You never showed up before.
I’m sure I’m going to get yelled at or tone-policed for this post, so let’s start here: spare your fucking breath.
But if you feel you must rant back at me, read the whole fucking post first.
A few years ago, Black Harry Potter fans pointed out the lack of Black characters in the books. If memory serves me, there are two–Kingsley Shacklebolt and Blaise Zabini. One is a Death Eater. The other one is literally a man named after a kind of prison chain. And fans went “well Jo supports Black Hermione headcanons and she was played onstage by a Black girl!”
A few years ago, Black readers expressed concern over how Rowling portrayed S.P.E.W., and the concept of house elves being slaves. People dismissed this as being because the house elves are based on the folkloric brownies–and while this is true, there was absolutely no attempt to show why Hermione was wrong beyond “lol silly girl, wanting to free the house elves,” nor was any attempt made to show why the treatment of Dobby and Winky was wrong beyond “well their masters were Slytherins what can you expect.” Black readers’ concerns were dismissed.
And a few years ago–around the release of Cursed Child was the first time I encountered it–Black fans pointed out that Lavender Brown was Black in the movies … until she became Ron’s love interest and was recast as a while girl. People got kind of mad and then forgot about it.
Over a decade ago, Jews pointed out that the goblins were antisemitic stereotypes. They were largely ignored. More recently, these pointings-out have been gaslit, ahistorically waved away, or the critics have been threatened.
About four years ago, I wrote a piece about why Snape is an antisemitic stereotype, and why, while he’s fascinating as a character, his narrative is extremely concerning within the context of being framed as Jewish-coded. I was largely ignored, except by Jews. I was still a gentile at the time and even so I was told by other gentiles that I was imagining things–or that I was the one stereotyping Jews by recognizing the negative stereotypes in the work, so maybe I was the bigot, huh, how about that.
A couple of years ago, someone actually took Rowling to task on Twitter about there being no Jews in the books. Her reply was “there are plenty! Anthony Goldstein is Jewish!” Anthony has no spoken lines–his biggest interaction with any of the main cast is shooting Harry a dirty look–and his Jewishness is not mentioned or shown anywhere.
I can’t be sure when I started seeing this, but as a onetime Harry Potter fan myself, I can say for sure it was within a year of Deathly Hallows the book coming out: criticism of the fact that the only gay character in the books turned out to be a master manipulator who was in love with a Hitler parallel, was in charge of children, and was actively grooming a young boy. (Later criticisms have been angry that Dumbledore was never mentioned as gay in the books. On that one, I have to give Rowling a very begrudging pass–even if she’d found a way to bring it up, in 2007 it would have been censored right back out.) And yet other than the occasional stray comment, that criticism has largely been ignored.
LGBT activists and gay men have been outraged since 1999 because Rowling stated that lycanthropy was supposed to be a corollary for AIDS. Ah, yes: because AIDS makes its victims turn into deadly, feral beasts once a month but causes absolutely zero other health problems, and it’s most commonly spread by ill actors who know they’re poz and deliberately infect others. Yep. Sounds accurate to me … not.
Twenty years ago, Chinese-American readers and Chinese-British readers pointed out the racism inherent in the name “Cho Chang,” which sounds quite close to the racial slur “ching-chong” (and also is not a real Chinese name). They were ignored. At best, their legitimate grievance was trotted out as a “tsk tsk” addendum when the focus on Rowling’s anti-trans views started coming to light.
When the background lore for Fantastic Beasts came out, Native American readers were horrified by what Rowling did with their culture. I don’t think I can even list all of their complaints here because they were so many, so myriad, and it’s literally easier and more to the point to just say “she was lazy and clearly did not do a single line of research, ever, at all, and did not get anything right, at all, and in fact got a lot of things very offensively wrong.” People got mad for about five minutes and then forgot all about it when the movie dropped.
Readers with ties to the African continent were also horrified, by the way, because supposedly there’s one magical school for the tiny little islands of the UK and also one magical school for the biggest continent on earth. The many cultures, languages, and the basic geographic impossibility of this were all ignored by Rowling and her publishers–and fans, who got mad for five minutes and then forgot about it when the movie dropped.
When it came out that Nagini was some kind of snake woman, being played by a Korean actress, some fandomers pointed out that it was really fucking gross to have a Korean woman trapped by a man who then “impregnates” her with part of himself. Among other things, it’s at best an unfortunate parallel with the Korean “comfort women” of WWII. (translation: Korean women who were raped and tortured by Japanese soldiers.) People got mad for about five minutes and then forgot about it.
At some point–again, Potter has been in my direct or periphery for such a long time that years start blending together–Rowling made a statement about how the reason there are no disabled people at Hogwarts is because they’re “fixed” by magic. There was basically no outcry at all.
And now that Rowling’s rabid anti-trans views have come to light, you want to pretend you never knew she was a terrible bigot.
You’re showing up for trans women. As you should. Good job, have a gold star.
But do not forget, and do not give yourself a pass, that you never fucking showed up for the rest of us. You were passive and dismissive and justifying.
She is racist, ableist, queerphobic, and antisemitic. You have had a way to know this for twenty years. Even if you missed some of the early criticisms–I did, I was twelve years old and I fully recognize that many Potter readers aren’t even as old as the series itself, I don’t expect a five-year-old to have noticed this stuff–the evidence has piled up and piled up and piled up.
And only when it became a cause that’s politically convenient did outrage begin.
Speak out for the trans women who have been and will be harmed by Rowling’s recent drive off the cliff. Please do. I mean that genuinely. This is not okay.
But speak out for the rest of us too. Call her to task for EVERYTHING. Otherwise it’s empty performative posturing.
Your activism must be intersectional. Or it’s bullshit.
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