It is remarkable to consider that less than three years ago, the author of Harry Potter was still universally admired and beloved, and even the recipient of a Robert F. Kennedy humanitarian award. Now, she’s widely regarded as a closed-minded, fringe cult figure not unlike Lyndon LaRouche or Anita Bryant.
It was on December 19. 2019, when she proclaimed sarcastically, “Sleep with any consenting adult who’ll have you.”
Her most literate supporters in English-speaking North America now simply ignore her (euphemistically referring to July 2022 as the date the author became “posthumous”). But and her increasingly hateful posts and actions continue unabated, and indeed, have accelerated, now occurring on an almost weekly basis: the hounding of interviewers, actors, and democratically-elected leaders; her attack on trans-inclusive charities in Scotland and the UK, where she resides; and her most recent stunt—the spiteful funding of a “women-only” rape support center in Glasgow, pointedly created to drive out of business the only other one in town, which incidentally is run by a transgendered woman.
An insecure intellectual bully, her posts are rife with venemous sarcasm, all the while maintaining her “love” for transgendered people, denying her transphobia (she is merely “concerned”). Her defenders claim she is only raising legitimate issues for discussion—ignoring the fact that the author refused to broach any discussion whatsoever with transgendered individuals, medical experts, or the fans who once loved her who strenuously disagree with her.
Conversely, she is supported only by an increasingly rabid, regressive, illiterate and illiberal movement of transphobic TERFs in the United Kingdom who very likely have never even read her books—and most certainly haven’t absorbed their lessons of tolerance and anti-bullying. She is quoted favorably by MAGA Republicans eager to leading a regressive and growing transphobic movement in the United States (that also threatens other personal freedoms), and is even referenced glowing by international, blood-thirsty warmongers like Vladimir Putin—the only supporter among her ugly horde she has deigned to disavow.
Rowling is too cowardly to debate the overwhelming, articulate mountain of arguments against her views—made by fans who once loved her as well as medical experts who deal with the reality of gender identity—preferring to caricature her detractors to a woke “mob” that has it in for her because she’s a woman (which had never occurred to the Harry Potter fans who bought more than half a billion copies of her books), and reducing any dissension to her caustic views as support for rape and the handful of supposed death threats she claims have been made against her. Increasing insecure in her status as a powerful woman, she has on numerous occasions made bragging reference to her success as the final retort in an argument.
On a personal note, I happen to have a career that brings me into contact with a variety of fandoms—comics, Star Wars, Star Trek, science fiction, fantasy, and horror (both literary and film and television), Dr. Who, and more. Harry Potter has never had as much overlap with comics as the others, perhaps because of the author’s apparent antipathy for graphic novels (she’s alleged to have pilfered many of her ideas from a little-known DC series by Neil Gaiman she no doubt read but has has conveniently forgotten).
Whether you find any grey area in the so-called “gender-critical” debate, one thing is certain: Rowling has been an autocratic, cult-like leader giving license to a throng of ugly TERFs and transphobes, and has laid waste to her IP brand. It is an unprecedented development in the history of franchises and fandoms.
More on Rowling on this blog.
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