Hello everyone, and welcome to the Why We Fight series. I’ve asked some of our favorite wrockers from around the world to talk about what they’re feeling now that JK Rowling is openly transphobic. Please feel free to join the conversation in the comments, but do remember these are sensitive subjects and real people you’re talking to.

Avery Marshall (he/him) is the transguy wizard rocker behind the band How Airplanes Fly. You can find his wizard and muggle music on BandCamp.

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“The ministry is interfering at Hogwarts.” That sentence, more than any in the Harry Potter books, has guided me as I’ve become an adult. I discovered Harry Potter when I was 10 years old. I devoured each page, taking in every lesson about questioning authority, standing up for others, and building
community to heart. These ideas are at the foundation of me. It shocked me when I first read the tweet from J.K. Rowling not understanding why someone would use the term “people who menstruate”. As a transgender man who has menstruated before and may again if I can’t afford my medication, I was hurt. Then I was furious as she doubled down on her clearly transphobic opinions.

It isn’t as if I haven’t heard things like this before, I have. I just hadn’t heard them from people that I held in such high esteem. I’ve heard things like this from people who I knew held bigoted views about race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality. Hearing it from someone I trusted has made me rethink a lot of the media that I consumed as a kid. How can I openly support and play music about a world created by someone who doesn’t believe my identity is valid?

What it really comes down to is that J.K. Rowling can’t separate sex and gender. She has bought into limited and binary ideas of who people are meant to be. It’s such a shame considering how large of world she created with her books. My sex – some things going on in my body that has no place in defining me – is not the final story. My gender – the way that I see myself and present myself to others – is the story that I create. I spent the first 27 years of my life identifying as a woman out of fear and uncertainty. I told myself everyday that it would be a selfish and self-destructive decision to transition. I sacrificed my mental and physical health in order to fit into a box that I had no say in making. I was stuck in my own cupboard under the stairs. Harry’s journey and the community I found by following Harry’s journey encouraged me to live freely as myself.

In order to make some egotistical point about who gets to be called a woman, she has un(?)intentionally put the people who have supported her in danger. 44 trans people were murdered in 2020, making it the worst year on record for transphobic violence. The majority of the people killed were transwomen. The same arguments that she’s making about sex are the same ones the defenders of these murderers make. Using sex to define who someone is or what they have access to makes her no better than a death eater claiming to know what a “real” magical being is.

Finally, I can’t end this without mentioning that J.K. Rowling is a billionaire. In our world today, we know what that means. There are no ethical billionaires. No one earns a billion dollars – I don’t care if they’re the author of children books or the founder of a bookstore turned monopoly. She is the person that she taught us to question and distrust. Before she showed us how transphobic she is, she had made several calls that made me question if she even read the story she wrote. As much as I enjoy certain parts of Pottermore, I don’t take it seriously anymore. I mean…the thing with the toilets…seriously? As hilarious as that is, it illustrates a growing pattern. She’s in this for the money now, not for us. She is now the ministry interfering with Hogwarts.

I wish we could cancel J.K. Rowling, but the truth is that she has enough resources to live comfortably and obliviously for the rest of her days. Has she lost a little money? Maybe. Has she lost some followers? Most definitely. She isn’t being cancelled, she’s being held accountable for her actions by the people she helped raise. Instead of responding like Lucius Malfoy , she could have learned from this. Maybe she will, maybe she won’t. What I know is that I don’t care what she does because this community doesn’t belong to her. It belongs to us.