Hello everyone,

I saw recently another post on Lemmy which was fairly negative towards fans of the HP universe (some people announcing that they would block other people because those are HP fans)

I guess we can all agree by now that JKR’s transphobia is bigotry and should be condemned.

However, that still does not say what do to with that universe that we love.

I found an interesting article on that topic: https://www.popsugar.co.uk/entertainment/harry-potter-fans-jk-rowling-transphobia-essay-49214964

I guess the most important part is

Still, there may be a way to enjoy Harry Potter as a trans person or ally. Over the years, many fans have found creative ways to engage with the series’s magic while also acknowledging its creator’s bigotry. In her paper “Transformative Readings: Harry Potter Fan Fiction, Trans/Queer Reader Response, and J. K. Rowling,” Jennifer Duggan, an associate professor of English at the University of South-Eastern Norway — says that it’s possible to interpret the text of Harry Potter itself in ways that would certainly horrify its writer. “My central thesis—one which has also been argued by other academics like Thomas Pugh and David Wallace — is that the Harry Potter novels are deeply queer,” she tells POPSUGAR. “I mean this in both senses of the term: they champion nonnormativity through the contrast of the ‘perfectly normal’ Dursleys and Harry, and they are, at their heart, a story about a boy with an ‘abnormality’ (as the Dursleys call his magic) who comes out of his cupboard under the stairs and discovers and finds and affinity for a hidden, colourful, queer world. I take this argument further to argue that the novels are easily read through a trans lens, since there is a focus in many of the books on shapeshifting, including several cross-gendered transformations.”

Fandom, she adds, can provide spaces where Harry Potter fans can explore the series’s queer undercurrents while celebrating their own sexualities. “From what I have observed, I have concluded that for the most part, the Harry Potter fandom continues to offer queer and trans fans a positive space,” she tells POPSUGAR. “The two main trends I have seen in fan works are an ‘answer hate with love’ reaction, in which fans focus on trans positivity, and so-called ‘spitefic,’ which are works that are framed as revenge on Rowling for the hurt she has caused. These works are usually trans-positive, too. That said, I fully understand why some fans feel they can no longer engage with the texts in any way.”

Link to the research paper: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10583-021-09446-9

Seems an interesting way for me to re-appropriate the universe, what do you think?

  • @TheDoozer@lemmy.world
    14•6 months ago

    Okay, so here’s my take:

    It is very reasonable for people to stop buying things from the Harry Potter universe because of JKR’s shitty views, which she is vocal about. She sucks. If you can’t even read or watch her stuff without thinking about how shitty of a person she is, then by all means, stop reading or watching stuff. I wholeheartedly agree with your position, not that you need my personal approval for it.

    THAT BEING SAID, shitting on other people for consuming it in any way is some guaranteed glass house stone throwing. Nestle uses slave labor (including child slaves), takes water from drought areas and sells it elsewhere, and generally commits evil across the whole world in ways that ruin or end lives. The chocolate market is so inundated with slave labor and unethical practices that even companies like Tony’s Chocolonely who are specifically about ethically sourced chocolate can’t 100% guarantee child slave labor isn’t used. The meat and dairy industry torture animals their entire lives for the sake of efficiency. The atrocities committed around the world for the sake of the things we consume in the First World is unconscionable and there’s little we can do short of living a completely self-sustaining life.

    Now, I know what the immediate response is, that this is “whataboutism” or deflecting, but let me be clear. Child slaves, animal torture, environmental catastrophes are orders of magnitudes worse than a billionaire who talks shit about an already marginalized group. What she is doing sucks, and if you have a particular distaste for that, and that’s the particular hill you want to die on, then by all means. But unless you are a vegan who grows their own food and buys exclusively locally produced goods, put the stone down and go back to your Potter-free glass house.