the marauders fandom is not the reason terfs brought about a deeply transphobic and lesbophobic supreme court ruling in the UK. i’m going to be very clear about that because it’s something this fandom sincerely needs to confront
the ruling itself was written based on a deep misunderstanding of trans, nonbinary and lesbian identity that stems at least in part from a basic lack of british social education and discourse on lgbtq issues. jkr did not cause that. she is one of many right wing bigots capitalising on it and this case specifically only came about because she put £70,000 behind it
that wealth is based off a franchise which became a household name nearly three decades ago. that franchise is sustained because harry potter is ingrained in popular culture worldwide. it’s the families who flew 4000 miles to take their kids to wb studios. the vast majority of the world does not hear about hp or engage with it because of the marauders fandom
i do want to be very clear about that last point, because its a different issue from whether someone is personally uncomfortable engaging with hp in any way or whether engaging with it affects people in your community. that is a different kind of impact, but the discourse in this fandom is repeatedly blurring it with the broader impact on lgbtq people in britain of hp being so profitable and what jkr does with those profits
when you start talking about the harm that financially supporting the hp brand does as a personal moral issue, you are making this about you. when a supreme court ruling comes down that says very specifically that only cis women can be lesbians and five days later the discussion online is how someone feels about posting hp fanfic, you have made this harm about you. and it’s not about you. it’s about the people dealing with the reality of being lgbtq in britain right now. it’s about the ways in which that ruling directly and indirectly affects us
when i go to work each day and navigate the transphobia still rumbling around even in explicitly left wing spaces of british society i quite frankly do not give a fuck about your 100k wolfstar first war slowburn being taken off ao3. neither do the trans and nonbinary people I work with. neither do the parents of trans and nonbinary people I work with. it has literally zero impact on anybody’s lives here and has made absolutely nothing better
so what I am asking is that instead of posting on tumblr or ao3 or tiktok about the morality of being in the marauders fandom you instead share information about lgbtq issues in the uk right now and the voices of people who live here and are going through it. make people hear us. make people understand
being trans or nonbinary in the uk right now feels suffocating. it feels like a constant battle to not have your identity snuffed out. it feels like shouting into a void and being faced with this terrifying, uncaring silence. or worse. i am genuinely begging all of you to actually engage with that reality and stop being one more person talking over us
The problem is clearly there don’t fund her don’t do that but don’t speak over the people that desperately and urgently need to be heard. Their voices are being snuffed out by the government and in part by us. Please share resources and informational posts if you can and are safe to 🩵