The Queen of broken Potter hearts

Somewhere around the queue to see Platform 9 ¾ is a bemused gaggle of Londoners wondering what all the fuss is about. What started as a harmless book about an orphan boy having a magic adventure spawn a whole world of joy for many of its readers, becoming the astrology of their times with sorting hats and houses. Amidst Pottermania its author rose to prominence, her support for the dispossessed and less fortunate seemingly written in the stars. Yet, as the augurs and outliers suggested, in reality this support was superficial, a ripping off of cultures she barely bothered investigating, laying racist tropes on top of shying away from including any LGBT characters. Potterverse is a conservative world, where those on the margins are caricatures, and where its creator made bank on her own prejudices. None of this is news, yet the fact that J K Rowling sees fit to use her billions to wail on trans women shows how her conservative values have slipped into reactionary politics. Where once she was the Queen of the best seller list, now she is merely the Queen of broken Potter hearts.

None of this would matter if she had the cultural footprint of Orson Scott Card, a man shunned because of his reactionary values, yet because Rowling has both wealth and cultural cache her personal beliefs attract attention whenever she decides to speak. Her attacks on the trans community come from a position of…