JK Rowling: the burden of Education and an outsiders perspective of the Harry Potter Woman

The First part of the Soul: The Burden Of Education

The burden of Education is something I have lived with, and it is something that other disabled people will know about pretty much instantly. for those who don’t, it is the idea that minorities have an implicit (hidden) suggestion to educate those who are the majority in any given social and societal setting.

Especially in spaces wherein being trans is the difference maker, being at all seen as queer, as different, in some environments feels like a death sentence. It feels like I am a billboard with a thousand different things written on me, but in the least sexy way possible and with a permanent marker instead of a whiteboard pen.

The burden of education in a room full of cisgender and heterosexual people is therefore falling on my shoulders as a person from that minority group. Now, I am privileged in the fact that I can effectively explain my gender and have done enough therapy to know what makes me tick. Of course, the question I pose to you is should it be my responsibility alone to educate? And by me I mean disabled people, people that are not everything society expects of them. I extend that from disabled people to everyone that is part of any minority ever. If we take that further into spaces which aren’t just about disability, queerness, and neurodivergence if we take it to what just over half of the population are: women.

How many times has a menstruating person (likely a woman, but I use that language purposely because menstruation is a biological process and is not constrained to one gender or the other)?

Let me raise a question to you: as someone that does not mentrate, am I allowed to ask invasive questions, such as how it feels, what emotions are you going under and even more inasive questions, or would that seem like the burden of educating me (a non-binary, non-menstruating person) on the inner workings of the reproductive cycles of the other person? The point I am trying to make here is one about the burden of educating people.

Should it be down to the minorities to keep on educating the majority about the experiences of a specific group? And as the experiences of neurodivergent people illustrate to us (to mean the general population), if you’ve met one, then you have only met one. Therefore, it is not specifically important for me to illustrate my story to you as a member of a minority group. Therefore this opens up the gates for me to ask one question, and I am going to put this bluntly because having this burden weighs on me heavily: should people who are of a majority group read some shit and try to educate themselves, or should they rely solely on experiences?

Circling back to the woman Who Shall Not Be Named, then, the harder she pushes on ehr anti-trans buttons, the harder she rallies people, and the more she donates to anti-trans organisations (more on this in a second) and the further she tries to force the narrative that trans people are (like disabled people have been painted) a “drain on precious resources” for medical sytems, that people — particularly trans women — are predators and trans men and masculine people are merely “cutting their tits off for attention and want to become a man because of Male Privilege(TM)” the more we have to fight.

The more we need to fight, the further the burden of education falls on us. And therefore, more annoyed, grated, and fearful we become of the Woman Who Shall Not Be Named and the people she is enabling.

I as a person that already needs to educate on so many other fronts also needs to educate on my existence as a person that fucks gender norms as much as they exist. I am not a walking bilboard of minority experiences, I am a person. I am a human, I have a job and a life and goals and dreams and things to do. Bieng trans a a part of me, yes, but is si not the only thing. I am not merely a husk painted in yellow, purple, black and white.

Unfortunately, I am not afforded the same opportunities because of people like Rowling. People like Rowling want me dead — to call me a predator most likely — and hurt some of my dearest friends and colleagues.

And so the burden of education does not only fall on me, but the worries too. And those worries further sap at my ability to educate in a never ending cycle of having the aforementioned burden on my shoulders. Of course, there are also other eliments in there, too. Let us get onto the second, then.

The Second part of the Soul: Fuck, the whole country wants me dead.

Really I should welcome you to England. It's known as Terf Island by some people, and by others, it's known as the place of the crown. It doesn’t really matter what you know about it, because this problem is going to be one.

Abigail Thorn has suggested that this country is basically, as I suggested earlier and credit her for the humour, “TERF Island”.

To fully understand what happened, and why I am so angry, delving into the literary theory of books — and fantasy but also where applicable disability theory — is really important here. Thankfully for you I am an educator and did my dissertation in this stuff, so I know what I am on about.

The first place to start, is at the beginning: what are books as an object of culture? There are hundreds of things — blocks of text, beautiful cover designs, products, living objects, time-peices — and the list goes on, but the most important part in considering the fantasy genre is simply: does it provide an escape?

If we want to get more academic with it, Marek Oziewicz argues:

‘speculative fiction represents a global reaction of human creative imagination struggling to envision a possible future at the time of a major transition from local to global humanity.’

He suggests further that this category of literature seems to include narratives which are addressed to young people and adults in a variety of formats, and the genre embraces differences.

I was never really a Harry Potter child. I've been to the Wizarding World a few times, where my friend in Year Eight told me about all the cool movie magic things that they did, but I was never really into Rowling’s universe. This, though, doesn’t matter because if we are to suggest that the fact that I was into other Fantasy narratives, which for me provided a significant amount of escape, should be taken away from me.

Here, I think my experience as a minority may be valuable. Being from a minority background and being someone that has all of these invisible differences to the public, I take comfort in thw Fantasy fiction. It is well known that Derek Landy novels are what got me into my degree and uncovered my love of literature but if Derek had come out with some horrible aligations then I don’t know if I could come out with loving his work anymore and I dont know how much I would want to consume his works.

I think because of the escapism of his works provided me (and Rowling’s has provided to so many others) we need to question. I bring Landy up for two reasons: one, because he has included a non-binary character in his novels, and the other, because he is both a vocal and on-page supporter of minority rights and trans rights in particular.

I’m going to throw some horrible statistics at you: “experimental statistics” as given by the Office for National Statistics suggests that 0.55% of the England and Wales population is transgender. Focusing on the Young people for a second. The Trevor Project showcases this shocking statistic: 9% of LGBTQ+ young people seriously considered attempting suicide in the past year — including 46% of transgender and nonbinary young people. LGBTQ+ youth of color reported higher rates than White peers.

I am not going to go into the hundreds of stories I have of trans people being unable to access the medical care they need, them mental health services, the issues with employment, and the hundreds of other intersectional problems which are a part of the minority experience, but I will say this: it is heartbreaking to see a significant amount of people that I consider my family dying. I am in pain with every death, filled with fear at every time a outlet misgenders, deadnames, or fails to understand the complexity of the experiences of the group I am a part of. It hurts when the knife is dug deeper and deeper into my heart, and something feels off about it, and then I wonder if it is going to be me who dies for being who I am.

This fear is a result of what Rowling and the people like her do and the real effects that “gender-critical” ideology has on people. The fear of being the minority, the fear of being the people that are running instead of the people that are hunters.

Of course, I don’t know if Rowling had stayed silent about all of this stuff, hadn’t donated so much to charity — £70,000 — and was not so vocal about it, I don’t know if I would be more encoraging to get into her work. I don’t know if I can read the writer of People Who Want Me Dead, the writer who would happily go to jail for misgendering a trans person

Because the damage has already been done, and the reputation of Rowling will never be able to be untarnished. The conflict becomes even more interesting if you consider a literary theory and the cognitive dissonance that comes when the books and the movies are in different camps.

Third Part

Roland Barthes decided that it was right to publish his seminal essay Death of the Author in 1948 — and that is by one of the two prongs of literary attacks I'm going to fling at Rowling. I am not assassinating her character, but I am trying to make sense of the wider question: should we — and furthermore, can we love a piece of work by a woman who is so adamant about my destruction?

Away from the witch for a second and towards Barthes. He argues that a book becomes the reader’s book upon publication, and therefore, the author dies. It is the text which lives on after the (in some terms literal, but in JKR’s case metaphorical) passing of the writer, and it is the same reason why new literary responses are being made today to the literary “greats”: Shakespeare, Dickens, and why literary responses to new works: Finn Longman, my own novel(s), will be made.

If we really are going to argue that the writer is dead, that in this case Rowling is nearly decomposing as we have had her text in our hands for a very long time now, and it is the reader’s text, how do we negotiate the space that widens between reader and writer. How do we deal with the cognitive dissonance that comes into play when Harry Potter is written by such a woman but is celebrated by the movie cast?

How do we negotiate the space between the horror and hate that the woman herself has created, the movements she has founded and preached for and fights for, and the movements which the movie staff do?

Most — if not all of the actors — from the movie series have supported — vocally — trans people and their rights, fought for them and stood up (much like Landy did, and so did I) for the rights of trans people — the antis is of Rowling and her bigotry.

Facualt (1978) makes two interesting suggestions here that I want to unpact. Firstly, he suggests that writers are effectively people that will transend history and they are viewed as a hero. If we are to take my understanding of what Gacault calls a classifactory function, then, Rowling is already made famous by her creations, and as such, she will live on immortally. This becomes a problem if we are going to try and wrangle with her current works, but shouldn’t be a problem later, when we get to her newest political tomes.

The suggestion is that provided you don give any money to the witch — using second-hand books, using movies on DVD which have been pre-owned going to events which don’t put money directly into her pocket — then surely it doesnt matter because Rowling is “dead” and so what she has done and the wealth she has immersed and gives to causes which directly effect my community’s life, is horrible, yes but is it is the Reader’s story now.

As such, we should be able to enjoy it and live free, shouldn’t we?

Art is just that, art, some suggest. And the maker is horrible and destructive. But unless we bleed her dry of money, she is just going to keep going, and trying to get everyone to stop buying everything HP-related is going to be utterly horrible and unachievable. So therefore, why not continue?

I do see the point; the cognitive dissonance between knowing Rowling wants people like me dead and still being curious about her work is a dissonance which isn't going to leave me. Being passionate about an individual work is fine, and finding ways around it to enjoy but not monetarily support is okay. If you need it, then take it, but I suspect that more people than they realise are falling into the trap of Rowling — and her publishing house, too — and they don’t even know it.

Capitalism is a beast summoned from Hell, and the beast’s claws only get longer and wider and more horrid. I don’t know who summoned the beast and what created the monster, but these systems breed this sort of hate for finantial gain. Of course, because of Rowling’s newfound love of being a massive raging “Trans Exlusioninary radical Feminist”, she needed something to sit in; her views needed somewhere to go other things on her Twitter account because she hadn’t ruined enough lives quite yet. And the money is too sweet and feels too good in her fingers (she literally makes many jokes about her large royalty statements as a way to live with the hate she puts out into the world), so she decides to give birth to another ugly monster. Clue: its not a living child.

Rowling wants to get into crime writing — after, I assume, counting on her spreadsheets next to her royalty statements how many trans people she has denied healthcare to today and how many others she has decided aren’t trans because apparently she doesn’t understand how fluid gender is — and so comes up with this great idea to publish a Crime novel under a new name. Ironically, she publishes it under a male name: Robert Galbraith.

Of course, the literary discourse is that male names traditionally sell more because of the historical significance that men were the only ones historically able to be “connected enough” and “in touch” enough with reality to write. Considering women used to be deemed insane for wearing jeans, I think the bar was basically in Hell (along with Capitalism. Apparently, it comes from Satan himself; I am none the wiser).

Regardless, onto the mess which Rowling’s Crime novels are. Rowling decided to publish a specifically nasty, incoherent mess of an essay, and whilst I feel for her and understand why, I disagree on a human level with her resulting actions. I don’t mean it is incoherent in the sense that there isn’t a human element there — one of fear, and her view comes from her experiences.

However, as a trans person who was sexually assaulted once by an ex at fifteen and then again at twenty by my own father, I don’t share these views. I am a trans person, as I have stated, so I understand on a human level, but I still need to live with the consequences of people like Rowling’s views.

Whilst it comes from a human place, the fact is that the essay entitled

The essay was so questionable that a bookshop in Australia announced it would not be stocking any further books from Rowling or her Crime counterpart.

Rowling has liked many tweets regarding trans women being “men in dresses”, dismissing inclusive language and arguing against “people who menstruate”, and backed Maya Forstater (a woman fired for her transphobic tweets). During Pride month of 2020, she published an essay I will get to later.

Amongst all of this, Rowling has continued to double down on her transphobia and protests Scotland’s Gender Recognition Reform Bill that makes it easier for trans people to change their gender legally. Due to her raging transphobia, however, she struggles to contend with the idea that trans people are alive and that they exist. She argues, simply, that it should be a medical examination process that has a medical basis (because her suggestion that gatekeeping is the best thing to “protect spaces” and therefore having as many barriers to trans people and their existence is the best course of action, according to the torrents of hate she has).

Rowling presents a difficult one, in the sense that she is a walking oxymoron. It is possible, as she suggests, to both give trans people protection and deny others that same exact protection, you cannot have it both ways. Whilst, yes, the domestic and sexual violence figures for trans people are high, that is because we are a minority. Because of people like Rowling, we have to fear for our lives.

What Rowling is suggesting is that a transgender woman who has undergone hormone therapy and surgical transition (although optional) should go into male spaces — even though this is a male space.

The only way that Rowling — and others like her — have legs to stand on is simple: by denying how reality works. Her suggestion is that because trans people are very much aware of the difference between their sex and their gender, that someone a woman who goes into a male space (a male bathroom) should go in there because their sex is male, but their gender is female. So basically, what Rowling wants is to protect cisgender women, to throw trans women under the bus. Of course, this means that she doesn't care about trans people, as she states, but only cares about cisgender people, and creates a false dichotomy, a binary between Trans and Cis.

Emma Watson tweeted: “Trans people are who they say they are and deserve to live their lives without being constantly questioned or told they aren’t who they say they are.” In a second tweet, she said: “I want my trans followers to know that I and so many other people around the world see you, respect you and love you for who you are.”

Whilst this is one example of the binary which is created — and we will come to this later — between cisgender and transgender, the binary between these two groups who are on opposite sides of the fence creates a sense of cognitive dissonance. This dissonance between movie and book creates a pull for readers because whilst the woman who wrote the books and created the tome-filled worlds is a raging bigot, that doesn't extend to the movie cast. So, then, is it okay to support and stream the movie on that basis?

No because you are still giving money to Rowling. You are still, in supporting anything related to the witch, giving her money — and thus fueling the cycle of hate and pushing trans rights back. Do anything else, which means that she is not financially supported. Drain her of money, the argument goes, and she will die. Although practically, this is impossible, as I’ve stated.

As a result of her views and the dissection of them, an Australian Bookshop, as a result of the essay and the resulting activation of the massive transphobia button, announced that it would not be stocking any future title by her crime pen name or her current name for children. Many bookshops in many other places also followed, both before and after. This is an act of resistance and solidarity with the trans community and I am happy about it. Amoungst the horrors, there is a little bit of light.

It is also worth noting that the TikTok trend of Harry Potter fans burned her books in protest of her revealing her final form. Obvious ethical issues with book burning aside, ironic considering how much medical knowledge was lost about trans people due to this exact practice by the Natzis, I understand the anger.

As I've talked about previously, because of Rowling and her suggestions about what trans people mean to her — not very fucking much, apparently — the reaction is to burn everything she has to a crisp. The reaction is one of anger, of haterid because of everything she stands for, a rebellion against the magical world where they could escape from the horrors of the thorny, claw-filled world. And for trans people there are so many horrors as I have touched on.

Are these people morally right to burn books? No. Are these people emotionally right? Yes. The difference between these two things and the response to the “death” of Rowling and the denouncement of her by the trans community presents an interesting suggestion.

The interest lies between the reader's responses to some of the more radical suggestions (burning books), but, the more interesting thing is the whole together denouncement of Rowling as a figure as a result of her finally coming out of the woodwork, reformed, bigoted, and with a few unresolved issues of her own.

Forth Part of the Soul

She comes out of the woodwork with the worst novel ever published because it is not really a novel but a political manifesto described as fiction. Like a dagger in the dark, the novel Troubled Blood is an example of my first-year lecturer’s phrase: “texts are political, Eri. You won’t be able to find me one that isn’t.”

Constance Grady argued in a piece for VOX that one of Rowling’s Crime novels (Troubled Blood): Troubled Blood is a book in which aesthetics are subordinate to politics. There is no “there” there besides Rowling’s political ideas. And those ideas are reactionary and hateful.’

Ideas which are reactionary and hateful, with books that speak to each other via the medium of time, are not new; what is basically Rowling using this male name to — bluntly here — shit on trans people. After all, trans people are people. The book only really cares about pushing the ideology, which Rowling has spent so many years getting into. It doesn't function as a novel, really, but it only says it is a novel because that is the only medium Rowling knows how to work with. And even then, I don’t see much special in it.

Katelyn Burns in an article for THEM illustrates that in one of the novels — the second one — this specific transphobic scene where a Pippa (a trans woman) tries to stab the protagonist (Cormoran Strike) and a series of descriptions relating to how Pippa is a trans woman is noted in detail: her visible Adam’s apple, hands in pockets, etc. Strike effectively suggests that if Pippa tries to run — as a pre-op trans woman — that he will do his best to make it not fun for her.

It is situations like this which bring into question Rowling, and it is not so much — as in the previous section — about the death of the writer. If we are going to ignore how it is the reader’s story for a second, how in all hell are we going to ignore the blatant transphobia Rowling is portraying here? Even if you take the text at face value and read it with blinkers on, it still doesn’t mean that we can explain away Rowling’s mystery and “crime” novel. The only crime these novels are committing is being blatantly transphobic and giving massive I-want-trans-dead vibes, which is to be expected from the witch. Of course,

Any normal writer who is not obsessed would make the trans person a part of the story and not the villain. What readers need to understand is that the protagonist is the viewer’s eyes into the world and readers are meant to form an emotional relationship with them. Now, I don't know how much writing Rowling has done outside of her novels, but I would argue that someone who is this transphobic and against the rights of minorities strongly deserves the wrath of the publishing company.

Whilst there have been riots, the company themselves in response to her other works, haven't been able to denounce her fully — most likely because of the company having her as such a famous cornerstone and giving the bonuses to the bussiness peopel as a result.

However, for a woman that created a world full of identity, created a universe filled with magic and preached the idea that no matter the identity on an individual, they can be whoever they are. A tale, as De Hingh puts it: ‘Harry Potter is a story about transition, about coming home to an identity you don’t know yet but that’s unmistakably yours. ‘

So therefore, we come to the final frontier here:

Fifth Part: Conclusions

With Rowling and he novels becoming massive pieces of destruction and tomes full of political suggestions and to enjoy them, I suspect you need a ticket inside of her own head — texts are inherently political, but I don’t think writers need to write political tomes full of nothing of substance.

To really make this digestible and not make this essay longer than it is, the problem comes with the presentation of the people — and whilst based on real crime cases, it doesn’t excuse her choosing this one — that she has decided to feature in this novel.

Rowling and her essay — but also her texts and views publically — have driven artists (Derek Landy, for example) and even the actors from the movies against them.