A J.K. Rowling Transphobia Primer (A Good, Old-Fashioned Link List!)

Originally posted April 6, 2021; last updated August 12, 2023.

Below is a good, old-fashioned link list of the J.K. Rowling transgender controversy. I initially built this list for my college students who were reading Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (1999) as part of a "Coming-of-Age" literature class (they've also read Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Alice Walker's The Color Purple, and Steven Chbosky's The Perks of Being a Wallflower, fyi). When I first started posting on the controversy, it seemed to many like only an intercene fandom happening, but the story has continued to have ramifications for the business prospects of the Harry Potter franchise, to say nothing of the real-world impact on the trans community. For my views, see other posts on this blog. - Donald E. Simpson, PhD.

J.K. Rowling: The King Lear of Kiddie Lit

It’s been nearly a year since I’ve blogged about She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named-But-Must-Be-Obeyed (even if one is a conscientious objector in the editorial and design department handling her work at Hachette), and it’s been a quiet year at that.

Fans Didn’t Enable Rowling; Success, Ego, and Power Did That.

I watched part of a YouTube video last night in which a longtime Potter fan basically laid out a thesis that fans have progressively enabled Rowling to become a bigot. This is an interest thesis, with some very small, partial truth to it; but it’s naïve—fannishly so, imagining a closer relationship and more influence on the author than fans actually have.

Joanne, Jo, J.K. or Robert: Somebody Help Me Out Here...

This is the second of two parts. Read part one.

It’s okay for Joanne Rowling to write novels under the pseudonym “Robert Galbraith”; it’s okay for her to obscure her gender using the made-up initials “J.K.” (she has no middle name); it’s okay for her to prefer the masculine-sounding nickname “Jo” over her feminine given name.

“Who'll Have You, Freak?!”: J.K. Rowling and the Curse of Transphobia

“Who’ll have you” is a hateful putdown the author has used twice in the mouth of one of her most beloved characters and once in her own voice, the last cruelly directed at transgendered persons in the abstract.

by Don Simpson

Last December (2019), just before Christmas, I became aware of a Tweet posted by J.K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series, and the brouhaha surrounding it, that has now become famous:

“Dress however you please. Call yourself whatever you like. Sleep with any consenting adult who’ll have you. Live your best life in peace and security. But force women out of their jobs for stating that sex is real?”