paddy carverWhen I was a teenager1 I loved Orson Scott Card’s Enderverse2. A particularly formative moment for me was when Ender, the protagonist, finally verbalized something he had been realizing over the duration of the novel: that it was impossible to truly know someone and not love them as they love themselves.
This provided useful clarity on empathy for me. That everyone had their own rich, interior lives and an understanding of the world that allowed them to view themselves as the hero was perhaps overdue in arriving, but Ender’s Game finally helped me grasp it.
I picked up Orson Scott Card’s Characters & Viewpoint to learn how he built these characters and worlds I cared about. I hung out on his Hatrack River website’s forums, learning writing techniques from other fans of his writing.
So you can imagine my surprise and discomfort when I learned that he was a vocal activist against gay marriage. Against my ability to get married. And, until the Supreme Court ruled against it in 2003, he was a big proponent of making being gay illegal.
What a wild source to learn empathy from.
I was given the first Harry Potter book for my birthday when I was in second grade. I started reading it the day I got it, and the first chapter put me off, so it sat on a shelf in my room for months. But I was a voracious reader, and no book could survive proximity with me for long before getting read, no matter how disinterested I was in it. So one day, lacking other things to read, I picked it up and read it. And I liked it.
A new book in the series released every July, right around my birthday. It became tradition that I’d receive the latest book for my birthday, and within days would have finished it and flipped back to the beginning to start again.
But more than that, my younger brother read it, too, and liked it. That was new for me. And kids at school had read it. Family friends had read it. I vividly remember a family friend telling me her son was so proud that he read the latest book faster than I did, and asking me not to tell him that I was on my seventh read-through at that point. I remember, on a family vacation to Maine with those family friends, going to the midnight release party at the bookstore for the book that released that summer.
I remember opening the book on the ride home. I remember being shocked that my parents let me stay up until midnight, and brought me and my siblings and our family friends out to a bookstore at midnight just to get a new book.
That was not my experience for any other book. I read and loved lots of books, lots of series. But that was the only book event I ever went to.
Harry Potter was, at a certain point, popular for being popular. That it was the zeitgeist is, I think, no small thing. It made my weird hobby legible to people who didn’t normally understand it. And so loving books and loving Harry Potter became, if not the same thing, useful proxies for each other.
I honestly don’t remember when I learned that JK Rowling is a committed transphobe. Probably later than I should have.
I do know at some point the conclusion became unavoidable that I could no longer support her work. Not only could I no longer give her money, I couldn’t give her cultural power. I couldn’t help Harry Potter be synonymous with a love of reading anymore. There was no logical knot I could tie myself into to justify continuing to engage with it.
Our friends’ kids were reading Harry Potter as their bedtime story at the time. We had been asking their parents for years when they would be old enough to start. When they were our ringbearer and flower girl in our wedding, we thanked them with replica wands from the movies.
We stopped talking about it with them, and stopped inviting them over to watch the movie when they finished the book. I honestly have no idea if they ever finished the series or not.
I came to Neil Gaiman’s writing in adulthood. I had read Good Omens as a teenager, and Neverwhere at a friend’s behest, but that was the extent of my exposure.
But I enjoyed the way he talked about reading. I enjoyed the way he talked about stories. I picked up more of his books, and read them, and liked them. When my therapist suggested I try listening to audiobooks to help regulate my sleep schedule, I used Neil Gaiman reading his own books to fall asleep. When my husband and I needed to drive halfway across the country, we listened to American Gods, Gaiman’s love letter to the American roadtrip.
When credible allegations of sexual assault were made against Gaiman, a lot of people wanted to claim that his work had never been that good to begin with. I understand the impulse; we want good art to be made by good people who do good things. It feels offensive to know that people who make something beautiful, or true, or meaningful can do monstrous things.
But I’m not a fan of that line of thinking. Two things can be true: Neil Gaiman can be a talented writer, with a deep and powerful understanding of stories and how they affect us, and he can be credibly accused of sexual assault.
Harry Potter offers a harder example to view this through. “Read any other book”, you’ll be exhorted. “They make books for adults now, you know”, you’ll be told. “It’s not even that good.”
And to an extent, that’s… true. It’s deeply mid writing that, at times, relies on some shameful stereotypes and doesn’t do nearly enough self-examination to grapple with what it’s implying or outright stating.
But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t good to you. It doesn’t mean you can’t have enjoyed it, or were wrong to. It may reveal some blind spots you have where you’re susceptible to harmful narratives (it certainly revealed some to me) but perhaps it’s okay for you to be an imperfect person learning and growing.
HBO has released a trailer for their new show (movie? I’m not sure) remaking the incredibly-successful series of movies from my childhood and early adulthood. One take I’ve heard is that part of what’s prompting this is too many of the original cast have come out against Rowling’s transphobia. And maybe that’s why this is happening. Maybe HBO and Rowling just like money. Who knows.
We will not be watching it. The trailer, or the show (… movie?)
I won’t tell you whether you should watch it or not. I will tell you that whether you watch it or not is taking a side. You’re either okay with hurting trans people or you’re not.
Someone once said Rowling could have kept her transphobia to herself and periodically tweeted things like “Happy Sorting Hat Day!” and gone down in history as the 21st</st century’s most beloved, successful, and rich author. But she didn’t. She instead said that people must agree with her transphobia because they keep buying Harry Potter and its merch. So here we are, JK Rowling is making you choose: Harry Potter or trans people?
I think it’s okay to have loved Harry Potter. It’s okay for it to have been formative for you. It’s okay for you to have found community and yourself through it. It’s okay for it to have meant something to you, and for you to continue to honor it for what it meant to you.
I do not think it’s escapable that continuing to engage with it, monetarily or not, makes you complicit in violence against trans people. I wish that weren’t the case. I think it’s entirely JK Rowling’s intent and doing that it is the case.
I think this is where separating the art from the artist becomes impossible: when the artist is wielding that art as a cudgel.
If you still engage with Harry Potter but have nothing against trans people, I think it’s time to thank it for what it has meant to you, put it down, and pick up something else. I promise you, there are other series and other communities that will welcome you with open arms. That have so much to offer you, and that will help you find community and yourself. There are so many other things out there that can be meaningful to you.
And supporting them won’t hurt anybody.