Mick Hartley

Meanwhile, in Seattle:

A museum has airbrushed JK Rowling out of its hall of fame and Harry Potter exhibits because of her gender-critical beliefs.

The Museum of Pop Culture (MoPOP) in Seattle, Washington, accused the author of holding “super hateful and divisive” opinions in a lengthy blog post explaining its decision…..

The museum doubled down on its decision on Saturday, saying it “unequivocally stands with nonbinary and transgender communities”. Chris Moore, who is transgender and uses ‘he/they’ pronouns, wrote in the 1,400-word piece: “There’s a certain cold, heartless, joy-sucking entity in the world of Harry Potter and, this time, it is not actually a Dementor.

“This certain person is a bit too vocal with her super hateful and divisive views to be ignored…Her transphobic viewpoints are front and centre these days, but we can’t forget all the other ways that she’s problematic.”

Explaining the removal of Rowling from MoPOP’s hall of fame, Moore wrote: “For the time being, the curators decided to remove any of her artefacts from this gallery to reduce her impact. It’s not a perfect solution, but it’s what we were able to do in the short-term while determining long-term practices.”

On the author’s induction in 2018, a year before she first publicly expressed her views on trans issues, MoPOP described the Harry Potter books as “beloved” and published a three-paragraph biography of Rowling outlining her literary achievements.

In his post, Moore also accused Rowling of “fat-shaming”, a “lack of LGBTQIA+ representation” and using “racial stereotypes” in her books.

“We learned that [Rowling] was a problem, which is why you’ll see the artefacts without any mention or image of the author,” he said. After all, Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, and Rupert Grint are all incredibly vocal allies.”

Here's that original blog post, from May:

We would love to go with the internet’s theory that these books were actually written without an author, but this certain person is a bit too vocal with her super hateful and divisive views to be ignored. Yes, we’re talking about J.K. Rowling, and no, we don’t like that we’re giving her more publicity, so that’s the last you’ll see of her name in this post. We’ll just stick with You-Know-Who because they’re close enough in character.

Her transphobic viewpoints are front and center these days, but we can’t forget all the other ways that she’s problematic: the support of antisemitic creators, the racial stereotypes that she used while creating characters, the incredibly white wizarding world, the fat shaming, the lack of LGBTQIA+ representation, the super-chill outlook on the bigotry and othering of those that don’t fit into the standard wizarding world, and so much more. We’re going to be focusing on You-Know-Who's transphobic views in this blog post because she’s really doubled down on them lately….