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J.K. Rowling’s Trans Tweets Are Disgusting
That doesn’t mean she should lose control of her work
Everyone, it seems, is writing about J.K. Rowling’s transphobic tweets these days. I’ve seen coverage of the scandal by CNN, NPR, NBC News, the New York Times, Variety, and USA Today. Harry Potter himself, Daniel Radcliffe, chided her in a blog post for the Trevor Project.
I have written before about having a transgender son. Clearly, I don’t agree with Rowling’s opinion.
Some critics, though, take their animadversion too far. Molly Roberts is one. In a Washington Post essay, she took Rowling to task for creating a beautiful, adaptable world and then trying to control it.
“Rowling magnanimously bestowed her blessing on some readers’ interpretation of Hermione as black. Yet was that blessing really necessary? Other fan-favorite inventions the writer has written off as “incorrect”; apparently, they pushed beyond whatever boundaries her mind had set for her novels. Those novels, she made it abundantly clear, still belonged to her.”
She ends her essay with a call to let the books mean what anyone wants them to mean — a sort of literary mobocracy.
“Allow Neville Longbottom and Luna Lovegood to end up together after all; allow Remus Lupin and Sirius Black to be…
