#the rowling problem

What with the new Harry Potter game being released in the next year (probably) and Rowling’s continued descent into transphobia, I recently decided that I need to get rid of my old Harry Potter books. And I’m torn. I mean, I know a lot of children still love her works and would be tempted to donate them to a homeless shelter for children there to enjoy... but I’ve been realizing just how racist her works truly are.

First, let’s consider House Elves. We have a servant race that loves being slaves. In fact, the one House Elf that gets his freedom, Dobby, is a deviant because he wants a (very minor) salary. Another House Elf who loses her position drinks herself to sleep each night. When offered minimal pay for their work, the elves take great offense. 

Now let’s consider the arguments against ending slavery in the United States. It was claimed by some slave owners that slaves loved being slaves. People continue to preach that lie, claiming that black people were better off as slaves than they are as freemen in the United States.

Yes. House Elves are in fact magical black people in the Rowling Universe. She make them funny looking with large ears and big noses and odd speech patterns and if you’re not catching on then you’re not looking. 

Next, we have goblins. These greedy and treacherous demihumans run the Wizarding World’s banking industry and can’t be trusted. In fact, Harry and his friends are betrayed by a goblin! Of course, the fact they were planning on betraying that goblin and not keeping their word about a potent artifact that the goblins claimed was theirs is immaterial. The goblin still betrayed Harry! And is bad! And they are blatant proxies for Jewish people, much as fascists once parodied Jews as being small, untrustworthy, treacherous, rich, and in control of the banking world. The antisemitism is blatant when you sit back and take a look at how they are portrayed. 

Centaurs of course are indigenous peoples, armed with “primitive” weapons, and seem benign enough but if you’re not careful all at once they become quite dangerous except for the rare noble exception. 

There’s even the Purity of the Wizarding Families. This is a big factor in the series with racial purity being considered a huge deal... and we learn in the end that Harry Potter himself is of a prestigious family line going all the way back to the three brothers who crafted or acquired the Deadly Hallows... and is in fact related to Tom Riddle. (And we needn’t forget Rita Skeeter who is depicted as an illegal Animagus using her other form to spy on people, and is also described as having “large masculine hands” which was the start of Rowling’s descent into transphobic character depictions, or how starting in the very first chapter and shown in multiple areas, Rowling is fatphobic and uses a person’s weight to suggest they are bad or unreasonable people.)

Before I knew that she was a transphobic jerk, I used to look up to her, since I loved her writing and love writing myself. Now, I've found other people to look up to such as Stephen King and Rick Riordan. They’re both amazing authors and have opinions that I agree with.

Just because the creator of something sucks, shouldn’t meant that we aren’t allowed to enjoy it anymore. That being said, I don’t think that should mean that we completely discredit the creator. They deserve credit for their work, but that doesn’t mean that we have to take their real life opinions and let it have an effect on said work. Once they put something out to the public, they can’t change it. Unless they put in their stories before they release that someone is gay or trans or black or white, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they are. 

I know that it’s a thing that a lot of people thought that Harry should have been black, even though he was portrayed as white. I personally think that he should have been black, but I also think that he was definitely bisexual. Since Rowling never directly told us in the books that he was white or that he was straight, it was up to us to interpret that by ourselves. Same with any character, really.

Anyway, I’m getting off track, so, I’ll just say what I wanted to say.

We shouldn’t let what the author thinks take away from our pleasure in enjoying something they made. We also shouldn’t let what they say about certain characters outside of their stories be canon (like what Markiplier says. He basically thinks that unless something is specifically stated in one of his works, everything else is up to us. We can perceive his world as we like, imagine things as we like, unless something happens that tells us otherwise. He says that he likes to leave things up to the viewer, which is what he does most of the time).

Worse yet, she accidentally tweeted it in response to a nine year old girl who had drawn fanart of her new children’s story.