You must log in or # to comment.
Oh another round of asking supposed allies to give up cheap-ass treats in turn for something more substantial. I’m here for it. stop it with the harry potter shit, there is better stuff out there that doesn’t harm trans people
It always breaks me up a little how important HP was to my friend groups growing up. I mean, all the way into my mid-20s. My trans friends and neurospicy friends both loved Harry Potter, going so far as having themed Christmas stockings. All of those happy memories, all of that money given to someone who turned out to be so spiteful. I can’t look at HP the same way anymore. So many HP fans were queer. It just hurts in a way I can’t fully express. more so that people still support her product.
I kind of hate to have to say this, but its ok to still like the stories. If you have to buy them, buy used, otherwise pirate. I can’t possibly be the only one who was launched headfirst into allyship by the HP fandom and the more people that happens to the better. As always, JK can go fuck herself.
It’s not just about enjoying the stories though. It’s more about buying more and more merch, running promo with your house scarf and that stuff. It’s about.claiming to be an ally while still giving her money that she proudly funnels into hate campaigns.
And that’s why you buy used or pirate😁 No additional money for the shithead and the market is flooded with second hand stuff anyways
In my opinion, even talking about the licence itself is giving her free publicity and indirect money. HP should be forgotten until she dies.
all harry potter cannon is on AO3
I’m conflicted when her movies enter the libraries of streaming services. I’m not sure how exactly they get monetized and how much of a difference one watch makes. I watched Fantastic Beasts. Newt Scamander is a cute character. But I watched it with my parents, who would’ve watched it anyways.
I own Hagwarts Legacy, I got it somewhere for free. They probably get some compensation for freebies, but I wouldn’t expect that to be determined by the exact amount of gifted titles either. I never played it.
Epic gave money to JK Rowling (through the game licensing) for each copy of the game redeemed. So you did give her money.
I’m pretty sure it was revealed a while ago that Epic just gives a big lump sum for their free game giveaways, not any specific amount per copy. Although the finances behind their giveaways aren’t exactly public, so it’s possible they’ve changed their model or made exceptions.
https://www.polygon.com/22417954/epic-games-store-free-games-cost-epic-paid-publishers-developers/
Even if it’s a lump sum, it’s most probably based on how many copies they expect to give away. I think the game was free twice, and I’m sure the publisher knows some gamers won’t pay for it for ethical reasons, so it’s a way for gamers to wash their hands clean saying they did not pay even though money still exchanges hands.
Nobody should be using any of the big streaming services anyways just because they’re evil in their own right. Just pirate HP stuff if you want to watch it.
I used to hate harry potter because I felt it was poorly written, now I hate it because JK is an awful trash person and its poorly written.
I loathe JKR as much as anyone else, but I do wonder why the whole “there is no ethical consumption under capitalism” thing seems to end exactly at Harry Potter and nowhere else.
No trans person I know who goes nuclear about everything related to consuming or discussion Harry Potter has any issues with the endless promotion of ‘approved’ products and companies that are often even an integral part of online ‘trans culture’, like…
- Instagram/WhatsApp/Facebook/YouTube et cetera (pro-queerphobia, pro-fascist corporations actively funding and supporting alt-right movements across the world and helping alt-right actors make databases of queer people)
- Discord (surveillance company working with ICE, handing over trans folks’ personal information to the cops, the age verification scandal et cetera)
- Minecraft (created by alt-right figurehead Notch, owned and operated by notoriously evil company Microsoft)
- World of Warcraft (Blizzard, notoriously anti-union, pro-sexual harassment corporation)
- … and so on.
Of course not all of these are directly equivalent to JKR and HP in terms of tangible impact on trans people specifically, but the scale is definitely off. Why do folks cut off friends for discussing Harry Potter fanfiction but not for ordering a skirt on Amazon or encouraging vulnerable trans folks to hand their data to Discord?
The older I get, the more it seems like a teenage in-group out-group peer pressure thing than a real world view. Hating on Harry Potter signals you’re a good person, and that gives one a feeling of belonging in the community and having an identity that stands for something. It’s more of a rebellion thing than anything. At the same time, being a ‘Discord trans girl’ has an ‘uwu cute’ aesthetic and therefore must be good and desirable, no matter the implications.
It’s a vibes-based world view.
Of course JKR is evil and I want her prosecuted for what she’s been doing to hurt us. I just think shaming random people for enjoying Harry Potter is ineffectual and hypocritical when practically nothing else is so heavily policed; and while ‘mainstream trans culture’ online promotes and supports so many other evil companies and their products.
Like Ada said, JKR is uniquely hateful and her acceptance by society is enormously harmful. She shares as much responsibility as Hilary Cass for trans people being as discriminated against as they currently are in the UK. Her activism has ruined and ended lives, not because she’s just greedy, but simply for the love of the game.
Also, don’t use any of those other products if you can avoid it. Harry Potter is an easily avoidable series, not a hard to avoid service like Amazon or YouTube. It’s not that hard to walk away from that fandom, especially when all the most interesting contributors have already left.
The biggest difference is that all of your examples are standard big, evil corporations who fuck everyone over, while JK is a specific person spewing hate at a specific group of people.
i think a lot of it comes down to how much easier it is to drop Harry Potter than entire social platforms and such.
for example, it’ll take time and energy for me to move from Windows to Linux, which i simply don’t have right now. but all i need to do to stick it to Rowling is not care about Harry Potter.
now, that doesn’t mean i would go out of my way to harass people who still support the franchise, but i could see how that would embolden other people to do so, and i still think it’s important to let people know that J.K. Rowling actively advocates against trans people existing.
complete tangent about Minecraft
i may get flak for this, but Minecraft is completely disconnected from Notch nowadays - he’s still riding his fortune from when he was involved, sure, however i’m fairly certain he hasn’t seen a penny since he sold it off, in contrast to Rowling who still gets a cut. correct me if i’m wrong on that.
i get being put off by it entirely because of Microsoft, that’s valid. Mojang largely works independently of them though afaik, and Mojang seems fairly supportive if anything - they’ve hired at least two LGBTQ+ folk that i know of, Lena Raine (Celeste’s composer) and Sarah Boeving (who i only knew was queer via the on-screen pronouns in Minecraft Live 2023). on top of that, they removed some splash texts referencing Notch in 2019 after he made “controvesial (i.e. transphobic) statements on Twitter” (source).
looking at the wiki, these splash texts were also added in 2020:
- Black lives matter!
- Be anti-racist!
- Learn about allyship!
- Speak OUT against injustice and UP for equality!
- Amplify and listen to BIPOC voices!
- Educate your friends on anti-racism!
- Support the BIPOC community and creators!
- Stand up for equality in your community!
as well as these ones in 2022:
- You are valid!
- I’m glad you’re here!
- You are welcome here!
- Your gender is valid!
- Contains infinite genders!
and while i know this isn’t the biggest show of support Mojang could do (e.g. un-region locking the progress pride cape), it does help solidify in my mind that i’m not supporting bigots by playing a game i purchased over a decade ago.
… ok, other than the Microsoft account i had to make for it, you have me there.
minecraft is also the easiest game to pirate i have ever seen
Vintage Story is the new Minecraft. We have water wheels now.
I thought Hytale was the new Minecraft? Anyway, Luanti is a FOSS alternative.
I dropped literally everything in your list for the reasons you outlined (except WoW, which I dropped before I knew anything about Blizzard).
But Rowling is worse than them.
Corporations are amoral, and entirely self serving. They will fuck over anyone if it earns the corporation a profit.
Rowling is not amoral. Rowling is driven by hate, and her goal is not self interest, and her harm is not indiscriminate. Her harm is targeted and deliberate, and she explicitly uses her visibility to normalise and encourage harm to the people she is targeting.
And deliberate targeted hate that tries to create more hate is worse than amoral self interest.
Rowling is not amoral. Rowling is driven by hate, and her goal is not self interest, and her harm is not indiscriminate. Her harm is targeted and deliberate, and she explicitly uses her visibility to normalise and encourage harm to the people she is targeting.
Don’t forget to drop the mic after dropping bars like that.
This is a strawman. There may be no ethical consumption under capitalism, but not all consumption is ethically equal. Each individual makes a value judgement based on how much harm their purchase is doing and how much they need to make it.
That line is different for everyone, and you’re conflating those lines by collapsing trans people into a monolith. It’s inconsistent because people are different.
That being said, anecdotally, I don’t give money to any of the companies you listed, and neither do most of my friends afaik.
A few things
The “there is no ethical consumption under captilaism” as a get out of jail free for trying to do better is just a nothing. We should all be, within our capabilities, trying to ensure we aren’t at the very least direct financial supporters of evil companies.
Re: no trans person you know (…)
I’m a trans person I know, I go nuclear about jkr and harry potter, and I also go nuclear about the support and usage of meta products, purchasing of games from corps like actiblizz, ubi, ea, square, Microsoft, etc, Minecraft, discord, etc etc etc. I’m in the minority of the minority, sure. But most people don’t have the emotional or mental energy to “fight that many battles” at once, much less to convince others to do so.
The fact that most people might stop at hating jkr and HP isn’t evidence that they’re wrong or something. Its just a symptom of how well known it is that jkr and her products harm trans people. Fewer people know (or, have internalised) that the other examples are bad.
I think people should feel shame if they’re giving money to jkr or otherwise promoting her presence. I also think it would be good if more people were taking stands against more things, but jkr’s a good start
