Read the harry poster series a lot. I think I read the phoenix one +7 times. Won't stop me from punching j.k. bigot
this post was submitted on 07 Sep 2026
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Yeah... The closer you look at the Harry Potter books, the more you wonder how we didn't realise JK Rowling was a bigot sooner
Some artistic works age badly and I think it’s okay. It becomes a problem if artist themselves is aging badly and doubling down on things that could definitely be better about their works.
Exactly. If Rowling was willing to own up the problematic stuff in her books and grow from it, it wouldn't be a big issue. If she even disappeared into her castle and lived her life quietly releasing bad additions to the universe, it'd just blend into the background and only be occasionally brought up. Instead, JK became a Nazi who reinforces patriarchy, strengthens fascism, and made life hell for so many trans people.
All that is true but I think we need to acknowledge how JK started off a fairly moderate TERF and only became what she is today because of the interaction of her stubbornness with the reaction she got. If the goal is fewer bigots, there are lessons there for how to deal with TERFs.
Nah, she was already in too deep to rescue by the time she got pushback. She was too socially entrenched with bigots for anyone reasonable to reach her. Twitter drama is not responsible; her wealth, power, and how that impacted her social circle were.
People often think these descents into fascism are ideological, but it's been mostly interpersonal in every case I've witnessed. If someone is a rich white "feminist" with conservative tendencies, they can easily find friendship with people already deep in the brainrot. They then become reliant on that social group that leaving becomes costly, and fuck those minorities anyways. "They aren't my friends, so why should I care?"
Don't think of the detached internet as a space for recuperating fascists. Deprogramming cannot realistically happen there, not without more personal influence. It's parasocial to think otherwise.
The thing I just dont get is how someone who considers themselves a feminist has chosen a crusade where her greatest allies are people that would kick her back into the kitchen. Like all the groups that are as vocal as her about trans rights that take her side seem to be incels, manosphere idiots, and forced-birth christofacists.
If all it took to turn a terf into a bigot was to give the author some moderate criticisms about the systemic failings of their world building to turn them into a Nazi, I think the only solution is to prevent terfs from becoming authors.
Either that or we need to accept that this was always going to be the outcome of some privileged rich white idiot who can't handle the slightest bit of pushback who'd rather cozy up to Nazis than admit that maybe her writing isn't perfect.
I really disagree that twitter arguments are the same as "moderate criticism". Even if every single person who criticises someone does so moderately and reasonably, which is already very unlikely, simply being moderately criticised by hundreds of thousands of people is not something the human mind is equipped to deal with in a healthy way.
I disagree with the idea that she needed to be on Twitter and engage in twitter arguments. There was moderate criticisms of her across the net, the fact she WILLINGLY chose to engage in an opinion cesspool that let her drown in shit is her own goddamned fault.
Plenty of other people hired someone to deal with their social media accounts because they didn't want to subject themselves to socially-acceptable-4chan, she chose to chug sewage straight from the pipe despite having plenty of money and the connections to have it. Honestly, her not engaging with criticism with hostility would have done wonders for the whole situation.
Because every one who read it was a kid?
I mean, I was an aspie kid who was fascinated by much of the mold's writings but even I could notice some incredibly strange things:
- House elves being treated as slaves and none of the wizards finding it odd. And Hermione, the typical person whom I felt most normal, was put away as an annoying brat and nerd. C'mon!
- The suspiciously riches-obsessed and long-nosed kobolds
- The overt discrimination of wizards w/o wizard parents (being called Mudbloods; or those who are 'too Muggle-obsessed'.)
- JK only wanting people from the UK to play, even though it wouldn't always make sense. What about the Beauxbatons? The Durmstrang ones?
Probably part of the problem is that kids are not very principled.
Harry Potter is fascinating to me because the books have messages against bigotry in them, and you look at the author and wonder how the gap between reality and the story could possibly exist
A video essay I watched once made an interesting point, which was that JK named Hermione Hermione because she didn't want any real young girls to her bullied because of the books. Basically, she thought Hermione was the worst, and made the boys only barely tolerate her because she was useful to them.
But then a bunch of Hermione-coded girls started absolutely loving the books because they saw themselves in it, and the movies cast a pretty girl instead of an "ugly" one, and suddenly JK's "oh shit, uh, yeah... hero..." 😛
TBF, the red flags are there.
Hermione gets moked for protesting. slavery is normalised but it's ok, because one elf becomes free, no one cares about the rest...
And the rest of the house elves think he's weird for wanting freedom....
I was an adult when I started reading them because my younger sister liked them, back when the movies first came out. I definitely had a few moments of 'oh thats kinda wrong' but I thought it was just crappy writing in a kids book and moved on.
And now I know better (well, for years now but you know what I mean).
I feel like, if you think about what the book does, the gap isn't as big as you'd think.
"Hermione, don't let being muggleborn get you down. You're a powerful witch, and therefore have value. ...Let's just ignore how we treat Filch and act like his bitter attitude is his own fault, alright?"
"It is choices that matter, not circumstances. Like how the sorting hat chose for these people to be Slytherins, so they're all evil and probably ugly."
"Look at how heroic Harry is for freeing a slave. Now, we're going to give him a slave and not think too hard about that. In fact, Hermione wanting to free other slaves is annoying and we should laugh at her because of it."
Maybe the editors forced it to change?
wonder how the gap between reality and the story could possibly exist
This is because everyone can become an absolute bigoted POS like that terf if they really wish for it. But many of us decide that we don't really give a crap about other people's genitalia, let alone about what they do with it so we just live our lives as if that was none of our business. Because, you know, being a decent human being is not that hard and letting people live their lives as they want doesn't make your life worse.