rapeculturerealities

Once, she blamed liking anti-transgender statuses on Twitter as an error, dubbing it a “Clumsy and Middle-Aged Moment.” Despite fans catching the 53 year old in the act of putting her stamp of approval on trans hate once again, she thumbed her nose at the backlash.

Rowling eagerly co-signed the Anti-Trans attacks launched by notorious The Times journalist Janice Turner.

While the LGBT community and our allies have stood back and watched a rather ominous narrative form around JK Rowling, it has been without any direct confirmation or statement from the author herself. It’s as if she is conditioning the world to accept it rather than rebuke it. First she stuck her toe in the water, was caught, claimed it was a misunderstanding and we accepted that. Then, she persisted to do the same things… again and again.

Finally, we have some confirmation of Rowling’s stance against the transgender community. She has followed one of the most hateful and aggressive anti-trans radical feminists on Twitter, Magdalen Berns.

quietdoppelganger

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femmeyoshiko

I’m sorry but you are kidding yourself if you can pretend Harry Potter is divorced from the author’s transphobia. Saying “Miku made this” is just glossing over the disturbing context given to elements from the series when you know that JKR is a raging transmisogyniat who follows one of the worst terfs on twitter.

In Hogwarts, the stairs to the girls’ dorms physically will not allow male students to enter. However girls can enter the boys’ dorm base apparently girls are inherently more trustworthy. This was written by a woman who believes trans women are men who prey on cis women and therefore should be forcibly removed from women’s spaces.

In Harry Potter only the girl students are allowed to pet the unicorns because they are more “pure” than the boys. This was written by a person who believes your sex assigned at birth IS your gender and believes it immoral or impossible to have a different gender from your ASAB.

The only time people are very shown using polyjuice potion to transform into a person of another gender, it’s mostly a joke about Harry’s friends making comments about his body + Fleur being embarrassed for her husband to see her as a naked man. Other than this scene, every use of polyjuice potion is intensely gender-conforming, and it’s not because of the voices because in the books polyjuice changes your voice as well.

There are elements of the Harry Potter books that people have tried to reframe as being trans-inclusive (“what if a trans boy couldn’t get into the girls dorm only the boys dorm?”) but we are lying to ourselves if we pretend her “opinions” aren’t present in Harry Potter.

the-bluebonnet-bandit

Her opinions AND misconceptions/stigmas of vulnerable groups are rampantly present in Harry Potter. We shouldn’t forget that its canon that werewolves are supposed to be a metaphor for HIV, but then after Lupin we get Greyback who goes around…turning people into werewolves on purpose. To which the canonical equivalent is thus a very dangerous prejudice about queer men that the community had to live through during the aids crisis and STILL does today.

Then there are the money hoarding goblins at the bank who are directly based from antisemitic stereotyoes that have been passed down through generations of storytelling…There’s the house elves who are supposed to represent a marginalized group and slave labor, yet its canon that they “like” working and brilliant Hermonie is just an over-zealous feminist sort who isn’t looking at the circumstance practically….Then there’s everything about how she refuses to write in representation but will try to claim it later, and everything she has been doing with the Fantastic Beasts movies (Nagini is a name from India, why is the character suddenly an entrapped Chinese Woman???)….

But what I REALLY wanted to say was how sad this is.

(Sorry. My cat pressed “post” with her foot and I was powerless. Despite the cute I am still exasperated!)

Here’s the thing. I am an avid scifi nerd. Despite the fact that numerous famous science fiction authors have held (at best) imperfect and (at worst) disfainful views of different groups, I’ve still enjoyed many of their stories. I can’t help it.

This all sort of goes into the “Death of the Author” litterary theory which holds that once a work of art is finished (like a book in this case) - its interpretation belongs to the individual consuming it. And their interpretation is no more or less important than the author’s - whatever their intent was.

I know we all like to hear what our favorite creators like to say about the world they made. But through each lense of the mind - we ourselves are creating our own world. It will be different from our friends and neighbor’s world even if it based on the same material. That being said - J. K. Rowling is a great example of why Death of The Author can be so important.

“She wrote a book about love!” Yes. But so did Orson Scott Card. His books Ender’s Game and Speaker for the Dead radically shifted my whole approach to other people. I identified with Ender, viewed him as maybe autistic like myself, and I changed a lot of my internal thoughts and behaviors because of what I read about trying to understand others. No matter what, there is a human being inside of everyone. And love or no love, we need to find it if we are to survive together as a species.

Thats still a huge part of my world view. Even if when Card wrote it he wrote it without “the gays” in mind.

YES. J. K. Rowling made Harry Potter.

And yes she always will have.

But more important than who “made” what, is what you do with it. What it means to you. How you made yourself.

Those are things no person or millionaire can take away or change or edit out of existence.

I am a slytherin and I’ll say it now more than ever - because these companies (nintendo with its anti-trans flag stance for example) and these creators - cannot take away the person I became when I made their world my own.

Enjoy what you enjoy. Rebel. Take it for yourself. It was art and you were always meant to.

You ought to be able to love and be loved - even if that love is for yourself.

lapucianprincess

JK’s opinion sucks. All the coding she put into her books suck. Death of the author is real, rad, and rational.

Harry Potter has changed so many lives and united a generation. We cant just dismiss the good it’s done cause the author is awful. And I mean, they’ve printed so many copies of the books, no one ever has to buy them new again.

However, if you want a Harry Potter that is gay and trans inclusive, has a way better story line, doesn’t shit on slytherins, has black!Hermione and indian!Harry, and has characters that actually communicate and act like rational people….

Check out Survival is a Talent by Shanastoryteller

Like seriously, this has been my canon Hogwarts for like a year, and it’s so much better. She also has another fic that explores and talks about all the issues with the house elves and pure bloods, etc. Really cool, plus it’s a every-one-became-a-professor au.

So forget JK. Harry Potter is ours now and we can, we should, and we will paint it every color of the rainbow (both skin tones and LGBTQ+)