By: Eeman Atif
J. K. Rowling is the author of the best-selling children’s book series Harry Potter, a series which arguably played an instrumental role in shaping many childhoods, and continues to do so today. More recently, however, she has come under a lot of controversies due to her comments about transgender issues. In 2019, she tweeted in support of Maya Forstater, a British woman who was fired from her job after posting a series of tweets questioning the government's plans to let people declare their own gender. According to her, people who are born male are men and people who are born female are women, and that is that. As it turns out, this view was also shared by J. K. Rowling. In the past, both these women have stated that the reason behind their beliefs is that by allowing people to decide their own gender, many women could be put at risk for sexual harassment and assault as people who they consider to be “not women” are allowed access to female locker rooms, sports teams, etc.
The reason these comments are so harmful is that they perpetuate the stereotype that transgender people are sexual predators. Multiple studies have been conducted into this issue, and it has been found that states in which people are allowed to use bathrooms that correspond with their gender identity, there have been little or no instances of the abuse that people are so scared of. Moreover, making trans people use the facilities for their gender assigned at birth may not only make them feel unsafe, but also put them at risk for gender dysphoria, a medical condition experienced by some trans people that can cause depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation.
Only this month, Rowling criticized an article for using the phrase “people who menstruate” instead of simply saying, women. In response to the tweet, many called Rowling a TERF, or a trans-exclusionary radical feminist. This term was originally used in the 1970s to refer to feminists who did not support the inclusion of trans women into their movement. They asserted that there needed to be safe spaces for women, and they were determined to keep trans women and nonbinary people assigned male at birth out of those spaces, even threatening violence against trans people on many occasions. This theory is echoed in Rowling’s statements asserting the importance of biological sex. Simply put, TERFs do not consider trans women to be real women, trans men to be real men, or gender non-binary people to exist at all.
Like thousands of children around the world, the world Rowling created was an integral part of my childhood, and in shaping my personality into what it is today. So when Rowling started to become involved in such controversy, I, like many others, simply decided to enjoy the series she wrote without supporting her views. After all, I could just treat the writing and the writer as two wholly exclusive entities, right? But the more I thought about it, the more impossible it seemed.
Just think about it. Why did J. K. Rowling, an unapologetic transphobe, depict Rita Skeeter as having a “heavy jaw”, and thick fingers and gaudy dressing with fake hair and fake nails? Why would Rowling, who’s been very vocal about the “dangers” of letting people use bathrooms and locker rooms that correspond with their gender identity, show that Skeeter has the ability to illegally transform her body in order to spy on children? This is only one example, Harry Potter is filled with Rowling’s bigotry.
That doesn’t mean that it’s a bad book (or series). It does have many good parts, like the emphasis on friendship and found family, on standing up for what you believe in. But in my opinion, you can never truly separate the art from the artist. Rowling’s world is filled to the brim with her worldview. Of course, it is, she made it. While this does not mean that we can’t enjoy it, it does mean that it’s time that we admit that we can’t ever truly separate it from her. We can’t ignore the fact that it is her creation, and as such, who she is as a person is a part of what the books stand for. Like any and all human creations, art too has the ability to be flawed. In the end, it isn’t ignoring the flaws that fixes the situation, it is being aware of them and it is dealing with them. We can’t fix something if we don’t acknowledge that it exists in the first place.
(Photo from here.)
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