Can I Fangirl About J.K. Rowling for a Minute?

Bear with me.

Every now and then, I find myself pausing out of disbelief that J.K. Rowling is not only against gender ideology but outspokenly so. It’s not that I ever doubted that the beloved author was smart enough to get it and brave enough to say so. It’s just that, if you asked me back when I peaked if I thought Rowling would ever join the fight, I would think such a reality was too good to be true. And yet, here we are!

It means a lot to me that Rowling is involved in this, and not just because she is a famous author. This is a huge benefit to us, no doubt, but it’s more than that. What makes it extra special is that I (like so many millions of others) was completely obsessed with Harry Potter when I was a kid.

The series caught me at the perfect age to hook me for life. I was nine when I read the first book. By that point, I had already decided I would be a writer when I grew up, so I was instantly enamored not just by the book but also by its author. I watched the “Harry Potter and Me” documentary when it came out in 2001 and every time I could catch it on TV after. I dreamed of my own flash of inspiration for my own story.

The final book was then released when I was just a few weeks away from turning 17. I was also flying to Disneyland the next morning, but I still stood in line at midnight to get it, then stayed up all night reading. I was so sleep-deprived and delirious that the Pirates of the Caribbean ride seemed disturbingly realistic the next day.

As I grew up, I naturally left Harry Potter in my younger years, though it kept its very special place in my heart, and I enjoyed the Hogwarts Legacy game immensely. Rowling herself also remained a personal inspiration, and I did become a writer.

So you can imagine how cool it was when I noticed, about two years ago now, that she had followed me back on Twitter. And while that gave me a big smile for a few days, it was nothing compared to seeing that she more recently personally welcomed my baby girl into the world.

If you’d told me years ago that J.K. Rowling would be aware of the birth of my daughter, there’s no way I would have believed you. It would seem more absurd to me than her outspokenness on the gender issue.

This was special to me not just because Rowling is a famous author who wrote my favorite childhood book series and who now fights the same cause I do. That would be enough to send me over the moon, but not to the extent that it has.

Rowling is not just my hero for these reasons. She is my hero because of her anti-authoritarian stance, which is also one of the main messages of the Harry Potter books. As I wrote almost two years ago for The Distance in an article titled “J.K. Rowling's Haters Would Have Sided with the Bad Guys in Harry Potter”,

What’s interesting about Rowling’s most fervent detractors is that they display the kinds of authoritarian impulses that the Wizarding World author essentially spent seven entire books critiquing.

Those who wonder how Rowling could write the books she did and then come out as strongly as she has against gender identity ideology clearly never understood what they were reading.

[…]

The gender identity movement is fundamentally authoritarian—alarmingly so. It is absolutely no surprise that Rowling sees it for what it is.

Her most rabid haters pretend that the magical world of her creation is a realm where they can do whatever they please. They self-servingly imagine that the strong themes of friendship, loyalty, and love in the Harry Potter series mean that this is a world where they could dictate their personal ideology and have everyone else accept it with open arms.

To them, “kindness” means “do what I tell you.”

This couldn’t be further from the message of the books, which are diametrically opposed to control and coercion.

My entire fight against gender ideology is at its core a fight against coercion and control. I hate being told what to do, so being told to pretend that people could change sex was an instant “no” for me when I realized that was, in fact, what gender ideology was asking of us. This natural revulsion to acquiescing to demands has evolved into a much more comprehensive philosophy of my whole life. For example, two of my other heroes are Rose Wilder Lane and Isabel Paterson—two of the founders of American libertarianism.

This personal and political philosophy is why I often find myself on the receiving end of attacks from both trans rights activists and people ostensibly on my own “side.” A lot of these same “allies” have also recently turned on Rowling because she maintains that some trans-identified people are sympathetic, which I agree with. For this, she has been accused of believing in “tru trans” (the idea that some people are really trans), even though she has clearly and repeatedly explained that she does not (as have I).

Just as I am happy to be alongside Rowling in the fight against gender ideology, I am happy to be alongside her in this position within the “movement” as well. I’m not going to lie, after people decided to attack me, once again, on the day I gave birth of all days, over my friendship with my best friend Lois, I sincerely questioned what the point of being involved in this was anymore. Some people even went over to my Instagram, which has nothing to do with my activism and contains only personal photos, to leave nasty comments under a photo of myself holding my newborn baby. So, even though I wasn’t looking at any of the nonsense on X, there really wasn’t any way to escape it completely.

You know what? Even my worst trans activist enemies took the day off.

It’s not that I was hurt by this attack on a personal level. I was too in love with my baby girl and had gone through way too much of a traumatic labor to care about something so petty. Plus, this has happened multiple times over the past year, so I am very used to it and it has never really upset me.

Over the following few weeks, however, it did begin to bother me. It wasn’t that people were attacking me, as I am very used to that, it’s that people could be so ugly at all.

Don’t get me wrong—I will never stop advocating for what I believe in. I think I have been quite successful and my sights are set even further. I just don’t care whether I am part of some larger movement or if anyone else considers me to be. I can’t say I’ve ever cared all that much or I wouldn’t be in this position, but it does now truly pale in comparison to doing what I think is right, especially now that I have someone else to set an example for.

And speaking of that little girl: I can’t wait to re-experience the world of Harry Potter with her. And when she is older, I can’t wait to explain why the author means so much to me and how Rowling even welcomed her to this world.

If I had to write the story of my life, I would have thought this little tidbit too fantastical to include. But it really did happen, and I just needed to take a moment to express my gratitude.