Last weekend we went school clothes shopping across the river because Iowa has an annual sales tax free weekend. This will be her first year in junior high and her first year wearing girl clothes to school. She was SO EXCITED to pick out her new wardrobe. Gold shoes, pink sneakers, flip flops with flowers, and so many dresses. I loved watching her develop her own style because until now its been UnderArmor t shirts and warm up pants. Just to go shopping she wore a dress and a pair of gold glitter high tops. She looked beautiful and her happiness was contagious.
Our last stop was Target, where we needed camis and jeans. And right there, by the jeans, were the Harry Potter shirts. She found two she loved -- a grey tee with a Hermione Granger quote on it and a red and white tie dye hoodie with a matching scrunchie. She's been a huge Harry Potter fan since she was a little boy. Something about the kid who never quite fit in becoming magical and being looked up to struck a chord in my little girl. And she wanted these tops. And we could afford these tops. So I laid them across the pile in the cart and then made a difficult decision. I told her that if we bought them, JK Rowling would get some of the money, probably only a few pe nies, but some money nonetheless. She smiled and said okay. Then I told her that it might be a little complicated because JK Rowling had recently been making a lot of statements against transgender women, specifically that they aren't real women and that they hurt the feminist cause. And my daughter's face fell. I explained that an author's personal thoughts didn't change what they'd written and that I, for one, was not about to let such ignorance and stupidity take Harry Potter away from me, but that I wasn't sure if we should give her any money. I asked my daughter what she wanted to do. She told me to put the tops back. I said I would still buy them for her and they'd still look good on her and that none of this had anything to do with Harry or Hermione or anyone else in the stories, but she said no. She didn't want to support anyone who thought she wasn't real, who thought she was bad for other girls and women, and who said she couldn't be a feminist. She said she was done with JK Rowling forever.
I suppose I could have just not told her anything about Rowling's statements or opinions. I could have bought the shirts and let her proudly wear them to school. I'm sure that's what a lot of parents are doing and it would have saved my kid some heartache. But she deserved to know. She deserved to know that by getting the shirts we would be lining the pockets of a woman who spreads hate directed, in a very real sense, at her. She already knew that we don't eat Chik Fil A, we don't shop at Hobby Lobby, and we don't get our pizza from Papa John's, and I wanted her to decide if she wanted to do the same with Harry Potter merchandise.
I wonder if Jo Rowling knows that she makes kids like my daughter cry. I wonder if she realizes that for some, all of the strong female character role models in the world can't make up for the hateful example she herself sets. And I wonder if she sees that in this world, she's a Dursley. She's the one looking down on the different sisters and nephews just because she doesn't understand their magic.
Ms. Rowling, in this story, you are the villain.
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