Broken Pedestals- JK Rowling

There was a time when I greatly admired JK Rowling; in fact, I'd wager to say that most every modern author under forty has admired her for a while now. These days, the admiration has died off, replaced with contempt for her views on gender and trans people. Today's blog entry is all about how much I admired (past tense) JK Rowling, and why that admiration is dead now.

First off, I gotta get this out of the way: if you still love Harry Potter, all the power to you. Nobody has the right to take away something you enjoy. It's OK to still love Harry Potter, since it's still a fun book series.

Back on topic; the story of Rowling is little more than the ultimate success story. A housewife living off of government aid sits down and writes a book, it gets rejected left and right until it finds a publisher willing to bet on her, and in a decade she goes from food stamps to million Pound mansions. This isn't the dream, it's the quintessential Hollywood success story. Only difference is, it really happened!

Growing up, JK Rowling was my inspiration. I always thought "if she could do it, so can I!" And for a long, long time, I thought I could. Her story of perseverance rewarded really struck a chord with me, and for the better part of a decade, I lived with that dream of getting rich off of my creative work.

Aaaaand then, Twitter happened. I still remember reading up how Rowling stated that, before toilets were invented, wizards would just... soil their pants...and magic away the poo...

Pardon me, that still makes me cringe.

It was that moment that literally made me realize "wait a minute, Rowling... is kind of cringe?" It was also the moment I realized that MAYBE YOU SHOULDN'T USE TWITTER TO SAY EVERY LITTLE THING THAT POPS INTO YOUR HEAD!!! Like seriously, think before you tweet!

And then came... the transphobia. On 6 June 2020, Rowling needlessly tweeted a comment making fun of an article for using the term "people who menstruate" instead of just saying the term "women." Why was this tweet foolish? Because it's not just women who menstruate: girls in puberty menstruate, some trans men still menstruate, nonbinary AFAM people menstruate, and so on. Further, not all women menstruate; trans women don't menstruate, post-menopausal women don't, and neither do women who've had their ovaries removed. So Rowling's comment was not only needlessly incendiary, it was also factually wrong.

When she was criticized, instead of deleting the tweet and saying "I am sorry for my comments," she doubled down on how "sex is real." But if one were to apply critical thought to her arguments, one would notice not only how vacuous it was, but also how it was quite self serving. Because even assuming "sex is real," what does that have to do with the erasure of non-women who menstruate? Simply put, to Rowling, these aren't anything other than women, and it is in fact this erasure of trans identities that outs her as a transphobe.

And that was the moment any respect I had for Rowling died. And when that happened, I took to her works and her legacy with a more critical eye. And what did I find?

That there are other, better books for kids out there. That Harry Potter as a series shouldn't be the be all, end all measurement of children's literature. That kids deserve better role models than Rowling. And most importantly, that success isn't just fame and money.

One of my current goals is to create a series for children that they can enjoy. A series with good role models, good moral lessons they can learn, and characters they can look up to. I also want to be someone who people can say "that's a good author, and a good man right there." And I can't be that person if I don't purge myself of my own biases and watch what I say, unlike Rowling.

I used to think "not all of us can be Rowling" or "there will never be another Rowling" to be a depressing thought, but these days, I find them encouraging. Because what's the point of all those riches, if nobody likes me? I'd far rather be an anonymous ally of the LGBT+ community, than a famous enemy. 

In the end, what else can I even say? Rowling broke her own pedestal by getting too high up her own britches. She didn't NEED to comment on that one article, because in the end, she was just a celebrity, not a politician. If only she'd stopped thinking of herself as JK Rowling the author of Harry Potter, and thought of herself as Joanne Rowling the private citizen, she could have avoided a LOT of trouble and still be admired the world over. Or, at the very least, if only she'd apologized for her insensitive comments. A little humility goes a long way.