Harry Potter and The End of The Trans World

Is there a question whether transgender people exist? Most would answer “no, what a ridiculous question” as they obviously exist, even if they constitute an extremely minute percentage of the population. But to some, their existence is dependent on magic, because they rely on Harry Potter, and by inexplicable extension, its author, J.K. Rowling, for their being.

In the magical world of Harry Potter, the justice-minded and rebellious adolescent characters drink something called “Polyjuice Potion” to temporarily take on the general appearance of other people, even those of entirely different anatomies and gender expressions. As a teenager, I remember reading this and thinking, “Oh God, I wish it were that easy.”

At the time, I was very much in the closet as a transgender girl with scarcely any vocabulary — not even the now familiar medicalizing term “gender dysphoria” — to explain to the adults in my life how I was in pain, and the world J.K. Rowling created offered escape. It wasn’t the genre elements that appealed to me but the central message of courage in the face of evil and authenticity in the midst of urged conformity.

Was the Harry Potter series of books a child’s fantasy or a manifesto for transgender people? That words on a page were sufficiently malleable to apply to a reader’s world is wonderful, but it didn’t give readers ownership of the content or its author.

Woven throughout the narrative is an insistence on love and community and integrity and inclusion, which is why it has broken my heart in recent years to see Rowling’s inexplicable replacement of justice-minded imagination with a bigotry-driven rejection of science and reality.

You loved Rowling’s books, which somehow means Rowling owes single-minded dedication to you and your cause? And should Rowling say (or twit) banal things that, from your passionately self-absorbed perspective, don’t reflect her complete adoration of you, your world, your issues, she has failed you?

On Thursday, Rowling tweeted a defense of the British researcher Maya Forstater, whose employer declined to renew her contract in light of Forstater’s own tweets, which included statements such as “men cannot change into women.” Forstater took her former employer to court, where the judge sided with the employer, stating that Forstater’s online commentary “creates an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment … not worthy of respect in a democratic society.” In her tweet, Rowling effectively dismissed all of this, suggesting that Forstater was being fired for “stating that sex is real,” a common transphobic assertion that has been dismissed by medical experts and other scientists.

For most of us, including “medical experts and other scientists,” there is the biological side and the ideological side. Spare us your chromosomes, as there are biological anomalies that produce intersex beings, which prove that babies are delivered by storks.

The twit that’s caused a million woke heads to explode in outrage was directed toward the firing of a woman for not toeing the transgender line.

It’s “transphobic” because everything that isn’t transphilic is transphobic. Except nothing in there suggests you can’t be as trangender as you wanna be, but that “Maya” shouldn’t be fired for saying sex is binary. TERFs, amirite?

And it’s not just the WaPo that posts this hate letter to Rowling, because this twit, this fury, conclusively proves the society is literally Hitler. The New York Times is on it as well.

For the past decade, I’ve been an active player in the Harry Potter fan community, serving as the spokesperson for an independent nonprofit inspired by the boy wizard, sitting on the brain trust for a prominent Harry Potter fan conference and making videos about the impact the series has had on my life. I’ve seen the mind-blowing creativity of fans — from wizard rock music to cosplay to fan fiction that will make you weep — as well as their unparalleled capacity for positive change.

If sitting on the cosplay “brain trust” doesn’t entitle her to tell Rowling what she’s allowed to think or say, what does?

It was this community of loving, passionate people who accepted me with open arms when I came out as transgender at the age of 25. While I was nervous about coming out to some relatives and acquaintances, I never doubted that the Harry Potter fan community would accept me for who I was. After all, we all adhered to the values we learned from the books about being yourself, loving those who are different from you and sticking up for the underdog.

It’s wonderful that the “Harry Potter fan community” accepted you. It’s possible that the masked wrestling community would as well, but this was the community you chose. That’s nice.

I wonder now if I’ll be able to separate the author from the text, if and when I decide to read the books again — a decision I’ve yet to come to a conclusion on. It’s certainly not the first time I’ve had to consider this: It was disappointing to see the appropriation of Navajo culture in Ms. Rowling’s digital story collection, “History of Magic in North America” and the original books have been rightly criticized for promoting fatphobia, racial stereotyping and more.

Will J.K. Rowling lie awake in her bed at night fretting over whether Jackson Bird will be able to separate the author from the text? She failed your purity test? So what? Harry Potter isn’t the Bible, even if you want to believe in the Apostle Hagrid. It’s just a children’s book series that you, in your narcissistic delusion, have adopted as some guiding force.

Transgender people exist. So do men and women, and so do men and women of varying degrees of masculinity and femininity. You be you. They’ll be them. And, as Jesus of Hogwarts said, “live your best life in peace and security.” But everyone, not just transgender people. If you want to be accepted, then accept others as well, and don’t hate J.K. Rowling or anyone else because you’re not the center of their universe.

28 thoughts on “Harry Potter and The End of The Trans World

  1. Dan

    > bigotry-driven rejection of science and reality.

    Would this be the science that says XX chromosomes are female and XY are male? Or the reality that says that boys have a penis, and girls have a vagina? Those who believe that sex and gender are identical, binary*, and determined at conception are squarely on the side of “science and reality.”

    * Yes, there’s a tiny minority of people with ambiguous genitalia and/or ambiguous chromosomes. But though the trans activists love to point to them, they’re in a completely different situation.

    1. Stephanie

      You only mentioned chromosomes and genitals, with respect to “science and reality”. You omitted the brain. Here’s science and reality:
      [Ed. Note: Link deleted per rules.]

    2. B. McLeod

      Not real science and reality, but their politically enforced, bow-to-the-hat-on-the-pole “science and reality.”

      1. Stephanie

        “Male” and “Female” brains look different. The brains of transgenders with male genitalia look like that of females and visa versa. You can Google this and learn. Try reading a study from the Cleveland Clinic.

        1. Dan T.

          People get fired for saying there’s any difference in how male and female brains think, though… look up James Damore.

        2. Julia

          So, A -> B means B -> A, green apples are cucumbers because both are green, and people should be able to grow new genitalia out of their brains.

          I think, I’m convinced that some people got genitalia instead of a brain.

          1. SHG Post author

            Can’t we just let everybody be whatever they want to be? While there are questions about how to address the issues raised, that doesn’t mean transgender people don’t exist or can’t be allowed to enjoy life like everyone else.

            1. losingtrader

              Are you plaigarising Rodney King now? This makes me ashamed to be the benefactor of the SHG Insult Library.

  2. Hunting Guy

    Per Larry Correia, Rowling is an A* list author so I doubt that she gives a flip what some random fan thinks.

    * A List – High upon Mount Olympus They Gaze Down Upon the Pathetic Mortals = All the $

    Authors who are worth more than the GDP of some countries.
    Authors who build their houses out of gold bars.
    Characters from their books get their own theme parks.
    The lady who wrote Twilight.

    1. SHG Post author

      Gonna speculate a bit here, but maybe Rowling would prefer not to be embroiled in this controversy, even if she can afford to survive it, because who needs this shit?

  3. Bruce Coulson

    Far too many people cannot separate a creator from their works. It is possible to love a creative work while despising the author (or any other creator, for that matter). If you can’t, then maybe you should stick to non-fiction… or skip any creative works, just to be sure!

  4. Dan T.

    The cognitive dissonance experienced by some of the more avid, and woke, fans is immense. Future historians will be able to study this as a case study in people being able to make 180 degree turns in their opinions of a person instantaneously as a result of one infraction of political standards. The episode of the Pottercast podcast that came out a day after Rowling’s tweet will be a prime source for such studies. It featured as a guest the same person who wrote the NY Times column referred to above, and there was unanimity of opinion between host and guest on all relevant issues, including that Rowling has shown herself to be a vile “TERF”.

    This is extremely notable, given that the podcast in question has been absolutely devoted to Harry Potter and its author for its 15 year history, has featured Rowling as a guest and fangirled effusively over her, and until last week had an opening intro recording narrated by Ms. Rowling herself. The host of the podcast (one of several hosts actually, but the only one present in this episode) is the author of a book on the Potter phenomenon that has a foreword by Rowling, and has interviewed the author on multiple occasions, frequently remarking afterward about how great a person Rowling has shown herself to be along with being a brilliant author. (I’ve saved as complete a set as I could scrounge of the Pottercast MP3s in case they get memory holed.)

    If somebody can go overnight from this state of admiration to condemnation based on one dissenting opinion, that’s a sign that something very odd is going on in our culture.

    Incidentally, a famous quote from the Potter books and movies, Dumbledore’s statement that it is brave to stand up to one’s enemies, but braver to stand up to one’s friends (actually, the book says “just as brave”, but apparently the movie changed it to “braver””) has been cited a few times by people on both sides of the conflict; it iironically can be said to apply both to Rowling being unafraid to express an opinion she knows will offend a large part of her fan base, and to the long-time devoted fans being unafraid to express opposition to their former idol.

        1. SHG Post author

          Not Ken.

          I actually got a preview of “Make No Law” as Ken was putting it together before it went live. It was good stuff. But I still hate podcasts and don’t listen to any of them, Ken’s included, even though I’m sure they’re outside my “sweeping generalization.” By the way, you’re fee to like whatever you like, my “sweeping generalizations” notwithstanding.

  5. Noxx

    Authors, maybe not always great people, I’m sure you can come up with a list off the top of your head so I won’t bother with examples.

    I don’t think a whole lot of Rowlings fantasy world, but she certainly set herself up for the Tranish Inquisition by continually retconning her work to ingratiate herself to the mob that’s dragging her today. The attention of these loons is a dangerous thing to court, as they gleefully cast each other on the fire left and right. At least she can afford their scorn, it’s mind numbing to think of the number of people who can’t that the mob gets fired / canceled via the Twitters. Strange times.

  6. KP

    “if and when I decide to read the books again” pfft! Nobody cares!

    … but will you spend the dollars to buy the next one Rowlings writes? THAT is the important part of life!

  7. B. McLeod

    I found Rowling’s comment to be completely unremarkable. The notion that someone should not be cast out of work for continuing to believe what people have commonly believed for thousands of years strikes me as quite a common sense observation. What is remarkable (and extreme) is that anyone would seek to make an “outrage” of it. The very nonsensical extremism of these imbeciles is why they are going to fail. It didn’t work for the so-called “religious right,” and it won’t work for [Ed. Note] activists. A pox on both their houses!

  8. Jake

    Stan culture is toxic. This week it’s JK Rowling, last week it was JJ Abrams. Next week, who knows? George RR Martin is probably due for cancellation.

  9. Jake

    Happy Festivus! Thanks to the miracle of social media, everybody has a platform for the airing of grievances. Earlier, when blogging was the only game in town, it was only those smart enough to create a website and who could put in the energy and felt confident enough to spool up a couple of hundred words on a subject who would share their point of view. I’m afraid the future is nothing but low-effort shit posts unless we all stop paying attention.

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