User talk:WikiFouf/J. K. Rowling

The Ivory Tower, Harry Potter, and Beyond: More Essays on the Works of J. K. Rowling (2024)

 * And then, in December 2019, the entire universe finding its origin point with J. K. Rowling began to shift on its axis.
 * Prior to that date, Rowling’s relationship with fans was largely positive, but it took a startling turn with a few tweets in support of a British woman, Maya Forstater, whose contract with a global think tank was not renewed in March 2019 following Forstater’s own tweets concerning biological gender. On December 19 Rowling tweeted a rhetorical question implying that it is wrong to “force women out of their jobs for stating that sex is real,” adding the hashtag “I stand with Maya Forstater.”16 Over sixty-five thousand people retweeted, and another thirty-five thousand quoted the tweet.17 The firestorm was lit.
 * Over the next six months, Rowling herself fanned the flames as she became increasingly vocal and, in a few cases, flippant about gender identity. In perhaps her most ridiculous public comment on the subject, Rowling pretended to have forgotten the word woman, implying that the term had passed out of fashion. On June 6, 2020, Rowling retweeted a report on menstrual health and hygiene issued in the aftermath of the COVID-19 epidemic by the Devex independent news company, prefaced by the snide comment, “ ‘People who menstruate.’ I’m sure there used to be a word for those people. Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?”
 * Perhaps the final straw for some Rowling fans came on June 10, 2020, when Rowling posted a lengthy letter on her own website explaining her perception that women are endangered by policies welcoming transgender individuals into spaces such as restrooms and changing areas matching their gender identity.19 Rowling’s concerns about individuals entering same-gender spaces based solely on self-declaration were influenced, she avowed, by her history as a sexual assault victim.20 In late 2022 and early 2023, as Scotland considered its own gender identity reform, Rowling continued to be a vocal opponent of self-designation, especially for those in early adolescence.
 * But in June 2020, Rowling’s manifesto led some people to label her as a trans-exclusionary radical feminist (TERF), a term first used in 2008 that has more recently evolved as “gender critical.”22 Many transgender persons felt shocked and betrayed by the author’s public statements. Tolonda Henderson, a Harry Potter scholar who is also transgender, has written that they felt “brainwashed and gaslit at the same time” after reading Rowling’s response.23 Henderson subsequently removed the author’s name from their essay for Open at the Close, writing that the change “gives me back a sense of power and agency in my scholarship.”24 At the time of that book’s publication (2022), Henderson was also considering abandoning Harry Potter scholarship altogether. The only thing the author and those whom she has hurt, offended, or angered now seem to agree on is that the issue is “surrounded by toxicity.”
 * For many fans and scholars, there were at least two surprising aspects of the whole controversy. First, the 2020 tweets were inconsistent with statements of support for the transgender community Rowling had made previously. For example, she has said that transgender individuals “need and deserve protection” and “pose zero threat to others” and has voiced support for “every trans person’s right to live in any way that feels authentic and comfortable to them.” Her public presence, from her early work with Amnesty International to her charitable projects, reflected a thoroughly liberal mindset of the sort that she is credited with fostering in young readers.
 * The second and perhaps most surprising aspect of the 2020 tweets was the shockingly simplistic understanding of gender identity reflected in them and the inconsistency of these seemingly concrete views with the ideology of her novels. The Harry Potter series presents human nature as complex and identity formation as a process; reading the series requires a reader’s maturation as the novels progress. Characters presented through a mostly concrete lens in Sorcerer’s Stone and Chamber of Secrets have more depth and nuance in later volumes. The Albus Dumbledore presented early on as a wise and flawless headmaster turns out to have been negligent (at best) or complicit (at worst) in his own sister’s death; in the final novel, he is revealed as having planned to sacrifice Harry Potter all along to save the Wizarding world. The animosity that Severus Snape directs at Harry in his classroom is revealed to be motivated by bitterness that his childhood love, Lily Evans, chose James Potter rather than him. The Tom Riddle introduced as an ambitious and calculating villain in Chamber of Secrets turns out to be another of the series’ many wounded children. No better explanation of the series’ multiple layers of complexity has been offered than M. Katherine Grimes’s essay “Harry Potter as Fairy-Tale Prince, Real Boy, and Archetypal Hero” in the original Ivory Tower volume. Yet Rowling’s declarations about gender identity reject this more nuanced perspective, instead recalling her very early books in their absolute concreteness, their insistence that human gender and gender identity are simple concepts. Readers have been understandably baffled.
 * In January 2021, a high court judge ruled that Forstater’s gender-critical views were protected under British equality law as “a genuine and important philosophical position” that “could not be shown to be a direct attempt to harm others.” But regardless of the outcome for Forstater, who has called Rowling her “fairy godmother,” the damage to Rowling’s reputation has proven extensive. Fans have found themselves no longer comfortable reading (or watching) Rowling’s work, or comfortable only so long as they do not contribute to her income, and have boycotted Harry Potter–themed festivals, fancons, conferences, and sites (real and virtual). Scholars have declined to participate in publishing or other professional projects based on Rowling’s work or reconsidered the offering of Harry Potter–related courses, and students have been reluctant to sign up for them. Publishing houses have withdrawn support for Harry Potter–related manuscripts in progress.
 * [...]
 * Just as the Harry Potter “Generation Hex” experience was unique to the young readers who inhaled and embodied the series’ original release during their childhood and adolescence, the Era of the Transphobic Tweets is a unique experience for those of us who were not merely enchanted by the series’ magic but deeply invested in building a body of scholarly work around it. Who can better account for the conflict between our “walk away” and “stay and fight” impulses than we can ourselves? Who can better explain the disconnect between the antiracist ideology of the Harry Potter series and the animosity its author expresses in some of those tweets?
 * [...]
 * Kullmann: And third, J. K. Rowling has publicly voiced controversial views on sex and gender on Twitter and in the media since the end of 2019, displaying not only an antiquated understanding of gender identity but also quite overt transphobia on her part. Her statements divided fans, and the controversy led to boycotts of the film series. Actors Daniel Radcliffe and Eddie Redmayne have officially spoken out against Rowling despite continuing their professional relationship with her. For a detailed discussion of this issue, please see Lana A. Whited’s introduction to this volume. As a literary and cultural scholar, I personally find the appeal of the frequently invoked “death of the author” concept greatly diminished when the author in question is vociferously campaigning against transgender people on social media while routinely practicing world-building through the same outlets, and especially if that author prides herself and her works on preaching love, tolerance, and the rejection of bigotry of any kind.
 * [...]
 * Sutherland Borah: On December 19, 2019, Rowling sparked her biggest controversy so far when she tweeted, “Dress however you please. Call yourself whatever you like. Sleep with any consenting adult who’ll have you. Live your best life in peace and security. But force women out of their jobs for stating that sex is real? #IStandWithMaya #ThisIsNotADrill.” Rowling was responding to a court case involving Maya Forstater, an economist who, according to the BBC, was not reappointed to her job after accusations of making transphobic comments to coworkers and creating a hostile work environment. Forstater sued her employer and lost.33 Human Rights Campaign and GLAAD called out Rowling’s tweet as both factually inaccurate and hurtful to transgendered people. In the past, Rowling had liked other tweets considered by some to be transphobic as well.
 * My survey was posted for a two-month period starting in mid-November 2019, so it was partially contemporaneous with the fallout. Respondents identified Rowling’s December tweet (which they called “tone-deaf” and “unconscionable”) as the leading controversy in the fandom, with 13.4 percent of participants describing it as a serious problem. Asked if Harry Potter had a positive or negative impact on her life, one responder, Jennifer, described it as a mixed experience because Rowling’s “support of TERF (trans-exclusionary radical feminist) accounts on Twitter, her rejection of Scottish independence, her imperfect allyship to the lgbtqia+ community, and her tendencies toward non-intersectional feminist behavior [are] concerning in the best lights.” Having come of age during the AIDS crisis and the fight for marriage equality, many millennial-aged fans grew up with empathy for vulnerable populations. The transgender community’s status as a vulnerable population is well established,35 so many fans with politically and socially aware attitudes were offended when Rowling made a statement perceived as hostile toward trans women. The irony, of course, is that researchers such as Jack Gierzynski and Loris Vezzali have established that these same ideologies derive in part from exposure to the Harry Potter novels.
 * Then came Rowling’s tweet on June 6, 2020, in reaction to an essay on the Devex news site entitled “Opinion: Creating a More Equal PostCOVID-19 World for People Who Menstruate.” Rowling posted: “ ‘People who menstruate.’ I’m sure there used to be a word for those people. Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?”37 The blowback on Twitter was swift. Rowling posted three more tweets over the next couple of hours. In her last tweet, she wrote, “I respect every trans person’s right to live any way that feels authentic and comfortable to them. I’d march with you if you were discriminated against on the basis of being trans. At the same time, my life has been shaped by being female. I do not believe it’s hateful to say so.”38 Medical doctors and health-care professionals responded, as did LGTBQIA+ advocates. Charlotte Clymer, a transgender woman who works for the Equal Rights Campaign, pointed out, “The vast consensus of medical and other scientific experts validate trans people and urge affirmation of us. Your own country’s medical organizations have said as much.”39 Feminist author Naomi Wolf reached out to Rowling on Twitter: “@ jk_rowling you’re a cherished part of my kids’ lives. That said, this thread baffles me. ‘My life has been shaped by being female.’ That’s 100% true for trans women as well.” There were 95.3K retweets and 231.9K likes for Wolf’s response two weeks after Rowling’s original post.
 * Four days later, Rowling posted on her website an expanded response, “J. K. Rowling Writes about Her Reasons for Speaking out on Sex and Gender Issues.” In her 3,669-word essay, the author lays out her concerns about “the new trans activism” and her fears that “women’s rights” are under attack. She states, “It would be so much easier to tweet the approved hashtags—because of course trans rights are human rights and of course trans lives matter—scoop up the woke cookies and bask in a virtuesignalling afterglow.”42 Rowling reveals that she is a survivor of sexual assault and domestic abuse from her first marriage. She states that she believes most trans people deserve protection; she then argues that allowing trans women to use women’s restrooms or changing rooms will “open the door to any and all men who wish to come inside.”43 Rowling concludes that she is writing not to garner sympathy but to gain understanding for women who feel as she does.
 * Rowling makes some reasonable points—she wants to protect “women and girls” from abuse and predation. However, her definition of who qualifies as female seems limited to those born biologically female, which excludes trans women. In her essay “How JK Rowling Betrayed the World She Created,” trans writer Gabrielle Bellot expresses her hurt as a Potter fan. Rowling’s opinion, Bellot feels, “is a mainstream anti-trans view, arguing that people like me are dangerous and unfit to be in certain spaces.”44 If Rowling were just another Twitter user, her statements would be only one individual’s opinion. However, as of this writing, Rowling has 14.5 million Twitter followers; she has clout by virtue of her creations’ commercial success and her millions of fans.
 * All three corporate entities who have valuable properties on the line—Scholastic, Warner Brothers, and Universal Studios, owner of the Wizarding World theme parks—attempted to strike a balance between not alienating Rowling and supporting the LGBTQIA+ community, including their own employees and customers.46 The films’ millennial-age stars—Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint, Bonnie Wright, Katie Leung, and Eddie Redmayne—expressed their support for the trans community. Radcliffe wrote a post for the Trevor Project, a nonprofit organization dedicated to suicide prevention among LGBTQIA+ youth. After affirming support for the trans community, he addressed HP fans: “To all the people who now feel that their experience of the books has been tarnished or diminished, I am deeply sorry for the pain [Rowling’s] comments have caused you. . . . If you found anything in these stories that resonated with you and helped you at any time in your life—then that is between you and the book that you read, and it is sacred.”
 * In response to the survey, graduate student Abbey Flentje noted the impact of Rowling’s tweets and other questionable choices: “J. K. Rowling’s Twitter has definitely affected my view of her rather than of her series. She has supported and retweets/follows many trans exclusionary radical feminists (TERFs) on the platform, which just says that a lot of her feminist leanings are more in the vein of white feminism than anything else.” Although 17.99 percent of fans surveyed said they knew of no controversies in the fandom, 6.3 percent reported they had left the fandom because of anger over Rowling’s views and other controversies. Flentje concludes, “Rowling herself has not diminished my enjoyment of Harry Potter or the fandom.” It’s a distinction fans in other fandoms have made when creators have fallen from grace. For example, filmmakers Roman Polanski and Woody Allen, both accused of having sex with teenage girls, are often regarded through a dualistic lens for their professional successes and personal behaviors.
 * In the 1967 essay “Death of the Author,” Roland Barthes writes, “The reader has never been the concern of classical criticism; for it, there is no other man in literature but the one who writes. We . . . now . . . know that to restore to writing its future, we must reverse its myth: the birth of the reader must be ransomed by the death of the Author.”48 Similar to New Critics who isolate texts from outside influences (including the author), Barthes sees the relationship between reader and text as more important than that between writer and text. Divorcing the text from its creator certainly presents its own problems, but separating the books, films, and characters fans love from a creator with problematic views or behaviors is attractive for some aggrieved Potter fans.
 * Separating Rowling from her works might be a feat only a wizard can manage, partly because she has been intensely involved with the fan community. Nevertheless, fans have brought their own analytical skills to bear on what they deem problematic in her works. Flentje described this process happening during a college course. “I took a course on race, class, and gender roles in the original novels, which I believe gave me a fresher critical perspective to the books and also revealed to me how white and heteronormative the series is. Hermione is an excellent character, but she ends up being one of the only progressive women in the series” (Flentje). Other fans I surveyed noted that they found echoes of anti-Semitic tropes in descriptions of the Goblins. Several mentioned repeated fat shaming, usually applied to villainous characters such as the male Dursleys, Aunt Marge, Dolores Umbridge, and Crabbe and Goyle. With the exception of Hagrid, characters who are overweight are often depicted by Rowling as being mean, lazy, and stupid. A few responders observed how disturbing the enslavement of house-elves was despite Hermione’s efforts with S.P.E.W. to liberate them; the subplot was unresolved in the books and omitted from the films. Unfortunately, once flaws are exposed, whether in the works or the author’s behavior, not every fan can reconcile the incongruities. When fans believe an author has failed them, many turn to the fandom itself for consolation.

Cancel Culture Rhetoric and Moral Conflict in Contemporary Democratic Societies (2024)

 * Analogous rhetorical moves are at play in J. K. Rowling’s rhetoric stemming from transphobic comments that the Harry Potter author tweeted in June 2020. Rowling’s tweets argue that sex is solely biological and therefore question and dismiss the experiences of transgender people (Gardner, 2022). After her tweets generated significant backlash, she took to her website, where she wrote a lengthy post attempting to explain her thoughts on the issue. Unsurprisingly, this post did not put the issue to rest, and many fans continued to tweet and register their disapproval of her stance. Harry Potter stars Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson tweeted support for transgender people and distanced themselves from Rowling (Gardner, 2022). My goal in analyzing Rowling’s rhetoric is to identify how her discussion of being canceled facilitates character work in this conflict. As a result, I largely will not engage the substance of her claims about trans people, nor will I refute the misguided claims that she makes.
 * In her opinion piece on her website, Rowling did not lash out at cancel culture per se, although she claimed to have been canceled. The target of her concern was what she called “new trans activism.” Yet, for Rowling, this type of radical activism led to the things associated with cancel culture—polarization, dismissal, knee-jerk reactions, and social media hate. Much like Hawley and the power of big tech, Rowling saw the conflict over the meaning of biological sex and the boundaries of “woman” as a political group as a central moral conflict for society. Thus, she too used the image repair strategy of transcendence to elevate the significance of this conflict. She also situated the conflict as part of a broader debate over free speech. Indeed, in describing the reasons she was concerned about “the new trans activism,” Rowling (2020) wrote, “as a much-banned author, I’m interested in freedom of speech and have publicly defended it, even unto Donald Trump.” In describing her commitment to free speech, she also noted that she has been publicly canceled before. “I must have been on my fourth or fifth cancellation by then,” Rowling wrote (2020), explaining the outrage over a post she had “liked” on Twitter. Thus, Rowling also broadened the context for this particular controversy surrounding her tweets about biological sex into a moral conflict about free speech and free thought that implicated the public understanding of cancel culture.
 * Rowling clearly identified the enemy in her narrative. She was careful to separate “trans activists” from all transgender people, but pointed to those who are vocal on social media as wielding the weapons of cancel culture. Rowling told a story of social media abuse that intensified throughout summer 2020. While the abuse started “bubbling in my Twitter timeline,” it then “swarmed back into my timeline” and eventually rose to the level of “relentless attack” (Rowling, 2020). Each time, Rowling described the abusers as “trans activists” or simply “activists” (Rowling, 2020). In connecting these activists and their social media abuse to her personal story, Rowling painted them as odious. “Ground down by the relentless attacks from trans activists on social media, when I was only there to give children feedback about pictures they’d drawn for my book under lockdown,” she remembered, “I spent much of Saturday in a very dark place inside my head, as memories of a serious sexual assault I suffered in my twenties recurred on a loop” (Rowling, 2020). While Rowling’s enemies were not Hawley’s powerful tech companies, Rowling cast them as a vocal mob spewing insults that would be tough for any person to weather.
 * A great deal of Rowling’s essay was spent bolstering her own reputation as an image repair strategy. Indeed, her statement that she had already been canceled four or five times implied a resilience and strength of character as the essay evidenced her continuing to speak her mind. In addition, Rowling situated her interest in gender, sex, and trans issues in the context of something that any audience would know her to be an expert at—developing characters for fiction. “On one level, my interest in this issue has been professional, because I’m writing a crime series, set in the present day, and my fictional female detective is of an age to be interested in, and affected by, these issues herself, but on another, it’s intensely personal,” Rowling (2020) stated. Seeking out information on these issues while writing a novel seems designed to reduce the offensiveness of the likes and interactions on Twitter. It perhaps can be seen as research, not activism.
 * And yet, Rowling also bolstered her character on a personal level, not just a professional one. She shared a personal story about her own experience with domestic violence to emphasize the vulnerability of women to dangerous men: "I managed to escape my first violent marriage with some difficulty, but I’m now married to a truly good and principled man, safe and secure in ways I never in a million years expected to be. However, the scars left by violence and sexual assault don’t disappear, no matter how loved you are, and no matter how much money you’ve made. My perennial jumpiness is a family joke – and even I know it’s funny – but I pray my daughters never have the same reasons I do for hating sudden loud noises, or finding people behind me when I haven’t heard them approaching." (Rowling, 2020)
 * Rowling made clear as she concluded her essay that she was not seeking sympathy, not a “teeny-weeny” violin song (Rowling, 2020). However, sharing this story certainly strategically shifted Rowling’s character. Clearly, she hoped that readers would come to understand why she insisted upon biological sex as a marker of womanhood. This also reminded her audience of the lasting impacts of such abuse, which situated her in a disempowered position against the enemy of misogyny. There are other moments in the essay where she also admitted weakness in this battle. She described herself as “ground down by the relentless attacks from trans activists on social media” and noted that she spent some time away from Twitter “because I knew it was doing nothing good for my mental health” (Rowling, 2020).
 * Just like Hawley, Rowling constituted an audience of readers to show concerns for ordinary people. Her character work, too, placed her in what could be described as a silent majority. “What I didn’t expect in the aftermath of my cancellation,” she noted (2020), “was the avalanche of emails and letters that came showering down upon me, the overwhelming majority of which were positive, grateful, and supportive. They came from a cross-section of kind, empathetic and intelligent people.” Rowling made clear that she was subjected to a host of abuse, but located her views within the majority, even if the majority was not vocal and active on social media. Moreover, she placed the audience she created outside of the specific details of the controversy. “If you didn’t already know – and why should you? – ‘TERF’ is an acronym coined by trans activists, which stands for Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist. In practice, a huge and diverse cross-section of women are currently being called TERFs and the vast majority have never been radical feminists,” she explained (2020). In defining the acronym, she created a context outside of social media squabbles, assuming that many are not versed in the specifics of this issue. Moreover, she made clear that she is amongst a “huge and diverse” group of women being targeted by what she characterized as activists bent on canceling and using “the tactics of the playground.” This latter descriptor is of course, in W. L. Benoit’s (1995) terms, a form of attacking the accuser.
 * Finally, just like Hawley, Rowling shifted her character to an empowered position. “I knew perfectly well what was going to happen,” she claimed (2020) when she weighed in on these issues on Twitter before noting she had been canceled numerous times before. She expected, she explained, to be targeted on Twitter, to be called abusive names, and for former fans to call for a boycott or even the burning of her books. Despite her clear-eyed vision of the consequences of her actions, she, like Hawley, constituted a moment that required her to stand up for what she believes: "But endlessly unpleasant as its constant targeting of me has been, I refuse to bow down to a movement that I believe is doing demonstrable harm in seeking to erode ‘woman’ as a political and biological class and offering cover to predators like few before it. I stand alongside the brave women and men, gay, straight and trans, who’re standing up for freedom of speech and thought, and for the rights and safety of some of the most vulnerable in our society." (Rowling, 2020)
 * Although she did not call an audience to action here as Hawley did, Rowling did note that she stands with others in her continued need to speak her mind about this issue. Moreover, she made clear that this is both a difficult and important time to do so given not only the cancel culture tactics of the Twitter activists, but also what she described as the “most misogynistic period I’ve experienced” (Rowling, 2020). She pointed to former U.S. President Donald Trump joking about committing sexual assault and a general backlash against women. “Everywhere, women are being told to shut up and sit down, or else,” she cautioned (Rowling, 2020). Thus, against these obstacles, Rowling noted that she must take her stand and risk the consequences. Yet, it is important to note that the risk and consequences of such rhetoric are not evenly distributed across society, and Rowling’s financial wealth and fame generally protected her from serious consequences.
 * In sum, Rowling also used claiming to be canceled as a form of image repair. Indeed, this blog post sought the goals of image repair—offering an explanation, defending, and justifying (W. L. Benoit 1995). Rowling used the affordances of her blog—free from the character limits of Twitter—as the place to do this repair work. Claiming to be canceled allowed her to engage in character work and bolster her reputation to navigate the tension between being seen as a victim and being the hero in the narrative. Indeed, because claiming to be canceled required identifying an enemy doing the canceling (in Rowling’s narrative, it was the “new trans activists”), it primed the strategic actor to tell a story with a compelling context that sets up a moment to act, and thus, shift their character from a victim to a hero.

Agonism in the arena: Analyzing cancel culture using a rhetorical model of deviance and reputational repair (2024)

 * The sentiment analysis of 6000 tweets about J.K. Rowling revealed significant negativity (35.35%) and positivity (17.27%), with negative sentiment spiking after her initial gender-critical comments on Twitter in support of Maya Forstater, who was claiming she was facing employment discrimination based on her public views that biological men could not change their sex (Siddique, 2022).
 * [...]
 * Accordingly, the sentiment analysis data concerning Rowling was particularly complex, as some negative tweets were supportive, and negative only in the sense of attacking those who were accusing Rowling of transphobia.5 In any event, Rowling's rhetorical strategies varied over time. Initially, she adopted “no strategy” when confronted by the cancellation movement following her support for Forstater. The phrase “no strategy” comes from Benoit (1995) and Coombs (2007), in which they equate it with “silence” (strategic and otherwise). Rowling's “no strategy” was, then, an attempt by the author to avoid commenting on transgender politics. However, she later explained that she was trying to manage her mental health by staying offline and avoiding heated discourse (Rowling, 2020). In other words, her “no strategy” was equivalent to a non-strategic silence—which allowed the rhetorical wrangle to continue without her necessarily at the centre of online dissensus. However, before long she moved to double down on her gender-critical views, adopting more active strategies including attacking accusers (27.78%), bolstering (19.44%), and ingratiating (9.72%). Fig. 6 shows the results from the sentiment analysis for Rowling for the sampled period.
 * J.K. Rowling's stance on transgender issues has positioned her as a principled speaker amidst significant controversy, embodying agonism within the culturally charged debates of the West. While media outlets and Harry Potter stars have critiqued her (Flood, 2020; Romano, 2020), and her name was notably absent from recent franchise promotions (Billy, 2021), her financial success and book sales have thrived (Forbes, 2020). The wrangle in the rhetorical arena, a manifestation of dissensus, has seen Rowling endure doxxing and threats of violence, yet she remains defiant and is positioned in the Sphere of Legitimate Controversy in this analysis due to her high levels of public support and because the academic community remains divided on debates regarding social constructionism, gender and sex.6 Moreover, her philanthropic efforts have undoubtedly manufactured “image credits” (Coombs, 1998), bolstering her reputation. Rowling's entrenched presence in the rhetorical arena is reinforced by strong parasocial relationships, as demonstrated by the global phenomenon of “Pottermania” and public sentiments expressed in her defence (cf. Turner-Vorbeck, 2008; LoveMoney, 2021). Indeed, her successful avoidance of de-platforming from Twitter, even before Elon Musk's takeover, suggests that her so called “cancellation” was in part mitigated by her significant cultural capital and fandom (Turner, 2010). This scenario underscores the complex interplay of agonism and dissensus in public discourse (Davidson, 2020), demonstrating how deeply ingrained fandoms, economic power, and a principled voice can insulate a figure from a cancellation movement.

== The Failure of Cis Feminism: Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminism in Academia (2023) ==
 * Of course, TERF ideology has now circulated far beyond activist and academic circles. Perhaps the single individual who most recently propelled TERF ideas to the forefront of public discourses is British author J. K. Rowling (who is now sometimes jokingly referred only as “She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named” in reference to Lord Voldemort, the evil character in her Harry Potter children's book series). Rowling has a long history of transphobic activity on Twitter: in 2017 the British author liked a tweet linking to a Medium article targeting trans women, and in March 2018 she liked another tweet calling trans women “men in dresses.” At the time, her representative called these “a middle-aged moment” and claimed that her finger had slipped, leading her to accidentally like such tweets (Baker-Whitelaw 2018, also repeated in Rowling's own 2020 essay, discussed below). These early online activities are also echoed by Rowling's writing: in The Silkworm, a mystery novel published in 2014 under the name Robert Galbraith, the problematic ways in which the character of Pippa, a young trans woman, is represented and described in the story had already caught the attention of many of Rowling's readers (Zacny 2019). More recently, Rowling showed more explicit support to TERF ideology by publicly advocating for two controversial British women: first, in June 2019, Rowling started to follow anti-trans and anti–sex work YouTuber Magdalen Berns, giving her increased visibility and platform. Then, in December 2019 Rowling made headlines again after publicly tweeting her support for Maya Forstater, a British tax specialist who did not have her contract renewed by her employer, the Center for Global Development, after tweeting that people cannot change their biological sex. Forstater contested that decision but lost her case in employment court.6
 * And finally, in June 2020 Rowling fully lifted the veil surrounding her views on sex, gender, and transgender people in her essay “J.K. Rowling Writes about Her Reasons for Speaking Out on Sex and Gender Issues,” creating a large-scale controversy and fueling the ideological conflict between trans-inclusive and trans-exclusive feminists often referred to as “TERF wars” (Pearce, Erikainen, and Vincent 2020). In the essay, Rowling retraces the history behind her views on trans issues and shares many discredited theories about trans identities, such as her belief in “rapid-onset gender dysphoria” (ROGD).7 In addition, Rowling (2020) reasserts her position as a feminist by listing both her charity work with “female prisoners” and “survivors of domestic and sexual abuse” and the “huge explosion in young women wishing to transition and . . . who seem to be detransitioning” as reasons behind her trans-exclusionary views. Rowling (2020), just like Cameron, also participates in the reversal of the animus model discussed above and states, “None of the gender critical women I've talked to hates trans people; on the contrary. Many of them became interested in this issue in the first place out of concern for trans youth, and they're hugely sympathetic towards trans adults who simply want to live their lives.” Despite the lack of newness or originality in Rowling's claims, the essay was awarded the BBC's annual Russell Prize for best writing in December 2020, which also shows how acceptable and mainstream TERF ideology has become.
 * This popularization of TERF ideology beyond academia and the focus on J. K. Rowling as its new poster child, I would argue, has led to a new possibility for feminism to distance itself from these trans-exclusionary views and to frame TERF ideology as mere transphobia, thus excluding it from the realm of feminism. Although I do believe it is paramount to analyze the circulation of TERF discourse outside feminist academia, I also argue that academic feminist circles must reconcile with their history of trans-exclusionary practices and beliefs and self-reflect on how feminism holds transphobia as one of its constitutive foundations and how it has been, and still is, providing a space for TERFs to accumulate knowledge, capital, and accreditation. This is what this article now turns to by proposing a case study of one feminist studies graduate student with TERF views at a progressive American institution.

== The Necessity of Young Adult Fiction (2023) ==
 * The ability to imagine beyond the self and to acknowledge the connections between self and other are so much at the heart of the Harry Potter novels that it may explain the global outrage that greeted Rowling’s comments about trans women, which seemed very much at odds with the principles of the Potterverse. In her comments about trans people, Rowling insists on an essentialist definition of “woman,” writing on her personal website: "I want trans women to be safe. At the same time, I do not want to make natal girls and women less safe. When you throw open the doors of bathrooms and changing rooms to any man who believes or feels he’s a woman—and, as I’ve said, gender confirmation certificates may now be granted without any need for surgery or hormones—then you open the door to any and all men who wish to come inside. That is the simple truth." (10 June 2020)
 * In this same piece, Rowling referenced her experiences as a sexual assault survivor “not to garner sympathy,” but to explain why she feels so strongly that “natal women” need a place where they can feel safe from aggressive men. In an essay from later that same summer (August 2020), Rowling explained that she was returning the “Ripple of Hope” award given to her by the Robert F. Kennedy Foundation in 2019 because Kerry Kennedy, president of the Foundation, had made a statement condemning Rowling’s views on trans people and calling her transphobic. Rowling writes, “As a longstanding donor to LGBT charities and a supporter of trans people’s right to live free of persecution, I absolutely refute the accusation that I hate trans people or wish them ill, or that standing up for the rights of women is wrong, discriminatory, or incites harm or violence to the trans community” (Rowling 2020). She goes on to say that given the “very serious conflict of views” between herself and the Foundation, she has no choice but to return the award.

#RIPJKRowling: A tale of a fandom, Twitter and a haunting author who refuses to die (2023)

 * Rowling’s history of disseminating transphobic rhetoric online as well as the news her 2020 book contains transphobic messaging will be considered. When Barthes called for the ‘death’ of the author, he highlighted the importance of understanding texts as independent from authorial intention and biography. As this case illuminates, when fans cannot reconcile Rowling’s values with those of her creation they pronounce her ‘dead’.
 * [...]
 * Rowling’s reputation crisis started out by her liking and retweeting a couple of transphobic tweets in 2017 (Madani, 2020). Nonetheless, Rowling’s public relations representatives maintained these were ‘clumsy and middle-aged moments’ and that ‘this is not the first time she has favourited by holding her phone incorrectly’ (Duffy, 2018). However, this behaviour continued and began its crescendo in June 2020 when Rowling published a tweet in which she mocked a headline for using gender inclusive language when referring to menstruation. A couple of days later Rowling posted a lengthy blog post detailing her ‘reasons for being worried about the new trans activism’ (Rowling, 2020). In July, Rowling tweeted a comparison of ‘young people who are advised toward hormone therapy to “conversion therapy”’ (Madani, 2020). By September 2020, the hashtag #ripjkowling began trending on Twitter despite Rowling being very much alive. Fans collectively agreed to ‘cancel’ the author after uncovering her newest book, Troubled Blood, features a male serial killer who disguises himself in female clothing to murder women (Lopez, 2020). Today in 2023, Rowling is often referred to as transphobic and ‘TERF’ (trans-exclusionary radical feminist) in the Twittersphere and by Potterheads.
 * Transgender people are constant targets of toxic language on social media, however not all verbal abuse is explicit. Within transphobic groups are trans-exclusionary radical feminists who are ‘critical of the notion of gender, and position the existence of trans women as antithetical to “womenhood”’ (Lu and Jurgens, 2022). TERF groups uphold an active presence on social media sites and remain a frequent source of transphobia as their masked rhetoric is not always recognised by current hate speech detection models (Lu and Jurgens, 2022). Because interacting with TERF individuals can be materially harmful, trans communities and allies continue to establish lists of TERF accounts to block and help trans people avoid abuse online (Lu and Jurgens, 2022). In regards to JK Rowling, the announcement that she was publishing a book with underlying transphobic messaging was made in an already precarious context of active public dissatisfaction with Rowling pertaining to highly contentious current transgender and LGBTQIA+ issues.

Faut-il avoir peur du wokisme ? (2023)

 * Un vrai consensus entre personnes de bonne volonté autour de la différence entre organes génitaux et genres devrait également nous épargner le spectacle de personnalités se mélangeant les pinceaux jusqu’à l’absurde dans leurs déclarations, comme cela a été le cas avec J. K. Rowling, l’autrice d’Harry Potter. En effet, son tweet, qui faisait suite à un article publié sur le site d’opinion Devex et intitulé « Créer un monde post-Covid-19 plus égalitaire pour les personnes qui ont leurs règles », n’est en rien cohérent avec de précédentes déclarations où elle semblait visiblement accorder du crédit à la théorie du genre, du moins la respecter.
 * « “Les personnes qui ont leurs règles”. Je suis sûre qu’on avait un mot pour désigner ces personnes, avant. Que quelqu’un m’aide. Fammes ? Fommes ? Fimmes ? », ironise-elle dans son message. Soit on refuse de faire partie de ces personnes de bonne volonté, qu’elles soient progressistes ou modérément conservatrices, dont je viens de parler et qui sont prêtes à différencier organes génitaux de naissance et genres, soit on assume d’en être et dans ce cas on n’écrit pas ce genre de tweet en totale contradiction avec la reconnaissance du genre comme construction sociale !
 * Si on agrée sur le fait que le genre est une construction et que l’on adhère aux grandes lignes de la théorie du genre, on devrait alors de toute évidence accepter de reconnaître qu’une personne née avec des organes génitaux femelles mais qui se réclame du genre masculin puisse être considérée comme un homme. Et donc, par-là, ainsi que le Planning familial français l’a déjà fait, admettre qu’un homme puisse avoir ses règles et enfanter. Cela me paraît d’une logique implacable.
 * Ce qui fait dire à certains, qui ont la manie de généraliser les choses dans le sens qui les arrange, que « les transitions de genre chez les enfants sont l’un des pires scandales médicaux depuis un siècle » – J. K. Rowling (décidément, elle n’en rate pas une !), dans un podcast diffusé récemment.

== CIS-WOMAN-PROTECTIVE ARGUMENTS (2023) ==
 * In 2020, CWP rhetoric thoroughly permeated media coverage of trans issues in the United Kingdom.7 The British media supported Maya Forstater’s wrongful termination tribunal,8 following her dismissal for a series of transphobic remarks including amplifying a comparison of using gender-appropriate pronouns with the date-rape drug Rohypnol,9 and they largely welcomed author J.K. Rowling’s view that transgender equality jeopardizes cis women’s progress.

== J. K. Rowling and the Echo Chamber of Secrets (2022) ==
 * My trans voice changes over this time. I watch Rowling’s forays on Twitter from 2017 to 2020, and I shrug uncertainly at the “likes” by Rowling of transphobic tweets. I watch the likes mutate into increasingly vicious cycles of statements and reactions between Rowling and those engaged in the online backlash against her. Looking back at this period, I understand I was Rowling’s kind of trans person, isolated, quiet, and respectful of concerns. In her essay of June 10, 2020, Rowling distinguishes between the politically voiceless trans individuals who “simply want to live their lives” and whom she in turn claims to love, and the more politically empowered but unhelpfully generalized “trans rights activist” (TRA) movement, which she describes as giving “cover to predators.” She is aided by the subsequent coverage of the online backlash to her essay, including the opinion pieces by Craven and Davidson.
 * [...]
 * So one year on from my café-based interview with Davidson, Rowling produces an essay that mixes dog whistles against trans women with the whitewashing of transphobia. Conflating the endeavor of empowering trans people with a public threat, Rowling (2020) says, “I refuse to bow down to a movement that I believe is doing demonstrable harm in seeking to erode ‘woman’ as a political and biological class and offering cover to predators like few before it.”
 * Associating disempowered minorities with the moral-panic discourse of “predators” or “super predators” (Cox 2020) should signal a red-light warning to any journalist in the global North. Yet it appears that, apart from YouTubers and UK trans charities such as Mermaids (2020), with their published critiques of the essay, no one has the inclination to challenge Rowling’s incendiary language. The legacy media instead fixates on the worst parts of the Twitter-based backlash as proof of a trans threat to Rowling, in other words, of a trans threat to people like them. An alignment takes place, as the legacy media consistently allows Rowling, one of their own, to get away with removing trans women from their verifiable position as a vulnerable demographic. In Rowling’s (2020) representation, they are a mysteriously influential and politicized subgroup of misogynists, along with the terrorist-inciting Donald Trump and terrorist-associated Incels, but even worse for the access they have: “When you throw open the doors of bathrooms and changing rooms to any man who believes or feels he’s a woman . . . then you open the door to any and all men who wish to come inside.”
 * This interchangeability by Rowling of men with trans women is a form of delegitimization that belies her claim of affection elsewhere: hers is a notion of trans at odds with most trans people, reimagining the good kind of trans person as humble, submissive, and content with their exclusion. Her claim of doors being opened, meanwhile, is an act of fear-inciting misinformation, for the doors have been open for a long time to trans women, with no pattern of damage done. Concurrently, and in contrast to the smears, Rowling (2020) whitewashes the transexclusionary gender-critical movement: “None of the gender critical women I’ve talked to hates trans people . . . they’re hugely sympathetic towards trans adults who simply want to live their lives.” Yet in the same essay, she expresses her admiration for Magdalen Berns, whose well-known transphobic diatribes, beloved by the gender-critical movement (Forstater 2021), include describing trans women as “fucking blackface actors. . . . You’re men who get sexual kicks from being treated like women” (Montgomerie 2020). As noted by Natalie Wynn (2021) in her deconstruction of Rowling’s social media output of this period, there is plenty of evidence of Rowling’s transphobia. All it requires is a journalist with a sufficient understanding of the responsibilities of their public position to challenge Rowling on her use of smoke and mirrors to delegitimize trans people.
 * [...]

Transformative Readings: Harry Potter Fan Fiction, Trans/Queer Reader Response, and J. K. Rowling (2022)

 * To summarize, in 2017, Rowling shared an article critiquing a proposed change to the United Kingdom’s Gender Recognition Act (2004), which was interpreted by some commentators as a change that would allow trans women to access women’s spaces, such as bathrooms (Jeni, 2017). She then liked and shared a tweet by Janice Turner stating, “No fox has a right to live in a henhouse, even if he identifies as a hen” (Smith, 2019), as well as a post implying that trans women are “men in dresses” (Smith, 2019), and garnered critique for following Magdalen Berns, who insisted that all “trans women are men” (2019) and that “blackface and ‘womenface’ are the same” (2018) on Twitter (see also Rowling, 2020k). The most recent clash between Rowling, the Harry Potter fandom, and trans and queer activists was sparked by Rowling’s (2020a) tweeting in response to an article discussing the health, hygiene, and safety of “people who menstruate” during and after pandemic lockdowns. Rowling (2020a) apparently took issue with the use of the term “people who menstruate” and the article’s explicit inclusion of gender minority individuals (including trans men) in this category, stating, “ ‘People who menstruate.’ I’m sure there used to be a word for those people. Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?” The post caused a furor, and Rowling was quick to defend herself with posts claiming that biological sex is “real” (Rowling, 2020b), that she has read widely on subjects relating to sex and gender (Rowling, 2020c), that she supports trans people (Rowling, 2020h, 2020i), that she is being targeted and threatened because she is a woman (Rowling, 2020g), and that the gay and lesbian community feel threatened by gender minority individuals (Rowling, 2020d, 2020j). Finally, she posted a long and, at times, contradictory defense of her position on her blog (Rowling, 2020k).
 * In this blog post, she not only suggests that trans individuals are a threat to women and that trans-positive discourses are dangerous to children but also that she herself is a victim—in particular, of “accusations of TERF-ery,” threats, and intimidation (Rowling, 2020k). Most alarmingly, she aligns female-to-male transition and trans activism with misogyny and suggests that trans women will be a danger to “biological women” if they are allowed in women’s bathrooms and changing rooms. She uses her history of “domestic abuse and sexual assault” at the hands of a cis male spouse to do so (Rowling, 2020k). This rhetorical use of her past to frame trans individuals as dangerous to women is particularly ironic in light of her firm dismissal of accusations of spousal abuse made against actor Johnny Depp, who stars in the Fantastic Beasts (2016–) films, as a private matter (Salter and Stanfill, 2020).
 * Rowling’s commentary has justifiably been received with horror by many Harry Potter fans, who have learned through her books and the fandom not only to privilege inclusivity but quite specifically to consider gender as expansive and fluid (Bird, 2019a; Coulter, 2018; Pocock, 2019). A great number of fans, as well as the actors involved in the film adaptations of the series (e.g., Lang, 2020; Radcliffe, 2020; Watson, 2020), emphasized in their numerous responses to Rowling’s tweets that gender minority individuals are more vulnerable to sexual violence than others and that the views she has espoused are harmful, hurtful, and exclusionary, particularly to the myriad gender minority and otherwise queer Harry Potter fans for whom the books and fandom have been meaningful spaces of self-discovery.
 * [...]

Harry Potter and Beyond: On J. K. Rowling's Fantasies and Other Fictions (2020)

 * In a tweet on December 19, 2019, Rowling voiced her support for Maya Forstater’s anti-transgender beliefs. In a controversial case, Forstater’s position as a tax expert at the Center for Global Development was not renewed owing to her anti-trans statements, with judge James Tayler ruling against her, writing that she is “absolutist in her view of sex,” and concluding that “it is a core component of her belief that she will refer to a person by the sex she considered appropriate even if it violates their dignity and/or creates an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment. The approach is not worthy of respect in a democratic society.”20 In response to these events, Rowling tweeted, “Dress however you please. Call yourself whatever you like. Sleep with any consenting adult who’ll have you. Live your best life in peace and security. But force women out of their jobs for stating that sex is real? #IStand WithMaya #ThisIsNotADrill.” Given Judge Tayler’s eloquent rebuttal against Forstater’s disregard for the reality of transgender experience, Rowling’s endorsement of her position evinces a narrow view of the dignity and rights of trans people.