A Custom Mood Theme in a Year

I've got a less contentious relationship with the Harry Potter franchise than I think a lot of my friends and family do. Once I discovered that Rowling was actively attacking trans folks and institutions that help them, I bailed on purchases and washed my hands of it.

However, I have still had moments of distress and... grief, I guess? over a part of my family that is still deeply in love with the franchise and who choose to ignore that direct line of 'purchasing goods leads to money given to the franchise owner who is in turn using that fame and money to make direct attacks against marginalized people', especially when a kiddo in that part of the family recently came out as [a gender diverse identity here, which I'll leave vague for privacy], and is getting set up to have to deal with some extra complicated relationship with their gender as they grow up.

However, Jessie Gender recently tackled this frustration in a clear and eloquent way, and more than that, she breaks into some larger topics on how we got here under capitalism and the more and more right-leaning general opinion that causes harm today. And, she offers some suggestions on big and little things that trans allies (indeed, left-leaning folks or folks who would like to consider themselves left-leaning and human rights supporting in general) can do to help one another without getting caught up in guilt or defensiveness or shame about liking a thing that ultimately is now doing harm.

One of those topics, which I think we see a lot in younger folks in the LGBTQ+ community and in fandom spaces, but which is actually endemic to our entire culture (at least in present day North America, just playing out in different ways!) is the idea of purity culture and essentialism defining what we do as who we are. Meritocratic essentialism is a wedge that we can use on one another (but more insidiously, which we use on ourselves) to make an action that we took, once, to define who we are and whether or not we're a bad or good person. It works in more and more subtle ways to divest us of our responsibility for anything, or, on the opposite side, to take on more and more of the burden without it ever being agreed or consented to.

This winds up playing out in the Harry Potter franchise situation as something like this:

Person A is neutral, or a fan. They may be aware of the harm done, but either 'one little purchase isn't a big deal' or 'fuck Rowling, I enjoyed this too much as a kid to give it up now!' or one of many other reasons to continue interacting with and purchasing franchise merch/games/media.

Person B mentions or explains the direct line of harm.

Person A hears "you support this franchise, therefore you are a bad person" regardless of whether Person B actually implied or outright said it. Often, person B does imply or outright say that, because Person B is as caught up in the essentialism of identity as Person A is.

Person A doesn't feel like a bad person; but now they're defensive, they're hurt, they're angry, or they feel like there's now an elephant in the room that makes everything with Person B uncomfortable. Regardless of whether or not they choose to continue participating with the franchise, it's now no longer about talking about the direct harms being done to marginalized people, it's about their own hurts and whether they're a good person. And for Person B and folks like them, people who are less inclined to listen to begin with use it as an excuse to signal that Person B is being an asshole who doesn't need to be listened to because they're going around trying to hurt folks like Person A's feelings (and, more importantly, sully their very identities as being Bad People!) simply by bringing up the issue.

The solution to this kind of behaviour is to become aware of it. Essentialism and assumption of guilt or innocence works at its best when it goes unsaid. We can still make mistakes, we can miscommunicate, we can all make our own choices and have our own feelings without those defining who we are in every way-- and I really believe that if more of us took extra time to notice how our image of ourselves and others (our identities) were tied up with this core belief that "behaviour == moral value/essential quality of Good or Bad", we'd have more spoons to talk about difficult and ongoing harms like this, even if we have different opinions, without it culminating in severing ties and causing thought patterns of more and more dehumanizing radicalization.

So, like, yeah, fuck the HP franchise. Fuck Rowling. Liking HP itself doesn't make you a bad person, unless you're also saying "actually Rowling makes a good point", in which case, we're just going to land in really different places. But I like that Jessie Gender comes out of this talking about how to support one another and gives a reminder that it's important to be aware of (and critical of) your actions without boiling yourself or others down to Good or Bad. If we can all see one another as human, then we start being able to get somewhere that helps those who are getting shit-kicked just for fighting to exist.