Okay, I don’t want to get into an argument, but I saw this after waking up and had to reply. With all due respect to you, @JayPea, and the entire trans community, seeing this made me sad.
I am not, I have never been, and I will never be a transphobe (or any other phobe, for that matter; except a bigotphobe).
I’m a Harry Potter fan. So now you claim I’m a transphobe, despite knowing very little about me or my beliefs? You claim my wife, my sister-in-law, my cousins, and a lot of my friends (all decent people) are transphobic? I, who vote liberal, have been active in one of the most liberal parties in Finland my entire adult life, participated in several Pride parades, and have lived my entire life with a big sister who has an intellectual disability, meaning that I have learnt to accept and see the value in the different and marginalised, even when faced by prejudices by others.
We can’t see the world in such a black-and-white way. Claiming that HP fans are transphobes is a bit like claiming that DW fans think that women are only good for screaming and making tea or that all wheelchair-bound and/or disfigured people are evil (see, there’s an equivalent of fat-shaming in DW as well, and it’s been going on for decades!). Or, conversely, that people who dislike Elton John’s music are homophobes. I could easily claim that you think this of women or disabled people, but I do not because I can separate decent people from idiots and bigots, and I can see the good in people, and I’m better than that.
The Harry Potter books are written for children. We shouldn’t sit here and deeply analyse the text as if it were the word of God. People who do that are no better than people who analyse the Bible and live by its many outdated and problematic ideas (slavery, polygamy, physical punishment, and yes, the belief that marriage is only acceptable between men and women) as if the book was the only truth to life. I read the HP books many times when growing up, but I grew into a decent person because I was raised that way. So saying I’m a transphobe is indirectly stating that my parents are as well—and I can tell you that while my parents are far from perfect, they are some of the most accepting and loving people I know. Also, I know people who haven’t read the books when growing up (or ever), and they are transphobic. See? It’s not that simple!
JKR is a bigot, yes, and I am angry and sad that she has decided to take the stance that she has, but that doesn’t take away my enjoyment of her books, the movies, or other Potter-related stuff. Incidentally, before anyone claims that I support her transphobia economically, I bought the books and movies years ago, so that money was spent before anyone knew about this. And I haven’t put money into anything she has been attached to since.
This was all I wanted to say. I hope we can be better than this and avoid viewing the world as a black-and-white place. It’s much more complex than that, and there are many more labels here than “Potter fan = transphobe” and “not a Potter fan = not a transphobe.” The sociologist in me would like to analyse this further, but this post is already getting long, so I will not go further into that.
I hope this didn’t sound too blunt, as I didn’t mean to personally attack you or anyone else (and you are perfectly entitled to your opinion, of course); I just had to speak my mind when seeing a reductive statement like that.
but thanks for clarifying what you meant specifcally. That’s something I can absolutely agree with.