How I Got Over JK Rowling’s Transphobia
By: Adriana M
Tags: Culture, Social Media, News, LGBTQ, Mindfulness

I refuse to let social media fill me with hate.

Image by Clker-Free-Vector-Images from Pixabay

It’s been an emotional year. We are in the middle of a pandemic; racism is alive and rampant; social discord seems to invade every inch of breathing room that the Coronavirus had not taken away already. And then, there was JK Rowling’s infamous transphobic rant. What. The. Fuck.

Amid the chaos, discovering that your idols have clay feet feels like being kicked in the gut when you are already down. It is not that it came as a huge surprise. There had already been signs of her transphobia before. But in the era of social media, I take statements under 280 characters long with a grain of salt. Many a celebrity has put their foot in their mouth when making a quick social commentary that sees one side of an issue when ignoring another. That is why Rowling’s previous “feminist” tweets gave me only a “is she or is she not” sort of discomfort. But now that the whole castle came crumbling down, I had to find a way to recover from what felt like a personal attack.

First of all, I must say that I am not a person who finds any enjoyment in being a victim. I believe in social justice, donate to worthy causes, vote, call my representatives. What I do not do is walk around, pointing at people who have beliefs different to mine and say: “see? That is a bad person.” My reasons for avoiding that kind of finger pointing are spiritual. Filling myself with anger and disdain for other human beings is exhausting and consuming, and it contributes neither to my personal growth nor to the world in general.

That being said, there are two big reasons for me to feel troubled about this particular debacle. One, some of the people that I love the most are trans. And two, the Wizarding World had been, until a week ago, my absolute favorite refuge from the chaos of real life.

I made my toddle as a creative writer in the fanfiction arena, writing on fanfiction.net under the pseudonym Slythadri. To this day, when I need a quick fix, I write one of those fics and make the beloved characters do as I please. I make Pansy Parkinson fall desperately in love with Harry Potter or decide that Draco Malfoy is gay and pining for one of the Weasley brothers. Writing those stories fulfills my dose of guilty pleasures, rearranges my compass, and makes me feel joyful and ready to take over the world. To have the creator of that wonderful mythology come out as a bigot that would be willing to offend my loved ones was like being hit in the head with a baseball bat. For a few days, I felt sour, unable to use my favorite escape.

Then I started reflecting on other times when I got great knowledge, satisfaction, or entertainment from the works of people who turned out to be not too great. For example, a few years ago, I attended meditation sessions at the Zen Buddhist temple in my city. It was always a wholesome experience, and I never got anything but positive vibes from the place. Then eventually, a scandal exploded. Apparently, the founder of the temple had been a charlatan, someone that was not a monk, had never been even close to taking orders, nor was he affiliated in any way with the organized aspect of the Buddhist path. A person with zero training had out of the blue decided to start a Zen Buddhist temple — what a clusterfuck.

Did that ruin the experience for me? No, it didn’t. I had a few days of doubts and soul searching, and in the end, concluded that nothing bad had happened when attending those meditation sessions. The dubious character was not around anymore, the current leader was a known ordained monk, and the community was wonderful. The murky beginnings of the temple did not cast a shadow over the benefits that it provided to the world.

Then this morning, I had an epiphany: if I had met Ernest Hemingway, I would have probably despised him. The man that Vanity Fair described in 1934 as “America’s own literary caveman: hard-drinking, hard-fighting, hard-loving, all for art’s sake” sounds like a nightmare to me. Had he been born in this digital age, he would probably be a regular on TMZ. Afterward, I picked up The Snows of Kilimanjaro and gave it a quick read. It is an example of excellent literary work. The feelings the written piece awakes in me do not have to correlate with my personal opinion of the writer. They are two separate entities.

I also remembered that once a book, a movie, or an art piece is finished and let out in the world, it doesn’t belong to the artist anymore. It belongs to the public. It belongs to those who consume it.

Nowhere is that more evident than in the fanfiction world. Those of us who read and write fanfiction take the book that someone else wrote, deconstruct it, tearing it to pieces, and then built it up again. And we do it for pure, selfish pleasure because we want to. Because it is out there for us to enjoy in any way we please.

Remember the guys that cut the Nike symbols off their socks after the company supported Colin Kaepernick’s kneeling during the national anthem? What did those guys get with that? Socks that now slip inside their shoes when they walk. My point is they could have disagreed with Kaepernick’s actions and still have socks that work. Similarly, I will now disregard JK Rowling as a person not worth my time and energy but will take the wizarding mythology with me because it belongs to the world. I would turn it into something that works for me.

The saving grace of this whole fiasco was the statement given by Daniel Radcliff through the Trevor Project. Harry Potter himself reminded us that “If these books taught you that love is the strongest force in the universe, capable of overcoming anything; if they taught you that strength is found in diversity, and that dogmatic ideas of pureness lead to the oppression of vulnerable groups; if you believe that a particular character is trans, nonbinary, or gender fluid, or that they are gay or bisexual; if you found anything in these stories that resonated with you and helped you at any time in your life — then that is between you and the book that you read, and it is sacred.”

Well said, Daniel. I will definitely follow your lead.