JK Rowling’s latest transphobic tweets have once again highlighted her exclusionary behaviour and put her in a spot. This isn’t exactly shocking because Rowling has faced ire for propagating transphobic and trans-exclusionary radical feminist opinions earlier as well. One look at the Harry Potter series can tell you how embarrassingly undiverse it is — afterthought, postscript revelations on Twitter about her characters do not count.
Declaring Dumbledore as queer and endorsing a Black Hermoine are the most prominent examples of Rowling retrospectively trying to add diversity in the otherwise white hetronormative wizarding world she first created.
Queer Baiting
The Harry Potter series has been constantly accused of queerbaiting— a marketing ploy used to lure an LGBTQ+ fan base by teasing the possibility of non-heterosexual characters, without the intention of ever developing it into an actual element of the story.
Here’s a classic instance of queerbaiting. Before Harry Potter and the Cursed Child — the play that tells the story of Harry Potter 19 years later — was even published, there was a tonne of fanfiction ‘shipping’ (when fans wish for two characters to be romantically linked) Draco Malfoy’s son Scorpius with Harry Potter’s younger son Albus. When the play finally came out, the bonhomie between the duo was far more intense than the relationship between Harry and his best friend, Ron, ever was.
Nymphadora Tonks and Remus Lupin, two characters from the series who were thought to be queer by fans, were married out of the blue and made to settle down as as a typical hetronormative family. Tonks, a Metamorphmagus — a witch who can change her appearance at will, was considered to be gender fluid. Lupin’s struggles as a werewolf were seen as deliberately framed to highlight the plight of HIV/AIDS patients. But even these prominently queer characteristics pointed out by Potter fans, weren’t enough for Rowling to properly assert and develop these traits in later books.
It’s not fair for Rowling to keep adding queer elements the Harry Potter fans root for after the books have been published in ways that suit her interest, but fail to actually bring diversity and inclusivity to her writing.
Let’s wait and watch what she does with Dumbledore and Grindelwald in the upcoming Fantastic Beasts films, where she has the opportunity to explore their sexual relationship.
Also read: Daniel Radcliffe, Eddie Redmayne, Beckham bring Hogwarts home with Harry Potter readings
Culturally tone-deaf wizard world
The wizarding world first created by Rowling is of, for and by White people. I don’t think there’s much to argue there.
The few non-White characters she does introduce in the books are underdeveloped lazy additions that highlight her prejudice.
Take for instance the Patil sisters. Remember their agonising outfits at the Yule Ball in the Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire — dull, unflattering lehengas, which seemed like a mockery of Indian culture. A lot of us are still and will always be unforgiving of that travesty.
Then comes Cho Chang. In a world full of fantastical names like Severus Snape, Albus Dumbledore, Dolores Umbridge, Nymphadora Tonks, Luna Lovegood and so on, Rowling settled on mixing two Korean surnames to portray the only visible Asian character. Rowling may as well have introduced another Karen or Susan type character instead of creating a token Asian character she clearly put no thought into.
Many defend Rowling by begging critics to judge the series according to the time period it was written in — the first book was released in 1997.
But the late 90s weren’t exactly the Victorian era. Besides, the last Harry Potter book was published as recently as 2007. Proving that time was never really the issue, Rowling was also accused of racism in her 2016 Pottermore essays about the History of Magic in North America. She was slammed for the way she wrote about ‘Native American wizards’, and was attacked for “using an ancient culture as a convenient prop”. Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, her ongoing series, also lacks diversity. Casting a South Korean woman as Nagini — Voldemort’s pet snake, and her subsequent defense of the choice, served as another example of her blatant ignorance of the issue of cultural appropriation.
For a book that highlights class struggles, centres on the battle against a Fascist megalomaniac and constantly takes on prejudice and discrimination in the wizarding world , the lack-of-diversity and cultural appropriation problems are disheartening.
J.K. Rowling’s transphobic tweets don’t make me question my love for Harry Potter one bit, like Harry Potter actor Daniel Radcliffe fears. Potterverse has been shaped as much by fan fiction as it has been by the books. So, in this case, I have no qualms separating the art from the artist. Rowling may have given us the boy who lived, but we were the ones who made him immortal.
Views are personal.
Also read: J.K. Rowling releases first two chapters of her new book ‘The Ickabog’ online for free
Now theprint had turned into daily prophet and you have became Reeta skeeter in fact half the world is now condemning JK Rowling based on these stupid articles. I am not saying she is absolutely correct but you people are taking it too far by dissecting every part of a book I love.
I mean Cho and Chang aren’t Koream surnames! I am definitely a Korean
whd_die
I mean Cho and Chang aren’t Koream surnames. The most common surname in Korean are Kim Lee and Park. I meanshe could have chosen names like Hermione!!
So much blablabla. Get over. Harry Potter is not real life is a book it does not have to be your way hating just because one or two chareters weren’t gay and got married the most bullshitting thing I’ve heard in this decade.
Of course your opinion is valid, but I feel like this article isn’t really necessary or helpful to anyone, and seems heavily biased against the art of JK because of her recent tweets. Some of your points seem like stretches, and you reiterate things like the racial diversity in Scotland in the 90s, thinking it’s offensive to portray it the way it actually was.
Your weakest point is and remains my biggest pet peeve: cultural appropriation. Since when is it a bad thing to share our cultures with each other? You complain about the lack of racial diversity, but when they cast an Asian woman, you complain about CA? There’s no pleasing some people.
Chin up author. Your article was good and your opinion matters. While I will always be glad that JKR gave us Harry Potter, it was the fandom that breathed beauty, depth and inclusivity into the HP world. After 6 years in this fandom I can confidently say that most of the HP fandom do not stand behind JKR and her bigot opinions.
Surely there are more important things in this country to focus on .the Harry Potter people are just stirring things up.Why don’t people get on with their lives and help rather than stir up trouble.
Are you serious? You’re really even bringing this up? No I’m pretty sure you’re not and this is just for clicks and so you get money around the recent tweet.
But just in case you seriously believe what you wrote let’s look deeper than the looks of a “modern” person who believes each of the 5200 or however genders should be included in a book. First: Cultural diversity. Why aren’t there more non-white people? Because, now this might seem crazy, Hogwarts. Is. In. Scotland. Now why would people from Asia want to go to Scotland for education especially when there are already schools in Asia? The answer is they wouldn’t or only a couple would, just like we see in the books. Besides that Cho Chang is not the only “diverse” character. There’s Sue Li, the Patil twins and that’s only if we leave out the two whole schools that came for the tournament. Now this means one of three things you don’t consider them “diverse”, you haven’t done your research or you’re lying on purpose and I’m not sure which is better.
Now let’s take a look at the lack of trans and gay characters. First let’s look not only at when the book was written but when the events of the book actually happened, because when it was written doesn’t matter. We start around 1991 (first year) and end 1998. Now I couldn’t find any actual data but it’s safe to assume the amount of gay and trans people was way lower than it is today simply because it wasn’t as accepted. So let’s look at the wizarding world, it’s really small compared to the Muggle world. And outside of being really we see an even smaller part and since Rowling doesn’t take the time to establish the sexuality of every side character (which she shouldn’t) That means that the chance of us actually seeing a gay character are quite low. But do you know what makes them even lower? The fact that the wizarding world is behind the Muggle world since a lot of the wizards consider them beneath their notice. So make the story actually take another 50-100 years earlier and do you see how your argument doesn’t work now?
Now I’m not even going to touch on the mess that was your part about Lupin’s werewolf part being like AIDS. But I have one last question for every triggered person and whoever wrote this article:
Why does every book have to have gay and trans characters? You push for this a lot but is there any actual reason besides stroking your own egos about how you’re “helping the trans people” or something like that? So what if the book doesn’t have all 15 thousand genders? Does that make the story any less good? Why aren’t we going after Shakespeare because Romeo and Juliet are not two gay people of non-disclosed gender?
I’m no hp expert, but isn’t Hogwarts the only wizarding school in Britain? Not that Scotland is as peelywally as you may believe, there are people of all colours, already when I lived there around the time the series was starting. Pointing at background characters, most of who get added as an afterthought later, is not really the same as having diversity in the main cast, the people who actually have characters. It’s like claiming James Bond has true diversity because he gets various brown people to make his martinis. But that franchise is its own can of worms.
Then, I am pretty sure it was jk Rowling herself who claimed lycanthropy is like the wizarding world AIDS.
Why should there be gay people in Hogwarts, you ask? Why not? Why make Dumbledore posthumously gay, if not to make up for this mistake. With such a large cast, unless wizards have some sort of hetero-sorting hat, if this was real, some people would have been gay just by laws or probability. Trans is somewhat rarer, but would the story be any worse, if just one person in the cast of thousands had been a transperson? Wouldn’t it be easier for wizards anyhow, surely there is a polymorph potion for sex change. And, no one curious enough to use one? Pfft, shows a lack of imagination is nothing else.
And because JK Rowling is transphobic suddenly people criticizes her books on Harry Potter. Wow! Just wow!
So Ernest Hemingway, Mark Twain and other straight or heterosexua authors’ works are also no good because, yes, it doesn’t contain diversity or it doesn’t have trans characters in it?
Shame on you critics!
Talking about sex based rights to prevent sex based discrimination (yes, it’s real, female genital mutilation, female foeticide, untouchability against menstruating women are just *few* examples) doesn’t make you a transphobe. Her books have many poc who are freaking awesome (Kingsley and Lee Jordan are my personal favs). She actually bothered to even mention poc and reflect on diversity which many authors don’t bother with.
Gosh you people are truly terrible. Ffs a person’s sexuality doesn’t define them! I thought it was amazing Dumbledore was gay AFTER. It meant gay people can achieve great things without ever having their sexuality define them. They have a life outside sexuality.
Secondly, A born woman doesn’t need to pander to feelings of other people to talk about what affects her. Stating a biological fact- women menstruate- is Not transphobia! Saying that same sex attraction is real, is not transphobia! What is wrong with you people. Womanhood is not a freaking feeling or abstraction. It’s a BIOLOGICAL REALITY. The Gender debate is about equality between the SEXES. Get rid of gender socialization and you won’t even have men who feel like they’re “women”. Womanhood is not a feeling. FEELINGS don’t result in female foeticide, menstruation shaming, or lack of abortion rights. REAL MISOGYNY DOES. MALE PRIVILEGE does that puts female bodied people on a lower status. Talking about this is NOT TRANSPHOBIA. trans people are an important part of fight against GENDER NORMS. They open our eyes to how men can be empathetic soft spoken or wear dresses and makeup. And how women can be resilient, strong and wear trousers. How these traits are not “feminine” or “masculine” but “human”. But trying to pretend that sex based differences don’t exist is STUPID. Women need sex based rights! Like maternity leaves or menstrual rights or right to life, or freedom against female genital mutilation.
The amount of arrogance, ignorance and entitlement in this article is shocking.
Btw, the Patil sisters wore robes in the books. Why are you blaming JKR for the costume designers shoddy idea of Indian clothes? Oh and LEE JORDAN was an AWESOME character and HE WAS POC. PATIL SISTERS, KINGSLEY SHACKLEBOLT, ANGELINA JOHNSON were all amazing, strong, capable characters in the books! And her depiction of house-elves shows how deeply brainwashed exploited populations can be, who believe their marginalisation is only right. The untouchables in India were the same, never raising a voice against their persecution for fear of reprisal and brainwashing into Karma Theory. And Goblins were an amazing race but their values were different from wizarding folk, so much so, that wizarding folk believed them to be greedy or recalcitrant leading to prejudice, when Goblins were simply living by their own morality. There is so much nuance in her books but I suppose you would need to read it first.
Agreed! So sick of this nonsense!
The books were made for children and teens and you’re outraged they didn’t include sexual education? Lol SJW’s are not far from promoting pedophilia
I find all this JKR hate to be laughable. You want drunk tweet equality for some odd reason. There is a simple solution to your plight. You want more gays, gender fluidity, or racial diversity in your Potter stories? Fan fiction has what you crave. Why not? It was good enough for JKR to stamp her name on some fan fiction & label it a Cursed child.
You are confusing the books and the film’s. The books make no mention of the race of the majority of the characters and as JKR pointed out the description of Hermione is nearer to a black girl than a white girl. JKR is hardly the first to (possibly) bow to pressure from Hollywood over the colour of the cast.
Although some kids are aware they are gay around puberty, very few discuss it. Certainly very few teachers are openly gay even now. The books were aimed at the kids and later the YA market. Can you imagine the storm if she had included gay couples in the first couple of books?
As for all the puff about JKR’s position on trans gender issues, I’ve seen nothing to indicate trans PHOBIA. Her views on bathroom rights are well argued even if I don’t necessarily agree with them but they do not advocate marginalisation. Merely that trans gender people don’t fit into easy categories. Doesn’t mean they don’t deserve rights and support and protection from descrimination.
I have no problem with the Harry Potter series as a whole. But it is sad to see someone try so hard to make an agenda out of what I am assuming was her passion project/magnum opus. Just don’t come out to be political and leave it as is, or do what she just did and make yourself look like a terribly out of touch and ego bound person.
I try to seperate the art from the artist, but sometimes the artist just turns out to be so batcrap that it does affect my viewing/listening experience.
Interesting look into the mindset and psychology.
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE NEVER WRITE AGAIN!!! You are a hypocrite!! Why are you allowed to express your opinion in an article and criticise her life’s work in a few paragraphes, while she isn’t allowed to have her own opinion!!
She didn’t even offend or belittle anyone, she only expressed her own opinion in the name of the same freedom that gives everyone the right to choose whichever life they want!
She exposed a very vulnerable and raw part of her, why are you people so cruel!
Didn’t you even think how hard it must’ve been to make such a personal and painful experience public to the world?! Did that thought never cross your mind?
And now you’re ruining one of the most unique experiences that came into this world for many people around the world!
What has the world come to? This is just sad.
Just because Harry potter has been so successful people think the have the right to pick holes in J K Rowling and the story, and it’s just a story, an epic and successful one at that, and I always will love the story . The films left out so much and certain things were changed from the books.
Nothing but a shitty hate piece, this article. Not every piece of art has to be a social commentary and Rowling just wanted to bring a little magic to the world – she had no idea she’d become so successful and was barely afloat when she penned this story.
Her lack of need/desire to promote other races in Harry Potter isn’t the issue here, it’s people like you unnecessarily highlighting it, making it a real thing when it wasn’t before, that keeps fuelling the hate and the disharmony in the world. Are you personally affected here? I highly friggin doubt it.
Wake up and just see it for what it is, a kid’s fantasy story about the underdog who never gave up.
How bout this… write your own goddamn book, with as many gay characters as you want, quit picking apart other people’s work because there wasn’t one of every kind of person in it. This shit is getting fucking old everything does not have to cater to everybody, don’t go to a steakhouse and demand more vegan options. Its her world she can do whatever she wants in it, if you don’t like it DON’T READ IT!!!!!
????, here’s an idea…..if you really want inclusion, make your own pinché series of books and movies.
Why do articles like this get published? Does the author even read all books? Harry Potter books are quite the opposite, and one of the best literature for a child. They teach positive things. Don’t try to taint something so beautiful in the name of radical journalism.
You forgot Lee Jordan. Someone clearly did their research.
She’s got such an issue with a kids book, why doesn’t she read something else? Or better still, write her own.
NewYork times complex??? It’s a story jk Rowling is in no way obligated to make HER story more “diverse” It’s a fictional story meant to be enjoyed as is all art
The stupidest article I’ve read in a long time. Shouldn’t Misra have read the actual books? She is setting greater store by the fan fiction and the movies than the books. Why do we need to add a bunch of characters just for the sake of diversity? What does race gender or sexual orientation have anything to do with the Harry Potter stories? Would it have been a very different tale if Ron and Harry hooked up, or Hermione was black and transgender? What a load of crap.
Oops, bet you didn’t expect your little hate article is going to gather so much negative comments.
Bet the only thing you wanted is to feel accepted and loved, but didn’t exactly know how to get there.
That reminds me of a character from fantastic books I’ve read as a kid and which still remain a huge part of my life, as a 32 year old Mom.
The books are cleverly plotted, with great characters and details about that fantasy world, so realistic that you find yourself as a kid getting excited about a cat that doesn’t move from your father’s car whole day, because she could be watching if you’re an adequate fit for a certain school; but most importantly, books are about standing for minorities, choosing “the right, and not the easy” path, about loss and how to deal with it, about courage, and about growing up, about friendship and LOVE.
True love, not likes.
Maybe you’ve heard of them.
Harry Potter, no?
Oh well.
Children’s books are better for leaving out divisive arguments anyway. Though why our society now wants us to cater to the whims of people who base everything they are on feelings with no basis in biological reality is a question that should really be answered. Ten years ago these ‘trans’ people would have been labeled crazy, and rightfully so. I mean, come on. Half of them can’t even make up their minds at all, hence Facebook’s 52 genders.
Let’s trash J K Rowling’s books! Oh my God I will be ACCEPTED if I trash them! It will feel so good to finally have someone to agree with me!
I will pretend to stand for rights that I superficially know about and don’t honestly care about and I will go so far as to say that it doesn’t count anything that might be interpreted as inclusive just to trash them some more. Of course, I did not in fact read the books, but I’ve spent whole night researching what potentially could be wrong with them for my hate article, so don’t tell me that doesn’t count. I think that’s what people want to hear right now. I care about trends and what people think of me, not about the people actually, but I don’t think anybody will notice that, not now. I can always accuse them of being a racist if they don’t agree with me. Yeah, I think I nailed it this time. They are going to like me, for sure.
Haha nicely put. People just like to use big “ism” and “ist” words from the safety of their computers just so they can be seen, even when they are so far personally removed from it. It’s pretty sick when you think about it, all it does is further fuel issues and I can’t possibly imagine what the author actually hopes to achieve or gain, outside of some internet back-pats.
Ask any author, half of the bullshit analysis people do on their stories, the supposed messages and symbolism, the author never even considered. Anti race? Bullshit, Rowling just wrote a kid’s fantasy story ffs.
Please, if you are going to make people to hate this master piece of the whole universe of Harry Potter, is better that you stop writing things that don’t make any sense, because you’re mixing what you want with other things that don’t have any connection. Seriously bro, because one book doesn’t have what you would like to it has, that doesn’t mean that book is wrong, because if that were correct, there are a lot of books that are wrong because I don’t like them. I think is great your opinion, but is only yours, and you’re trying to use it to change the believe of other people :/
What will you target next? Lotr? Why are their no black elves? Good thing Tolkien is dead. Or he would’ve had to deal with such pretentious liberal bullshit.
I’m not sure I would let my kids read the harry potter books if all the characters had to be in relationships, these are kids books, why are we back to opening adult content to kids, they are the heros they go on adventures and fight bad guys. Cant it just be left alone.
No way I would have read these to my daughter if sex were in them. Frankly, any parent that does expose their child to sex at too young an age should be investigated for grooming them for sex trafficking.
And the books occasionally mentioned a person’s skin tone but very seldom. I just assumed, as did my mixed kid, that the people in the book were people with varying amounts of melanin.
If you want to say JK is transphobic, then blame HER… Don’t point out stuff from Harry Potter books! As other people have commented, Harry Potter was set in the 1990s. So, you must know that JK has written her books according to what it was like at that time. So, if you want to write against Rowling, then first learn the truth!! Don’t start randomly expressing your opinion on the Internet!!
Unpopular opinion-
I liked this article.
This is tagged as an opinion piece by the author. So, why is it okay for you to speak or have your own opinion but you are attacking JK for having her own opinion and ideals? You a the classic definition of a hypocrite. We don’t care about your opinion and we don’t need to live in your vision of the Harry Potter universe.
Here’s a tweet that explains it succinctly.
“And Rachel Dolezal is really black, and parrot man is really a parrot and elf girl is really an elf and this 54 year old dude is really a 6 year old girl.
Self-identification – no matter how sincere, no matter how supported by psychologists – is not the sole criteria on ANYTHING.” Trans women are not women just because they feel like it.
I’m tired of hearing or reading about people who get triggered by HP and JK Rowling. The Potterverse is not meant to imitate real life. It’s FICTION.
I’d like to what University graduated this fool of a writer. Nothing JK Rowling said was wrong, and it definitely was not transphobic.
JK rowling objected to the phrase “People who menstruate…”. She is right. This phrase is as wrong as saying ‘All lives matter’ instead of ‘Black lives matter’ just for the sake of being more inclusive, ignoring the specific discrimination based on race. “People who menstruate” belittles the very, very specific lived experience of discrimination based on menstruation and the fight against it for millions of WOMEN. One well documented instances of menstruation based discrimination specific to women and girls is that every year millions of women lose access to education when they start menstruation.
This line of thinking has other repercussions too – if trans women (who have male biological markers, and therefore the resulting muscle mass, and other male characteristics) are deemed biologically to be women, then essentially they, who are biologically men, can compete in women’s sports. You might as well then just have no separate sports for women, and just include all biological men in womens sports. This is why sportswomen like Martina Navratilova are objecting to this line of thinking.
Further, they also use the ‘Trans women are women’ slogan to ask to be included in women bathrooms and changing rooms. This is dangerous. Trans women are biological males with all the inherent physiological markers including, having a pen!s, their physical strength etc. This is already a problem many schools in America are fighting. Imagine, a biological male using bathrooms used by young girls.
Even further, JK Rowling did not object to any one selecting their gender roles or sexual orientation – she and many of us like her are very supportive of LGBT. But the objection is to refuting biology – your DNA is your DNA – you are predominant male or predominant female. Frankly, why the extreme left and Trans women suddenly feel the need to go with “Trans women are women” slogan but not “Trans men are men” slogan itself is telling. Because they know that trans men are biologically female and can’t physically dominate men, while trans women with their male hormones can easily dominate women. Also telling is that unlike many Eastern nations, they don’t want to identify as a third gender either!
Even worse, in the west, theres been an increased push to get minor children to have elective s3x xhange surgery – something that is severely detrimental to health and potentially irreversible. Example, to provide a fake vag!na, essentially their pen!s is reversed and a hole surgically created. Now because physiologically, this is a wound to the human body, it keeps trying to close it and can exhibit symptoms of putrification that a open wound would be expected to – so you have to spend the rest of your life dilating it open and ensuring it doesn’t smell or catch disease/infection. The hormones that they are provided can cause organs to age and increase co-morbidity. This is what they encourage children to undergo.
To the bright bulb who wrote this article, I dare you to research into these issues and write about it. Otherwise I am afraid you are just anti-women and anti-children, and dare I say anti-humanbeing.
Totally agree. Thank you for this post!!
“People who menstruate” is the right term to describe people who menstruate. Not “women”. There are thousands of women all over the world who do not menstruate because of a variety of reasons including age, health issues, medication etc. So according to your definition, they are not women because they don’t menstruate.
There are also transmen who menstruate. I think that’s all the line “people who menstruate” meant. But everyone, starting with JK Rowling, ran away with it and turned it into a whole rant about transwomen trampling all over women’s rights.
This is shit.
Every novel ever written must contain non white person in a prominent role, also there has to be relationships that are non hetrosexual. Fewer white people better it is. Also there must always be non binary characters… These are the parameters for any novels. Anything other than this will be called as transphobic because that’s what matters. Story doesn’t matter, characters doesn’t matter, what matters is that protagonist is a black/asian/brown guy who likes to identify himself as an Apache helicopter and likes to do T90 tanks.
Do they let literally anyone publish nowdays? Without a spell or grammar check. Yikes – Complete trash.
I totally agree with this opinion, harry potter’s world is based on the books jk rowling released, but the fans added the diversity it needed, because the world we live in is diverse. It even opened my eyes about gender-fluid tonks and ill remus, ive never thought of it, and im super thankful i’ve read this.
And if you want to sell an all-inclusive image (remember the criteria for fitting in hufflepuff?) it shouldn’t bother you that the fans actually include diversity in the universe.
Ok, I would like you, for once, to start Reading every single thing she has written. Her “transphobic” tweets are no more than opinions which she has now deeply explained and, sorry to inform you, her explainations make sense. She is not transphobic, she just thinks there is no one side the truth and one side the wrong there are both of them in both sides. What’s the matter in thinking beyond received ideas ?
Worst article I’ve ever read , worst , worst. Please stop writing . Never write again, if you’re going to write this bad.
I recently read the series for the 1st time in many years and did see some problems concerning the ethnic groups and characters described but then again think of British society and the ethnic diversity there. And yet again their attitude towards this and the history where it may stem from. Think of BREXIT and maybe try to tolerate intolerance.
Also maybe cut the over analysis. It’s just a story. It’s a piece of art and it is sure to involve the author’s personal thoughts and values and this is her right. And also I am not sure how you can “tease” someone into believing a character is gay and then “unfairly” disappoint them when it turns out they aren’t. Some people (and characters) are also bisexual and still end up living in a heterosexual relationship without feeling like they miss out on something or are untrue to themselves. Some of us fall in love and keep loving the person and not their gender. Sexuality is not a black and white, straightforward thing and I truly hate it hate it when everything needs to be specified like this.
However I cannot really sympathise with medically unfounded cosmetic surgery to “fix” your gender if you are transgender. Governments and societies are encouraging people to ruin their one-of-a-kind, fertile and perfectly functioning body because their mental or preferred gender needs to match the biological gender.
Sexuality is a spectre and the more we describe individual sexualities the less we see variety. Sexuality shouldn’t be any problem in post-individualist outside-the-box -over analytical society. We shouldn’t need to discuss it, not in these terms like are these genders real or acceptable and how many fingers you need to count every kind and how do we fix those that are nothing yet. What a bunch of bullpoop people.
The time period and place the Harry Potter universe is set in means that there wasn’t much cultural diversity and no one was out as queer, but I still think she should have tried a little harder to make the non-white characters better and more realistic, because its not hard to come up with a Korean name better than Cho Chang, or to give the Patel sisters Yule Ball outfits that weren’t a direct mockery of their race. Just because they’re South Asian/Indian doesn’t mean they have to wear clothes that reflect that. The diversity is amazing for the time it’s set in but that gives her no excuse to be lazy when writing those characters. Not to mention that Tonks and Remus made no sense together when it was clearly alluded to that they were queer. Even if it couldn’t be explicitly said that they were, it didn’t really make sense to put them together, but that’s just my opinion. Some of you need to grow up, someone’s opinion doesn’t invalidate yours, people have different viewpoints, get over it
Not including a queer storyline doesnt render a book tone deaf. A fictional story can be about so much more than raising lgbtq issues. They are relevant issues but they need not be present everywhere. Harry potter has a lot more beautiful lessons and you are invalidating them just because there are no queer storylines? Learn to separate the art from the artist. If a queer book like will Grayson doesnt have black character does it mean its tone deaf to racism? No one would say that. Every book explores a different agenda and a absence of a particular one doesnt make it any less beautiful and nor does it give anyone the right to devalue it based on that absence. This comment on the harry potter franchise only shows the author’s superficial pro trans ideas. If you cant be accepting of different ideas of a book how are you accepting of different ideas of gender i wonder!
THANK YOU, the one person on this article who has actual reasons for their opinion instead of commenting abuse at the author who wrote it. The time period and place the Harry Potter universe is set in means that there wasn’t much cultural diversity and no one was out, but I still think she should have tried a little harder to make the non-white characters better and more realistic, because its not hard to come up with a Korean name better than Cho Chang, or to give the Patel sisters Yule Ball outfits that weren’t a direct mockery of their race. Just because they’re South Asian/Indian doesn’t mean they have to wear clothes that reflect that. The diversity is amazing for the time it’s set in but that gives her no excuse to be lazy when writing those characters. Not to mention that Tonks and Remus made no sense together when it was clearly alluded to that they were queer. Even if it couldn’t be explicitly said that they were, it didn’t really make sense to put them together, but that’s just my opinion. Anyways, good job on actually being mature compared to the rest of the comments.
Not including a queer storyline doesnt render a book tone deaf. A fictional story can be about so much more than raising lgbtq issues. They are relevant issues but they need not be present everywhere. Harry potter has a lot more beautiful lessons and you are invalidating them just because there are no queer storylines? Learn to separate the art from the artist. If a queer book like will Grayson doesnt have black character does it mean its tone deaf to racism? No one would say that. Every book explores a different agenda and a absence of a particular one doesnt make it any less beautiful and nor does it give anyone the right to devalue it based on that absence. This comment on the harry potter franchise only shows the author’s superficial pro trans ideas. If you cant be accepting of different ideas of a book how are you accepting of different ideas of gender i wonder!
You do realize that these books were written in a time when if there was a gay character featured in a story it couldn’t be advertised as or given an age rating for children to read it. Rowling revealed that Dumbledore is gay after this law was overturned.
Please you are no one to say bullshit about J.K. Rowlling…She’s the best author ever known
Why was this even published?
SOME Points Are Fair…But The Chunk About Not Making The Characters What The Fans Wanted Is Just Beyond Stupid. The Lorax Did’t Make The Once-Ler Have Sex With Himself (Known As Onecest) And Harry’s And Draco’s Kids Should’t Be Gay For Each Other Just Because Some Fans Shipped It.
This article disappoints me. One thing our culture lacks is respect. People might have different opinions than you and that is OK. If Rowling states what she believes about transgender people, you can disagree, but show some respect. She has the right to express her opinion as well, so people should just accept that. Everyone has different views, lets keep that in mind. We dont all have to agree. Lets all respect eachother and our right to choose, and not be jerks to those who dont have the same opinions.
God Bless,
Keagan