From Wiggin to Weasley

The first serious science fiction book I read was Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card, and it changed what I read. I read it for school. In 7th or 8th grade, there was a ‘Science Fiction and Fantasy’ module in my English class. We were given a list of 5 science fiction and/or fantasy books to read, and needed to read one.

Most of my friends choose Dragon Riders of Pern by Anne McCaffrey. Some others choose The Hobbit, as an excuse to re-read it. On average, I only read one to two school books a year. I mean, I read constantly. I read a lot of murder mysteries and survival books (R.L. Stine’s Fear Street, Agatha Christie, Sue Grafton). Rarely could school books hold my attention as effectively as running from an obvious danger. Ender’s Game proved to be that year’s exception.

(Well, that and Animal Farm by George Orwell. If Card changed what I read, Orwell changed how I read.)

I felt Ender Wiggin on a deep, intrinsic level. I felt how he was overlooked, how he was underestimated, and how he made mistakes doing the right thing. I felt his isolation and insecurity; the pressure to succeed because he was created to succeed where others had failed.

I mean, what pre-teen can’t relate to that? We all think there’s something special about our shit at that age.

But it’s also this world that Card created. It seems antiquated now but Card basically conceptualized reddit before it was common to have a single desktop per home. A world where anyone, even a couple of kids, could make a name for themselves. Entering the first Battle Room with Ender is still a vivid reading memory. Of feeling lost, but slowing making sense of the literal moving objects around you. How to react when you are frozen by elements beyond your control. “Remember, the enemy's gate is down.” That line helped calm me throughout undergrad in stressful situations fueled by procrastination and anxiety. That life is chaos, but it's up to you to make sense of it. Don't get distracted.

I don't read Card anymore. At all. I've even started to give away my old paperbacks that I've collected over the years. I don't need him in my collection. Orson Scott Card is an open bigot, plain and simple. As fond as my memories are of Ender Wiggin's narrative, every time I read one of his books that's time I'm not giving to an author that isn't a white male homophobe.

I've never understood the defense of 'separating the artist from their art.' Every time we give our attention to movies or books created by folks that have brought harm to members of our society, we are actively ignoring lesser known artists that know how to behave. Artists of a different brand of genius. Artists of diversity. Instead, we keep passing these tainted artists around like artifacts. As if their work is more worthy of our collective time because it made a splash, and thereby exposing their ideology to more people who could have spent that time discovering an artist that isn't a piece of shit.

One of the morals in the Ender universe is that no matter how different someone is, if they look different, act different, have a different culture, or are as ugly as a bug, they are a person. Violence happens when stubborn people refuse to understand one another; the conversation has to start with compassion. The book taught me tolerance, despite Card's best efforts.

Do you know who taught me more about tolerance? Yann Martel. N.K. Jemison. Barbara Kingsolver. Really, Card just got there first because he keeps getting passed around.

I understand that we can't police all that we read. People are imperfect; Orwell’s history is littered with antiquated outbursts of racism, sexism, and an odd relationship with sexuality. However, Orwell also dedicated some of his major works to critiquing imperialism and the classism/racism it required. In “Antisemitism in Britain” he, while still espousing some anti-semitic rhetoric, argues that war and political tensions make it easy and even acceptable to segregate a part of the population and belittle them. Furthermore, it’s difficult to look inside ourselves at our inherent prejudices and how we are likely part of the problem.

“Naturally the antisemite thinks of himself as a reasonable being. Whenever I have touched on this subject in a newspaper article, I have always had a considerable “come-back”, and invariably some of the letters are from well-balanced, middling people — doctors, for example — with no apparent economic grievance. These people always say (as Hitler says in Mein Kampf) that they started out with no anti-Jewish prejudice but were driven into their present position by mere observation of the facts. Yet one of the marks of antisemitism is an ability to believe stories that could not possibly be true.
...
This feeling that antisemitism is something sinful and disgraceful, something that a civilised person does not suffer from, is unfavourable to a scientific approach, and indeed many people will admit that they are frightened of probing too deeply into the subject. They are frightened, that is to say, of discovering not only that antisemitism is spreading, but that they themselves are infected by it.”

Orwell wasn't perfect, far from it, but his body of work demonstrations an introspective thinking. That we need to challenge ourselves. We are all still growing up, and we all still have so much to learn.

Artists and authors evolve in a lot of ways. Some we hold up, as their actions emulate what we want to see in the world. Famously, in 2012, J.K. Rowling dropped off the Forbes Billionaire's list for giving so much of her fortune away to charity. In truth, Rowling refuses to reveal her net worth, so we don't know for sure. What is estimated, however, is that she stopped being a billionaire because of her charitable donations but also because of Britain's high tax rate.

However, this is a tax rate that she publicly supports. Rowling wrote the first of the Harry Potter novels while on welfare, and she is a staunch defender of taxes that fund government assistance programs. In 2010, the conservative Tory party was trying to win an election in Britain. They ran adds directed at young people which stated “I’ve never voted Tory, but…” and offered a tax credit to young, married couples in lieu of welfare resources. Rowling did not mince words:

“Nobody who has ever experienced the reality of poverty could say “it’s not the money, it’s the message”. When your flat has been broken into, and you cannot afford a locksmith, it is the money. When you are two pence short of a tin of baked beans, and your child is hungry, it is the money. When you find yourself contemplating shoplifting to get nappies, it is the money. If Mr Cameron’s only practical advice to women living in poverty, the sole carers of their children, is “get married, and we’ll give you £150”, he reveals himself to be completely ignorant of their true situation.”

She goes on to explain why she, even as a very wealthy woman, is in complete support of her taxes supporting the lower class.

“I am indebted to the British welfare state; the very one that Mr Cameron would like to replace with charity handouts. When my life hit rock bottom, that safety net, threadbare though it had become under John Major’s Government, was there to break the fall. I cannot help feeling, therefore, that it would have been contemptible to scarper for the West Indies at the first sniff of a seven-figure royalty cheque. This, if you like, is my notion of patriotism.”

Currently, Rowling supports so many charities I can't find them all. She created Lumos, a global non-profit which reunites orphaned children with their families or helps them find new ones. She established the Volant Charitable Trust, which aims to “alleviate social deprivation across Scotland, particularly supporting women, children and young people at risk.” The proceeds from her Harry Potter companion novels go directly to helping the less fortunate, and Harry Potter and the Dealthy Hallows itself was printed on environmentally green paper.

Almost all of her charitable giving is centered on helping non-traditional family units struggling in the lower class. Helping people that are forgotten or in some cases ignored by the system. People that are frequently misunderstood and marginalized. People that need, as many authors have taught us, tolerance and compassion.

Which makes this next bit hard to understand.

On Twitter, J.K. Rowling used to follow a large number of anti-trans activists, and has a history of liking transphobic tweets. In December of 2019, Rowling left no doubt when she tweeted in support of Maya Forstater, a woman who was (rightfully) let go from her job because she’s openly transphobic and intolerant. There have been several articles that detail this better than I can, even making the interesting connection between Rowling and the trend towards anti-trans sentiment in British feminism.

For example, one tweet liked by Rowling linked to a The Times article by Janice Turner about how a trans-woman in a female prison assaulted fellow inmates. It ran with the disgraceful headline “No fox has the right to live in a henhouse, even if he identifies as a hen.” The article, which uses this one case as a reason why no trans-women should be allowed in the same space as a cis-woman, is misleading at best and dangerous at worse. Assuming all trans-women will behave the same as this known sexual offender is fear-bating your audience with an awfully small sample size. In reality, transgendered prisoners, especially people of color, are nearly ten times more likely to be victims of sexual assault than the general prison population. Placing all transgender and gender nonconforming people in the wrong prison puts them directly in harms way.

Surely, as a champion for the socially disenfranchised, Rowling must know this.

In 2016 the Harry Potter play, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child cast a black actress as Hermonie Granger, and a black/mixed actress as her daughter. The internet was upset. Which, what else is new. To her credit, Rowling immediately got on board. Speaking to the Guardian, Rowling dismissed the backlash because “…I thought that idiots were going to idiot."

There are so many social injustices that Rowling stands guard on. She prides herself on it. Not just in the charities that she donates to, but I'm not being hyperbolic by saying that the Harry Potter series has saved and changed lives. The internet is full of people sharing their stories about how the boy who lived helped them keep living.

So how is it that she doesn’t grasp the trans struggle? Is it because it the trans rights movement has only found their intersectional footing in the queer community in the past decade or so? Was she never taught that trans people also deserve space and respect? That trans is an identity, a part of a person, and not an organized group that represents a threat?

What is it, Joanne, that scares you so much about these people that so clearly are in need of society’s safety net? Threadbare and all?

I love the Harry Potter books. I’ve read the whole series twice as an adult, and it was just as gripping the second time around. I even have a misprint of book seven, first printing, on my shelf that I will not be parting with any time soon. But Rowling? I can’t bring myself to give her any more of my time, or my money. Because as good as the series was, every movie I see, every app I download, every t-shirt I buy, she gets a piece. She has so many pieces from so many of us. More than a lifetime’s worth.

There are other authors that deserve that piece of me; of us. There are other stories just as gripping as the boy who lived, we just haven’t found them yet. Without Rowling, I have more time to look.