Why J. K. Rowling is Not Our Ally

If any of you reading are fans of the Harry Potter series, supporters of the LGBT+ community, or just followers of book-related news generally, you are most likely aware that there has been something of a controversy surrounding HP author J. K Rowling in the last month or so. Essentially, Rowling has recently taken to Twitter to air her views on trans rights, which have been criticised by many as transphobia masquerading as feminism. As an LGBT+ person who has long been a fan of Rowling and has previously written about the importance of the Harry Potter books in my life, I wanted to write a post explaining my views on the situation.

First of all, I would like to stress that while it has only been recently that Rowling's anti-trans Twitter tirades have hit mainstream news, people in the LGBT+ community have long suspected her of holding transphobic views. As far back as March 2018, Rowling was liking tweets that referred to trans women as "men in dresses" - an action which her representatives blamed on a "middle-aged moment" at the time. Many of us had been keeping a sceptical eye on Rowling's social media activity since then, and we watched as she slowly began to move from liking transphobic tweets, to retweeting them, to finally writing her own.

This eventually culminated in Rowling publishing a post on her website, explaining her "reasons for speaking out on sex and gender issues". I'm not going to link to the post here, but it's easy enough to find if you want to read it for yourself. The purpose of the post, I imagine, was three-fold: to justify Rowling's recent statements regarding trans issues, to elaborate on her "gender critical" views, and to condemn critics who correctly identified her views as those of a TERF (Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist). It also showed many of us why Rowling has historically stuck to fiction writing, although I doubt that was one of her goals in writing the essay.

I am not going to explain, in detail, why the things Rowling said are transphobic and harmful. This is not only because many other people, including many trans activists, have broken this down far better than I could, but also because her views are hardly unique. The ideas that trans women are a danger to cis women's safety, that acknowledging the difference between sex and gender will diminish the importance of reproductive rights, and even that supporting transition is in some way supporting a new form of conversion therapy - these are nothing new. Yet the fact that these views are being espoused by someone as influential as Rowling is worrying. Still, as I said, I am not going to get into much detail about that here. I am linking to other informative articles throughout this post, and I will leave a number of links for further reading at the end of it.

All of that said, there is one aspect of Rowling's vitriol which I would like to address, and that is the way she has been referring to queer women. When Rowling mentions cis queer women, she leaves the "cis" unspoken, despite the fact that trans people are more likely to identify as non-heterosexual than those who are cisgender. Rowling's exclusion of this is crucial, as she has recently taken to using cis queer women as human shields in her one-person war against trans people. The first example of this naturally took place on Twitter, on 7th June, when Rowling wrote a post claiming that "If sex isn't real, there's no same-sex attraction", which she soon followed by sharing an article by a lesbian woman who claimed that the LGBT+ community's support of trans people was leading to lesbians being "shouted down" and ignored.

Now, I'd like to quickly point out two things. First, I don't know of a single trans activist who claims that "sex isn't real". All I have ever seen trans activists advocate for which Rowling could possibly be confusing for this is the idea that we should update our perceptions of sex and gender so that they are in line with the most current scientific understanding: that sex is not binary and it is not the same as gender. Secondly, while there are small numbers of queer women who are indeed TERFs (though they apparently don't like to be labelled as such) and don't support trans people, I believe that the majority of us understand that trans people have historically been and continue to be integral to our community. So why, if she has studied trans literature to the extent that she claims, would Rowling choose to focus on a fringe branch of the community despite it not being reflective of the broader group?

The reason, to put it idiomatically, is because Rowling wants to have her cake and eat it too. She wants to be able to continue claiming she is an LGBT+ ally while still promoting her transphobic agenda, and the way she has decided she can do this is by presenting the conflict as lesbians vs trans people, with her on the side of the former. This is terribly convenient for Rowling, who can then deflect any criticisms from the LGBT+ community with quotes of one of the few queers who agrees with her or tweets referencing one of her "best mates" who is a "self-described butch lesbian". The shallowness of it all is almost comical. "I'm not homophobic," she might as well have said, "I have a gay friend."

For anyone who doubts that Rowling's supposed LGBT+ (minus the T) support is anything but self-serving, I would like to ask this: would a true ally have written an entire seven-book series without including a single openly-LGBT+ character? Would they have sloppily claimed, post-publication, that one character had actually been gay? Would they have then later, when given the opportunity to make this queerness explicit in film adaptations featuring said character, have chosen to reference it only in vague allusions that would easily be ignored or censored by homophobes who preferred to pretend they hadn't seen it? If Rowling is such a supporter of lesbians, where were the lesbians in Harry Potter? I could be wrong, but I don't recall a single one.

But perhaps, you might argue, she can be an ally without necessarily putting representation in her work. To which I would say, we do not owe Rowling our support as an ally. She does not deserve it simply for claiming she has a gay best friend or once sharing a shallow, rainbow-tinged reference to Harry Potter on social media. If she truly cared about us, she would have put us in her books. She would have donated to charities which supported us. She would have promoted books by other LGBT+ authors. Has she ever done any of these? Furthermore, if she has, has it ever been on anything close to the scale at which she has voiced such disrespect for trans people? The answer is no, because Rowling doesn't care about LGBT+ voices unless they are speaking up in support of her.

I have hesitated to write this post for a while, feeling that adding my voice to those who are speaking out against Rowling was unnecessary at best or speaking over trans people at worst. It was one comment, among many which angered me, that infuriated me to the point of wanting to finally write this. It was Rowling's assertion, which she has in fact made a number of times now (as many other TERFs have done before her), that transitioning is akin to conversion therapy. Her idea seems to be that young queer people are being forced to transition rather than being allowed to accept their queer identity. This idea is absolutely ludicrous. If trans people, as we have established, face transphobia even within the LGBT+ community, then how do you expect us to believe that trans people are now magically more accepted than queer people? I have never in my life met a person who accepted transness but not same-sex attraction; far more often I have met people who supposedly support the LGBT+ community, but who don't accept the T part of the acronym. For Rowling to then make this absurd claim is not only silly, it's disgusting. It is repulsive to me that she would take an experience which has caused so much harm to so many young queer people (and, yes, trans people too!), which she as a cishet woman knows nothing about, and use it to support her own hateful position. A true ally would never do something like that, and the fact that Rowling would shows to me that she never truly supported us at all.

Let me make this very clear. Rowling does not represent the views of queer women. She is not our ally, and she certainly does not have the right to be using us to deflect from criticism of her transphobic agenda. Our trans siblings have more in common with us than a self-serving, cishet faux-ally like Rowling ever will. I am disgusted at Rowling's attempts to co-opt queer women's struggles. What I see in these attempts is that Rowling will go along with a tide of LGBT-phobia as long as she can position it as feminism. I am not oblivious to how much of the anti-trans discourse mirrors old-fashioned homophobia - does Rowling think we don't remember hearing that queer women were threats to straight women, that we shouldn't use the same bathrooms because of our inherent perversity, that we were harmful to the feminist movement? I've heard it all before, and changing your target from cis queer women to trans women has not deceived me. I know that if J. K. Rowling were a prominent feminist only a few decades earlier, she would have directed this same hate at the queer women she claims to support. I hope that every other cis queer woman sees her fake support for what it is: a flimsy attempt to keep herself from being seen as the LGBT-phobe she is.

So, what now? Where do those of us who have spent large parts of our lives loving the HP books (and even, as in my case, Rowling's post-HP writing) go from now? Personally, I will no longer be supporting J. K. Rowling. I have many happy memories connected with Harry Potter, but I know that these are not solely because of the books themselves. I mentioned in my previous post about HP that the books reminded me of home and of my family. I still have those things, and I don't need Harry Potter to maintain their importance to me. Privately, the characters and their stories will likely always hold some sentimental value for me of course, but I will no longer be promoting the books to new readers, buying Harry Potter merchandise, or reading any of Rowling's new books. Instead, I will be trying to support writers of fantasy and children's fiction who don't have Rowling's influence, especially those from marginalised groups, such as trans authors. I will try to lend my support to those authors who deserve it, who will use their influence for good instead of causing harm. Harry Potter has indeed been important to me, but supporting my friends in the LGBT+ community is more important than that. I hope that those of you reading feel the same.

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As I mentioned earlier in the post, I think that the people we need to be listening to most at the moment are those most affected by the situation: trans people. To that end, here are some links to content by trans creators on this subject which I have found informative. I would encourage you to explore these and seek out more perspectives by trans people wherever you can.

• Why What JK Rowling Said is Transphobic
• Addressing The Claims In JK Rowling’s Justification For Transphobia
• Is J.K. Rowling Transphobic? A Trans Woman Investigates
• J.K. Rowling’s transphobia is a product of British culture
• Responding to JK Rowlings Essay | Is It Anti-Trans?
• Where J.K. Rowling’s Transphobia Comes From
• So... Let's Talk About JK Rowling's Tweet | Kat Blaque
• J.K. Rowling wrote a controversial statement about transgender people in response to being called a 'TERF.' Here's what that means.
• JK Rowling is Transphobic... So What? | Kat Blaque

A Book That Reminds Me of Home // 30-Day Book Challenge - Day 10

Today is the tenth day of the 30-day book challenge, in which I will be writing about a different book or book series every day for 30 days, with each book chosen according to the daily prompt. Today's prompt is: "a book that reminds you of home".

I feel that I've shot myself in the foot a bit here in terms of blog post topics.

As you can see from the intro above, today's challenge is "a book that reminds you of home". In order to choose a book for this prompt, I decided to reflect a little on what "home" means to me. After a bit of thought, I decided that home for me means where my family is. Unfortunately, I've already talked about my family, in my blog post about My Family and Other Animals. Clearly, I did not think this through.

I say all that to say, if this post seems slightly repetitive or similar to Day 8 of this blog challenge, please forgive me. It's been a long week.

Now, without any more excuses, here is my choice for today's challenge: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone.

The Harry Potter books have been a significant part of my family's life since the first book came out, when it was initially only my mum and my brother who read the books. As the years went by, most of us began to get hooked on the series as well. At the same time, we all kept up with the release of the new films, religiously going to see each one at the cinema when it came out. Several of us even bought copies of The Cursed Child simultaneously when that (awful) script was published. For many years, it was possibly second only to Star Trek in terms of the media which we were most unanimously fans of.

In part because of its association with my family and my childhood, the Harry Potter books and films have long been a source of comfort and nostalgia for me. This isn't solely owed to my family, however. Part of the reason the HP world is so reassuringly familiar is due to the stories itself, which I know so well by now that coming back to these stories is, in some ways, like returning to a family home. I know the place, the people, the history of what has happened here, and I supposedly know what to expect when I revisit it. Supposedly.

There is a saying, that you can't go home again. It's like that quote about how no man steps in the same river twice, as by the time he takes another step both he and the river are changed. Home is much the same. As fondly as we might remember it from our childhood, when we return to it older and wiser, it may be difficult to see in the same light. I find that this has very much happened to me with the Harry Potter series, and it is primarily due to one person: J. K. Rowling herself.

To be completely frank, I was initially hesitant about writing this post. There has been a lot of controversy surrounding Rowling lately, to the point that many people (myself included) became wary of giving any more support - financial or otherwise - to the Harry Potter franchise.

If you are unaware of what's been going on with J. K. Rowling, basically it's this: she's a transphobe. If you want more detail than that, Aja Romano and Katlyn Burns have both written excellent articles on the subject, explaining what happened and why people are angry. Romano's article particularly focuses on the timeline of Rowling's self-embarrassment and the response of HP fans to it, while Burns' piece puts Rowling's transphobia in the broader context of rising TERF (trans-exclusionary radical feminist) ideology in the UK. I would recommend reading both if you have the time.

While this recent event was definitely the most egregious of Rowling's gaffes, it was by no means the first. There has been suspicion building over her possibly being transphobic for a while now, as the articles mentioned above explain. On top of that, people have been critical of Rowling for a number of other reasons, from her endless retconning of the source material (in case you haven't kept up, Dumbledore is gay and also wizards and witches used to soil themselves in public) to racism that apparently cropped up in the original books, Pottermore, and the new films. For the HP fandom, Rowling has become increasingly like an out-of-touch old relative who either doesn't know or doesn't care how offensive they keep being. In Rowling's case, I imagine it's a bit of both.

Now, I don't have the time nor the inclination to get into a debate over "separating the art from the artist" and whether or not we can continue to love Harry Potter while avoiding supporting a harmfully transphobic celebrity. I simply felt that I couldn't write this post without addressing the "Rowling issue". Yet in some ways, including this in a post about a book that reminds me of home makes perfect sense. Like I said earlier, returning to media that we loved as children isn't always easy. We see things with new eyes, and what we see isn't always as pure as we remembered. This is something that we all have to deal with in returning to those things we remember fondly, be they books, homes, or even people. Whether or not those things can continue to hold the same place in our heart afterwards is something only we can decide.

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I would like to end this post by sharing a video on J. K. Rowling by one of my favourite YouTubers. Even if you're not sure how to approach the Harry Potter books in light of this controversy, one thing we can always do is support trans creators, like the incredibly talented Kat Blaque.