Hello everyone,
I saw recently another post on Lemmy which was fairly negative towards fans of the HP universe (some people announcing that they would block other people because those are HP fans)
I guess we can all agree by now that JKR’s transphobia is bigotry and should be condemned.
However, that still does not say what do to with that universe that we love.
I found an interesting article on that topic: https://www.popsugar.co.uk/entertainment/harry-potter-fans-jk-rowling-transphobia-essay-49214964
I guess the most important part is
Still, there may be a way to enjoy Harry Potter as a trans person or ally. Over the years, many fans have found creative ways to engage with the series’s magic while also acknowledging its creator’s bigotry. In her paper “Transformative Readings: Harry Potter Fan Fiction, Trans/Queer Reader Response, and J. K. Rowling,” Jennifer Duggan, an associate professor of English at the University of South-Eastern Norway — says that it’s possible to interpret the text of Harry Potter itself in ways that would certainly horrify its writer. “My central thesis—one which has also been argued by other academics like Thomas Pugh and David Wallace — is that the Harry Potter novels are deeply queer,” she tells POPSUGAR. “I mean this in both senses of the term: they champion nonnormativity through the contrast of the ‘perfectly normal’ Dursleys and Harry, and they are, at their heart, a story about a boy with an ‘abnormality’ (as the Dursleys call his magic) who comes out of his cupboard under the stairs and discovers and finds and affinity for a hidden, colourful, queer world. I take this argument further to argue that the novels are easily read through a trans lens, since there is a focus in many of the books on shapeshifting, including several cross-gendered transformations.”
Fandom, she adds, can provide spaces where Harry Potter fans can explore the series’s queer undercurrents while celebrating their own sexualities. “From what I have observed, I have concluded that for the most part, the Harry Potter fandom continues to offer queer and trans fans a positive space,” she tells POPSUGAR. “The two main trends I have seen in fan works are an ‘answer hate with love’ reaction, in which fans focus on trans positivity, and so-called ‘spitefic,’ which are works that are framed as revenge on Rowling for the hurt she has caused. These works are usually trans-positive, too. That said, I fully understand why some fans feel they can no longer engage with the texts in any way.”
Link to the research paper: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10583-021-09446-9
Seems an interesting way for me to re-appropriate the universe, what do you think?
I knew Edgar Allan Poe was pro-slavery before I read anything he ever wrote.
Arthur Conan Doyle fully supported the British empire.
Pretty much any comedy from the 20th century is going to have at least one homophobic joke.
Learn to pick the battles that matter. Rowling is going to be a billionaire if you read her books or not.
There’s a difference between being a bigot that grew up and lived surrounded by bigotry and little else and being an anti-Semitic TERF in 2024.
As the article I linked shows, most of the fandom has an issue with JKR, which makes sense due to her bigotry.
However, the fandom also still enjoys the work she created. If the argument is about money she makes out of her work and gives to hate speech groups, I know hardcore fans that stopped buying any merchandising or anything that could benefit her years ago.
Now that I think about it, did watching the movies cast reunion shot by WB a few years ago benefited her? They purposefully left her out of it.
So, you think someone is likely to become pro-slavery if they read ‘Tell Tale Heart’ or turn on their friends if they read ‘The Maltese Falcon?’
Interesting that you have chosen to continue your disingenuous arguments about dead authors from a different time who don’t, for example, actively donate proceeds to hate groups today.
Especially when you keep going back to Poe, whose most published works don’t actively promote any of his beliefs beyond being emo.
You’d have been better off using The Murder in the Rue Morgue for your “point” btw.
“My central thesis—one which has also been argued by other academics like Thomas Pugh and David Wallace — is that the Harry Potter novels are deeply queer,” she tells POPSUGAR. “I mean this in both senses of the term: they champion nonnormativity through the contrast of the ‘perfectly normal’
You can tell people not to read the books, or you can use the books to educate. I prefer not setting the precedent of banning books, but you can do whatever you feel.
Yet another disingenuous argument, pretending people are “banning” her books.
Interesting.
In any event, just as you can get free copies of Poe, Lovecraft, Kipling, etc, because their works are public domain, I would suggest if you’re willing to ignore her personal views, which don’t really come up that much anyways, you always have the option to just acquire her work in ways that don’t financially benefit her.
Whether that’s a used copy or a… More open view of intellectual property, there’s options for people who like the setting yet don’t feel like making a billionaire more of a billionaire.
you always have the option to just acquire her work in ways that don’t financially benefit her.
Whether that’s a used copy or a… More open view of intellectual property, there’s options for people who like the setting yet don’t feel like making a billionaire more of a billionaire.
Sounds reasonable
dis·in·gen·u·ous [ˌdisənˈjenyəwəs] ADJECTIVE disingenuous (adjective) not candid or sincere, typically by pretending that one knows less about something than one does.
That word doesn’t mean what you seem to think it does.
Where wasn’t I candid or sincere?
Damn, you’re just actually incapable of making an honest argument, huh?
Learn to pick the battles that matter. Rowling is going to be a billionaire if you read her books or not.
Might a decent takeaway here be instead to pick the battle of pushing to tax the rich such that one cannot become a billionaire bigot to begin with?
vaguely gestures at the US south and midwest A lack of money doesn’t prevent bigotry.
Rowling is going to be a billionaire if you read her books or not.
Ahem, just learn to hoist the sails.
What does that even mean?
Piracy
Silly me. Some one else in the thread was talking about slavery in the HP universe and I thought it was a slave ship reference.
You don’t have to pirate HP. I see the books and movies at pretty much every thrift shop I go ot. For the record, I’ve seen one movie I got from the library and never read any of the books.
If you want a good fantasy book that takes all the tropes and kicks them in the groin, try ‘Glory Road’ by Robert Heinlein. In the early 1960s a young Vietnam veteran is recruited by a Princess to fight dragons and find a mystical treasure.
try ‘Glory Road’ by Robert Heinlein. In the early 1960s a young Vietnam veteran is recruited by a Princess to fight dragons and find a mystical treasure.
Interesting recommendation!
Indeed. Tolkien’s works shows some concepts of racism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tolkien_and_race). The list goes on forever.
There was a TV version of Tarzan, set in Africa, on the air at the same time Star Trek TOS was on the air. iirc it was canceled due to poor ratings, not viewer outrage
Questionable elements in Tolkien’s work come nowhere near the vile pro-slavery content of Harry Potter, and when asked about race, Tolkien always had something good to say about the oppressed and something bad to say about the Nazis.
Okay, so here’s my take:
It is very reasonable for people to stop buying things from the Harry Potter universe because of JKR’s shitty views, which she is vocal about. She sucks. If you can’t even read or watch her stuff without thinking about how shitty of a person she is, then by all means, stop reading or watching stuff. I wholeheartedly agree with your position, not that you need my personal approval for it.
THAT BEING SAID, shitting on other people for consuming it in any way is some guaranteed glass house stone throwing. Nestle uses slave labor (including child slaves), takes water from drought areas and sells it elsewhere, and generally commits evil across the whole world in ways that ruin or end lives. The chocolate market is so inundated with slave labor and unethical practices that even companies like Tony’s Chocolonely who are specifically about ethically sourced chocolate can’t 100% guarantee child slave labor isn’t used. The meat and dairy industry torture animals their entire lives for the sake of efficiency. The atrocities committed around the world for the sake of the things we consume in the First World is unconscionable and there’s little we can do short of living a completely self-sustaining life.
Now, I know what the immediate response is, that this is “whataboutism” or deflecting, but let me be clear. Child slaves, animal torture, environmental catastrophes are orders of magnitudes worse than a billionaire who talks shit about an already marginalized group. What she is doing sucks, and if you have a particular distaste for that, and that’s the particular hill you want to die on, then by all means. But unless you are a vegan who grows their own food and buys exclusively locally produced goods, put the stone down and go back to your Potter-free glass house.
Hello, thank you for this perspective!
Y’all are new to this. Us old farts have been navigating the racism of Lovecraft and the sheer bloody minded stupidity of Orson Scott Card for ages now :)
Interesting, I wasn’t aware of those issues!
Sometimes you have to separate the art from the artist.
That’s interesting, because I usually struggle to separate the part from the artist (e.g. Polanski receiving awards while being condemned), but in this case, I guess because it is a fictional universe that every reader can make their own, I find it easier.
It might as help that most of us found Harry Potter when we were kids and nostalgia is a hell of a drug
Sorry, double comment but I am just thinking that I discovered a lot of other fantasy universes when I was a kid, along HP: Narnia, LotR, Eragon, etc.
Only HP hit me so much. I think there is something with the daily life of the characters, and how relatable it is, that makes is stick more.
Good point!
To be honest, I don’t really engage in this community because of the discomfort Harry Potter generally brings me now. I was honestly a bit relieved when it died as I knew when it was created it would eventually spell trouble. I want to preface this as I say all of this as a queer Jewish man.
I was a big fan of Harry Potter as a kid. It was the one of the big book series’ I enjoyed and it connected me with my mother. I had difficulty picking up reading and Harry Potter was a pathway to solidifying my literacy. I understand why people enjoy it, and in many ways the memories I have of it with connecting to my mother is something I will never forget. But at the same time… there’s a big difference between consuming public domain work made by awful people who no longer receive profit whilst consuming work by a woman who is actively engaging in political campaigns to make trans peoples lives worse with the profit she still receives.
I am not trans and I cannot speak from that perspective, but what I can speak on is that I don’t really talk about Harry Potter amongst my friends who are as a sign of general respect. It’s hard to really emphasize just how much pain JK Rowling has brought people. It’s horrendous. There is obvious nuance here and I get that and whenever people talk about Harry Potter I try my hardest not to to pass judgement in spite of the fact I cannot help but think of all the awful shit that’s happened. It is extremely difficult for people to break from the cultural hold that Harry Potter has held. It is one of the most iconic media franchises of the early 2000s for a reason.
When it comes to the antisemitism aspect of it, it brings me frustration as it is often an after thought in the discussion of her stuff. TERF shit and antisemitism tends to be best of friends for some reason. Most likely since TERFs are often embraced by fascists who are already antisemitic and they pick their talking points up, but I digress. Antisemitism is a big thing across most media in general and that did leak heavily into Harry Potter at first, but her antisemitism in her work is more jarring knowing that she is now openly associated with public antisemites as well.
I don’t know. The whole thing just upsets me honestly. Seeing the conflict it creates is painful.
Hello,
Thank you for your comment, and sorry about the unease this community brings you.
Are you comfortable having this community active on your instance? We can move it elsewhere if you prefer.
Update as I know this comment is linked to from time to time: we discussed about this with Gabe on Matrix, he was okay to keep the community here. Proof of this: he appointed one of my alts as a moderator of the community, which he probably wouldn’t have done if he wasn’t approving our community being here.
Dr. Suess was cheating on his wife while she was suffering from a disease and she ended up committing suicide from it. HP Lovecraft was a flaming racist, yet I would guess that most fans of his work are themselves not flaming racists. It’s ok to enjoy the creative work of otherwise not-great people, by reading their work you’re not saying you agree with their personal beliefs (though people may question you if you’re seen reading Mein Kampf out in public, which it’s not a creative work, so maybe it’s different for political works).
I grew up with HP as a kid and made friend’s I’ve kept to this day via fandom activities. The HP fandom has always been pretty queer and, at the time, making Dumbledore publicly gay was very meaningful to a lot of fans at a time where being gay was much more controversial than it is now. Governments were just starting to recognize gay marriage. I don’t think JKR developed her shitty transphobic views until long after the books were published. I’ve definitely cooled on my love for the the series because of JKR’s behavior, but I think it’s a big overstep to shun fans.
I think the stories themselves are a fine character-driven fantasy romp. Do harry and his 13 yearold friends solve slavery? No. But they’re good kids with good intentions and they manage to make some positive change during high school. All was well for them and theirs, not for the entire wizarding and muggle worlds.
It’s quite easy to avoid purchasing anything that will give JKR’s estate more money. Buy second hand and torrent the films.
Thank you for your comment, sounds like a reasonable perspective
Harry Potter isn’t a good book written by a bad person. It’s a bad book. At Christmastime in Grimmauld Place they dress the severed slave heads up in little Santa hats and beards. Hermione makes fun of Umbridge by triggering her (probably rape) PTSD. The series ends on the line “all is well”, but nobody has done anything to solve the problems of slavery, second class citizens, oppression, and fascist social attitudes that created Voldemort. Harry becomes a cop for a government that he watched fall to corruption and evil.
The plot isn’t the best, the list of issues is so long it’s almost embarrassing, but the world is whimsical and comfortable, especially in the first few books. Characters description is well done, their behaviour is believable there is some moral ambiguity for some of them (Dumbledore and Snape, among others). There is a reason the series was so successful, and its popularity was never reached by similar series.
The later books are quite disappointing, especially by not addressing the underlying issues of the magical society, as you said.
In the early books you’ve still got Azkaban set up as the punishment for criminals, even for a crime as small as having an animal without a licence. Harry Potter immediately went to the grimdark without any sense of criticality to the atrocities in its world. At least Warhammer 40K is supposed to be a satire of fascism. I feel more comfortable reading the Horus Heresy than going back to Harry Potter.
Do you have more details about the animal licence leading to Azkaban? Doesn’t ring a bell, is it in reference to Hagrid having illegal animals? I had a look at the list of knows Prisoners of Azkaban, and didn’t find any on this list
HP world during the series is not a satire of fascism, but it shows what happen when the government gets complacent instead of addressing the core issues. That is mostly visible with the sack of Fudge, and then Scrimgeour desperately trying to correct the course.
Oh, I’m misremembering. Hagrid actually goes to Azkaban during the second book under suspicion of opening the chamber of secrets. No trial, no proof, they just sent him to super jail because he likes beasties.
Yes, and that is indeed to show how the magic government is corrupt.
They should have addressed those issues at the end of the series, and it would be fine if there was no epilogue, so that every reader could imagine what would happen. Personally, I don’t consider the epilogue to be canon.
If you hate the quality of Rowling’s writing so much that you’d prefer to rewrite your perceptions of it, maybe you could just consume better written media to begin with. I recommend The Owl House, it does the “magic school in a problematic world” story WAY better and actually addresses the problems in the world.
As for Harry Potter, the reason Rowling is able to acknowledge her world sucks but never has her heroes change it, is that Rowling fundamentally believes disrupting the social order is bad. Once you realise that, you see the books in a different light. Hermione gets made fun of by the author for SPEW, because the author believes ending slavery is bad. This isn’t a writing flaw, it’s an intentional result of her worldview.
If you hate the quality of Rowling’s writing so much that you’d prefer to rewrite your perceptions of it
I never said so.I think her style is pretty good, it’s one of the things I appreciate the most about the series. Discarding a few pages out of a seven books saga seems reasonable, it is done in a lot of other fandoms. Star Wars fans recently had to discard a whole trilogy, it does not mean that they don’t appreciate the original material.
I recommend The Owl House,
Thanks for the recommendation, I’ll give it a try.
is that Rowling fundamentally believes disrupting the social order is bad.
That’s an interpretation of the series, but then why are the following characters presented as social progress from the statu quo?
- Remus Lupin, first werewolf allowed to attend Hogwarts (they had to plant the Whomping Willow for him) and even teach there
- Hagrid, a half-giant, allowed to work at Hogwarts and teach
- Dobby, free Elf, allowed to work and live at Hogwarts
Following the magical world conventions, those people should be ostracized, and kept away from society. Dumbledore fought to give them rights, as a way to show that change was possible. Indeed, he didn’t completely change the society, but he was also busy fighting another threat, the comeback from a political leader who would completely destroy the rights of the minorities.
About the Elves, Hermione is making fun of because she’s trying to get a bunch of teenagers to care about social issues. However, at the end of the series, Ron say that they should warn the elves in the kitchen to prevent them from being harmed.
It isn’t PC, but I’m not aware of anything Rowling has said that could be taken as any kind of -phobic. <shrug>
You’re never going to agree 100% with any other human being, and that’s as it should be. If you don’t like her books, don’t read them. If you do like them, do read them. It’s simple common sense. There’s nothing “sensitive” about it.
