Goal of the antagonists in Fantastic Beasts: We need to prevent the Holocaust by revealing ourselves to non-magical humans and ruling over them as superior wizards!
Goal of the protagonists in Fantastic Beasts: We need to prevent wizards from enslaving non-magical humans by keeping our kind secret from humanity and letting the Holocaust happen. We’re the good guys, here!
hope cis people who participate in the hp fandom & rb those “nonono jkr sucks but it’s totally fine to keep giving her attention” posts know they’re disgusting! jkr is an actively alive person who is honest-to-god attempting to hurt the trans community and it is completely fucked up to keep giving her stuff attention while she’s doing this. your trans hp character hcs & trans hogwarts emblem art aren’t worth shit.
transmasc opinions on jkr are extremely valuable actually, specifically transmascs from the UK. her “save the poor lost autistic girls!!!” bullshit is targeting transmascs specifically. transmascs are literally the intended targets of the laws she is working to get put in place, laws that will and already have killed transmascs. boost UK transmascs voices and stop telling them they aren’t the ones being impacted by this shit.
UK transmasc here!
She’s literally caused such bulllshit for transmascs here in terms of transition. First, her money donations and fearmongering led to puberty blockers being stopped for 2 years for trans kids (after a court case involving a transmasc minor, who argued they had Gillick competence. JK and others campaigned against this case, which if it went in favour of transphobes- would have removed Gillick competence for *everyone*. Gillick competence is the reasoning vital to young teens who are pregnant and may seek an abortion etc.).
It was because of the pandemic mainly, but in 2020 we lost all of the transmasc bottom surgeons in the UK. They were drafted to help covid. When it came time to finding replacements, JK and terf groups kicked up such a fuss and culture war about “young (afab) teens ‘mutilating’ themselves” that the process was unnecessarily lengthened and so many trans men were left in limbo with half finished neophalluses in multi-stage phalloplasty.
JK Rowling uses her voice to attack us ans further a culture war that seeks to prevent transmascs from transitioning at all. Its scary times and I wish more people took transmascs in general seriously. And UK trans people seriously.
I was just a little bit too old to really get into it by the US release of the first Harry Potter book, so I never read those books until quite recently (2016) and I was really surprised when I finally read them. I thought Harry Potter was supposed to be like, this model for nerds and outcasts, but instead he’s a dumb jock who’s famous for being famous. And he wants to be a cop (which is at least consistent).
There’s something really off-putting and mean about it. It’s “ethically mean spirited” as Ursula Le Guin remarked when asked her impressions of the series, and a better writer might have been able to take that and Say Something about the hierarchy of life as teenage, but JKR is just not able to think through the implications of anything she writes whether that’s the antisemitic implications of goblin bankers, why Dumbledore sent Harry back to his horrible family instead of placing an anonymous tip to muggle child protective services, or why Harry Potter’s shit for brains attitude is always, always rewarded and what that tells her more impressionable audience.
Five years ago, I couldn’t figure it, but with what we’ve learned about JKR’s politics in the mean time, it makes perfect sense.
It’s not just that Harry isn’t particularly bright that’s troubling, but the fact that he treats his friend who isn’t a dullard as a pain in the ass, except for when he needs to exploit her book smarts for something because he didn’t fucking study.
He’s the kid who doesn’t do the reading, acts disengaged through most of the class, but then when the big test comes around he’s cribbing off whatever sap is willing to put up with his shit, whether due to insecurity or pity or some combination of the two.
For all the faults in her writing on a structural level, JKR has a very specific world view that comes across very clearly without making it superliminal a la Ayn Rand.
Fundamentally, her world view is shaped by being a lower middle class Briton who resented the class system while also idolizing it. It’s the Chris Hitchens disease (not the one that killed him, the other one). She hates power and is fascinated by power. A very fraught relationship.
So instead of making Harry this special boy who upsets the order of the Wizarding World with his otherness, his arrival is actually celebrated and makes him an instant sensation because it represents a return of normality and order. She wants to make him a rebel, but she can’t actually have him challenge power in any way because power is constantly valorized in these books. His biggest ally is the headmaster of his exclusive private school (or would it be a public school in British vernacular?). So instead she makes him a cut-up and a delinquent who’s misbehavior is constantly hand-waved by everyone, except the one hard-ass professor who absolutely has Harry pegged except that professor happens to be a former Nazi so we can’t really sympathize with him, no can we?
The whole thing is a fantasy for suffering lower middle class British kids who dream of secretly having a peerage even as they resent the class system for all the opportunities it’s denied them and doors its slammed in their face. It’s an extremely British point of view and it’s not really surprising most American readers are oblivious to it, but at the same time it’s weird that more critics haven’t pointed it out.
This point of view perfectly unites the three main political causes Rowling has taken up: empire fetishism, austerity politics, and TERFism, all hallmarks of middle class British social climbers. Rowling has of course made it long ago, made it far further up the ladder than Hitchens ever did, and is fantastically wealthy beyond the dreams of many of the peers she once might have envied (and maybe still does). Still, the basic grubby insecurity of the class position she lived in for years before her big break remains, which explains a lot about how she sees higher taxes as some kind of personal affront, above and beyond what even many rich people born into money would see them as.
I think it’s also crucial to look at JKR in terms of where she existed fiscally and socially when she wrote Philosopher’s Stove and where she did by Deathly Hallows.Philosopher’s StoneandChamber of Secrets focus far more on Harry’s internal experience of the clash between his Muggle and wizard existences. That clash remains in the other books, but it becomes more and more artificial; Harry’s assimilation into the wizarding world parallels JKR’s assimilation into wealth, fame, and power (not perfectly, obviously).
The author of Chamber of Secrets presents house elf slavery as an unequivocal evil, but by the time she became the author of Goblet of Fire the implications of widespread slavery in wealthy wizard households became far more problematic to who JKR saw herself to be. The author of Goblet of Fire wasn’t able to condemn the various things that house elves symbolize about modern Britain because she was now part of those things. The author of Deathly Hallows couldn’t even bear Kreacher hating Harry; so Kreacher went from being someone who bought into pureblood supremacy to someone whose support of purebloods was nothing more than loyalty to the ideology of those who treated him well.
Again and again throughout the middle books of the series, the society of British wizards is shown to have clear, gaping, structural flaws. But as JKR became increasingly wealthy, she began to profit from the clear, gaping, structural flaws in the real world that her fictitious one paralleled. The injustice in Chamber of Secrets of Hagrid’s expulsion fifty years ago and his imprisonment during the book itself is very different from the injustice Harry faces in Order of the Phoenix, where he is able to escape from being framed unscathed and the consequences he suffers afterward are purely social; he is not treated to the same systemic injustice Hagrid received because JKR could no longer acknowledge those systems in the way she did previously.
This is a really good addition, which I rather missed having lost interest in the series half way through Goblet of Fire (for reasons that are alluded to here).
Isn’t it interesting that Rowling chooses to let Harry, her star protagonist, commit two out of the three Unforgivable Curses during the course of the story, while still a teenager, and face no punishment?
Wasn’t one of the huge red flags about Voldemort that he tortured others with no remorse, just to satisfy his own curiosity or emotional desires?
Harry Potter, our hero, clearly has a whole lesson about Crucio, Imperio and Avada Kedavra in Goblet of Fire, in which he learns, aged 14, that each curse carries a life sentence. In the same class, he witnesses the cruel impact of each curse used on an animal.
Nonetheless, the very next year is the first time Harry tries to cast Crucio, the torture curse, on another human. At the age of 15.
We know from the great detail that the lesson goes into that the sole purpose of Crucio is to cause pain. Harry does not use Crucio to try and obtain information. He uses it to hurt a woman who he dislikes (albeit for valid reasons).
The very next year, Harry again uses Crucio against an adult he dislikes, deliberately in order to inflict pain. Yes, it’s during combat. But he is knowingly breaking the law of his land. Is he banking on his celebrity status to be above the law?
Finally, in his seventh year, Harry uses Crucio against an adult for the third time. This time, he hurts the adult so much that they become unconscious from the pain. Amycus Carrow had insulted a woman Harry liked in front of him.
In case anyone has forgotten, immediately after finishing school, Harry Potter takes a career in law enforcement. There’s no suggestion he faces any punishment whatsoever for what are essentially war crimes. Is this what JK Rowling intended?
I wonder what Neville thinks about his friend’s actions, given his personal history with Crucio? Isn’t a central theme of Harry Potter “do the ends justify the means?” What does the rule of law mean if members of law enforcement are given carte blanche to commit war crimes with no punishment?
Doesn’t that retroactively excuse Dolores Umbridge’s actions when she herself, representing the law, attempts to bait Harry into committing a crime and threatens him with torture?
Shall we even get into the issues of Hermione committing kidnap and blackmail, Ron stealing, the Weasley twins underage gambling? Maybe Harry Potter isn’t the Good series it makes itself out to be when such morally grey characters are the central protagonists and the legal system rewards them.
seeing some Bad comparisons in my notes so I gotta make something clear.
reading Dracula does not give support to the author. he is dead. he cannot make money off your enjoyment of the novel, it is in the public domain!! it is also a really important historical novel, and reading it bit by bit is a great opportunity to really analyse it, including the biases present in the novel that are still prevalent in modern depictions of vampires. reading it gives the skills to spot things like antisemitism in modern media, as well as just a general good context for the beginnings of this genre
reading Harry Potter directly supports jk rowling. she is still fully alive and profits off any financial or verbal support you give her books. she then funnels that directly into removing the rights of actual transgender people. those books are also not historically important, and there are a million other similar books that are better
Hey remember when JKR said the sk*nwalker wasn’t actually a horrible monster and was just native Americans being dumb and not understanding wizard shit
Remember when she deadass said that for real and thought that was fine
Also remember when she thought there were just random ancient castles in North America like how there are in europe. Do you remember
She was like “the American wizard school goopygloop is in an ancient castle in North America”. First of all who built that shit. The pilgrims? My guy jebadiah who has 9 children dying of dissentary like oh yeah I’m gonna build a fully functional Scottish castle right here in the middle of Roanoak. That’s a good use of my time and resources.
JKR literally wrote a manifesto against nonbinary people and trans men, and smeared autistic people while she was at it, so can y'all please stop acting like the JKR bullshit is somehow an issue unique to trans women only?
Stop acting like this isn’t a community-wide issue that affects ALL trans people. Especially autistic trans people.
Our trans brothers & nonbinary siblings in the UK deserve better than this. Stop forgetting them. Stop erasing them.
Since some people are unaware of the breadth and depth of JKR’s ableism:
In her award winning(!!!) essay, Rowling explained that she believes autistic trans men and boys (like myself) are not mentally competent to consent to our own medical care.
We’re easily influenced, you see. Gullible. Liable to be led astray by militant trans activists, social media, and the glamour and popularity that comes with being transgender.
JK Rowling, outspoken feminist and champion for the rights of women, wants to deny medical autonomy to “girls” because she thinks we’re overly-emotional, frivolous, and susceptible to peer pressure.
She has spoken directly about her belief that autistic “girls”, especially, should not be allowed to transition because we’re intellectually incapable of forming, recognising, and articulating our own identities, and especially vulnerable to “social contagion”.
But, of course, the law doesn’t (shouldn’t) discriminate, and if autistic teens and/or adults can’t legally consent to treatment of gender dysphoria, we can’t legally consent to the treatment of anything. We won’t be able to access any treatment or medication without approval from a responsible adult.
The ability of trans kids to consent to their own medical care has already been the subject of a court case (Bell vs Tavistock). It was overturned on appeal, but one of the potential consequences of that specific case was that cis teens could have lost access to hormonal contraception without parental consent.
If Rowling gets what she’s said she wants, the knock-on effect may well be that autistic people in the UK lose the ability to live independently.
This is one of the things she’s putting her social and financial clout into. Her ongoing activismisa danger to the lives and wellbeing of all trans people and all autistic people in the UK and abroad.
Yeah Remus Lupin is sexy, but you know what’s sexier? Reading a book that doesn’t use lycanthropy as an excuse to demonize gay people and the AIDS epidemic
friend of ten years who is supposedly a vehement trans supporter is proud to announce me she’s going to see fantastic beasts 16 and is gonna buy hogwarts legacy… like so we live in parallel universes… i’m so fuckign angry lol
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