Category: childhood

My son went out for Halloween as Harry Potter before there were movies or store-bought costumes, so we worked out what his costume ought to be from the books. Can you imagine: he had to explain who he was supposed to be at a lot of the doors he trick-or-treated. He loved the fact Harry Potter wore glasses like he did.

I’ve been organizing my photos and it bothers me how important Harry Potter was in my son’s childhood.

The first I heard of the book series was that some parents wanted the books banned from the school library. Nothing could have inspired me to run out and buy the first one any faster than that. It was clear that one way or another, Harry Potter was going to be an important part of the culture of my son’s generation, so had the book turned out to be satanic junk, when I read it to him, we could have talked about it. And if it was half as good as advertised, we wouldn’t have wanted to miss any of it.

It was good, and the themes were powerful. It was interesting that the books matured with their readers. And my son grew up, learning some good lessons therein, and by the time the final book came out, I had to pre-order two copies because I didn’t want to wait the day it would take him to devour the thing before I could read it.

And of course, my son grew up and moved on. But as great as the Harry Potter experience was, the whole thing has been soiled by Ms Rowling’’ virulent anti-trans advocacy. I might say it was on par with Frank L. Baum’s racism, but at the time Baum made his splash, he wasn’t out of step with his times.

So much in the Harry Potter books seemed to support inclusion, this seemed to be out in left field.

We ought to know better. Jo Rowling ought to know better. The excuse for this “activism” is supposedly meant as “protection” for women. (Funny, that was/is often the excuse for racism.)

Attacking anyone for being different is never self protection. It certainly doesn’t protect *any* women. Such anti-trans nonsense has actually caused a lot of problems for a cis women who have been hassled and attacked because misogynists decided they weren’t real women either. People who buy into this mindset are justifying judging all women based on what they look like.

Women who you don’t look womanly enough might be banned from using the appropriate toilet. Worse, people, women, real women, not the mythological boogymen pretending to be women so they can more easily attack women that Ms Rowling is afraid of. Real women come in many shapes and sizes. Biology has long outstripped the binary worldview Ms Rowling cherishes.

One of the reasons I became a writer was to help make sense of the world. To help me understand other people’s points of view. But what I’ve never understood what kind of privileged arrogance makes anyone believe themselves entitled to tell other people who or what they should be.

In her persistent crusade to erase the identities of trans people, what Ms Rowling is doing with the outsized platform and insane amount of privilege she wields as Harry Potter’s creator, she is effectively doing the same thing her Lord Voldemort did in attacking “mud bloods.”

So while we still have the books in my house, and the first few movies, but they’ve not been re-read or watched again. There are so many good books and movies that haven’t been tainted by hate speech. Why bother? We certainly haven’t (and won’t) been passing them along to any children.

It is lovely that so many of the actors and others involved with the Harry Potter phenomenon have stood up against Ms Rowling’s unfeeling crusade.

https://variety.com/2020/film/news/emma-watson-daniel-radcliffe-sarah-paulson-condemn-jk-rowling-anti-trans-tweets-1234630870/

If I were to write a character who was a Rowling-like children’s author who engaged in anti-trans activism, I could imagine a number of reasons, all bad or sad, as to why such a wildly successful author character might persist in their hate based crusade against a group of innocent people. But that would be fiction.

In reality, I don’t know why, and truth be told, I don’t actually care. People often lie to themselves to justify their fear based hate. I am probably more offended by Mr Rowling when they claim to “love trans people” with one side of their mouth, then proceed to try to erase them with the other.

What Ms Rowling is doing here is hurting trans people. Ans well as their friends, families and communities.

There is no possible justification.