-I am 100% a Harry Potter fan.
I'm a huge --
I'm a proud Hufflepuff, to be honest with you.
-Yeah.
I'm like a Gryffindor with a Slytherin rising.
-Me and my roommates, we have --
Our key ring says "Alohomora" on it.
-I love the characters, and I love the story,
and I love talking about it.
But it also symbolizes something in my own life
that's, like, so important to me.
-I've been a Harry Potter fan for longer than I've been out
as trans, for longer than I even know I was trans.
-I was really into it, um, when I was a teen.
Slowly it's just been chipped away over the decade since.
-For the influential author of children's literature
to be so vehemently anti-trans and to so publicly shame,
ridicule, and invalidate trans people is -- is lethal.
And I can't talk about it without getting mad.
-I mean, the best way to put it without being super eloquent
is it sucks. It sucks.
-We would honestly prefer to never talk about her
ever again, honestly.
-There's, like, a very big, serious, global conversation
that needs to be happening right now
in terms of the uprising around protecting black lives,
which includes in a huge way black trans lives.
And so, like, this is a very specific act of violence.
-It's using her voice that so many people listen to --
so many people listen to her voice --
to actively attack trans folks.
That [bleep] me off. -Yeah.
It's so tough to see someone that you idolized as a child
say something so -- just so hurtful and damaging.
-If she's saying that trans women aren't real women,
then she's also saying trans men aren't real men,
that trans men aren't part of the conversation.
I don't know what's worse --
feeling invalidated or feeling invisible.
-As trans people and as trans young people especially,
we walk around with our guard up all the time.
And there are so few spaces for a lot of us
where we feel like we can let our guard down
and really be ourselves and feel safe and affirmed.
And the Harry Potter fandom is one of those places.
And then JK Rowling comes in and takes that away from us.
-For so many people, Harry Potter is,
like, something that they consider
to be a part of their foundational identity.
-I grew up with Harry Potter as a kid.
You know, I was about the same age as Harry
when the books were coming out and grew up with him.
So there's a part of Harry Potter
that is deep within the core of who I am and my identity.
And I did wrestle with the fact of, like,
what does this mean for my fandom?
What does it mean for me?
Is my engaging with this financially benefiting someone
who actively hates me?
-Don't give JK Rowling any of your money.
Stop buying the books.
Don't download the games.
-I think it's incumbent on us to name that we can still love
and cherish the story but we can
no longer economically support the franchise.
-I don't know if it's because I've been aware of this
with her for so long and I've had,
like, breathing time.
Now I don't want anything to do with the franchise.
-In my mind, I've kind of,
like separated Harry Potter from JK Rowling entirely.
Like death of the author
except she has done it entirely by herself.
-However way that, like, people are individually,
you know, interpreting Harry Potter,
however they feel about it in their personal lives,
like, that is a deeply personal thing.
Like, my love of Harry Potter
and what I love about it is my own.
-While she may be able to be
the one to sell rights to Warner Bros.
to make movies, she doesn't own the rights
to what Harry Potter meant to so many people, myself included.
-One thing that was nice is that it meant that several, like,
major members of the "Harry Potter" film
cast have spoken up in response.
And it's like, would they have explicitly spoken up so strongly
in support of trans rights right now if JK
Rowling hadn't spoken up against them?
I'm not sure.
Like, I'd rather we were talking about it
than not talking about it at all.