An Interlude
I’m interrupting my regular schedule because Rowling is still out here saying shit.
I always hear news a little bit late, but I admit that three weeks is pushing it. When I made my post last Friday, I had no idea that Rowling had been on Twitter March 13 denying the Holocaust. [1] To be specific, a Twitter user sent her the message: “The Nazis burnt books on trans healthcare and research, why are you so desperate to uphold their ideology around gender?”
Rowling responded: “I just…how? How did you type this out and press send without thinking ‘I should maybe check my source for this, because it might’ve been a fever dream’?” and I want to shake her and scream “Follow your own advice!”
I wonder if the original poster made the same assumption I might have, namely, that someone who spends so much time talking about transgender people should know a little about their history. I know that’s being generous, and ignorance is the bread and butter of hatred, but Nazi book burnings are hardly an obscure historical detail. An article by Mira Fox on Forward summarizes:
It was not a fever dream; in 1933, students from the Nazi German Student Association raided the Institute for Sexual Research, a groundbreaking clinic and place of support for trans, queer and gender non-conforming people. It also housed a library of research on gender-affirming surgery and sexuality more generally. After the raid, the students piled the institute’s entire collection in the street and set fire to the books, destroying research that would not be recreated for decades. The book-burning at the Institute for Sexual Research was one of the earliest and largest book-burnings during Hitler’s reign.
At the time of the raid, Adolf Hitler had just become chancellor, and enacted a policy of eradicating Lebensunwertes Leben, or “lives unworthy of living.” The fact that many of the researchers at the Institute for Sexual Research, including its founder Magnus Hirschfeld, were Jewish, only encouraged the hatred.1
Twitter users quickly provided the sources Rowling had asked for, and she responded with her characteristic flippancy, failed empathy, and strawman arguments. On March 14, Rowling posted a statement on her website refuting claims that no one made and calling all of her opposition an “extreme faction” reaching “a new low.”2 I actually read through her Twitter looking for any sign of even an attempt at empathy, and I came up with nothing.
It's so depressing to keep doing this. I’ve given up on hoping that Rowling will show any signs of self-reflection, but the reminder that she’s willing to sink this low is still painful.
Then again, I may as well use this opportunity to engage in some self-reflection myself. Last week, I was so excited to finally have something positive to say that I skipped over something pretty egregious: the goblins.
It wasn’t an oversight on my part, but a deliberate choice, the main reason being that I didn’t have anything to add to the conversation. So much on the subject has already been said, both before and after Jon Stewart’s comments3 went viral.
For example, the Jewish newspaper Forward had two articles in January of 2022—roughly a month after Jon Stewart’s podcast—arguing more or less opposite stances. The first, on January 5, was called “I am begging you all to please shut up about the Harry Potter Jew-goblins,”4 in which author Eliya Smith argued that seeing the goblin bankers as Jewish was itself anti-Semitic.
Then, on January 10, Forward published the article “Think the goblins in Harry Potter are antisemitic? Try the rest of British literature.”5 In it, Gordon Haber describes immediately associating the goblins with other antisemitic caricatures in literature, and he points out a detail in the movie I’ve never caught: Gringotts literally has a star of David on its floor tiles.
Towards the end of his article, Haber says:
“But let’s get back to the question of what a Jewish reader is supposed to do. I can speak only for myself by answering, ‘Keep reading.’ Nobody needs to be canceled, no books need to be banned. We just have to recognize the complicated history of Jews in Britain, in Europe, in Western culture in its entirety. (On the function of Jews as a symbol in Western culture, I suggest David Nirenberg’s book, ‘Anti-Judaism’.) If we stopped reading literature when we were offended by antisemitism (or racism, or misogyny, or ableism, and so on) we wouldn’t have much left to read.”
This reminded me that I’d read essentially the same sentiment expressed in Monsters by Claire Dederer: “I mentioned to a Jewish friend that I’d rumbled Virginia Woolf’s anti-Semitism and had been thinking about how this stained her work— or didn’t. My friend replied matter-of-factly, ‘Well, if we give up the anti-Semites, we’ll have to give up everyone.’”6
And again in one of my favorite podcasts, Hot and Bothered, in an episode that discusses the racism and colonialism in Jane Eyre.7 In it, Jamaican author Marlon James talks about reading books critically, and podcast host Lauren Sandler asks, “Marlon, I'm wondering where pleasure lies in that mode of reading.” James’s laughing response is:
“This seems to be a new thing. Let me just say, it sometimes seems to be a new thing for a certain kind of white reader, or a British reader or an American reader, that pleasure and offense can come from the same place. I keep going, ‘Welcome to our world!’ I was like, ‘How do you think we've been reading literature for the past 200 years?’”
He goes into more detail, and the episode as a whole is well worth listening to, but what really strikes me is the ease of both Marlon James’s response and Claire Dederer’s friend. Of course they’re both right, but I still find myself struggling. I’m guessing that their nonchalance comes from being born into communities that have survived centuries of persecution.
Being queer and autistic, I’ve experienced discrimination, but I didn’t understand it until I was nearly an adult. I can remember being angry as a kid that all of the gay characters were removed from the English version of Sailor Moon, but I certainly didn’t feel hurt by it. I had no understanding of the wider societal issue; I only knew that my favorite cartoon was being messed with. In high school, I did my senior project arguing in favor of gay marriage, but I wrote it from an abstract political position. I was so deep in the closet that I didn’t know why I cared.
I went to college and got an English degree, and I don’t remember my classes ever getting into issues of discrimination except for one or two especially feminist professors. I guess I might be able to handle a discussion of sexism with something resembling ease, simply because it’s so familiar that I’m desensitized to it.
I’m not sure it’s a good thing to be desensitized, but it definitely feels better. Rowling’s bigotry still feels raw to me, even though I’ve had years to adjust. I still catch myself feeling like, “Surely she knows this is a step too far, right?” But she doesn’t.
Ultimately I think Gordon Haber’s advice is pretty solid: Keep reading. I’m glad I’m keeping my Harry Potter reread pretty slow-paced, because it allows me to read a lot of unrelated subjects that keep my brain in a relatively healthy space. Right now, Rowling is openly opposing a law meant to protect against hate crimes,8 and I bet she’ll be doing something else to piss me off next week, but my plan is to stay focused on this project.
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More information
Transgender Experiences in Weimar and Nazi Germany with the Museum of Jewish Heritage.
This hour-long panel of experts discusses the lives of transgender individuals as well as the work of Magnus Hirschfeld.
“J.K. Rowling’s Spiral into Madness (with ContraPoints),” hosted by Matt Bernstein.
This video recounts J.K. Rowling’s self-inflicted Twitter downfall and her lack of awareness of the power she wields as a public figure attacking random people, as well as Nazi history and Rowling’s Holocaust denial.
One noteworthy quote from Natalie Wynne at 49:45 is: “If you can never admit that you’re wrong about anything, if you make one wrong turn, you’ll never get on the right path again, because if you don’t admit that you made a wrong turn, then you can’t correct it.”
References
“It wasn’t just the goblins — is J.K. Rowling doing Holocaust denial now?” by Mira Fox. March 13, 2024 https://forward.com/culture/592580/j-k-rowling-holocaust-denial-trans/
“Statement from J.K. Rowling, 14th March 2024". https://www.jkrowling.com/opinions/statement-from-j-k-rowling-14th-march-2024/
“The Problem With Goblins: J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter, & Jews | The Problem With Jon Stewart Podcast.” Dec 16, 2021.
“I am begging you all to please shut up about the Harry Potter Jew-goblins,” by Eliya Smith. January 5, 2022. https://forward.com/culture/480388/please-shut-up-about-the-harry-potter-jew-goblins-antisemitism-jk-rowling/
“Think the goblins in Harry Potter are antisemitic? Try the rest of British literature,” by Gordon Haber. January 10, 2022. https://forward.com/opinion/480578/think-the-goblins-in-harry-potter-are-antisemitic-try-british-literature/
Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma, by Claire Dederer. I can’t provide a page number because I used an e-reader, but this is from the “Chapter 6: The Anti-Semite, the Racist, and the Problem of Time.”
“Take The Maniac With You to England (Chapter 27 - Part 1)” from Hot and Bothered, hosted by Vanessa Zoltan and Lauren Sandler. Series page:
https://www.hotandbotheredrompod.com/on-eyre
Episode transcript:
https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5a329f0790bcce7599907274/t/63be1586a1e9d22a5dc51df9/1673401734196/On+Eyre+Ch+27+Part+1.docx.pdf
“J.K. Rowling challenged Scotland’s new hate crime law by attacking trans women,” by Clarissa-Jan Lim. April 3, 2024. https://www.msnbc.com/top-stories/latest/jk-rowling-scotland-hate-crime-laws-transphobic-rcna146183