Back to Hogwarts

by Tonya Pell, posted in Culture, grief, Identity

If you’ve known me for any length of time, you will know that I have been a Harry Potter fan since I was 11 years old. My elementary school librarian featured the author for a month during 4th grade, so I picked up The Sorcerer’s Stone and haven’t looked back. Even when other conservative, religious parents were decrying them for ‘promoting witchcraft’, my mom read the first three with me and encouraged me to keep reading them. Actually, what happened was that I was gifted The Goblet of Fire for Christmas the year it was published, but my mom said she wanted to read it first, because she had heard the story took a bit of a darker turn (not wrong there). I ended up bugging her so bad that she let me read it anyway. My parents and I went to see the first movie together and I remember being scared to watch Voldemort’s reveal at the end. I remember getting The Deathly Hallows a day early in the mail, because Wal-Mart messed up the delivery, so I stayed up all night reading the book and crying my eyes out at the end of Harry’s story… at the end of that chapter of my life.

I didn’t live in city big enough to host Harry Potter book release parties, but I did attend midnight screenings for the final two movies with friends. We dressed up and I, once again, cried my eyes out at the realization that this core part of my childhood was coming to an end. My first tattoo was the Deathly Hallows symbol with the saying Mischief Managed written beneath, like so many other millennial women before me. I had it done in London during my study abroad experience and it felt like a full circle moment for me. I’ve been to the Leavesden Studio Tour, right after it opened, and the Wizarding World at Universal Studios. I’ve owned countless merchandise, fan art, some of the illustrated books, as well as the same books I was gifted or bought as a child.

But none of my history with Harry’s story is a good enough excuse to continue to support the transphobic hate and bigotry that JK Rowling is supporting with her fortune. The fortune that I helped her build, like so many of us did, because we believed in the story she wrote around justice, friendship, and love. The very themes and lessons she’s currently denying the most vulnerable groups of people in our society by advocating for trans-exclusionary policies and spaces.

Before I dive into my story a bit more, I wanted to take a moment and say this: I know online there has been a lot said about how Harry Potter fans should or should not continue to support her work and the world she created. I wanted to share my perspective and experience coming to terms with my relationship with Harry Potter as a ciswoman in order to help other cisgender people unpack our privileges. For some cisgender people, it’s been easy to reconcile their relationship with Harry Potter. For me, and others, I don’t think it has been and I wanted to share why that’s been the case for me in an attempt to encourage other cisgender people to reflect in a deeper way. I recognize that transgender people will have a different perspective and experience on this. I have attempted to share the real life impacts of her bigotry towards transgender people throughout this essay, but if there is more that I could have done to center the reality of supporting her work and fortune, please drop me a message.

I have made a concerted effort in the last decade to not directly support Rowling with my own personal money. I have not been perfect, but I am a firm believer that we have power in the ways we spend money. I know that ethical consumption under capitalism is near impossible, but it’s one of the ways I do try to live my values out in real life. I still drink Coca-Cola (but am trying to cut back), I own a HP printer, I own an iPhone… and I’m sure I buy brands that I shouldn’t (for more information on the BDS movement click here). But I haven’t shopped on Amazon in a couple of years, I don’t eat at McDonalds or Starbucks, I canceled my Spotify subscription, and I am not engaging with any new Wizarding World media or merchandise. I am not saying this to act like I’m better than anyone or shame people for their choices; I’m doing it to educate and open a conversation about ethical consumption under capitalism. We all have to make choices every day on how we spend our money. I know it’s overwhelming to make the ethical choice every time. We can’t do it, that’s how late-stage capitalism keeps working. But we can choose to do nothing or we can choose to do something. And honestly… not watching a new TV show, when there’s a million other TV shows to watch AND a set of 8 movies that I personally think are still going to be better than the new TV show, doesn’t feel all that hard to do.

It doesn’t feel hard to me, because I’ve come to peace with my relationship with Harry Potter. For a couple of years, I would get really defensive and angry when I would see people bashing Harry Potter fans online. Even though I knew why we shouldn’t be supporting Rowling at that time, and I agreed with not supporting her, I was still angry that people acted like it should be an easy decision to just drop something that was so important to me and other people. But I knew I had to take a step back to think about why I was so angry. I knew I wasn’t really mad at the random strangers online, mainly because they’re random strangers online, but I wasn’t quite sure what made me feel so defensive still. It wasn’t until a few months ago, when I realized where my anger was really coming from.

Back in 2021, at my old job in the States, one of my colleagues created a virtual Harry Potter book club. I asked if I could help her and the Wizarding World book club began. We ran four clubs, one club for each of the first four books in the series, for two years. It was, hands down, my favorite memory from my previous job. When I moved to Ireland, I heard about a youth program at my university and they were asking for PhD students to lead educational programs with youth on the weekends. I had been looking for part-time jobs, and knew that I could easily adapt the virtual book club into an in-person book club instead. So I facilitated the book club again for two programs and it brought me so much joy to meet with youth on a Saturday morning to talk about the boy who lived.

When I was asked to come back for a third time, I said yes at first. And then the articles came out how Rowling was explicitly telling people that her wealth is funding anti-trans policy in the UK. While we all knew this was happening for years, here was the undeniable proof. I thought I was doing enough by not purchasing any official merchandise, not watching the last Fantastic Beasts movie, or telling people I wasn’t going to watch the new TV show. But I had to face the reality that with the book clubs, I was still encouraging the younger generation to buy the books and engage with her world, which was still ultimately adding to her fortune. While I was not using my own money to buy the books, and I am obviously not responsible for other people’s actions, I still needed to face the wider consequences of me facilitating the book club. While I had justified my facilitation with the argument that I was trying to draw out and highlight the overall messages and themes from the books that I knew informed me, and so many other fans, to fight for social justice as adults, I knew that it wasn’t a good enough justification. So I backed out from facilitating the book club. In that process of reflection, it hit me that the reason I would get so angry at the random strangers online was because I was really so angry at the author.

I am angry that she wrote a story that argued against hatred and bigotry, but she is using MY money, money I gave to her as a child and throughout my early adult years, to fund hatred and bigotry.

I’m angry that she is vilifying a group of people who need our love more than ever, but she wrote a story about what can happen when you vilify a group of people.

I’m angry that she is trying to claim her hatred will protect women, when we know that if trans women aren’t safe then none of us are safe.

I’m angry that she isn’t able to see that her real problem with the violence against women has nothing to do with trans women, but with men and the patriarchal violence they inflict on women every damn day. The same patriarchal violence that she is, in fact, perpetuating with her anti-trans rhetoric.

I am so damn angry that she is trying to ruin a part of my childhood that gave me a space to escape, a world where I learned what friendship should look like, a story that encouraged me to fight for justice, and a character that gave all bushy haired, nerdy girls like myself a hero to look up to.

Honestly, fuck her for thinking she can.

That’s why I’m at peace with my relationship to Harry Potter. I know the lessons I learned from those books and I will continue to live out those lessons and values by advocating for transgender people to live in this world free from violence and oppression. I’m not giving her the power to ruin my relationship with the most important book series of my life, but I also don’t need to add anything more to that relationship. I’m not going to remove my tattoo; if someone wants to ask me why I still have it, I’ll tell them why. I’m not going to throw away my well-read books. I’m not going to donate the few pieces of fan art that I still own. But I also don’t need, or want, to consume more Wizarding World media. I don’t need to share my love for the books with the younger generation. I don’t need to buy any more merchandise (and in fact if you are my friend, please don’t buy me any more). I don’t need to share my relationship or appreciation for the books with anyone except myself.

I think for the generation of people who grew up with Harry, that’s been a hard reality to accept. For decades, we had each other, the Harry Potter generation, to turn to for a sense of common ground, understanding, and experiences. So many of us have easily bonded over fond memories of watching the movies at midnight releases, attending book release parties & staying up late reading the books, writing fanfiction, watching A Very Potter Musical or Potter Puppet Pals, questioning which House you belong to, what your favorite class would have been, and all the other memories that meant something to us. And now… we’re realizing we can’t have that anymore. I know I’ve had conversations with friends throughout the years, including ones in the LGBTQIA+ community, about how Harry Potter gave us a community of nerds and geeks to feel safe with; to feel seen with… and that community has to break up in order to stop funding Rowling’s fortune.

I’d argue that many of us are collectively grieving over the loss of the shared community that so many of us have had for the majority of our lives. Grief might seem like a dramatic word to use in describing this collective feeling, but once I came to terms with my anger I was able to recognize the grief underpinning it. If I’ve learned anything about grief over the last decade of my life, it’s vital to name grief when it shows up. Otherwise, it will continue to fester and cause more harm than growth.

Owning my anger and grief has been about recognizing how I can still treasure the experiences and memories I have from being part of the Harry Potter generation, but I don’t need to actively bond with people anymore based on our Hogwarts Houses. I can still reminisce with my trusted friends, who I know feel the same way I do, but it’s not the part of my personality that I share with others anymore. That doesn’t mean my personality and life hasn’t been informed by those 7 books; they always will be. It’s about recognizing I’d rather use my personality and life to bond with people who want to fight against violence, hatred, and oppression instead.

I have all the lessons, memories and experiences I need from Harry, Ron and Hermione already and no one, not even Rowling, can take those away from me.

You can support the following organizations supporting the transgender communities in the UK, USA, Ireland, and worldwide:

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