On the one hand I understand the impulse behind posts like this. On the other hand I actually think it's very worth talking about the ways that Rowling's bigotry shows up in her work, and the fact that it has not been an obstacle to her success any more than her tangible political actions have.
por ejemplo: for as much as we talk about things like the bizarrely pro-slavery SPEW plotline, or the portrayal of the goblins in the movies in particular, I have seen very few people engage with the fact that "a monstrous, violent brute is in the girl's bathroom, where it Does Not Belong" is a plot point in the very first installment of the series. that's pretty relevant when discussing the author's transphobia and transmisogyny!
It also helps put into perspective that she did not just suddenly fall down this radical pipeline. As someone from the UK, people like JK Rowling are a dime a dozen. Her politics were vaguely progressive for the time in which she was writing, enough for her to be held up as an “empowering female author” by her fans but still safe enough for mainstream British media to not feel in the least bit threatened by her (to an extent, I’m sure there were various fearmongering tabloids about her and her books during the 90s/2000s, but nowadays the media will pretend like she’s always been their Favourite Woman because nothing about her is actually threatening the status quo anymore). This allowed her to gain the level of influence that she did, having fans on all sides of the political spectrum. She was a bit of a feminist, in the sense that she was an independent woman who supported various feminist movements, but she was centrist enough to not really offend anyone except the loudest of bigots and conservatives, to which she could easily point them out and prove that she wasn’t as bad as them! She doesn’t even despise gay people! One of her characters is even gay it’s just never mentioned in the books at all and has zero impact on the story whatsoever and never has to be forced onto you if you don’t want it!
Her lukewarm yet radical politics are extremely UK-based, rooted in our class system, colonial history and Radical Feminist marches of the 70s and 80s. Every other white, middle class English woman thinks almost identically to JK Rowling. My mother thinks identically to JK Rowling. The politics in her books are an intimate look into the politics of “progressive” British society, and that is why it’s so impertinent that we do actually discuss them. TERF ideology did not spring from nowhere. It was a product of both its time and location, and JK Rowling was right in the heart of it. She was a young adult during the Reclaim The Night Marches (prompted by a string of murders of mostly sex workers by the Yorkshire Ripper, but which was twisted by white, middle class women into a march for them while simultaneously looking down upon the sex workers who were murdered; hence the origin of SWERF ideology) and would have been heavily influenced by authors such as Germaine Greer and Julie Bindel.
It would require a thesis to explain exactly how every single questionable belief in Harry Potter is rooted in the politics and the history of the UK, and unfortunately without that context, it’s hard to discuss exactly how TERF ideology came about and why JK Rowling was so susceptible to it. We do need to discuss the contents of HP, including the homophobia, transphobia and racism that is so common amongst “progressive” Brits of that generation because otherwise we can’t protect ourselves against it. TERF ideology is rising exponentially throughout the globe without people understanding where it came from and why it specifically originated in the UK. The UK was built upon oppressive and violent systems. Our society has historically been segregated, not just by race, but also by class and gender. Our school systems are notorious for being segregated; you can throw a stone anywhere in the UK and you will hit a Boys’ school or Girls’ school. In my town alone, there’s about four. Everyone in my family went to a single-sexed school. Almost everyone I know went to a single-sexed school. Almost everyone in the government went to a single-sexed school. I cannot emphasise enough how the UK breeds bioessentialism like we will die without it. JK Rowling is not an outlier. She is white, middle class British society perfectly encapsulated into a single person, and her books are no different.
Oh this has cracked the lid on a thought I have been brewing about how girls-only and boys-only schools are framed as a sort of... Cozy? Nostalgic? Maybe specifically cozy and safe in a posh way, because they're associated with posh boarding schools more than borstal now.
It's a dangerous thing, related to other dangerous things too.
