I'm not just talking about her being a TERF specifically (I know she was liking various transphobic tweets long before she was officially outed), but also her just being super shitty and neolib in general even by normal lib standards.

I've heard it goes back as far as the Harry Potter books themselves which, full disclosure, I haven't read for myself (Seen all the movies tho). I've heard from people who have tho that there's apparently shit in them like a subplot mocking Hermione for trying to stand up for House-elf rights (Who don't want to be free anyway of course) and Harry basically becoming a cop at the end (As part of the organization that pretty much just allowed Voldemort and the Death Eaters to take control again).

But to me personally, in hindsight, the moment when alarms really should've been going off is when she lazily retconned Dumbledore as being gay and Hermione as being black while acting like she totally intended those characters to be that way from the beginning.

Obviously the problem isn't them actually being gay or black, it's that it's very transparent in this case that she just wanted brownie points and pats on the back for having diverse characters without actually having to do any of the work.

I'm not saying every time Dumbledore/Hermione were in a scene that they needed to go "Say Harry, have I mentioned that I'm homosexual/of African descent today?", but you'd think those aspects of themselves would at the very least be alluded to at least once in the span of 7 fuckin' books.

The fact readers could go through the whole series and never notice those supposed aspects of the characters says it all imo.

(Also, in Hermione's case specifically, you think she would have said something about Emma Watson being cast as her and not a black actress if she really did have that planned all the way back then.)

Anything else I missed? Perhaps from actual Harry Potter readers that know something I don't?

  • Cromalin [she/her]
    ·
    3 years ago

    You should listen to the shrieking shack podcast. It's a Harry Potter reread podcast that's really good. The hosts give detailed analysis of all the problems with the world building, characters, plot structure, and writing. They point out a lot of things that went way over my head as a kid, most notably how transphobic the depiction of Rita Skeeter is. They also go into the history of the fandom, as well as where it is now that everyone feels a little embarrassed about the whole thing. Plus, they had a news segment at the start of each episode, and the show was coming out at the same time as all the terf stuff came to light, leading to some great bits. Really recommend it.