JKR is transphobic. What can Potterheads do?
Millennials attack you if you disrespect their Harry Potter house, read a TikTok comment and I shriveled in shame as I took a sip from my Hufflepuff coffee mug. Call me new to the world of teens taking over the resistance movement, but I am here for it and all ears. Because the Gen Z has a lot to say, and in a vocabulary that we millennials are struggling to get on board with.
Staying true to my millennial blood, I shall return to the subject of Harry Potter because it is imperative that I do. JK Rowling going all at it again with her transphobic tweets and ideas was disappointing but not surprising. But the lack of novelty in her exclusionary politics has little to do with the way millennials have let her off the hook. Upset, bewildered they did what they do best. They returned to the books and have reminded themselves every reason they can find to justify holding on to their Harry Potter filled childhoods she gave them.
I fell upon Harry Potter in my 20s and so even though I am a millennial, I have experienced it differently. I adore the stories, I am filled with joy the way the book celebrates the ideas of chosen families, friendships, and the narratives of overcoming fear with togetherness.
But did we really need JKR to go off the rails with transphobia to see the problems with Harry Potter? The story, in its entirety, is ridden with lessons that not just lack inclusivity but walk on cruel binaries of who is worthy, brave, good, and evil. She makes a willful decision to sort the houses in a way that makes young minds believe that the world is split into brave, ambitiously evil, gullible, and smart. And among them, only the brave and the evil get centre stage. None of these ideas are far from her personal opinions on how humanity is to be then ‘sorted’. And anything that disturbs these binaries, must be invalidated by her.
While canceling is never a solution, millennials in their nostalgia are hell-bent on retaining a legacy that should be rightfully reduced to that of someone who encouraged hate. And in doing nothing, they not only display their privilege to maintain the status quo but also prove that they are plain petty. Even though the millennials and their childhoods have all my sympathy, it doesn’t explain this inability to stand on the side of the oppressed and withdraw support to JKR’s legacy.
How is withdrawing support different from canceling?
Cancel culture leaves no room for change. It is a mob judgment and it is to punish. It benefits from exclusion and is the group sharing of hate, instead of actually changing anything for the ones harmed by the person being canceled.
Withdrawing support, on the other hand, is the act of rewriting the legacy of such individuals. It is ensuring that history records both their famed art and their infamous problematic and exclusionary ideologies in the same breath. When we withdraw support from one place, that support is often and immediately diverted to voices that had been silenced and marginalized thus far.
Here are some ways to withdraw support:
1. Amplify criticism: Share the work that called out the artist’s work or stance that was found to be oppressive, problematic, or limited. Take the onus of conversations about the criticism as much you did to keep the merchandise of the art selling.
2. Donate: Give to causes that have been negatively affected by the artist’s work and clout that helps spread the problematic views of the artist. You have spent on making it to their book launches, concerts, movies; it is merely a diversion of that spending.
3. Encourage retelling: Especially when it comes to literature, support voices that can retell the problematic work of art from a marginalized person’s perspective. Re-writings help us recognize the stories that we are missing out on because of the systemic elimination of such voices.
With every time we discover a person we stan fall on their own sword, let us be reminded that there are people who don’t have the stage they deserve. And it is imperative, that we, who aided in building the legacy of someone who failed us all, do our part in shifting the balance of things.
Also, millennials, stop being petty and get on board with the Gen Z game.
