The TERF Who Raised Us

JK Rowling, generational storytelling, and transphobia

When my ultra-conservative mother forbade Harry Potter to me as a child, in a twist of irony that would not occur for twenty years, she used an argument logically identical to the one its author uses today against trans folk. She told me that Harry Potter, a children’s series about a boy wizard and his friends who go to a magic school called Hogwarts and use spells with names like “riddikulus,” was Satanic worship masquerading as children’s literature, that it had not been written as an earnest attempt to entertain middle schoolers but as an obscene plot to smuggle immorality into my young mind and turn me into a godless leftist.

A godless leftist I became without the help of billionaire transphobe J.K. Rowling, but the idea that there are concerted forces aiming to corrupt young minds is now something she and my mother agree on. If you’ve had the distinct displeasure of reading through Rowling’s unhinged defenses of her transphobia, you’ll hear the same line of logic echoed throughout: that anyone who champions trans rights is part of a dastardly plot to turn children into sex perverts and allow cisgender women to be raped in public restrooms.

Now we have to deal with all sorts of unfortunate questions. Questions like: can we still read and watch Harry Potter? If…