No. As an English major and a transgender person, no. We do not take this attitude.
Harry Potter is a culturally important work and JK Rowling wrote it.
So many culturally important works of literature were written by people with bad views by today’s and even their time’s standards. Shakespeare? Racist, sexist, islamophobic, xenophobic, anti-Semitic. But we don’t erase his name from those plays. Because if we try and claim that those plays were authorless it gives us an awfully convenient excuse to ignore all of the flaws within them and how we may or may not agree with those flaws on a subconscious level.
In the world of literary analysis these days the author is no longer dead. We don’t do that anymore. The author is a ghost hanging over your shoulder. You can interpret their work any way you want and they can have no say in it. But you as a reader must also acknowledge that their original intentions are there. Their personal history and the times they lived in are there.
JK Rowling wrote that series whether you like it or not. Whether that makes you comfortable or not. Harry Potter is one of the most culturally important book series of the last century and it was written by a transphobe. It was written by JK Rowling. Face up to it. Look it dead in the eye. Recognize its flaws and like it anyways if you still want to. But don’t. I repeat don’t. Do not claim that it is authorless. No work of literature is.
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