JK Rowling: "I love, respect, and affirm trans people, I just don't think the government should be converting children into giant hunter-destroyer cyborgs and this is why trans people of all ages should not have rights."
The Dance:
1. State that you're not a bigot.
2. Fearmonger/concerntroll about something that sounds bad and is absolutely not happening.
3. On that basis, argue a slippery slope that requires oppressing the group you've stated you're not bigoted against.
1. State that you're not a bigot.
2. Fearmonger/concerntroll about something that sounds bad and is absolutely not happening.
3. On that basis, argue a slippery slope that requires oppressing the group you've stated you're not bigoted against.
This is like, the smallest thing about J.K. Rowling and the Harry Potter series worldbuilding, but... I've gotten so much pushback over the years for pointing out that in her world, the exact same magic is called something different based on the gender of a practitioner.
Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry is Hogwarts School of Magic Done By Women and The Exact Same Magic Done By Men.
Every time I point this out multiple people jump in to say "I assumed that ____ and ___ were witchcraft and ___ and ___ were wizardry." I'm told that the text implies they're different arts. And it... super doesn't. Only the name of the school suggests they are distinct.
"Witch" is just Wizarding World for Wizard Who Is A Woman. "Witch Weekly" is a *women's magazine*, not a magazine about witchcraft. Why else would they spend time talking about a wizard's smile?
As I said, it's the smallest thing, but... binary gender essentialism is baked into the Harry Potter series to the point that they need a completely different word to describe the exact same thing when it's done by women vs. when it's done by men.
Like, if you were to go through the Harry Potter series and mark the number of times "witch" is used where "woman" or "girl" would convey the same information, when magic is not relevant at all. It's like the old scifantasy trope of "Call A Rabbit A Smeep".
And the thing is, it almost reads as a parody on cistypical gender essentialism because they have this insistent terminology where Hogwarts has to be a school of Witchcraft AND Wizardry because it's co-ed, they have both Witches AND Wizards...
....and they're very insistent on this terminology (beyond the very typical thing where "wizards" can generically mean a mixed group so it's always "he's a wizard" or "she's a witch" but a mixed group may be "they're wizards") but it means nothing.
And the mind sort of rebels against the idea that a distinction that is so important to wizarding society that it's in the title of Britain's onliest magic school could mean absolutely nothing, which I think is why so many people when it's pointed out have an answer ready.
Because *obviously* witchcraft and wizardry must be different things, or how would Hogwarts teach both of them? But no class is referred to as being wizardry or witchcraft, and every class is coeducational which means it's teaching both wizards and witches.
When Rowling talks about "sex-based rights"... I can't help thinking about how in her wildest imagination, as far back as book 1 when everything was childhood whimsy and fantastical escapism, this is the kind of thing she came up with.
