In addition to my loathing of the author, I have to say I am also really bothered how the books normalize slavery, glorify blood purity and elite privilege, treat systemic child abuse as comic relief, use goblins as thinly veiled anti-Semitic caricatures, reduce fat characters to jokes, sideline women or box them into tired tropes, justify authoritarianism with a shrug, romanticize magical servitude, paint non-human creatures as inherently dangerous, and act like destiny is a substitute for character development — all while the wizarding world runs on a caste system and no one ever questions it.
Ok fair, and kind of obvious now that I think about it. But a lot of people seem to also be arguing that the books can stand alone and be enjoyed separate from the author’s discriminatory beliefs. And if that is the case, then let’s take the books separately, and examine what they really are presenting to the audience that loves them so much. Even forgetting about Rowling, can these people really say they feel it’s totally ok to enjoy a classicist story about discrimination, slavery, and child abuse, etc.? And that they should be allowed to enjoy such a story without anyone casting aspersions against them?
FAMILY guy pretty much foreshadowed her writing, and “coming out as transphobic, but a couple years” they were on to sometime that people were ignorant back then.(there was at least 2 cutscenes about her).
1 where peter was reminiscing about her “know problematic writing of jk rowling”
Which makes it mind bogglingly insane how many claimed “feminists” support her because of her stance on trans people.
Hermoine and Ron ending up together is shit. He treats her like garbage throughout the series.
Bellatrix is presented as this fucked up “Daddy’s Little Monster” to Voldemorts Joker.
All of the “good” women are passive little teachers and moms.
What happens to Tonks is especially gross as shit. You have a GNC women. Goes by a shorten, masc-ish name. Short hair, colors, dresses ambiguously.
Then she gets married off to the other queer coded character. (Werewolf = HIV, I’m pretty sure she straight up said that at one point.) He calls her her extremely feminine birth name, and iirc the text even mentions that she is vaguely uncomfortable with that? Then gets knocked up and killed off. She gets to die a “proper woman.”
TERFs say “trans men shouldn’t transition! Just be a non confoming woman!” But it’s a fucking front. They are a conservatives in disguise. They don’t want GNC people to exist, just like they don’t want trans people to exist. “Just be non-binary! But also, shave your legs and wear makeup and make sure to present in a feminine way.”
If I was a billionaire feminist who could buy courts, I could think of several better priorities.
If I were a billionaire, the amount of low-to-no cost housing, green energy, and fiber internet I would build would be off the charts. And with Elon Musk money, I’m fairly certain I could ensure that NO ONE in the US would ever have to worry about where their next meal would come from. Certainly not schoolchildren. Also, I would commission a third season of the classic 1999 anime Big O, with the original writers and showrunner.
Correct me if I’m wrong - I’m not American, so I wouldn’t see this regularly - but I swear I heard about a lotto jackpot or two that hit the billions of dollars (maybe it was close, if wasn’t that much). So it’s possible (rare as all fuck, but possible on occasion) to get to that - or close to it - without building it on the backs of the working class. If that happened to DominusOfMegadeus then that would be awesome! All for it. It’s unfortunately more likely that you’re crushing people’s spines as you climb the mountain of them to reach that amount though. Blargh…
She did give away a lot of money to charity. About 16% of her wealth when she became a billionaire iirc. Gave to help children in poverty and to fight the disease MS.
I don’t know much about her stance on trans people other than she seems to believe that there is a difference between trans and biological women. Feel free to drop a good link where I can educate myself.
Anyway, reading comments here make it sound like she’s a modern day Hitler that’s never done anything good in her life, and that sounds both unfair and untrue.
I have no idea what book series you read (or if you’ve read it at all) but you are…very off on this take.
Don’t get me wrong, JK Rowling is a total piece of shit, but the books themselves are distinctly anti classism, “blood purity,” slavery, misogyny, and a whole host of other things you listed.
Are they without any flaw? Certainly not. Is it okay if people boycott the media because of Rowling’s ongoing transphobia? Absolutely. But most of what you’ve listed about the book series is blatantly untrue…
I think people like to take all the poorly written parts of HP and conflate them with bigotry. Its possible, but jk Rowling is just a shitty writer who does not plan ahead at all. I still think fans wrote the last three books via posting theories on HP forums.
I’d have to see the spreadsheet before I’d give her any credit for having one. The story gets w9rse and worse as it goes, I can’t imagine she planned that. The ending is absurd and I haven’t heard anyone defend it successfully.
I will definitely concede that her writing is amateurish and poorly conceived at best, and it’s entirely possible some of these issues are due to that. However since all of it came out of her brain, and these themes are how she thinks about the world, it might be trickier than that to separate the two so neatly.
I agree she is anti classism, and anti “blood purity,” but there is no redemption for the enslaved elves. Hermione written as irritating and the strong women are housewives and spinsters.
She is fine with different people moving to her country as long as they assimilate, so muggleborns and half-bloods can be wizzies too as long as they wear robes and curse in Merlin’s name. She hates multiculturalism, which is why the elves stay enslaved. They’re irreconcilably different. Sort of like transfolk. We’re different, in a way that can’t just be assimilated away.
Or… something like that. Her politics are kind of incoherent.
Her writing shows that her thinking is not logical. She was pro-remain usually means pro multicultural, but not in her case.
I know no details about the abuse she suffered, but she certainly distrusts men. I suspect she views all trans people as men in wigs trying to take advantage of women.
She doesn’t back down (see Stephen Fry “pocketed it” story) so every faux pas gets double downed upon and becomes a belief, no matter how illogical.
But all this comes after the books. I see the pro slavery, anti intellectualism and distinct lack of strong females in the books, but no anti trans or racism. She clumsily including non white characters which seems like they are editor suggested afterthought rather than a negative bias.
In the book goblins are “A short and stocky humanoid with black eyes, a domed head and long fingers.” but the movies add hooked noses and a Star of David mosaic on the bank floor.
She had a lot of power in the movie (all UK cast, filmed in UK) so she could have vetoed the depiction if she wanted.
Doesn’t HP end up a literal magic cop at the end of the series? The whole caste system is also upheld throughout, at no point is revealing the wizarding world to muggles even considered an option despite the fact that little kids are dying from cancer all over Britain/the world that could be magically healed in an afternoon. The whole SPEW thing is just profoundly racist and always has been. “Cho Chang” – nuff said. The whole point of Hogwarts is that it’s a boarding school, which proudly inherits all its real-world British characteristics which are intrinsically linked to the more problematic parts of the British class system.
Rowling has always been a bigot and I will die on this hill. Any progressive messaging that people read into harry potter is at best performative (for instance yes she explicitly denounces “blood purity” pretty early on, but that’s super performative considering her entire worldbuilding is built on the premise that some people are just inherently magical and others are inherently not invited to the party. “Blood purity contests” are only bad when wizards to it to other wizards.).
I don’t think she’s a good enough writer to have done most of the racist/classist/misogynist messaging intentionally, but nonetheless her reactionary poorly thought-out world view transpires through every bit of her writing.
EDIT: Trying to expand on my own thoughts here. I’ve always despised HP as a franchise so to try to be fair to HP let’s contrast and compare with the piece of shit author who did make a book I like, Ender’s Game. I pirated it a couple years back, and I won’t pretend it’s not obvious at times that he’s a homophobe and a religious nutcase with some obvious cognitive dissonance with some of his (at least at the time) progressive views. I guess the good thing about that particular IP is that there’s no new stuff coming out besides one awful movie, so everyone can agree Orson Scott Card can get fucked and move on with their lives. But it’s important to acknowledge that his religious zealousness did impact his writing and to take a step back even if we decide to still appreciate his work.
The problem is that HP fans are in a much tougher situation because the writing just isn’t good so if you drop the flimsy pretense that 2000s Rowling was a champion of liberal ideals, then you really don’t have much left besides a profoundly flawed worldbuilding with shitty characters who only work to uphold the wizarding status quo. Yeah I’d get pretty mad too if I had spend my teenage years obsessing over that heap of trash.
Never read one completely nor watched a full movie, but it always felt cheap and written from the unenlightened perspective of a simple mind to me.
The fantasy books of my generation, such as The Neverending Story, Momo, The Hobbit, Jim Knopf were a whole different level. Life experience and a touch of wisdom in a great story for children.
But I also think that it might be just my perspective, since my mind has been imprinted like that. I’m not judging anyone for being a Harry Potter fan and try to think of it as different, not worse.
I would imagine reading the books or watching the movies as a child probably endeared them to a lot of people. Don’t underestimate the nostalgia that people have, especially before it was widely known how troublesome the author is.
JK Rowling sounds like an incredibly talented author. Most people just massage things into place. Reuse tropes. But you’re saying she baked her worldview into practically every sentence?
If I see ugliness in the world, I might express it as I see it. I don’t have to think something is right for me to include it in a story. Do you think I’m special? Am I the only person capable of writing things that I don’t necessarily support? Everyone else is forced to include things they personally would vote for. If you write about slavery, that means you love slavery. Is it weird that I’m capable of being against slavery, yet it’s possible for me to include it in stories? Should I be using this power?
I didn’t realize Rowling was one of the best authors. I thought she just reused things without really thinking. I never knew it was 100% meticulous and so… thought out. I don’t think even Tolkien can be said to inject so much meaning into every single page.
You realize she didn’t write about slaves right? She made the main character a slave owner and had a plot point about how much the slaves love being slaves and dobby is just weird for not wanting to be a slave.
Am I the only person capable of writing things that I don’t necessarily support?
I can’t speak to that. But I can say that I don’t think that sentiment applies to her. And I think there’s a difference between a viewpoint that one can objectively examine from both sides, and a bias, that is so deeply ingrained to one’s psyche that it colors how one perceives the world. And yes, I do think both things exist.
In addition to my loathing of the author, I have to say I am also really bothered how the books normalize slavery, glorify blood purity and elite privilege, treat systemic child abuse as comic relief, use goblins as thinly veiled anti-Semitic caricatures, reduce fat characters to jokes, sideline women or box them into tired tropes, justify authoritarianism with a shrug, romanticize magical servitude, paint non-human creatures as inherently dangerous, and act like destiny is a substitute for character development — all while the wizarding world runs on a caste system and no one ever questions it.
So I will be passing on this series, personally.
this what most of the people are elucidating her meaning of her books, its her subtle way to express her transphobia, anti-semititism, etc.
Ok fair, and kind of obvious now that I think about it. But a lot of people seem to also be arguing that the books can stand alone and be enjoyed separate from the author’s discriminatory beliefs. And if that is the case, then let’s take the books separately, and examine what they really are presenting to the audience that loves them so much. Even forgetting about Rowling, can these people really say they feel it’s totally ok to enjoy a classicist story about discrimination, slavery, and child abuse, etc.? And that they should be allowed to enjoy such a story without anyone casting aspersions against them?
FAMILY guy pretty much foreshadowed her writing, and “coming out as transphobic, but a couple years” they were on to sometime that people were ignorant back then.(there was at least 2 cutscenes about her). 1 where peter was reminiscing about her “know problematic writing of jk rowling”
Not sure about the book but the movies are quite good and don’t promote directly any of the things you claim
Which makes it mind bogglingly insane how many claimed “feminists” support her because of her stance on trans people.
Hermoine and Ron ending up together is shit. He treats her like garbage throughout the series.
Bellatrix is presented as this fucked up “Daddy’s Little Monster” to Voldemorts Joker.
All of the “good” women are passive little teachers and moms.
What happens to Tonks is especially gross as shit. You have a GNC women. Goes by a shorten, masc-ish name. Short hair, colors, dresses ambiguously.
Then she gets married off to the other queer coded character. (Werewolf = HIV, I’m pretty sure she straight up said that at one point.) He calls her her extremely feminine birth name, and iirc the text even mentions that she is vaguely uncomfortable with that? Then gets knocked up and killed off. She gets to die a “proper woman.”
TERFs say “trans men shouldn’t transition! Just be a non confoming woman!” But it’s a fucking front. They are a conservatives in disguise. They don’t want GNC people to exist, just like they don’t want trans people to exist. “Just be non-binary! But also, shave your legs and wear makeup and make sure to present in a feminine way.”
If I was a billionaire feminist who could buy courts, I could think of several better priorities.
If I were a billionaire, the amount of low-to-no cost housing, green energy, and fiber internet I would build would be off the charts. And with Elon Musk money, I’m fairly certain I could ensure that NO ONE in the US would ever have to worry about where their next meal would come from. Certainly not schoolchildren. Also, I would commission a third season of the classic 1999 anime Big O, with the original writers and showrunner.
Unfortunately if you were a billionaire you’d be a selfish sociopath so wouldn’t think of any of these things.
Correct me if I’m wrong - I’m not American, so I wouldn’t see this regularly - but I swear I heard about a lotto jackpot or two that hit the billions of dollars (maybe it was close, if wasn’t that much). So it’s possible (rare as all fuck, but possible on occasion) to get to that - or close to it - without building it on the backs of the working class. If that happened to DominusOfMegadeus then that would be awesome! All for it. It’s unfortunately more likely that you’re crushing people’s spines as you climb the mountain of them to reach that amount though. Blargh…
Lotteries are a tax on poor people.
They are also a “bread and circuses” type thing.
Plus basically all the winners end off worse than before/dead
Projection much?
Huh? My point was that there’s a reason we never get good billionaires.
It was phrased as an accusation
It actually wasn’t.
She did give away a lot of money to charity. About 16% of her wealth when she became a billionaire iirc. Gave to help children in poverty and to fight the disease MS.
I don’t know much about her stance on trans people other than she seems to believe that there is a difference between trans and biological women. Feel free to drop a good link where I can educate myself.
Anyway, reading comments here make it sound like she’s a modern day Hitler that’s never done anything good in her life, and that sounds both unfair and untrue.
I have no idea what book series you read (or if you’ve read it at all) but you are…very off on this take.
Don’t get me wrong, JK Rowling is a total piece of shit, but the books themselves are distinctly anti classism, “blood purity,” slavery, misogyny, and a whole host of other things you listed.
Are they without any flaw? Certainly not. Is it okay if people boycott the media because of Rowling’s ongoing transphobia? Absolutely. But most of what you’ve listed about the book series is blatantly untrue…
I think people like to take all the poorly written parts of HP and conflate them with bigotry. Its possible, but jk Rowling is just a shitty writer who does not plan ahead at all. I still think fans wrote the last three books via posting theories on HP forums.
She had a spreadsheet outlining the plot and character beats for the last books by the time the first film was made.
She’s just not a great writer.
That is called a timeline, which most great authors do. It is character and story path development 101.
I’d have to see the spreadsheet before I’d give her any credit for having one. The story gets w9rse and worse as it goes, I can’t imagine she planned that. The ending is absurd and I haven’t heard anyone defend it successfully.
I will definitely concede that her writing is amateurish and poorly conceived at best, and it’s entirely possible some of these issues are due to that. However since all of it came out of her brain, and these themes are how she thinks about the world, it might be trickier than that to separate the two so neatly.
I agree she is anti classism, and anti “blood purity,” but there is no redemption for the enslaved elves. Hermione written as irritating and the strong women are housewives and spinsters.
She is fine with different people moving to her country as long as they assimilate, so muggleborns and half-bloods can be wizzies too as long as they wear robes and curse in Merlin’s name. She hates multiculturalism, which is why the elves stay enslaved. They’re irreconcilably different. Sort of like transfolk. We’re different, in a way that can’t just be assimilated away.
Or… something like that. Her politics are kind of incoherent.
Her writing shows that her thinking is not logical. She was pro-remain usually means pro multicultural, but not in her case.
I know no details about the abuse she suffered, but she certainly distrusts men. I suspect she views all trans people as men in wigs trying to take advantage of women.
She doesn’t back down (see Stephen Fry “pocketed it” story) so every faux pas gets double downed upon and becomes a belief, no matter how illogical.
But all this comes after the books. I see the pro slavery, anti intellectualism and distinct lack of strong females in the books, but no anti trans or racism. She clumsily including non white characters which seems like they are editor suggested afterthought rather than a negative bias.
Don’t forget the Goblins! Although I don’t know if that was from her or from Universal Studios.
In the book goblins are “A short and stocky humanoid with black eyes, a domed head and long fingers.” but the movies add hooked noses and a Star of David mosaic on the bank floor.
She had a lot of power in the movie (all UK cast, filmed in UK) so she could have vetoed the depiction if she wanted.
Doesn’t HP end up a literal magic cop at the end of the series? The whole caste system is also upheld throughout, at no point is revealing the wizarding world to muggles even considered an option despite the fact that little kids are dying from cancer all over Britain/the world that could be magically healed in an afternoon. The whole SPEW thing is just profoundly racist and always has been. “Cho Chang” – nuff said. The whole point of Hogwarts is that it’s a boarding school, which proudly inherits all its real-world British characteristics which are intrinsically linked to the more problematic parts of the British class system.
Rowling has always been a bigot and I will die on this hill. Any progressive messaging that people read into harry potter is at best performative (for instance yes she explicitly denounces “blood purity” pretty early on, but that’s super performative considering her entire worldbuilding is built on the premise that some people are just inherently magical and others are inherently not invited to the party. “Blood purity contests” are only bad when wizards to it to other wizards.).
I don’t think she’s a good enough writer to have done most of the racist/classist/misogynist messaging intentionally, but nonetheless her reactionary poorly thought-out world view transpires through every bit of her writing.
EDIT: Trying to expand on my own thoughts here. I’ve always despised HP as a franchise so to try to be fair to HP let’s contrast and compare with the piece of shit author who did make a book I like, Ender’s Game. I pirated it a couple years back, and I won’t pretend it’s not obvious at times that he’s a homophobe and a religious nutcase with some obvious cognitive dissonance with some of his (at least at the time) progressive views. I guess the good thing about that particular IP is that there’s no new stuff coming out besides one awful movie, so everyone can agree Orson Scott Card can get fucked and move on with their lives. But it’s important to acknowledge that his religious zealousness did impact his writing and to take a step back even if we decide to still appreciate his work.
The problem is that HP fans are in a much tougher situation because the writing just isn’t good so if you drop the flimsy pretense that 2000s Rowling was a champion of liberal ideals, then you really don’t have much left besides a profoundly flawed worldbuilding with shitty characters who only work to uphold the wizarding status quo. Yeah I’d get pretty mad too if I had spend my teenage years obsessing over that heap of trash.
Agree with you. You could take most fantasy stories ever written and apply the same “injustices” wrongly so. I call that reaching.
None of that matters, as it’s a book… The problem is her as a person.
You could apply the same logic to most fantasy and claim they are racist and pro-monarchy. Harry Potter isn’t really as bad as you make it sound.
Never read one completely nor watched a full movie, but it always felt cheap and written from the unenlightened perspective of a simple mind to me.
The fantasy books of my generation, such as The Neverending Story, Momo, The Hobbit, Jim Knopf were a whole different level. Life experience and a touch of wisdom in a great story for children.
But I also think that it might be just my perspective, since my mind has been imprinted like that. I’m not judging anyone for being a Harry Potter fan and try to think of it as different, not worse.
I would imagine reading the books or watching the movies as a child probably endeared them to a lot of people. Don’t underestimate the nostalgia that people have, especially before it was widely known how troublesome the author is.
Piers Anthony was my jam as a kid
JK Rowling sounds like an incredibly talented author. Most people just massage things into place. Reuse tropes. But you’re saying she baked her worldview into practically every sentence?
If I see ugliness in the world, I might express it as I see it. I don’t have to think something is right for me to include it in a story. Do you think I’m special? Am I the only person capable of writing things that I don’t necessarily support? Everyone else is forced to include things they personally would vote for. If you write about slavery, that means you love slavery. Is it weird that I’m capable of being against slavery, yet it’s possible for me to include it in stories? Should I be using this power?
I didn’t realize Rowling was one of the best authors. I thought she just reused things without really thinking. I never knew it was 100% meticulous and so… thought out. I don’t think even Tolkien can be said to inject so much meaning into every single page.
You realize she didn’t write about slaves right? She made the main character a slave owner and had a plot point about how much the slaves love being slaves and dobby is just weird for not wanting to be a slave.
I can’t speak to that. But I can say that I don’t think that sentiment applies to her. And I think there’s a difference between a viewpoint that one can objectively examine from both sides, and a bias, that is so deeply ingrained to one’s psyche that it colors how one perceives the world. And yes, I do think both things exist.