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You Can’t Separate Harry Potter from J.K. Rowling

Princess Weekes

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Stop buying Harry Potter stuff. SPONSORED BY GROUND NEWS: https://ground.news/princessweekes

🫶🏾 General Disclaimer: This video only covers a narrow part of this topic and not an exhaustive look into the topic. Anything left out was either cut for brevity/subject matter or simply did not come up in my research. I encourage anyone to fill in any gaps I may have missed with their own content or in the comments. 🫶🏾

Don't Rank Cuomo
✨Thumbnail by Euralis Weekes: https://euralisweekes.com/

✨Sources & Book Recommendations✨

⭐Sources

📌https://www.thepinknews.com/2024/02/1...
📌https://www.reuters.com/article/brita...
📌https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-50858919
📌https://www.thepinknews.com/2025/05/2...
📌https://theweek.com/feature/1020838/j...
📌https://www.life.com/arts-entertainme...
📌https://www.vox.com/culture/2017/6/26...
📌https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/For_Wom...
📌https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/For_Wom...
📌https://www.bbc.com/news/live/cvgq9ej...
📌https://slate.com/podcasts/icymi/2025...
📌https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattcrai...

⭐Book Recommendations:

📌Who's Afraid of Gender? by Judith Butler https://bookshop.org/p/books/who-s-af...
📌The Transgender Issue: Trans Justice Is Justice for All by Shon Faye https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-tran...
📌Transgender History: The Roots of Today's Revolution by Susan Stryker https://bookshop.org/p/books/transgen...
📌Before We Were Trans: A New History of Gender by Kit Heyam https://bookshop.org/p/books/before-w...
📌Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity by C. Riley Snorton https://bookshop.org/p/books/black-on...

⭐Jessie Gender's videos on JKR:
📌The Liberal-Washing of JK Rowling
📌Harry Potter Reboot Actors Chose Complicit...
📌Explaining JK Rowling’s Transphobia

⭐ Kat Blaque:
📌J.K. Rowling Is Just a Misogynist

⭐Contra:
📌 The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling | ContraP...
📌 J.K. Rowling | ContraPoints

✨Female & Non-Binary Fantasy Writers (note some of these books have of its time problematic elements so I'd suggest doing some research if you have specific triggers)
📌The Dispossessed [50th Anniversary Edition]: A Novel by Ursula K Le Guin
https://bookshop.org/p/books/disposse...
📌The Dragonriders of Pern by Anne McCaffrey
https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-drag...
📌The Gate to Women's Country by Sheri S. Tepper
https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-gate...
📌Doomsday Book by Connie Willis
https://bookshop.org/p/books/doomsday...
📌Model Home by Rivers Solomon
https://bookshop.org/p/books/model-ho...

✨Social Media✨
📌Patreon: www.patreon.com/princessweekes
📌Instagram/Reels: princess_weekes
📌TikTok (?): PrincessPendulum
📌BlueSky: @princesmweekes.bsky.social
📌Open Tabs Podcast: https://opentabs.libsyn.com/

⭐Special Thanks to Joey for Editing and Emotional Support.
⭐Monster Fucker Pin:
https://store.nebula.tv/collections/p...
⭐Villain Fucker Pin:
https://store.nebula.tv/collections/p...
⭐Other Merch:
https://store.nebula.tv/collections/p...

Keywords: harry potter, j.k. rowling, transphobia, homophobia, racism, colonialism,

20 Comments

@EayuProuxm 1 year ago

Ursula K Le Guin calling Harry Potter 'ethically mean-spirited' was way ahead of her time.
As she often is.

@Shrifbun 1 year ago (edited)

I grew up with an HP obsessed mother. She took me to midnight releases, she bought us tickets to Universal Studios the first summer they opened Harry Potter World, she had all the exclusive merch and collectables. Even after I came out of the closet, I never told her the truth about JK Rowling because I didn't want to deal with it. I knew JK Rowling was writing heinous crap online but let my mom continue to enjoy her favorite series because I did believe in the speration of the author to some degree, especially in the 2010s. But the day JK's terfdom leaked its way into mainstream news, my mother called me in distress. She was incredibly upset to learn JK was so anti trans even though she had always been so liberal. My mom became even more distressed when she realized I knew all along, but I told her that she didn't have to stop loving Harry Potter, it didn't hurt me. And to a degree, I still do today. Watching an old copy of a movie or owning a book for years doesn't hurt a trans person and doesn't benefit Joanne. But my mother got rid of every single book, donated every single collectable, removed the entire series from her life. She stood on the ground that my life was more important to her than a love for a book series. If my 60 year old mother can see that lives matter more than a fantasy, maybe others can, too.

@joelleblanc8670 1 year ago

What frustrates me is HP fans being like "JK never said she hates trans people." Like, uh, ok, well Michael Myers never said he hated Laurie in the Halloween films. He still hunted her for decades, though.

@JDBaldBabyVance 1 year ago (edited)

You just know that if Joanne had it in her mind to include a gay character in the HP books while she was writing them in the first place, they'd be a wizard named Yasslay Sashay Twinklebum.

@BrigitteEmpire 1 year ago

I have friends that literally will March for trans rights then spend all their money on Harry Potter games and merch, they need to hear this, thank you 🏳️‍⚧️

@perrisavallon5170 1 year ago

People make the mistake of equating Rowling with celebrities with bad or bigoted takes. She's an anti-trans ACTIVIST, and a successful one at that. Obviously bigoted people still deserve to be called out, but Rowling is actually actively doing things to harm trans people and succeeding, and that's different from someone who's had a few problematic tweets

@fangsgender 1 year ago (edited)

honestly i think the worst part about the hp fandom is that if you hold their feet to the fire, they WILL admit they don’t care she’s a violent bigot. when i was a teenager, i wrote a ridiculously popular harry potter fanfiction series—it’s still on goodreads, people still look for it all the time, it was kind of a micro phenomenon amongst harry potter fans in the 2010s (i once went to a party where everyone had read it, which was trippy.) i had written three and a half of the planned fics in 2018, and by that point i was in my late teens and was having a hard time rereading the books and not coming to hate them. but when she started doing all the terf shit, i told everyone “i’m not finishing this, i don’t wanna support her even tangentially, i’m trans.” people acted like i had done something truly monstrous, like i had betrayed and tricked them. at the time i wasn’t gonna delete it, i didn’t care that much and i kinda felt bad. but people sent me death threats about not finishing it! like you can’t say you don’t agree with her politics if you’re also threatening trans people, even if it’s “just online.”

@strangesynaps 1 year ago

Thank you for mentioning trans men. As a trans man with a very TERFy mother who genuinely agrees with JKR and pushed me to detransition (dont worry, I moved away and am a few months away from top surgery now) it's nice to hear anything about our existence at all. Genuinely so many people just dismiss us and erase us when it comes to discussions about the trans community. Thank you for including us! ❤

@madguy262 1 year ago

I work at an indie bookstore and managed to convince the owners to stop carrying the main series and all the additional accessory books. Small wins!!

@starrr339 1 year ago

You can separate the art from the artist in your head if that makes sense to you mentally and emotionally (and sometimes I can). But you can't separate the business from the people who profit — that's the point of boycotts and why it's so important to look at what Rowling does with her money (and the platform her business gives her). If you still want to reread the books or rewatch the movies, get them from the library and enjoy them if you can, but if you continue investing MONEY into her franchise empire, you are objectively monetarily supporting her as a person.

@bekblackwell2492 1 year ago

That transmasc argument is always wild to me because I tried really hard to be a good cis woman because I didn’t think there was anything wrong with being one and that was what I was supposed to be. I KNEW about and personally met quite a few trans people by the time I was a teenager, yet being trans myself and the idea of transitioning wasn’t something that was even on my radar until I was an adult. It eventually dawned on me in a very private, full circle way. It was a very hard thing for me though and in no way a convenient thing. This idea that it’s some kind of “get out of jail free” card for “confused, autistic” girls to escape misogyny just hurts my brain.

@katiemartin6991 1 year ago

If Daniel Radcliffe, who literally was Harry Potter for a sizeable chunk of his youth and has the best argument in favor of the Harry Potter IP being his "childhood", is able to disavow Rowling and support trans rights, Potterheads have no excuse.

@lprocks555 1 year ago

"Just because you have convinced yourself that it is 2009 choice feminism praxis to enjoy this franchise without politics doesn't make it true." Thank you. It is, in fact, quite easy not to give a billionaire more money.

@rachelb.684 1 year ago

13:44 I think a big example of this is how Ginny got possessed by Voldemort in the first book where she's a major character, and the series DOES NOTHING WITH THAT. That's a character-defining event! Even when she gets together with Harry, the only other child with as much of a personal connection to Voldemort as her, nothing's done with this.

@Knightwrath333 1 year ago

STOP BUYING STUFF. Yes, thank you. Just stop putting money in her pocket. love the books, hate them, ignore them, but how is this hard to understand? It's literally NOT spending money! Compulsive fandom consumerism has gotten out of control.

@sydneycazier5625 1 year ago

I have a really cute snake tattoo on my right forearm. He's wrapped around a fountain pen and his name is William Snakespeare. I've had way too many people ask me if it's supposed to be a Death Eater tattoo, and when that's brought up, I ask them "do you think I would get the fictional equivalent of a swastika tattooed on my arm?" That usually makes their brains reset for a minute. Regardless, I've been adding on the ink to blend it into a reptilian and literary sleeve that will hopefully make the misunderstanding less common.

@teaboy-g3k 1 year ago

I really appreciate you offering your perspective as someone actively involved in fandom. It's been enraging to see people use nostalgia to justify their passive consumption of official merch, and dismissing those who ask them to stop as people who "Just don't understand fandom." I'm a trans guy and have been desperately trying to get my brother's girlfriend to understand the damage JKR has done to trans rights (and by extension feminism as a whole) as she refuses to even take the most simple steps to avoid giving JKR money. (side note: I'm REALLY sick of cis people like her assuming I'm going to be cool with casually consuming and talking about Harry Potter in a positive light because she hasn't specifically targeted trans men with the same vitriol, as though I have to be a trans woman to care that my sisters are under direct fire.) Thank you for your thoughtful video.

@thepriceisright048 1 year ago

Happy Pride and Caribbean heritage month to one of the best queer Jamaican creators out there!!!

@V3XXE 1 year ago

So many cis folk whine at the idea of giving up on Harry Potter. "But I grew up obsessed with it!" Yeah, so did I. Then the author decided to make it her mission to try and make people like me not exist. Why would I not hold that against the fucking series?

@GarnetHeartIllustrations 1 year ago

19:32 the fact that Lupin becoming an actual danger to children when his HIV-allegory condition isn’t consistently medicated/managed is such an absurd bit of bigoted messaging.