They joke, but I legitimately know people whose parents were the super Christian “any book about controversial topics is the devil and so are video games and TV” to the point where when she found out her daughter had Harry potter book, she burned every book of hers that wasn’t directly religious.
Well guess who decided to “give them a try” since “the author clearly has the right ideas about life” since all her children are out of the house and the only ones who bother visiting are the two with kids (who would never admit it but they’re only there for free babysitting and future help) and one who just doubled down into the religion despite witnessing the same bullshit as her siblings…
So yeah, this may have been intended as a joke, but they’re closer to the truth than they might know.
The best satire is rooted in reality. The issue the onion is facing is that right wing nuts are genuinely beyond parody at this point.
The cultural left is against her for being very visibly transphobic (along other things). Additionally religious reactionaries historically don’t like the fact her books are inspired by historical witchcraft practices, as pointed out in the meme.
To quote wikipedia’s summery:
…Whited asserted in 2024 that Rowling’s sometimes “flippant” and “simplistic understanding of gender identity” had permanently changed her “relationship not only with fans, readers, and scholars … but also with her works themselves”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_views_of_J._K._Rowling#Transgender_issues
Ok. Since you have clearly been living under a rock for the past 10 years, here’s the deal with Rowling. It’s not really a political divide here, it’s an age divide.
Harry Potter was a formative experience for almost all of Millenials and Gen Z. That’s 40 years worth of kids right there. A lot if Gen X parents were fans as well. There’s a lot of gay/trans people who credit Harry Potter for helping them figure out their identity and come out to their friends and family. And Rowling is a master of cultivating a fandom; ask anyone between the ages of 40 and 12 what their house was, and I’m pretty sure you’ll get an answer. My point is, there are a lot of people (people who are adults now) who have formed their identity around Harry Potter, and Rowling made sure that it was seen as normal to get so invested in her books.
Problem is, Rowling is a Blairite Conservative, and you can see this all over her writing. As kids, we didn’t pick up on details like how the plot bends over backwards to not have any change happen in the world, how few girls there and how all the bad ones are ugly, the house elf slaves, etc. So when Rowling started to be more loudly TERF-y, we collectively went through a few phases of realization about how wrong we were about her:
- Wait, how could someone this conservative have written the books I remember?
- Maybe we can just pretend that she didn’t write the books? We can separate the art from the artist, right? Maybe I can just buy all my merch secondhand?
- Oh god her books have bad politics all the way through them, you can’t even pretend that these weren’t written by a conservative!
- Am I bad for liking these books?
- You know what, maybe I am done with Harry Potter.
To address another thing that might confuse you, I know that I’ve been using TERF and conservative somewhat interchangeably. To define my terms, when I say “conservative” I mean Rowling thinks the world was perfect at some point when she was a young adult and any attempt to change how the world works from that point is Evil and Bad. The Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist movement was seen as progressive in the 80s and 90s but has remained almost exactly as it was back then, so now it only contains “moderate” conservatives. To be fair, her political beliefs are pretty in line with most members of the Democratic party in the U.S., so I understand if you thought she was left-wing. But she is very clearly a conservative, and more importantly her whole fanbase was at minimum progressive liberals and many are much farther left because, you know, millenials and gen z have on average only been moving further left as they get older. Another thing exaggerating this is a fun little statistic that 67% of all book readers are girls, and guess which subset of Gen Z is most likely to be anticapitalist?
If she had just stayed quiet about hating trans people, I think Harry Potter might have been remembered as one of the most world-changing works of fiction, at least up until Gen Alpha gets old enough to enter academia. But she just had to use her platform to try to spread her beliefs, and now she’s so hated by her own fandom that attaching her name to a project is sure to make that project never sell, and any actually successful Potter-related project has to constantly reassure potential fans that they do not hate trans people, they are not associated with Rowling, Rowling has no involvement in their project, and a portion of our profits will be donated to a nonprofit that helps Trans kids. For example, Hogwarts Legacy did all of these things, and despite its good sales and despite most fans enjoying it there was an abstract dread looming over the project as if the fans expected Rowling to interfere with their enjoyment at any moment. It honestly just makes me sad that there are so many adults that feel so wounded and betrayed by their favorite author.
The way I reacted to this was to stop joining fandoms altogether, and I still feel icky when something I like has a fanbase. I don’t think this is healthy. Maybe I will work through this someday.
She’s a huge bigot…
I don’t think you can categorise into right or left. I know right-wing people who are gay as an example (they’re conservative, but they’re not MAGA/Trump/nazi’s).
It’s really better to categorise as “people who want the community to be better and want everyone to be treated well”, and “people who want people to receive different treatment”.
JK Rowling is the latter. Trump is the latter too. In general though, in US and Australia, extreme right wing people seem to fit more into the latter… Minorities can also fit into either category too quite easily
nobody on the left would ever say that someone who does one cool thing is automatically a good person. There’s been plenty of asshole artists and overall thing makers in history that have made amazing things
Maybe they’ll learn something. Despite the authors current opinions, the books messages are about tolerance.
With the Gringotts bankers being grotesque antisemitic stereotypes, the only black character being named Shacklebolt, and the only character who’s against slavery being laughed at by everyone else and then dropping the subject forever, sure!
Knowing all that along with how much of a bigot she is IRL, it requires a HIGH bullshit tolerance to be able to stomach it all.
That’s what you meant by tolerance, right?
Two Indians named Patel. Black kid named brown. You’ll never guess the heritage of Seamus Finnegan. She just has stereotypes and nothing else.
Related:
And also. Pleas explain me, how are Rowlngs goblins a Jewish stereotype, but Tolkiens dwarves aren’t? And what about the Doppler in The Witcher?
I don’t agree. The only thing about goblins is that they are bankers. If you hear bankers, and think Jews, that may be that You are stereotyping. Shacklebolt and Cho Chang I consider just poorly though through names. As for the elves being slaves, that has depth. It’s not just, elves want to be slaves so we keep them as slaves. The characters in the books ask them, if they like what they are doing. They like it, they talk about it, we see the point of view of elves. It may be my childhood innocence talking, but I never took it as malicious writing. Maybe unconscious stereotyping. But it was the 90s, she didn’t know better. But all in all now she is a shit human being and I despise her views.
Maybe, but I’m not holding my breath.
The one who originally had the HP books came out a few years ago and her mother disowned her.
Her dad doesn’t seem to care as long as she’s happy, but he is standing by his wife’s shitty decision. I can only hope he’s trying to talk sense into her behind the scenes instead of being totally hands-off.
when a character starts being an abolitionist about literal slavery, it becomes a running joke. the goblins are antisemitic stereotypes, up to and including being bankers, and all the characters who aren’t white are named in ways that would have been considered ‘kinda racist’ a century earlier.
Witchcraft is fine. Every evangelical I know was allowed to read Hobbit, LOTR, Dune, Narnia.
The problem is witchcraft written by women
I grew up in a very religious conservative home. My parents love LOTR, Narnia, Marvel, Star Wars, etc.
But we weren’t allowed to read Harry Potter. The reason given was that “fictional magic is usually ok, but HP is teaching you that anyone can go to a magic school and learn witchcraft.”
Now, you have to understand that they believed in real-life witchcraft. Real people apparently draw pentagrams, contact demons, and get effective results. They had cautionary tales about Ouija boards gone wrong, and that sort of thing.
But imagine my surprise when I grew up and married someone who is a huge HP fan, and I finally watched all the movies and listened to the audiobooks. And guess what? It’s literally the fucking opposite of “anyone can learn witchcraft.” It’s literally about people who are born with or without the ability do magic and the fascist villain wants to torture, enslave, and kill non-magic people.
So where did my parents get their entirely wrong idea? From some Satanic Panic fearmongering fundamentalist/evangelical leader. Maybe it was the same one who told them that “any music with drums is basically pornography.”
So nah, I don’t think it’s about women authors - that’s probably another issue. It’s whether the works are popular enough and have enough buzz words that some religious leader is able to latch onto it and scare people into being outraged by it, banking on the assumption that they won’t actually read it.
In fact, that’s a running theme - assume people won’t think for themselves or learn any facts about anything they’re told be outraged about.
Yeah, TBF I was really just making a snarky dig at the misogyny in the evangelical world.
I can immediately think of a counter example: the Golden Compass. It’s written by a man, but basically takes the stance that the devil is the good guy and has a main character whose best skill is the ability to lie so well she can pretty much always get what she wants. The church equivalent abuses children and looks the other way about it when confronted 💀
Unsurprisingly that series isn’t too popular among fundies
I’m pretty sure the best way to make sure your kid grows up to practice witchcraft is to raise them evangelical.
