To the Author Who Forgot Her Own Story
Note: This essay discusses J.K. Rowling’s public comments about trans people and the harm caused by them. It’s both critique and reclamation, written with love for those who’ve been hurt by her rhetoric.
For a long time, I didn’t really know who J.K. Rowling was.
Truth be told, I used to confuse her with J.K. Simmons. That changed when I learned to tell them apart by associating her name not with excellence or artistry, but with something far more sinister: bigotry cloaked in intellectualism and buried beneath the ruins of a once-beloved legacy.
I was in my mid-teens when I first read Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (Or Philosopher’s), if we’re being globally inclusive. I didn’t just read it quickly. I devoured it in one sitting.
The premise was magnetic. A mistreated, overlooked child discovers he’s special. There is a hidden world of magic and meaning just for him. The people who hurt him were wrong about who he was. He’s swept into a fight against a twisted ideology led by a regime that fears difference and wields propaganda like a wand.
It spoke to me deeply.
I grew up in an abusive, deeply religious household. The idea of being chosen for something greater, of finding family beyond blood, of standing up to cruel systems was salvation on a page.
The irony hit even harder because my father used to call Harry Potter satanic. In the end, he wasn’t entirely wrong.
The danger was never the magic. It was the messaging. That messaging curdled when its creator stepped into the spotlight and chose hate over humanity.
I read every book in the series except Deathly Hallows. Not because I had turned on Rowling. I hadn’t yet connected the public controversies to the woman behind the curtain. The magic had simply started to fade. Too many false starts of my own. Too many emotional blocks stopping me. By the time I might have finished it, I no longer wanted to.
The legacy of Harry Potter, for me, had already been irreparably damaged. Not by plot holes. Not by pacing. By Rowling herself, and her slow, deliberate transformation from literary hero to smug cultural villain.
Let me be crystal clear: I understand J.K. Rowling’s stated concern. She claims to fear that trans activism is dangerous, that it might erase cisgender women. I have a simple question for her, or for anyone who echoes that fear:
If trans people were truly trying to erase cis women, wouldn’t we also be erasing ourselves?
The idea collapses under even the lightest scrutiny.
Without people with uteruses, regardless of what terms they use, humanity ceases to exist. That is not what’s happening. To pretend otherwise is not only disingenuous. It is nonsense stacked on a hill someone has chosen to die on, waving a flag of fabricated oppression.
Here are the facts:
Trans people aren’t trying to erase cis women. Full stop.
The overwhelming majority of trans individuals are simply trying to live. To work. To love. To go to the bathroom without fear.
The idea that this is a coordinated attack on womanhood is not rooted in reality.
It is rooted in fear. Not fear of harm. Fear of irrelevance. Fear of losing power. Fear of sharing the spotlight.
When rhetoric stops making sense, it is rarely about logic.
It is about control.
Predators are predators, regardless of gender identity.
The argument that trans people pose a threat in public bathrooms has been thoroughly debunked. A 2018 study published in Sexuality Research and Social Policy found no link between trans-inclusive bathroom policies and incidents of sexual misconduct. None.
If safety is the concern, why not address the real threat?
Over 90 percent of child sexual abuse is committed by someone the child already knows. Most often, it is cisgender men in familial or educational settings. Not strangers in public restrooms. Not trans men or women trying to use a toilet in peace.
While Rowling and her supporters spin fear-mongering fantasies about hypothetical harm, violence against trans people is a brutal reality.
Since 2013, at least 320 trans and gender non-conforming people have been killed in the United States. I suspect that number to be much larger by now. The majority of them were Black trans women. Where is Rowling’s concern for those women?
The answer is clear.
This was never about safety. It was never about facts. It was always about fear and the need to remain at the center of the narrative, even if that meant burning the whole story down.
This made me question something. Isn’t her book about a chosen boy rising up against the oppression of his blood family and enemies? Let’s dig a bit deeper. There is irony in the betrayal not just of her fans, but of the very story and characters she created.
J.K. Rowling taught us how fascism rises. She showed us how fear becomes law, how bureaucracy can be weaponized, how language, when twisted, can justify cruelty.
Here we are now, watching her become the villain she once warned us about.
She gave us Dolores Umbridge, a woman who smiled sweetly while issuing edicts that harmed children. A woman who insisted she was protecting Hogwarts while silencing dissent and marking bodies with trauma. Her power came not from spells, but from policy. From the slow, insidious enforcement of ideology that was under the guise of order.
She gave us the Ministry of Magic, a bloated institution so afraid of acknowledging truth that it gaslit the public, turned on its own, and criminalized anyone who challenged its narrative. The Ministry didn’t need Voldemort to corrupt it. It did that on its own by prioritizing comfort over justice and control over compassion.
Then came Voldemort himself.
A man obsessed with purity. With bloodlines. With rigid definitions of who belonged and who did not. He saw difference as a threat and built an empire on fear. His power wasn’t just in magic. It was in propaganda. In convincing people that his hatred was logical, necessary, even noble.
Rowling wrote these archetypes. She now mirrors them.
She has become a one-woman Ministry, issuing decrees from her Twitter tower, dismissing those who challenge her views as confused, dangerous, or ungrateful. She invokes the language of protection, yet her policies are punitive. She claims to defend women, but only those who fit her definition of womanhood.
She wrote about the danger of narrowing identity to fit power.
She preached that silence in the face of injustice is complicity.
She taught generations to stand up for the marginalized, even when it was inconvenient or dangerous.
Now she is the one wielding the quill of discrimination. She is the one rewriting reality to match her fear. She is the one silencing truth under the guise of order.
This is not just ironic. It is devastating.
For many of us, her books were a lifeline. They told us we mattered. That our differences could be magical. That love, real love, was stronger than hate.
The author of that message walked away from it. She didn’t just betray her readers. She betrayed her own story.
When Rowling began to unravel, the fanbase responded. Silence was not our choice. Reclamation was.
Queer fans, trans fans, fans of color, those who once found solace in her stories and now feel erased by her rhetoric, did not disappear. We didn’t let her take the magic with her. We took it back.
We wrote fanfiction where trans witches fell in love at Hogwarts. We created art where the Sorting Hat affirmed gender identity with joy and reverence. We built headcanons that created safety, storylines that created sanctuary, and worlds that welcomed every kind of outsider.
We rewrote the map.
Rowling once taught us that when power fails you, you find another way in. When the doors of the castle close, you build your own.
This wasn’t rebellion for its own sake. It was survival. Some of us needed those stories to breathe. When she let us down, we carried the story forward ourselves.
There is grief in all this. Grief in realizing that the person who once made you feel seen now advocates for the silencing of those you love, or even worse: Your own silencing. This is not just betrayal. It is heartbreak.
I don’t want Rowling to suffer. I do not wish for her to understand gender dysphoria through personal pain. I hope she and her children never experience the isolation that comes from being told that your identity is dangerous. No one deserves that, not even those who spread the idea.
Still, I want her to understand the damage she has done. I want her to hear the depth of the pain she causes. This is not just discourse. This is not academic debate. This is real life.
When Rowling speaks, people listen. When she writes, lawmakers quote her. That kind of influence is not neutral. It cannot be brushed aside with wordplay or plausible deniability. Her words have weight, and they echo far beyond the walls of Hogwarts.
To every reader: Whether you are cis, trans, queer, ally, or unsure, we must love louder than they hate. We must open doors where others slam them shut. We must name injustice even when it comes from those we once held dear.
Why do I offer J.K. grace?
Rowling does not deserve my grace. She has done nothing to earn it. She has not apologized. She has not softened. She has not shown the empathy her stories once preached.
Still, I offer it.
Not for her sake. For mine.
I do not meet cruelty with cruelty. I will not bend myself to her level to make a point. The compassion I extend is not because she is owed it, but because I refuse to let her harden the parts of me that still believe in hope. That choice is mine. It is deliberate. It is rooted in love.
To give grace where there is none returned is not weakness. It is resistance.
I will not kneel to hate. I will not meet her in the trenches she dug. I will rise instead, and I will do it on my own terms.
The grace I give is not absolution. It is a boundary.
It says: You cannot have my heart. You cannot have my voice. You cannot twist my values into your weapon. I remain whole, not in spite of you, but because I refused to become like you.
To J.K. Rowling, if these words reach you:
There is still time to listen. There is still time to step back. There is still time to return to the values you once claimed to hold dear. No one is asking you to let go of your womanhood. We are asking you to make room for others to live fully in theirs.
You wrote about courage. You wrote about empathy. You wrote about love being the strongest kind of magic.
Are you still living by those lessons? Or have you become what you once asked us to resist?