There’s a Harry Potter shop in London’s King’s Cross Station. If you’ve been there, you’ve almost certainly seen it. Whenever I make one of my regular trips to London, I can’t help but observe the almost vortex-like way it draws in the public surrounding it.
Planted rather deliberately where the entrance for the fictitious “Platform 9 3/4” would lie, it’s apparently one of five officially licensed stores across the world; a likely reason why the line for the shopfront is always jam-packed with wand-wielding, burgundy-and-mustard scarf-wearing patrons avidly waiting to peruse the overpriced chocolate frogs and Butterbeer bottles on display.
I don’t begrudge these wizarding buffs for their enthusiasm – finding simple, if not over-expensive, sources of joy in the volatile world we live in today is as important as it is heart-crushingly sparse – but I can’t help but feel woe at the teeming crowds of avid fans dedicated to a culturally inescapable franchise which, to I and so many others, now represents a sinister undercurrent that has oozed its way into British society.
Harry Potter is an insanely profitable franchise. Estimated at a whopping $25 billion in 2016, it is one of the highest-grossing media franchises of all time. The original books have reportedly sold over 600 million copies, with the first in the franchise, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, being the fourth most sold book of all time. Its film adaptations, meanwhile, have grossed approximately $7.7 billion worldwide.
There has always been this kind of melancholic dread that comes from hearing friends, family, or loved ones talk about their love for the hugely prolific Wizarding World over the past few years. Love of the Harry Potter franchise is, of course, not synonymous with support of JK Rowling’s rhetoric about trans people. It is, however, seen by many as a kind of ambivalence or ignorance to how the kind of views that she holds have affected trans people in the UK and beyond.
That being said, I’m finding it increasingly difficult to accept the argument that it’s possible to enjoy the multimedia behemoth whilst simultaneously calling out JK Rowling for her views, and the recent creation of the JK Rowling Women’s Fund (JKRWF) has made that sentiment even more hollow.
Announced over the weekend, the private funding organisation aims, in its own words, to financially support the fight “to retain women’s sex-based rights”.
The organisation’s founding appears to be a method of optimising Rowling’s support of ‘gender-critical’ individuals and organisations. The author has already admitted she has donated to For Women Scotland (FWS), the group whose subsequent legal case into the 2010 Equality Act’s definition of woman saw the UK Supreme Court exclude trans women from the definition entirely.
JKRWF’s creation should act as a watershed moment for Harry Potter fans adamantly still spearating JK Rowling’s views from the books, films, and video games adding to her coffers. You can separate the art from the artist as much as you want, but the money being pumped into the franchise has a stronger political impact than your words do.
It’s time for every trans-supportive Hufflepuff, Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, and Slytherin to sit up and reflect. Can you still enjoy a franchise when its creator’s value stand at such odds to your own?
For many, the question isn’t whether you’re willing to choose between the safety and protection of trans people and enjoying Harry Potter, but why that’s even a decision that has to be made in the first place. I mean, can’t we just enjoy things? The sad truth is that unfortunately, endorsing something, especially financially, is never a neutral act. Anything and everything from buying your first house to grabbing a can of Coca-Cola at the shops is going to have some sort of economic and, therefore, political effect on the world, as tiny or as large as that may be.
My point is not to guilt Harry Potter fans into giving up something they love – I can’t, nor would I want to, dictate what people want to enjoy. Instead, I wish that all of those avid patrons lining up at King’s Cross Station, hoping that their favourite wand is still in stock, would understand political impact of their purchase.
Maybe they already understand that. Maybe they don’t care. Maybe some of them agree with JK Rowling. I don’t know, and I don’t care to know. I simply wish that each person entering the wizarding world knows who – and what – they are supporting.
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