On the sensitive topic of being a Harry Potter fan while acknowledging JKR's transphobia

Hello everyone,

I saw recently another post on Lemmy which was fairly negative towards fans of the HP universe (some people announcing that they would block other people because those are HP fans)

I guess we can all agree by now that JKR's transphobia is bigotry and should be condemned.

However, that still does not say what do to with that universe that we love.

I found an interesting article on that topic: https://www.popsugar.co.uk/entertainment/harry-potter-fans-jk-rowling-transphobia-essay-49214964

I guess the most important part is

Still, there may be a way to enjoy Harry Potter as a trans person or ally. Over the years, many fans have found creative ways to engage with the series's magic while also acknowledging its creator's bigotry. In her paper "Transformative Readings: Harry Potter Fan Fiction, Trans/Queer Reader Response, and J. K. Rowling," Jennifer Duggan, an associate professor of English at the University of South-Eastern Norway — says that it's possible to interpret the text of Harry Potter itself in ways that would certainly horrify its writer. "My central thesis—one which has also been argued by other academics like Thomas Pugh and David Wallace — is that the Harry Potter novels are deeply queer," she tells POPSUGAR. "I mean this in both senses of the term: they champion nonnormativity through the contrast of the 'perfectly normal' Dursleys and Harry, and they are, at their heart, a story about a boy with an 'abnormality' (as the Dursleys call his magic) who comes out of his cupboard under the stairs and discovers and finds and affinity for a hidden, colourful, queer world. I take this argument further to argue that the novels are easily read through a trans lens, since there is a focus in many of the books on shapeshifting, including several cross-gendered transformations."

Fandom, she adds, can provide spaces where Harry Potter fans can explore the series's queer undercurrents while celebrating their own sexualities. "From what I have observed, I have concluded that for the most part, the Harry Potter fandom continues to offer queer and trans fans a positive space," she tells POPSUGAR. "The two main trends I have seen in fan works are an 'answer hate with love' reaction, in which fans focus on trans positivity, and so-called 'spitefic,' which are works that are framed as revenge on Rowling for the hurt she has caused. These works are usually trans-positive, too. That said, I fully understand why some fans feel they can no longer engage with the texts in any way."

Link to the research paper: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10583-021-09446-9

Seems an interesting way for me to re-appropriate the universe, what do you think?

58 comments

I knew Edgar Allan Poe was pro-slavery before I read anything he ever wrote.
Arthur Conan Doyle fully supported the British empire.
Pretty much any comedy from the 20th century is going to have at least one homophobic joke.
Learn to pick the battles that matter. Rowling is going to be a billionaire if you read her books or not.
- There's a difference between being a bigot that grew up and lived surrounded by bigotry and little else and being an anti-Semitic TERF in 2024.
  
  As the article I linked shows, most of the fandom has an issue with JKR, which makes sense due to her bigotry.
  However, the fandom also still enjoys the work she created. If the argument is about money she makes out of her work and gives to hate speech groups, I know hardcore fans that stopped buying any merchandising or anything that could benefit her years ago.
  Now that I think about it, did watching the movies cast reunion shot by WB a few years ago benefited her? They purposefully left her out of it.
  
  So, you think someone is likely to become pro-slavery if they read 'Tell Tale Heart' or turn on their friends if they read 'The Maltese Falcon?'
- Learn to pick the battles that matter. Rowling is going to be a billionaire if you read her books or not.
  Might a decent takeaway here be instead to pick the battle of pushing to tax the rich such that one cannot become a billionaire bigot to begin with?
  
  vaguely gestures at the US south and midwest A lack of money doesn't prevent bigotry.
- Rowling is going to be a billionaire if you read her books or not.
  Ahem, just learn to hoist the sails.
  
  What does that even mean?
- Indeed. Tolkien's works shows some concepts of racism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tolkien_and_race). The list goes on forever.
  
  There was a TV version of Tarzan, set in Africa, on the air at the same time Star Trek TOS was on the air. iirc it was canceled due to poor ratings, not viewer outrage
  
  Questionable elements in Tolkien's work come nowhere near the vile pro-slavery content of Harry Potter, and when asked about race, Tolkien always had something good to say about the oppressed and something bad to say about the Nazis.

Okay, so here's my take:
It is very reasonable for people to stop buying things from the Harry Potter universe because of JKR's shitty views, which she is vocal about. She sucks. If you can't even read or watch her stuff without thinking about how shitty of a person she is, then by all means, stop reading or watching stuff. I wholeheartedly agree with your position, not that you need my personal approval for it.
THAT BEING SAID, shitting on other people for consuming it in any way is some guaranteed glass house stone throwing. Nestle uses slave labor (including child slaves), takes water from drought areas and sells it elsewhere, and generally commits evil across the whole world in ways that ruin or end lives. The chocolate market is so inundated with slave labor and unethical practices that even companies like Tony's Chocolonely who are specifically about ethically sourced chocolate can't 100% guarantee child slave labor isn't used. The meat and dairy industry torture animals their entire lives for the sake of efficiency. The atrocities committed around the world for the sake of the things we consume in the First World is unconscionable and there's little we can do short of living a completely self-sustaining life.
Now, I know what the immediate response is, that this is "whataboutism" or deflecting, but let me be clear. Child slaves, animal torture, environmental catastrophes are orders of magnitudes worse than a billionaire who talks shit about an already marginalized group. What she is doing sucks, and if you have a particular distaste for that, and that's the particular hill you want to die on, then by all means. But unless you are a vegan who grows their own food and buys exclusively locally produced goods, put the stone down and go back to your Potter-free glass house.
- Hello, thank you for this perspective!

Y'all are new to this. Us old farts have been navigating the racism of Lovecraft and the sheer bloody minded stupidity of Orson Scott Card for ages now :)
- Interesting, I wasn't aware of those issues!

Sometimes you have to separate the art from the artist.
- That's interesting, because I usually struggle to separate the part from the artist (e.g. Polanski receiving awards while being condemned), but in this case, I guess because it is a fictional universe that every reader can make their own, I find it easier.
  
  It might as help that most of us found Harry Potter when we were kids and nostalgia is a hell of a drug

To be honest, I don't really engage in this community because of the discomfort Harry Potter generally brings me now. I was honestly a bit relieved when it died as I knew when it was created it would eventually spell trouble. I want to preface this as I say all of this as a queer Jewish man.
I was a big fan of Harry Potter as a kid. It was the one of the big book series' I enjoyed and it connected me with my mother. I had difficulty picking up reading and Harry Potter was a pathway to solidifying my literacy. I understand why people enjoy it, and in many ways the memories I have of it with connecting to my mother is something I will never forget. But at the same time... there's a big difference between consuming public domain work made by awful people who no longer receive profit whilst consuming work by a woman who is actively engaging in political campaigns to make trans peoples lives worse with the profit she still receives.
I am not trans and I cannot speak from that perspective, but what I can speak on is that I don't really talk about Harry Potter amongst my friends who are as a sign of general respect. It's hard to really emphasize just how much pain JK Rowling has brought people. It's horrendous. There is obvious nuance here and I get that and whenever people talk about Harry Potter I try my hardest not to to pass judgement in spite of the fact I cannot help but think of all the awful shit that's happened. It is extremely difficult for people to break from the cultural hold that Harry Potter has held. It is one of the most iconic media franchises of the early 2000s for a reason.
When it comes to the antisemitism aspect of it, it brings me frustration as it is often an after thought in the discussion of her stuff. TERF shit and antisemitism tends to be best of friends for some reason. Most likely since TERFs are often embraced by fascists who are already antisemitic and they pick their talking points up, but I digress. Antisemitism is a big thing across most media in general and that did leak heavily into Harry Potter at first, but her antisemitism in her work is more jarring knowing that she is now openly associated with public antisemites as well.
I don't know. The whole thing just upsets me honestly. Seeing the conflict it creates is painful.
- Hello,
  Thank you for your comment, and sorry about the unease this community brings you.
  Are you comfortable having this community active on your instance? We can move it elsewhere if you prefer.
  
  Update as I know this comment is linked to from time to time: we discussed about this with Gabe on Matrix, he was okay to keep the community here. Proof of this: he appointed one of my alts as a moderator of the community, which he probably wouldn't have done if he wasn't approving our community being here.

Dr. Suess was cheating on his wife while she was suffering from a disease and she ended up committing suicide from it. HP Lovecraft was a flaming racist, yet I would guess that most fans of his work are themselves not flaming racists. It's ok to enjoy the creative work of otherwise not-great people, by reading their work you're not saying you agree with their personal beliefs (though people may question you if you're seen reading Mein Kampf out in public, which it's not a creative work, so maybe it's different for political works).

I grew up with HP as a kid and made friend’s I’ve kept to this day via fandom activities. The HP fandom has always been pretty queer and, at the time, making Dumbledore publicly gay was very meaningful to a lot of fans at a time where being gay was much more controversial than it is now. Governments were just starting to recognize gay marriage. I don’t think JKR developed her shitty transphobic views until long after the books were published. I’ve definitely cooled on my love for the the series because of JKR’s behavior, but I think it’s a big overstep to shun fans.
I think the stories themselves are a fine character-driven fantasy romp. Do harry and his 13 yearold friends solve slavery? No. But they’re good kids with good intentions and they manage to make some positive change during high school. All was well for them and theirs, not for the entire wizarding and muggle worlds.
It’s quite easy to avoid purchasing anything that will give JKR’s estate more money. Buy second hand and torrent the films.
- Thank you for your comment, sounds like a reasonable perspective

Harry Potter isn't a good book written by a bad person. It's a bad book. At Christmastime in Grimmauld Place they dress the severed slave heads up in little Santa hats and beards. Hermione makes fun of Umbridge by triggering her (probably rape) PTSD. The series ends on the line "all is well", but nobody has done anything to solve the problems of slavery, second class citizens, oppression, and fascist social attitudes that created Voldemort. Harry becomes a cop for a government that he watched fall to corruption and evil.
- The plot isn't the best, the list of issues is so long it's almost embarrassing, but the world is whimsical and comfortable, especially in the first few books. Characters description is well done, their behaviour is believable there is some moral ambiguity for some of them (Dumbledore and Snape, among others). There is a reason the series was so successful, and its popularity was never reached by similar series.
  The later books are quite disappointing, especially by not addressing the underlying issues of the magical society, as you said.
  
  In the early books you've still got Azkaban set up as the punishment for criminals, even for a crime as small as having an animal without a licence. Harry Potter immediately went to the grimdark without any sense of criticality to the atrocities in its world. At least Warhammer 40K is supposed to be a satire of fascism. I feel more comfortable reading the Horus Heresy than going back to Harry Potter.

It isn't PC, but I'm not aware of anything Rowling has said that could be taken as any kind of -phobic.
<shrug>
You're never going to agree 100% with any other human being, and that's as it should be. If you don't like her books, don't read them. If you do like them, do read them. It's simple common sense. There's nothing "sensitive" about it.

58 comments