Why I actually hate JK Rowling
Something I kinda wanted to talk about for a while is this: I have hated JK Rowling before it was "cool" to do so. Not because of her stances on trans people - as those were not yet out in the open, though they obviously have not made anything better, but because of everything else.
While I also had been a Harry Potter kid, duh, I was bugged by some of the things in the books even as a kid. Most notably the way the books constantly play animal abuse for laughs. I also was not a big fan of how the text treated many of the female characters as inherently bad or worthless, with Hermoine and Ginny being meanwhile shown as "not like the other girls" tropes. I was aware that the "not like the other girls" thing was toxic as fuck by the time I hit 18.
But the main reason I really started to hate Harry Potter and JK Rowling was, when I really how much those books took part in normalizing child abuse. Because oh my fucking god, HP as a series is basically a manifesto proclaiming the value of abusing children. Which, frankly, yeah, does check out with what Rowling is supporting these days.
Almost all adult characters in these books are using, abusing, and exploiting children. And some of it, sure, gets actually discussed in fandom circles (like how Dumbledore is practicing child endangerment at least 5 times before breakfast), but a lot of it was not. A big example of this to me was always the Weasley family. Both Weasley parents are horrible, abusive, and neglectful parents. The children are beaten, manipulated, pressured, and abused in so many ways, while the story then sits down, smiles, and goes: "This is the best kind of family!" And yeah, the kids also abuse each other - but in a home situation like the Weasley family, that would only be natural. Especially, as frankly, the Weasley family is a way more realistic example of how actual child abuse within the family unit looks like, than what we see with the Dursleys and Harry, where the abuse is so overblown that it becomes intentionally comical.
And here is the thing: I was an abused child. My mother was a lot like Mrs. Weasley. But I, as a child, had no framework of understanding this, because it was the late 90s/early 2000s, and it was not as if anyone was talking about child abuse that did not include either rape or physical violence. So, like most kids, I assumed my homelife was normal. And Harry Potter played a very, very big role in this. As the Weasleys modeled a homelife that was very, very close to my own, while then also saying: "This is the best way a family can be. Ideal family, really!"
And when you start to realize that this is indeed how Rowling thinks about such things... The other flaws became more noticable. The way how she generally thinks bullying and abuse is actually AMAZING AND FUNNY. The way how she proselytizes eugenics and imperialism. The way she defends slavery.
But at the time I started to really hate on her (the mid-2010s) everyone was getting angry about the mere suggestion that HP was not a pure-hearted story about love beating hate, and the suggestion that Rowling is a fucking heartless beast that feasts on the misery of others.
So in a weird way I - someone who is trans - was almost glad when she openly started to admit to be transphobic, because at the very least, people started to also admit more widely that the books were actually shit. Because yes, J.K. Rowling is a horrible person. A horrible person who sees women as baby vessels, and children as a sort of pet, while also holding the strong opinion that animal (and therefore child abuse, given children are animals to her) is actually a fun activity to engage in.
My main takeaway also is: yeah, obviously you should not engage with HP shit, because it gives her more money to invest into transphobic laws.
But also, you probably should not engage with the HP shit, because it is a story about how fasc*ism is actually a totally fun thing to do, how eugenics are amazing, how child abuse should be practice within any institution that kids interact with, how women generally are horrible, but are even more so if they do not have kids that they can abuse, and how actually British Imperialism was the best thing to ever happen to the world, and those slaves must have felt really happy about it.
Even if Rowling died tomorrow, and could no longer spent a cent for her hate campaign, the fact that those books aspouse fascist rhetoric should be enough to just ignore their existence.
