Falling out of love with an old friend: How to be a Potter fan in 2020.

This is an opinion piece, views are my own. Although in this poorly referenced state, it is still better referenced than JKRs essay. This was also written in 2020, and I can safely say that 2021 me disagrees with a lot of this now.


I have been a massive consumer of all things Harry Potter since my early teens (I’m now in my mid-twenties). From pretty early on, it become more than just about the books and films and I found fanfiction.net and tumblr to experience the potterverse in more depth. I’ve explored the world more and more as an adult and have had peaks and troughs of obsession with it but the universe has always been a part of the world in my head and my social life.


I had been saying for a while that JKR no longer had control of this universe. I’d been saying it because I was on her side, that I thought she couldn’t possibly be problematic- that Warner Bros. were controlling her words on sex abuse scandals and the lack of lgbt representation or that the queerbaiting in Cursed Child couldn’t be helped.

My opinions have changed. She is an unlearning, problematic white TERF.


Let me just prefix this with the fact that this article is not for people who haven’t decided whether JKR is problematic yet. I’m talking to the people who are trying to find their place in this world now. If you’re on the fence, here, here and here are some good starting points on why she’s such a problem now.

This isn’t new.


Her recent tweets have made me revisit the original stories with this new eye and I’ve noticed problematic themes at all levels. I am going to be forgiving of myself for not noticing these when I first read the stories aged 10. It isn’t as forgivable that we’ve seen who she’s been following and liking and ignored it. We’re adults, and those of us who have only reacted to this recently are reacting too late. There’s nothing we can do about this other than make up for lost time.


This time has shown me to be critical even if I love something and to be unrelenting in my position in the fight for people in situations of injustice, no matter the view of my fandom. I don’t think the growth that we’ve been through in such a short time can be unravelled from the lockdown or BLM movements and in time I’m sure we’ll be thankful for the time and fire we had in us.


Something that I think we need to reconsider is this: We always say that we’ve learnt to be good adults because we were brought up on love and acceptance in these books as children. But were we?

Harry Potter is centrist liberalism at its best.


What was fed to us was a “(trying to appear) progressive” TERF-mentality of realising the trans people exist but not wanting them in your bathroom kind of nonsense. I mean this about all kinds of issues; race, gender, class... This can be seen in a number of cases: The quite frankly offensive reveal of Dumbledore’s queerness, when she made it clear if somebody was black, so this type of “other” probably should’ve come up? She also wrote a whole chapter written by Rita Skeeter on him when she could’ve used any number of homophobic slurs to even give his queerness a whisper. But nope.


There’s also the anti-semitism of the goblins (Worth mentioning that she didn’t create this problem, but she certainly didn’t handle it with any transparency. This is not my lane but info here).


Not to mention the massive lack of Black and Asian characters at Hogwarts. We’re all very aware of the Cho Chang situation (a *mess*), the explosive-loving Irish guy, the reduction of descriptions of black characters to their hair or simply the word “black” (re-visit descriptions of Kingsley, it’s remarkably bigoted). I’ve written about Black Hermione before, and I stand by little 2016 me. But no matter how much I saw her as me as a kid, JKR didn’t write Hermione as Black. We would know about it. (Also, on race, I would’ve loved to see race and blood purity interact in the cannon. It’s something I’m exploring now in fic and I’m really flailing with it.)


I would finally like to discuss the use of house elves as actual slaves. I actually think this illustrates JK’s liberalism perfectly. The idea of house elves could be a wonderful, progressive exploration of the issues surrounding slavery to an audience of children and I’m still a bit mad at the missed opportunity. Harry is obviously distressed by the treatment of Dobby, a house elf that he gets to know, and deals with freeing him. However he doesn’t question the treatment of any other elves (wtf Harry? This is a bit like saying “I have a black friend”). When we reach book 5 and Hermione takes an interest in freeing the elves, she is shut down not only by her friends (she has to give up in order to keep Harry and Ron’s respect) but by the elves themselves. We were literally taught that enslaved beings want to be enslaved and not to bother helping them because they are happy as they don’t know any better and your friends will dislike you for trying. (Hermione being a super white feminist has been handled beautifully by others, so I would recommend looking into Hermione and S.P.E.W).


This all shows me that Harry Potter taught us to be accepting, but not to the point that would put us at a disadvantage or look outside our little worlds or properly consider marginalised folks worldviews.


In the cultural and historical context of these books, published from 1997 to 2007, there are some aspects of the books that are forgivable. But we no longer live in that context, nor did we when the final few books or Cursed Child/FB were published. Considering that by this time, Rowling would have been well-travelled, she could and should have been better.


Anyway my point of all this is to point out that this is not new and that we’re being very reactionary by only really discussing this now. Even though my friends and I have been screaming queer-baiting about CC for years and trying to make our little fandom world better, we can’t ignore the fact that this is too late and we must now spring into action.

Does all this mean that Harry Potter was bad for us?


Every child goes through developmental phases. One of these is moving from an egocentric worldview to understanding that things exists outside your world and then appreciating others perspectives- this is abstract thinking or Theory of Mind. There are a few theories of when this takes place, but the literature usually cites from around 6 months to 11 years. The level that the Harry Potter books ask us to look at the big wide world is wonderful for children. It must’ve done us a lot of good.


I think the refusal of JKR to improve the universe in the CC or FB universes is the problem. She is not exhibiting the abstract acceptance that is possible of her now-adult audience and couldn’t take the backlash at every bigoted move.


We aren’t good because of Harry Potter, I think we’re good because Harry Potter made us think as children and we didn’t stop learning and getting better. We outgrew it. You can even see this in our fanworks- so progressive and varied and creative.

Does that mean we should move away from Hogwarts for good?


The “read another book” crowds have been out in full force the past few weeks and I get it. We need to grow up. But I would argue that we have already in untangling the creator from the art. (And we do read other books, I promise).


I think that if you’re a Potter fan and look around at your friends, your partners, your clothes, your homes and see how entwined your life is with this universe, the mourning that we’re feeling shouldn’t be surprising. It probably shouldn’t be, but this universe is our culture and our relationships. And I use the word “universe” intentionally. Very few of our worlds are in any way linked to JKR as a person. She did lose control of her world years ago. There are swaths of examples of art being separated from the artist, but we cannot do this blindly as we have been for years.


I’ve really been searching for a way to navigate this in my own head. Just turning a blind eye and continuing as we are, however far removed we’ve become from JKR, would make us complicit and therefore transphobic. Is there any way for us to continue loving this world now?


We know that the original Hogwarts isn’t a safe place for us LGBT folk but the love, support and comfort I have felt from fandom for those things about me and the community that we’ve created doesn’t have anything to do with JKRs bigotry. The world that we’ve created around her universe is a safe place.

So what now?


I do not think that the attempts to rollback trans rights recently can be separated from the rise of TERF rhetoric from powerful people. Art controls culture therefore we must be responsible with our consumption of art. That being said, there are some things I have think will be necessary going forward:


1. I will listen to trans people on the Potterverse.


2. I will not give JKR any kind of platform.


3. I will not give her any money (intentionally).


We do not have to be big consumers anymore. We’ve all already got the books and the films. There will always be second hand merch hanging around to buy. It isn’t something we can ever completely buy out of- she is getting royalties from parts of the world we can’t even fathom but we have to be aware of what we are buying into and avoid it where possible.


4. I will write, read and amplify fanfiction and fanart that makes Hogwarts safe. I will write trans and gender non-conforming folk into my fics.


5. I will continue to unpack her universe as an adult who can think critically and trash the issues in there as publicly as my platform allows.


6. I will call out my friends when they’re not doing good enough and expect the same in return.


The question of how to proceed comes with how much of this discourse is acceptable to the people who are suffering from her rhetoric the most? And that is a question that we must answer personally. I think we need to be really reflective about it, and have constant conversations which amplify marginalised voices. That is how we will keep growing, and the only way we can keep our Hogwarts safe.

Some fantastic resources:


Mermaids: https://mermaidsuk.org.uk/


The Trevor Project: https://www.thetrevorproject.org/


Gendered Intelligence: http://genderedintelligence.co.uk/


Beautiful dissection of her essay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=paVH1PdOfwc&t=46s


Older video on the tweets: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USoIAWVkCvk&t


General discussion on separating the art from the artist: https://www.vox.com/culture/2018/10/11/17933686/me-too-separating-artist-art-johnny-depp-woody-allen-michael-jackson-louis-ck


On JKR and seperating the art from the artist: https://www.forbes.com/sites/danidiplacido/2019/12/19/jk-rowling-and-the-separation-of-the-art-from-the-artist/#4bfd8e5fe0e0


On JKR and separating the art from the artist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdtdbnW2IDw