I was recently at WorldCon, where I talked about unicorns with Peter S Beagle, fangirled over Mary Robinette Kowal reading us an excerpt from a secret new project, and went to many great panels on topics such as dark academia and techno-orientalism. Best of all, I caught up with old friends and made some new ones. In conversation with one of my new friends, we shared stories about our young children, and she told me that her daughter has recently got really into Star Wars and she especially loves Darth Vader. There’s something particularly adorable about a three-year-old girl going straight to the Dark Side, and her mum was delighted to be able to share her favourite media with her daughter.
However, I found myself feeling a little bit sad, because guess what? My childhood fave is problematic. You’ve probably already guessed what it is. Yep, that’s right, the boy wizard. I adored those books growing up — I’m slightly too old to have day-dreamed about getting a letter on my 11th birthday inviting me to join a world of witchcraft and wizardry, but I still loved immersing myself in the magic and the drama of it all. I would have loved to introduce my children to those books.
And here’s the thing: my older son shares his birthday with Harry Potter. I had a themed party for his first birthday. I dressed him up in an adorable little costume. I had bunting and everything. It was great.
Since then, that well has been poisoned. Now, there are some issues with the books themselves that I previously forgave, and would probably continue to forgive if I could. There’s no such thing as a 100% unproblematic work of fiction after all. I’m not really worried about those issues. No, I’m talking about the transphobia. I’m not going to run through the things JK Rowling has said and done here, but suffice it to say that she has well and truly demonstrated her commitment to hating trans people on numerous occasions, and as of the 2024 Olympics she was still at it. You can have debates about ‘separating the art from the artist’ all you like, but it’s still true that a pound you put in her pocket is a pound that’s funding transphobia.
So I cannot in good conscience support the Wizarding World in any way. I have put away the bunting and donated the cute little costume, and my copies of the books are on a high shelf, hidden behind a framed photograph. And I am not planning to introduce my children to the boy wizard. If they show interest independently, well then they can read my old copies of the books, and I expect I can pick up some second-hand DVDs of the films easily enough — I don’t think it’s worth making it into a Forbidden Forest, and thus doubtless increasing the appeal. I’ll just show neither enthusiasm nor censure.
Where does this leave me? Well, I can’t share my childhood love of Harry Potter, which is a shame because if you’re still happy to romp around Hogwarts there are lots of fun things to do — Lego sets and theme parks and that school-trunk thing at Kings Cross Station — but there are still lots of other great books out there. I’ve already introduced my son to my first magic school love, the Worst Witch books by Jill Murphy. Then there’s Diana Wynne Jones, Terry Pratchett, JRR Tolkien… And then, of course, there are all the new things we can enjoy discovering together. I didn’t read the Percy Jackson books the first time round, but I’ve heard good things about both books and author, so I think we’ll give them a try.
And since I returned from WorldCon, my son has — entirely unprompted by me — requested to watch… Star Wars. We watched A New Hope together. He loved it.
