Addressing J.K. Rowling’s Recent Statements

Jul 01, 2020

Posted by: Melissa Anelli

J.K. Rowling

In the past few weeks, we have taken the time to reflect as fans and as a community to the statements that J.K. Rowling recently made about transgender people. After listening to a wide variety of people most impacted by and taking in their feedback, our own statement is below and will live on our sidebar from here on out as part of our commitment to working to undo this harm.

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The Harry Potter fandom has been going strong for more than 20 years, and we are so proud to have been there alongside so many, celebrating, learning, and growing together.

As this fandom enters its third decade, J.K. Rowling has chosen this time to loudly pronounce harmful and disproven beliefs about what it means to be a transgender person. In addition to the distaste we feel for her choice to publish these statements during Pride Month—as well as during a global reckoning on racial injustice—we find the use of her influence and privilege to target marginalized people to be out of step with the message of acceptance and empowerment we find in her books and celebrated by the Harry Potter community.

Although it is difficult to speak out against someone whose work we have so long admired, it would be wrong not to use our platforms to counteract the harm she has caused. Our stance is firm: Transgender women are women. Transgender men are men. Non-binary people are non-binary. Intersex people exist and should not be forced to live in the binary. We stand with Harry Potter fans in these communities, and while we don’t condone the mistreatment JKR has received, we must reject her beliefs.

We have seen countless people use the Potter books and fanfic to explore their own identities while spreading love and acceptance. We know that this is still possible, and we know that we want to continue to be part of that movement. We are committed to doing better work in our community to uplift and center the people who have been marginalized and create positive change from within our fandom platforms.

To start, in order to make sure that this site may be safely enjoyed by those who have been targeted, we have immediately put into practice the following policies:

  • We will no longer be covering J.K. Rowling’s personal endeavors (this excludes updates from her charity, Lumos).
  • Wizarding World coverage will not feature photos of or quotes from the author (unless quotes are particularly newsworthy).
  • Twitter posts that may be hurtful to members of this community will be hashtagged #JKR to allow for easy muting; since Facebook and Instagram do not allow muting, these news items will not be posted on our main feeds.

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This marks the beginning of a renewed commitment to serving the Harry Potter community from a more conscious standpoint than we have done in the past. We will update this page as we develop efforts to elevate and fundraise for a wider array of fans.

Thank you for continuing to support Leaky, and help us work to realize the vision of a truly inclusive fandom. If you have input or ideas on how to achieve this, we’d love to hear from you.

If you are a trans person seeking support, we urge you to do so by calling Trans Lifeline’s peer support hotline.

We worked closely with a wide variety of members of the community to create this statement and we offer it to any fan or fandom entity that wishes to echo these sentiments and/or create their own action items for themselves. Social graphics and imagery may be found here.

 





The Leaky Cauldron is not associated with J.K. Rowling, Warner Bros., or any of the individuals or companies associated with producing and publishing Harry Potter books and films.