You Can Still Love “Harry Potter” Without Supporting J.K. Rowling’s Anti-Trans Views — Here’s How

ND: I think it’s such a complicated debate, and I think about it a lot of the time with J.K. Rowling. I think about it with Joss Whedon and Buffy and Marvel, and I think about it a lot with Mark Schwahn and One Tree Hill, which is like my favorite show of all time. So I definitely have personally thought about it, and I think something I really loved was something Sophia Bush said about One Tree Hill. She talked about how like she created Brooke Davis. She created and embodied that character, and it’s so much more than the words on the page he put down and the atmosphere on set. 

And I really kind of think about how Daniel Radcliffe became Harry, and he brought his own spin to it, and it’s so much bigger than her. And we may all have found a common ground in the work she created, but there are so many more stories like “I’ve met friends through Harry Potter” and “I’ve been to conventions and was sitting in a room and chatting about it.” She may have created the world, but the fandom goes so much further. 

So I definitely it’s one of those things where I kind of make a conscious decision to not buy any official Harry Potter merch anymore. I’ll buy shirts from local businesses on Etsy and smaller businesses like that because those dollars are going to fans and not to J.K. Rowling. And like I already have all the books, so there’s no need to buy the books again. I don’t want her to gain anything else from my love for it, but I do still have a love for it and I’m able to celebrate the characters and the fandoms that have been created in a different way.