With Rowling revealing herself as a full on TERF yesterday, I feel the need to say something about this whole thing... I mean firstly, fuck JKR, trans people are so valid. But lately I’ve noticed a growing subset of people who are either priding themselves on never having read Harry Potter, or shaming people who used to consider themselves huge fans of it, and I need to explain why that’s bad.
If you’re out here saying shit like “everyone who liked Harry Potter is probs a cop now”, or “Harry Potter was always trash anyway” that’s.... not it. It was popular for a reason. Millions of people, trans, queer, POC, Black, Jewish, etc. knew and loved it for years. If you’re only now saying it’s trash because it’s confirmed that the author is a bigot, that’s kinda fucked.
Firstly, you should be looking critically at all media you consume regardless of if you’re aware of the author’s viewpoints, secondly, you’re implying that everything made by bigoted, racist, homophobic people is automatically bad writing. Unfortunately, that’s not true.
You cannot only read stuff from “unproblematic” authors. It’s literally impossible. For one, authors aren’t always stupid enough to share their bigoted opinions on twitter for the world to see. And if you’ve read anything by a white person from the 19th (hell, 20th) century, they’re almost definitely a huge fucking racist at the very least. You can, and should, make an effort to consume media made by people of a variety of sexual orientations, gender identities, racial identities, etc. But this doesn’t ensure that all of those people will be perfect unproblematic angels either.
The fact is, bad people make good things. Bad people will make stuff you like. You cannot tie your sense of worth or your personal morals to whether or not you watch or read the “right” stuff made by the “right” people. And if you struggle with this, you’re not alone.
If you’ve ever heard of cognitive dissonance, it basically means that there’s a distressing situation that is creating inconsistency/conflict, so your brain makes an effort to try and restore balance. For example, you know that Harry Potter is a good book series and that JK Rowling is a bad person. But those opposing thoughts occurring simultaneously make your brain feel Bad so in order to get rid of that distress, you either start thinking “well Harry Potter wasn’t good actually” or “well JK can’t really be a bad person”. You’ll see this kind of thing happen all the time with fans of musicians who turn out to be shitheads. And it’s ultimately very harmful.
Make an effort to reconcile the conflicting thoughts in your head. And try not to hold yourself up as the pinnacle of unproblematicness, like in general. We all have stuff we need to work towards, and no one is completely free of biases and prejudice.
And if you’re a Harry Potter fan feeling guilty or uncomfortable because of JKR, here’s my advice to you:
It is definitely important to look closely at problematic aspects of Harry Potter that we, as children, may have overlooked. Initially I hadn’t considered that Cho Chang’s name was racist. I never thought about how the goblins running the bank could be seen as antisemitic. You’ve seen the posts/threads; there’s a laundry list of stuff wrong with these books that deserves to be pointed out. But not recognizing this stuff when you were literally in elementary school doesn’t make you a bad person.
The beauty of reading things while being socially aware means that we can look at something critically and still enjoy its content. No, this does not mean the author is totally dead and no you can’t keep saying “Hatsune Miku wrote Harry Potter”. You cannot ignore where the content came from and pretend that Rowling’s bigoted ideologies didn’t seep into her writing. Acknowledge that JK wrote Harry Potter, that you enjoy(ed) Harry Potter, and that JK is also a huge transphobe amongst other things. All of these things can be true simultaneously.
As for what you can do moving forward, 1. if you must, buy HP merch from indie creators and buy used copies/pirate the books, and 2. make an effort to read different fantasy books written by trans/nb authors. You cannot erase the fact that your childhood was shaped by these books, but you can ensure that your future is shaped by something different, and better.
To everyone else, don’t let your cognitive dissonance give you a sense of moral superiority. And lastly, fuck JKR and fuck transphobes :)
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