it's election day I can be a little political as a treat. if you still purchase or publicly consume or create harry potter media or content, donate to a UK based trans person and sit with your morals for a bit. Both major political parties ran a campaign stoking a culture war against trans people because of Rowlings ideology and funding. Every time you line her pockets - and that includes by consuming and creating fan content publicly, thus proliferating the enjoyment of hp (because even if you don't spend money on it, you are making it acceptable for people who do spend) - you contribute directly, personally, to British trans kids dying early. I don't care if it's important to you - I wore a ravenclaw scarf to school well into my teens, and then I found out Rowling was a terf (and all the antisemitic shit in the books) and every piece of harry potter merchandise got stuffed in a box at the back of my wardrobe. It turns out, when the author of your favourite book is best buddies with the MP of your constituency and they talk about trans people like you're dirt on the bottom of their shoes, it sours the experience a little.

Read a better book. Do better by british trans folks

I wrote a 12 page epilogue to my 2019 comic "Harry Potter and The Problematic Author" because I found, in 2023, that I had more to say. You can also find this comic on my website, and I have PDF copies available on etsy. I may sell print copies at some point in the future.

instagram / patreon / portfolio / etsy / my book / redbubble

Full transcript below the cut.

can people with harry potter urls just not fucking follow me

the way i am losing followers over this. GOOD. bye

Honestly if anyone tries to tell you the racism and antisemitic overtones in the Harry Potter books were accidental, remind them she is a fan of Matt Walsh.

As in, Matt “women are most fertile at 16 and teen pregnancy is only an issue because men aren’t responsible enough to marry them” Walsh.

Matt “abortion is evil and arranged marriage is great” Walsh.

Matt “besties with Ben Shapiro and part of alt right news site The Daily Wire” Walsh.

That guy.

JKR isn’t a feminist. She isn’t even a lib. She’s an alt-right Tory.

The film she’s referring to is Matt Walsh’s “What Is A Woman” which if you’re so unlucky you may have seen trailers of the past couple years on YouTube. It’s more or less just him asking queer people to define what it means to be a woman and getting mad at the answers they give before cutting to him narrating why this is delusional nonsense destroying western society or whatever. The whole thing is predictably disingenuous as you may expect, but what’s most important here is this:

“What Is A Woman” is a film you can watch only on the daily wire’s website, and (at least at the time these tweets were made) was only viewable if you were a paying subscriber.

Let me say that again with emphasis,

JKR is, or has been, subscribed to at least one alt-right propaganda site.

You don’t just accidentally stumble upon that, and even if you did, you wouldn’t stay there long enough to pay them money if you were a feminist because half the weirdos who post on the daily wire post anti-feminist garbage, and I’m not even just talking about the forced birth whining or whatever, Brett Cooper has stated before that she would rather lose her right to vote than lose the right to own firearms. Ben Shapiro is a rampant slut shamer. Jordan Peterson spews incel rhetoric CONSTANTLY.

So can we, if but for a moment, stop pretending the ONLY criticism of JKR is that she’s transphobic. It’s not. It isn’t. This isn’t even the only alt-right creep she’s on friendly terms or even openly a fan of. If you want a full commentary on JKR flirting with the alt-right, there’s a video here with screen shots and such. Most if not all of the tweets are still up if you want to verify that this guy didn’t just make them in photoshop.

And if you want some specific examples of the blatant racism, fatphobia, pro-authoritarian, transphobia, homophobia, and good old fashioned misogyny in the Harry Potter books that you can point to the next time a TERF starts a tirade about how JKR is actually GIRLBOSS FEMINIST or whatever to remind them that she isn’t JUST transphobic, there is a very long and extensive video that covers the basics so you don’t have to re-read all of the books just to prove to yourself you didn’t imagine all of that bigotry.

I was actually going to make a compilation of all of this myself before I happened upon these videos in my recommended list on YouTube, I won’t look a gift horse in the mouth here.

This purist ideology is ridiculous. Are all 3,000 of these people suggesting that JKR can’t even *talk* with someone who has conservative views? She’s not endorsing everything he says, she’s finding a point on which they agree and discussing it with him. That’s how people have conversations.

Jesus Christ, all TRAs are terminally online. Go outside please, y’all need a major reality check.

^ Me when I’m So Mad that people don’t like it when lady who made Jewish caricature banker who eat children and say slavery good talk to Known Pedophile Nazi and say she like his movie

To those videos I'd like to add like a mere 22 od hours more of videos.

This 10 hour video detailing pretty much everything wrong in the Harry Potter universe.

Jessie Gender videos debunking Matt Walsh's "What is a woman"

Caelan Conrad's "Gender Critical" series

And we won't forget about her friend, Posie "tomato juiced fascist" Parker, who had neonazis show up in support of her rallies and who had someone quote Hitler's "Mein Kampf" on another one. And not simply a quote that was from that book like a dogwhistle. Openly saying that the quote was from Mein Kampf.

Still, J.K. Rowling is not to be undone, by all this, anytime something happenss, she keeps going further into the right.

Just because they didn't say the exact same thing, doesn't mean they didn't say that...

Let's not forget that Posie Parker has also talked openly about "the billionaires funding the transgender lobby" (and then refused to expand about it).

And has J.K. Rowling said anything against any of this… Well, she publicly defended Posie Parker and lied about what happened…

So let's see, allying with fascists, parroting fascist viewpoints, fascists come in support of them… Is that enough to call them fascists? Or does anybody need more proof?

Truth is, proof doesn't matter to them. You can't challenge someone's position using facts, when they haven't used logic to get into that position.

The "tell me exactly when I said that" gives me so much gaslighting vibes.

A video that explicitly shows the connection between Posie Parker (aka Kellie-Jay Keene) and the alt-right nazi groups, as well as exposes her association with other unsavory people and organizations. And how JKR STILL SUPPORTS HER

The problem with hogwarts legacy is not just "a difference of opinion" due to the author, it's because jk rowling is actively giving her harry potter money to anti trans hate groups, to anti lgbtq+ groups, to anti abortion groups and to groups that are pushing for conversion "therapy"

You cannot buy licensed harry potter products without giving jk rowling money. Any money that jk rowling receives will most likely be used to fund some form of bigotry and this will hurt a lot of people.

Buying hogwarts legacy means accepting this fact and deciding that it's OK. And people are allowed to be upset by this.

she engages in stochastic terrorism on twitter too. someone stole my picture, made a fake "im going to kill all cis women" twitter account, and then she tweeted it out. i woke up to a shitload of notifications from friends telling me to hide so i privated my twitter and was offline for a week. thankfully another swer uses a dmca service and he submitted a claim to them and they got the pic taken down after a week but that was still a week of lost work for me. she just did that in 30 seconds, is still a billionaire, and i probably wasn't the only trans woman she targeted that day and i was lucky to just get away with a week of lost promotion and working on twitter (a quarter of my monthly income).

buying hogwarts legacy plays into keeping her relevant which is where she gets her power from. don't just not buy it, stop engaging with harry potter as media. it literally has a real material cost for transfems all over the world and everyone has to make the decision for themself if it's worth that just to play a video game or go to a theme park or watch a movie

How much money goes to anti-trans-hate-groups per copy of the game purchased? Like, how *much* of a real material cost is it?

Like I’d get it if all £50 of the game purchase went straight to killalltransgenders.org, but, like, if it’s fraction of a penny? However much it is, it has to weigh up against how much people want to enjoy doing a thing they want to do - which it might do, but there’s some real weight to outweigh there.

you didn't read my post like at all besides the part where it said real material cost

what you just wrote was insane by the way, you're saying that a little bit of genocide is okay as long as the people greasing the gears of the machine are having fun in a quantity that outweighs the suffering of the people being targeted

saying the quiet part out loud here. "how much until i have to care?"

So, as people are seeing the pretty extreme antisemitism in the new terf wizard game, it should be noted that this was not a case of "following existing antisemitic fantasy tropes". This was purposeful. The ex lead designer is alt right and ran an alt right "anti social justice" youtube channel. The discovery of this channel and the resulting controversy lead to him later being removed from the project late in development but the main premise of the game was determined by him and others with his views. The core concept of this game is antisemitic and fully intended to be. It is not a case of thoughtless devs or lack of cultural sensitivity. This game is intended to be antisemitic propaganda designed and developed by openly alt right devs.

Troy Leavitt is the alt-right, openly antisemitic, racist and misogynistic developer. His name was taken off the headlines after his "unsavory side" came out but he was in chagne in its early stages. As for the rest of the main credited people: Moira Squier is the game writer, Alan Tew is the director, James Cabrera is the lead producer. The existence of this thing is the product of a team's imagination, and the vile antisemitism, which has been built upon and taken to extremes over time in the franchise is a collaboration. Everyone high up in the dev team either did this on purpose or endorsed it.

To reiterate OP's point: this is not an accident, and it's not the work of a single bigoted individual.

Thank you for the specific names. Yes it was a purposeful team effort and Troy Leavitt went on record as saying that he made WB well aware of his youtube channel and they had no problem with it. He said he was glad they didn't seem interested in pushing a "social justice agenda". He voluntarily left the team due to public backlash to his youtube channel (which he still runs). He was not removed by WB or Avalanche Software. Everyone involved in the project in any kind of higher up position was well aware of his history of alt right work and knowingly endorsed it.

Thank you for the additional information!

Hey, Hogwarts Legacy comes out in a few days. Please, please listen to us trans folk and don’t buy it! If you absolutely must play some witch games, then I have prepared a short list of games you can spend your time on instead!

Jessie Earl also recently made a video in which she listed better games for streamers/gamers to play, including many queer-inclusive and less mainstream ones that deserve attention 👍🏻

The funniest part of the "your teacher dies in every possible ending" copypasta btw is that it doesn't really sell how generic the fucking Wizard game is plot wise on that front.

Like, we have two major spoilers, Rockwood curses Anne and blamed the Goblins for it, and Professor Fig dies regardless of ending. You'd expect therefore two very simple things from this reveals:

1) That this would lead to the classic mid story twist that the "oppressed minority doing terrorism was actually being manipulated the whole time and you the white saviour help them after realising they aren't so bad."

And 2) That the game has multiple endings that are shaped by your actions in the story, despite how in all of them your mentor dies (probably for different reasons each time).

This is however not fucking the case lol.

Because guess what.

Hogwarts Legacy has only two endings.

There is the "Good" ending, where you decide to keep the status quo as is and prevent systematic change, and a "Bad" ending where you "free the ancient magic" and change the status quo, but then promise to work to set ip up back as it was before.

NOTHING you do in the game changes this. Every decision, spell choice, side quest, NOTHING influences these endings. There is no Karma Meter, or checklist of decisions to have to pick the best possible ending ala Witcher, nothing, you are given ONE decision right at the end of the game, between breaking the status quo (bad) or keeping it as is (good) and that's the extent of player choice on what ending you get.

TWO ENDINGS.

ALL BASED ON YOUR FINAL CHOICE.

MASS EFFECT 3, INFAMOUS FOR DOING THIS VERY SAME SHIT, HAD THREE.

And after you have this choice, your mentor dies, and you fight the evil goblin leader who is evil because he was once the victim of a violent hate crime so now he sides with Wizard N*zis and wants to genocide all wizards, and who is, yes, the main villain of the game, not the guy who cursed the girl, nope, we're still murdering an evil minority rebellion leader with a large hooked nose as he's being powered by the status quo breaking "Ancient Magic" the hero is treated like a villain for if he decides to "share with the world."

And then there's a generic eulogy for mentor followed by the house cup being won by your fucking house as a "true" ending, which happens regardless of what choice you pick, and that is a "post credit scene" ending after finishing all collectibles and side quests, just to give the illusion of having 3 endings.

This game is shallow and mediocre beyond belief yet we have people fucking frothing at the mouth for being told they shouldn't fucking play the mid wizard game. You have streamers crying at the gentlest fucking pushback, people going "I can excuse transphobia and anti semitism but I draw the line at spoilers," for one of the most soulless, generic pieces of videogame media of this year.

"Boycotts don't work if the product is good just look at chick fill a" the product isn't fucking good the product is mid the product has an extremely shit plot baked in anti semitism and with boring "twists" and even if it was the fucking masterpiece some of those people claim it is have a minimum of moral fucking backbone and if you can't help yourself PLAY OR EAT SOMETHING ELSE.

IT'S NOT THAT FUCKING HARD.

Hogwarts Legacy update!

We've confirmed the plot: there's an uprising among the race of hook-nosed bankers who control the economy. (Note that the more evil they are, the bigger their noses are. There's a good one who has a big nose but he used to be evil when he was younger.) They're "rebelling" because they want their stolen cultural artefacts to be returned to them and want to not be oppressed anymore, which for some reason means they also want to massacre their oppressors' entire race, because of course marginalised people asking for liberation actually secretly want to kill you. As part of this sinister cabal's nefarious plot for white—I mean, wizard—extinction, they want to kidnap a child, because that's what hook-nosed bankers like to do, right? And their leader is willing to do anything for material gain, up to and including teaming up with fascists who hate his race.

You guys know that conspiracy theorists think Jews funded the Holocaust, right? They claim we did it so we could milk it for reparation money afterwards. And did you know they think we kidnap children? Or that we actually want supremacy rather than equality, and plan to subjugate the rest of the world for our own gain? Presumably you've at least heard the claim that we control the banks. And you know this is all very popular with the alt right, don't you? Have you also heard that this game's original head developer was an alt right YouTuber?

Don't act like this is a fucking coincidence.

No, JKR wasn't involved in the game, and it's actively intended to be trans-positive. Yes, she gets money from it, and will likely donate some of that to anti-trans causes. But even if you pirate the game so she doesn't make any money off of it, you're still going to be be playing the fucking Protocols of the Elders of Gringotts.

Fucking TALK ABOUT THIS.

#being trans and jewish makes this such a weird time to be in the circles im in online#because all i see in protest of the game is 'its transphobic to play it!' and nothing about the antisemitism#EXCEPT from other jews#with exceptions for my beloved frienda who are part of the Surprisingly Jewish friend circle (via @jonaldronaldrolkientolkien)

If you're not Jewish, read those tags and read them again.

A video I made with further thoughts on letting the Potterverse go.

just play wizard101 instead

I highly recommend reading Jessie Earl’s article about JK Rowling’s Anti-Transgender stance; because even though I was aware of several of the things she brings up here - I also learned a whole lot. 

I also highly recommend you check out her YouTube Channel - Jessie Gender.

I really do recommend it, especially if you’re into nerdy things, LGBTQ Discussions, and a lot of Star Trek. I think her videos are well-made, well thought out, and definitely worth a watch. 

She also came out with a video today, which I haven’t seen myself yet - so I can’t speak on it - but knowing her previous works and videos - I definitely think it’ll be worth checking out.

Don’t Stream The Wizard Game