#jkr discourse

[werewolf-cuddles]

Oh, cool, apparently JK Rowling is aphobic too.

Just add that one onto the pile I guess

[revengebarbie]

I'm going to say something that might ruffle a few feathers because I'm brave enough to do it. Everyone loves to scream "JKR is a TERF!!!!!111!!!!~!1!", but... hear me out.... what if she actually isn't, and her cause was badly misconstrued?

I don't believe she was saying “trans people don’t matter.” She was trying to ask, “Why is there no room for women to process how we’re impacted by these massive shifts in language, policy, and cultural norms?” And that’s a fair question. Even if people disagree with the conclusions, the question itself shouldn’t be radioactive.

JKR stepped into that minefield and, yeah, a lot of people felt hurt. And also—a lot of people felt seen. But somewhere along the way, it stopped being about what she said and became about what people decided it meant. Any attempt to clarify got flattened under slogans and assumptions. And the digital discourse around her is no longer about dialogue, it’s a purity litmus test. You either denounce her entirely or you’re cast as anti-trans. That’s not just intellectually dishonest—it’s a chokehold on honest engagement.

The deeper issue here? Society has a hard time holding two truths at once. That you can support trans rights and still question what it means to safeguard sex-based protections. That you can want bodily autonomy for everyone and still be deeply uncomfortable with fast-tracked medicalization of youth. That you can love inclusion and still feel unease when female identity is reframed as “a feeling” instead of a material reality shaped by oppression.

What gets erased in the noise is context: that women, especially older women, have spent decades fighting to name and own their experience. So when language gets restructured—when “woman” becomes controversial or sanitized into neutral clinical terms like "person who menstruates" or "chest feeder" or "birth giver"—it can feel like hard-won ground is being silently pulled out from under them.

And if we can’t even say that out loud without being dogpiled, something’s broken.

You don’t have to be a fan of everything Rowling’s said. You don’t have to endorse the way she’s framed every argument. But to reduce her to a cartoon villain or insist that any woman who asks “but what about us?” is automatically hateful? That’s not justice. That’s erasure by another name.

We have to be able to hold tension. To listen without always agreeing. To believe people can care about multiple groups at once. And if the culture can’t allow for that? Then maybe it’s not as progressive as it thinks it is.

The real crime wasn't hatred, but her refusal to stay silent. And whether folks agree or not, that deserves more honesty and less dogma.

People on the internet may be quick to flatten me into a villain for voicing a concern, completely ignoring the fact that my track record is one of empathy, curiosity, and allyship. I didn’t just jump on some late-stage “woke” bandwagon, I was already there when it was still risky and confusing and uncool to care. Yeah, the early 2000s. I lived the awkward years of learning how to show up, how to listen, how to be there for my queer friends before the world even handed me the language to do it perfectly when I was barely a teenager.

So when people act like I'm suddenly sus because I’ve grown into more complex thoughts, more layered questions, or because I don’t toe the party line 100% of the time, that’s not justice. That’s revisionism.

It’s not that I've turned my back on inclusion. It’s that my idea of inclusion includes women, includes nuance, includes being allowed to question without being exiled. I didn’t stop caring. I started caring more deeply, more holistically. And that’s what hurts, that I gave my heart early, and now you're being told it’s not good enough unless it conforms completely.

But the truth is? I was already doing the work before it became a social currency. And now that I'm asking harder questions, I'm being treated like you’re betraying the cause—when in reality, I'm just refusing to silence parts of myself in order to be accepted.

[breakfast-with-a-side-of-angst]

Honestly, though, JK Rowling told us what type of person she was from the very beginning by the way she treats Hufflepuffs. They’re background characters — never taken particularly seriously. They’re martyrs or unimportant. The main characters and the villains alike have no respect for them.

JK Rowling took the characters who value things like kindness, honesty, and loyalty, and she made them a joke. They’ll never measure up against the brave or clever or cunning. She created a culture where being kind or loyal, makes you a leftover.

She told us what her values were from the very beginning.

[evamme]

THE ULTIMATE IRONY.

[werewolf-cuddles]

I guess JK Rowling (who is most certainly not a Holocaust Denier 😉) never heard of the Streisand Effect.

She seems to think that by legally threatening someone to stop calling her a holocaust denier, it will make everyone else stop calling her a holocaust denier.

But naturally, all it does is make people call her a holocaust denier even more.

[werewolf-cuddles]

But how will people know that you're A Good Person if you don't *checks notes* set fire to your merch you bought years ago whose destruction would have zero tangible benefit for anyone?

Don't you know that enjoying a book that's been your favorite for decades in the privacy of your own home is *checks notes again, I saw the same posts* literally personally assisting in trans genocide?

Don't you know you're not allowed to enjoy stories written by shitty people*, even if you're very explicit that you don't support their views, or support them monetarily by buying anything from them?

*Well, it's just the one shitty person that's off limits. You're still allowed to enjoy Neil Gaiman's work. Or use Facebook. Actually pretty much anything else, you're good. It's just this one very specific case, where if you still enjoy the books that made reading fun again for millions of children, you've literally personally got blood on your specific hands. This makes perfect sense and definitely isn't indicative of tumblr's tendency towards reactionary yet meaningless virtue signaling.

(/end of sarcasm)

It's incredibly frustrating that this website's instinct the second anything bad happens for trans rights is to attack Harry Potter fans who publicly disavow and refuse to support the author. I get that fans are more bullyable than actual transphobes because we're all on the same website, but attacking them specifically is such useless self-aggrandizing bullshit.

People are allowed to be upset, but I wish they'd attack the actual causes instead of just whoever's closest and easiest to attack.

I understand the sentiment, especially given recent events, but yeah, a lot of this does feel rather performative.

The hyperbolic nature of a lot of these comments really doesn't help. In the comments of one post, I saw some people equating owning Harry Potter merch to collecting Nazi memorabilia, and at least one person comparing holding onto childhood copies of the books to "owning a cherished copy of Mein Kampf"

(Because yes, owning a children's book with problematic elements is absolutely equivalent to owning literal Nazi propaganda)

It's just exhausting, honestly, and yet I also feel guilty for feeling that way because I know that in the grand scheme of things, this is absolutely nothing compared to what so many trans people have been going through.

[ratatattouille]

Harry Potter is a global phenomenon. I don’t think US Americans fully understand how marginal the trans discourse is in the global HP fandom. Like majority of the HP fandom is pro-JKR. You somehow even managed to get religious people, you know, the people that burned her books initially, on her side. 😭 You can’t get this cancelled. Religious people failed and the new gender cult will fail, too.

Also, a grown man calling women getting sex-based protections “awful disgusting SHIT” screams “I have secret abuse allegations that will come up in a few years.” Only the ugliest celebrity men have made JKR their new Amber Heard lol. Like this is your biggest problem, Pedro? I bet it is.

[jchance4d4]

Yeah. I don't want to give money outright to either, and as @zeldahime said, will want to speak up against either being specifically platformed somewhere I can influence it, but the magnitude of impact is very different between the two.

That said, I've been having some thoughts about one of the big arguments over JKR. (and, for the record, I haven't cared much about Potter for years (and who the hell cares about Heron Thwack to begin with?), I've just been observing this discourse)

People seem to go round and round on the notions of "nonprofit, non-publicised fanwork just doesn't matter to her people" versus "They're openly tracking total engagement", and...I don't think it's a yes-or-no question. Does it figure in somehow? Probably. But, compared to merch and theme parks and mostly-mundanes listing their house on Facebook, it's...well, it's on the level of "fuck it, I'll go to Walmart" over $10 of groceries that you couldn't find elsewhere locally. Except less, because no actual money. Less, I suspect, than the arguing about it, at this point.

...and then, on the third hand, things take on significances whether we want them to or not. I completely understand people who see someone heavily engaged with her work, even in ways that don't move the needle much, and find it untrustworthy--it's become a symbol of all the noxious shit she represents whether we want it to or not.

People who freak out over harry potter are the most annoying people online. They are also the same people who make excuses for people like Neil Gaiman, might as well put a giant label on your account that reads "I am hypocritical clown that only cares about browbeating other fans and has no real morals".

--

One is a political danger to a country. One is a danger to their sex partners. Both of those things are bad, but it does not surprise me that people have different reactions.

[danadiadea]

If we assume that Severus and Lily both had does for a patronus, snily can only be platonic or sapphic.

[hprambles-blog]

I'm convinced most of y'all throwing the word twink around 24/7 are straight white girls that have prob never had sex but want to seem cool. I can tell by the way you fetishize being gay and focus so much on sex that you don't actually respect gay people.

1- Literally none of those claims are connected in any way, lol.

2- I'm not a girl, and definitely not straight.

3- LGBTQ+ people enjoy this kind of content, you're probably just homophobic.

4- If I picture a character described as elegant and slender as a twink, that's my headcanon, not something your homophobic ass gets to police.

5- You sound like a frustrated straight person who thinks they know more about our interests and preferences than actual gay people.

6- Tomarry and Drarry are both incredible ships.

7- Fuck JKR.

🍍

[joannerowling]

Genuine question here but I'm scared to ask on my actual blog because of the hate. Do you or your followers know why people consider JKR's goblins to be antisemitic but goblins in other media (like Dungeons and Dragons for example) never get the same scrutiny? I also don't remember hearing anything about JKR being antisemitic until after she started sharing her gender critical views. Her portrayal of goblins never seemed to be a problem before then, at least from what I saw.

It's just because it's JKR. There's not any actual antisemitism in HP's goblins. As a concept, similar creatures to goblins - little men who live underneath the earth, deal in gems/precious metals, with various degrees of evilness attached - exist in a vast number of cultures worldwide, across Asia and even Africa. (In fact, you'd be surprised with the amount of time humans from completely different cultures have invented the same type of supernatural creature without anything to show there was any cultural exhange between them, it's a relatively frequent aspect of cultural parallelism.) Goblins existed in British folklore before Jews migrated to the UK, even under different names.

The confusion may have arisen from the Knockers, a variant of Goblins which originated in Cornwall. You may recognise the name from King's book "the Tommyknockers". One interpretation of the myth (not the only one) is that they're the ghosts or spirits of long-dead Jewish miners, but even in this version, they're not particularly malevolent.

The Goblins in Harry Potter are closer to a parody of Swiss bankers. Switzerland famously held an ambiguous position during WW2: the country was neutral territory because bankers provided ways for the Nazis to hide the stolen riches of Jewish people, but at the same time, many Jewish people found refuge there and the Red Cross was born there as a neutral army nursing system. A more direct and obvious analogy for the Jews in HP would simply be the Muggle born, like Hermione, who are lied about (said to not be "real wizards" but magic thieves of sort in DH), stripped of their rights, "snatched", and murdered (or worse). Those are all loose parallels obviously.

[imjunebitch]

ik that people have stopped talking abt this as much but there's smth about the whole jk rowling shit that I wanted to discuss. I'm sure others have said it better, that's ok, I still wanna say it regardless.

basically, stop interacting with harry potter if you like trans people existing. i didn't fucking know what the marauders was until about a month ago... don't interact with it either! the issue is us giving a fuck about "problematic themes in harry potter." genuinely who gives a fuck about problematic themes in harry potter??!! why is that the center of our discourse? it shouldn't be! but that was rhetorical, i know why.

my dad read me the Harry Potter books when I was a little kid. i have crazy nostalgia for them, and I get why people love them. and i think, while harry potter is immensely flawed, and influenced by racist,ableist, and explicitly fatphobic views, theres a reason these criticisms mostly picked up after jk rowling started making a transphobic ass of herself. it wasn't enough to stop interacting with a franchise we loved because the creator was using the profit and attention to do terrible things. we needed to hate the franchise too. so all these (definitely real) faults were obsessively observed, categorized, derided. so we could hate the books themselves.

but something got lost in translation. people started thinking the problematic themes were the main issue, and they never were! the main issue is the woman utilizing our attention and profits to cause widespread harm to trans people! but some people decided it was okay to interact with sanitized fanwork, devoid of those problematic themes. folks. that isn't the issue. that was never the issue. don't "cancel" jk rowling and continue to interact with a fandom based around her work. have some moral fucking backbone and let the ip die.

[werewolf-cuddles]

the thing is, i dont think people who like still engage in harry potter are literally hitler or anything but like, like it or not harry potter is the platform she stands on and whether you give her money or not its still aiding in her platform by keeping harry potter around in the public zeitgeist. sure you specifically may not have much of an impact just blogging on your blog about these things but it does add up. its like with scott cawthon and five nights at freddy's the harm they are doing wouldnt be possible without both monetary and social acceptance. As a former harry potter and fnaf fan myself, i just wonder how much does it take to just cut it from ones lives. Like is it even bringing any joy to anyone anymore

I appreciate where you're coming from, but if I may be blunt, that ship has sailed. Harry Potter as a franchise is already so thoroughly embedded in the public consciousness that nothing any of us could do would make a difference either way. We're about 25 years too late.

And if I may continue to be blunt, the calls for people to abandon Harry Potter and let it fade from the public consciousness is, ironically enough, also keeping it in the public consciousness. If you want people to stop talking about it, then practice what you preach and stop constantly bringing it up at every opportunity.

[karl-marxs-ghost]

Kinda fucked up how some people think their personal comfort and fandoms are more important than other human beings, and then act like criticism of their actions amounts to persecution.

[necromanceyourgays]

I understand that “TERF” is historically used just for radfem descrimination against transwomen but I believe it should not be used a synonym for transmisogynist. I really think it’s important to include other trans indentites in that ‘T’, as transmisogyny can hit others just as hard. This is also a bit of a critism of TME/TMA labels.

A good example is how a lot of TERFs often campaign against healthcare for ALL trans people, even if it isn’t gender affirming.

As we know, a big part of radical feminism and TERF retoric is that women need to be protected, that they’re weak and fragile and “wombyns bodies are precious so we MUST protect them!” So, since the government recently passed have said the quiet part out loud, we know they don’t want us to have top surgery to prevent us from breastfeeding. JKR has openly supported this on Twitter.

TERFs shoot a bullet at one person and it hits everyone in the room in the process. As much as they preach about protecting transmen from “ruining their bodies” they actively prevent transmen from getting care in “Womens Spaces”, such as OBGYNs. A lot of this is because they want to bar men— what they consider transwomen to be- from all womens spaces since they see them as a fetish.

This hits transmen, intersex folk, and everyone inbetween. “Well if you have a penis you don’t need to go to a gyno” ignores people with both! This includes not only intersex people but folks of any identity that had bottom surgeries such as penile preservation vaginoplasty or no vaginectomy phalloplasty.

I’m saying my quiet part out loud here but if you are a radfem who supports trans women but calls transmen “poor manipulated girls” I’m calling you a terf. If youre a radfem and deny that transmen experience misogyny or say that theyre uneffected by trans misogyny I’m calling you a terf. You are excluding trans identites from your radical feminism, and that is TERFism.

TL:DR: When trying to ban transwomen, people with M gender markers, and people with penises from getting care seen as strictly for women you are actively killing people who need that healthcare. We are a community and we’re all getting fucked in the end

(sorry for the coke rant)

edit: i was not aware that taking the space from “trans man/woman” and turning it to “transman/woman” was transphobic when i wrote this! I apologize!

[humunanunga]

"allowed" is an interesting way to put that. And considering I'm visibly trans, it's especially interesting to assume I would've been in any way including Harry Potter in this statement.

tl;dr Harry Potter specifically has become a sewer. If you splash around in the sewer, you're gonna smell like a rat.

When JKR drank the koolaid and started using the profit she earns from her series to fund legislation that targets trans healthcare, everyone who gave a shit about the safety of trans Europeans stopped funding her success. When she points to the popularity of her series with blood libel, and the "ugly" professor having a hooked nose, and slave races that are happier as slaves, she uses her fandom's continued survival as proof that the fans of her books still agree with her political beliefs, that some fans are just quieter about their endorsement now "because of woke" or whatever.

Plenty of autuers have publicly expressed their political views, but they don't all use their social platforms to tell their audiences who to vote for or what bills to pass. HP Lovecraft is dead. He can't influence antisemitic policies from the grave. JKR is alive and using her literary success to empower transphobic politicians.

And therein lies the difference between praising fanon over canon and... this.

This isn't some corporation that owns all the brands of food you can afford, or that you can tolerate putting in your mouth, or that don't include a niche allergen. Because JKR explicitly makes Harry Potter politically-involved, all the Potterheads who didn't want to show support for the same policies as her left the fandom. And that's okay. You can feel hurt by the fond memories she betrayed by exploiting something you cherished for a vile goal.

What it comes down to is that JKR pissed in the pool, and now all the swimmers that didn't get out are doing it too.

Because of what she's done, Harry Potter has evolved into a safe space for terfs. Your association with Harry Potter signals to terfs that you must have stayed in the fandom because you're One Of Them.

If you don't want anyone to tell you what you smell like, it's time to get out and wash off.