complaints about student debt fell on deaf ears from generations who, when they were younger, started out with ‘nothing’ and made something of themselves.

In an age where they could get a family-supporting job with a high school diploma. In an age where you could work part time and put yourself through school, when minimum wage was high enough and tuition was low enough to do that. I for one, would have loved to start with ‘nothing’ rather than a heap of debt from a degree I couldn’t really use to get that fulfilment I was promised.

Everything didn’t just ‘work out’ because we followed our dreams. In fact… we were told to… put our dreams on hold. Or that we should just make it a hobby. Or just… wait until retirement. Or just realize that everyone doesn’t get to be an astronaut and we should just settle for being a barista.

Not speaking from personal experience, my parents were incredibly encouraging. But many of us who had degrees and jobs at starbucks had parents who thought that because we didn’t have a job in our field it just meant that we weren’t looking for them. So many of our role models turned their backs on us, and refused to listen to the reality of our situation. Because it didn’t match up with what it was like ‘when they were our age.’

And according to them, the world, apparently, was incapable of change. By the time our role models realized that… no… there isn’t just this trove of jobs out there, waiting for resumes dropped off to the manager with a wink and a handshake. By that time… we’d stopped caring what they thought. We pushed away from our role models who built up our expectations and did nothing to admit that maybe… this wasn’t our fault.

…Except JK Rowling. Who, famously, came from poverty and obscurity, living in public housing, on social assistance, getting fired from jobs because she was working on her manuscript. Facing rejection, mental illness, abusive people, her own role models, who did not believe in her anymore and in spite of all of it, she force fed their words back to them and founded a creative empire on a dream and a little creativity. She proved to us that our dreams were possible, while telling us that the problems we complained about were valid, and we had every right to be angry. And we had every right to keep dreaming.

Harry Potter was formative to our values, and JK Rowling, now in the public eye, told us that we didn’t have to abandon those values to ‘fit in’ with what our once-mentors told us we had to be. What we had to sacrifice in order to succeed. Without realizing that success, by their standards, didn’t exist anymore, except for a very few exceptions.

So, not only the books, but she herself was formative in how we held on to our identity through a crisis nobody believed was happening. And so no, people don’t want to admit she did anything wrong. To admit that she herself could turn into an icon of the kind of wrong-minded, bigoted, exclusionary, out-of-touch, ignorant, hateful, tone-deaf, and unwilling to learn and grow and develop and accept new things, new ways of thinking. To admit that she had become everything that would have told her she would never succeed, that we would never succeed…

I got to admit, I’m not sure how that works. Which is why we held on to Rowling for so long. Which is why I held on to that initial variant of Rowling, the one that cut through hatred and resistance so thatto that...... core of why people could flourish no matter who they were. Because that was the Rowling that we accepted.

So the new version… that... that must just be a mistake. There must be a reason for that. Because these two versions are incompatible.

It’s… almost impossible to get someone to remove something that they consider to be part of their identity. And, Not like it’s their fault, human beings are built to think that way. Our consciousness is designed to identify itself by things that feel familiar. The opposite is what? Cognitive dissonance? We HAVE to hold on to what we identify with.

And if that thing is some rags to riches British author... we have less agency in shaping ourselves than we think. And that’s especially true at younger ages because we don’t realize that this fun book we’re reading is actually shaping our entire identityself. Which like… really should scare the shit out of authors of Young Adult and Children’s literature. I mean you are developing a one-way line of communication direct with a small person’s subconscious. And… they WILL absorb all the subliminal messaging in there. Whether it’s intended to be there or not. And that can stay with them for their entire life.

In the instance of Harry Potter, the value on the surface is so strongly associated with inclusion, we give it the benefit of the doubt. Because… we are biased creatures. And in many cases We aren’t aware of what those biases are.

For instance, it’s not likely that Tolkein deliberately intended to code the forces of Mordor as representatives of dark-skinned individuals. He was trying to establish a dichotomy between darkness and light, and didn’t understand, and did not live in an era where it was projected that skin colour ought to be treated sensitively. And because Tolkein never did something that was like… errantly hateful, most people can separate the surface value meaning from the problematic instances.

And I thought, for a while, that I could do that with Harry Potter. You know, just kinda… remove Rowling’s gender politics and enjoy what was in the rest of the books. But now it just hangs off my back. Weighing down the love I have for her creation. And killing the admiration I had for her.

Every September 1st, people around the world celebrate the day that students go back to Hogwarts, with many proclaiming on social media “It’s time to go home”. It’s almost reached religious levels of devotion, with some fans making the pilgrimage to Kings Cross Station, congregating at the little sign in between platforms nine and ten, and counting down to when the train leaves at 11:00am sharp.

Others opt to travel to Universal Studios, where they can wander around Diagon Alley, being fitted for their robes, receiving their very own wand, and then casting their gaze toward the reproduction of Hogwarts that looms high above the land.

I never really got to partake in any of that, mind you. I didn’t have the money to travel to London for September 1, or to go to Universal Studios and visit Diagon Alley. Not in time, anyway. Not before Rowling… did the things.

There’s even a head canon reason why fans of a certain generation, mine, never got their letters to go to Hogwarts. Because of Voldemort’s power grab in the seventh book, all documentation tracking muggles with magical powers was destroyed. And therefor, after 1997, no eleven year old without wizard parents got their letters. It’s a silly and fun way to let the magical idea of Hogwarts live on. That we actually are witches and wizards, we just didn’t get our letters because a mad fascist didn’t want us included.

And In 2012, Harry Potter fans around the world cheered Britain’s then Prime Minister David Cameron’s declaration that May 2 would forevermore be known as International Harry Potter Day. Why May 2? Well, The Battle of Hogwarts was fought on this date in 1998. The final conflict of the Second Wizarding War.

The Order of the Phoenix proved victorious, ending the most devastating battle of that war and resulting in numerous casualties, including Remus Lupin, Nymphadora Tonks, Lavender Brown, Colin Creavey, Severus Snape, and Fred Weasley. But most notably the defeat of Lord Voldemort, or Tom Riddle.

Every year brings different ways to commemorate and celebrate this day. There are anniversaries to recognize, characters to memorialize, places to see. In Cameron’s official statement announcing the new holiday he said:

[Quote scrolling on-screen]:

“In order to fully commemorate and immortalize her work, we have decided to officially declare May 2nd as an official international holiday, in honor of the date that protagonist Harry Potter conquered the main antagonist of the series, Lord Voldemort. We hope that children and adults alike will be reminded of Harry Potter’s strong and courageous character on this day, as well as of the true credit that Ms. Rowling has made to society.”

In case you can’t tell, this is not the typical. This isn’t usually what people do after a book series has ended. It’s become something beyond its creator. JK Rowling gets the credits for all of this, in an official sense, being the creator. But she didn’t organize the pilgrimages to Kings Cross. She hasn’t been the one keeping the series alive with countless fan theoryies and videos and head canon explanations across the internet. She just confirms them sometimes.

And when she comes up with her own, its about Wizards crapping on the ground and magicking it away with theira wand.

The fans are the people who have kept this brand alive since the books finished their run in 2007, the year I graduated from high school incidentally, and the release of the final film was released in 2011. Long before Rowling officially launched Pottermore in 2015, (everything before then wasthat had been considered a beta), fans had been doing the hard work of keeping their favourite characters alive.

Fans took ownership of the the characters. Fan fiction communities for Harry Potter had always been popular, but they really took off once the series had finished. People were telling their own stories in the world. Creating their own characters. And Adding to the mythology.

And a whole lot of the people behind those new storiesthose people were queer and trans. People who understood that Rowling couldn’t actually include people like us in the initial books because of the then existing UK law that said books with LGBT characterscontent weren’t allowed in children’s libraries. So we assumed that was the only reason we weren’t there, and many of us created out own stories to fill in the gaps. Creating new characters to exist right alongside Harry, Ron, and Hermione.

And why wouldn’t we? In 2014 JK Rowling stated, very clearly, that gay, lesbian, bi, AND transgender students could, of course, attend Hogwarts.⁵ She even said that they may use magic to help deal with gender confirmation. She didn’t use those exact words of course, instead clinically stating that one could use magic to change their genitals, but the meaning was still there.

So It’s no wonder her being a TERF came like a punch to the gut to so many. And why so many people, myself very much included, preferred to ignore her slights on Twitter until it became impossible to do so. Until she went out of her way to remove that last shadow of a doubt that so many of us clung towe all desperately clung on to.

And it sucks. I hate it. I hate that I defended her. I hate that I ignored her growing transphobia. But most of all, I hate that I felt like I had to. I hate that had she put me and so many other fans, gay, straight, bi, cis, trans, non-binary… That she put us in the position of HAVING to ignore her ignorant and potentially dangerous comments. Because she had helped us form our identities as accepting, loving, people. The ones who would help the first years at Hogwarts feel comfortable in their new home. No matter where they came from, what they looked like, or what dormitory they slept in.

Over the course of just a few short years Joanne Rowling went from being the most tolerant, accepting, loving professor at Hogwarts… to She Who Must Not Be Named. And while doing so she created her own hoard of TERFY death eaters to go along with her, leaving the rest of us heartbroken at the betrayal, and trying to figure out what to do next. Do we cut Harry Potter out of our lives? Or just it’s^{[sic: its]} creator? Do we have to let go of something that made us feel so happy and safe? Or can we just let go of her? Can there be Harry Potter without JK Rowling?

(At desk with Harry Potter perch everywhere) I’ve been asking myself that question at least once a week for the last year and a half. Can I still enjoy Harry Potter, even though JK Rowling is who, it turns out, she is. Can I still read the books? Watch the movies? Play athe video game? Buy lego. Can I play with my wands? I have Slytherin and Ravenclaw scarves and this past winter, on the very rare occasion I got to leave the house, I felt like I couldn’t wear them. What about my Hogwarts backpack? Can I still use that without feeling like I’m promoting TERF ideology?

I know that for people for whom Harry Potter was just another book or movie, this probably sounds crazy. I feel like it would be akin to Marvel fans finding out that Stan Lee was secretly fighting against civil rights in America, or that George Lucas secretly financed the January 6th attack on the capital. It’s just so antithetical to the image we have of these people.

But luckily, in reality, Stan Lee was a pretty progressive guy who loved adding diversity to the Marvel Comics universe. And George Lucas abhors fascism, in case the bad guys in Star Wars being space nazis was too subtle for you.

But how does someone deal with discovering that a person who helped them develop their identity is… bad? People who read Orson Scott Card books as a kid had to do it when they founds out he was actually a raging homophobe. HP Lovecraft was a virulent racist and anti-semite… but his world has actually been adopted since his death, with countless Jewish writer and writers of color making his mythos safe for everyone. (Well, as safe as Lovecraftian literature can be.)

So it’s not a new phenomena. But certainly nothing like it has happened at this scale. No modern author has had the reach of JK Rowling. The cultural permeability. Harry Potter has sold over 500 million copies. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone is the bestselling single novel of all time. With the other six books in the series all landing within the top 20 bestselling books of all time. Rowling is the only author to have more than one book in that top twenty, and she’s got seven.

That has lead to a level of global cultural osmosis never before seen in literature. For some kids it was just another book they read, or movie they saw. But for many it changed how they looked at the world. It gave them a safe place to go when the real world was falling apart around them. There arewere reports of young Syrian refugees and South American migrants clutching onto copies of Harry Potter books as they flee from the horrors of war orand destitution. Because although bombs fall around them, and gunshots ring throughout the night… Hogwarts makes them feel safe.

And so I don’t think we can demand people give that up. As I’ve said already, I know more than a few trans people who have increased their love of Harry Potter to spite Rowling. To show her and the people who support her that they cannot take thiscan't take that away from them. That Harry, and Hagrid, and Hermione, and Ron, and the other Weaselys, mean something to them. That Neville and Luna and Cho and Dean were their friends when, maybe, they had none. That Molly Weasly was a loving and accepting mother figure. That Professor McDonagall was a teacher they wish they’d had to talk to.

If you want to cut this out of your life because of the things Rowling has said, I do not blame you at all. With countries all over the world passing anti-trans laws, adding her voice to the mix has only fanned the flames of transphobia. But if you want to keep these characters and this world in your life to spite her, I support that too.

Because the minute those books hit the bookshelves they became just as much the fan’s property as her own. She might legally own them, but a brand is nothing without the fansfanbase. There’s an entire generation of people who grew up escaping to Hogwarts. Who feel comfortable and safe within those walls… within the pages of the books… or the scenes of the movies. I’m one of them.

And honestly, I’m not letting her have the power to take that away from me. Will I spend anymore money on the brand? Probably not. But I’m not letting it go entirely. I accept that she is not who I thought she was.

But the beautiful thing about books is that, for the most part, they’re unchanging. Harry still comes from an abusive home, and finds his security in a chosen family. Hermione still fights for the rights of the oppressed, even though they’re different from her. Molly Weasely is still the mother figure that will hug you and care for you, no matter what. Sirius is still the godfather that will make you laugh, and put his life on the line for you. Dobby is still the devoted friend. McGonagall still the caring teacher. Hagrid still the father figure that will guide you through the dark.

They’re all still there within the pages and on the screen. Inside a worn paperback or old DVD you got as a kid or a teenager. And on September 1, you can still return to Hogwarts without putting a single Knut, sickle, or galleon in Rowling’s pocket. Rowling did her job. She wrote the books. But They’re yours now. Always.