Name: Harry Potter Video Game BOYCOTTED Over J.K. Rowling 'Transphobia' Backlash: Brie & Robby REACT
Uploaded: 2023-01-03T02:30:11.000Z
Duration: 9 min 4 s
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Some Harry Potter fans are boycotting the new Hogwarts Legacy video game over the franchise's ties to controversial author J.K. Rowling,

who has faced backlash over her comments about the trans community.

"By keeping Harry Potter relevant, you are keeping J.K. Rowling relevant and directly giving her the power to be harmful to trans people. The end."

Another said, "If playing a wizard game is more important to you than the trans community, don't act surprised when some people no longer want to engage with you."

Warner Brothers appears to have gone out of its way to distance itself from Rowling by allowing players the option to play as transgender characters,

and stating plainly on the Hogwarts Legacy website that Rowling was not involved in the development of the game.

I mean, we've talked about this a little bit, like,

I think at a certain point, a franchise that's existed for, like, 20 years plus now that means so much to so many people,

I think it's a bit of a stretch to say everybody who loves harry potter who grew up with harry potter long before JK Rowling said anything disparaging about still liking harry potter would hope.

Yeah, I mean look, if I were hanging out with a trans friend, would I bring my box set catalog of harry potter with me and talk about how amazing JK rally is.

Um, but kind of expecting people to divest from there kind of longstanding commitments.

I mean we talk about this in so many other contexts.

We all learn about the founding fathers and admire things that they did despite owning slaves and being real pissed, you know, we we listen to artists who have been very problematic.

Maybe they shouldn't, maybe the Academy Awards shouldn't grant roman polanski Oscars and things like that.

But for regular people, not the people in power and authority, but for regular people kind of making the consumption habits this vessel for collective politics, I think seems to be a little bit of a reach.

Again, they separate the art from the artist set like harry potter.

The content of harry potter is not doesn't have much to say.

I don't think on gender issues that that is insulting or disliked by the trans community.

There's some other things in harry potter that people have complained about over the years, other kinds of stereotypes who the bankers and goblins are and things like that.

There's been a discourse about those other aspects of harry potter.

I am in fact listening to them on audio book right now as we speak.

I just got to the fourth book, that's what I've been doing in the new year had had a long drive back from Detroit to to D.

After christmas and listen to the first three on tape and I'm on to the fourth one.

Now look, I am a big fan, I respect, I mean like you can take carrie potter from my cold dead Hands category and if you feel differently for someone who can no longer enjoy the stories because of what you know about J.

Rowling's politics, I also respect that like I completely appreciate folks, that's fine about this.

I have a hard time imagining me really liking something and then not liking it anymore because I found out the creator was ex like I just can't put myself, so then it becomes hard for me to understand other people feeling that way.

Like if I found out, I don't know, I can't fill in that blank with something, so I just, I can't support this anymore.

I think the one that I like, I'm very used to liking things that don't have politics that are similar to mine.

That I either the thing itself does not have politics that are similar to mine or the creator does some ones that I struggle with is so you know, when I was in college it was nonstop R kelly bangers, these were on the soundtrack to my senior year experience.

Like these songs have a lot of nostalgia for me, I do hesitate, like now when I hear it when I hear the song play, I do have a hard time not thinking about r kelly.

Um and the way he's abused all these women and it negatively affects my experience and I would choose not to play it out loud at a party at my house or something like that.

But there are other contexts where I'm with my college friends and we have our college playlist and it's coming up in that context and I feel like my my other memories, my other associations with the music supersede the like raw.

I don't care about, you know, some of the other songs that were like Poppin during like the Senior Boat Ride, Those are the ones that I struggle.

So it's a mixed bag or let's say um sometimes watching Bill Cosby in the context of the Cosby show.

I don't think it should be taken off tv, I don't think it should have been taken off of netflix, however, or wherever it was streaming, there are moments where I look at him because the gap between his persona and who he is is so significant that watching him play with little kids and be so sweet and be such a good father.

It is jarring and it negatively impacts my enjoyment of the show so I can relate to that experience.

But that doesn't lead me to say anybody who watches the Cosby show is bad or anybody who watches the Cosby show is indifferent to Bill Cosby's rapes or r r kelly's maybe I'm weird, I I can't I just can't imagine feeling that way.

I don't I don't think I've ever stopped liking something because of the creator's politics or having done something bad.

I can't I just can't think of anything like that.

If I if I didn't like the thing, I didn't like the thing and obviously your tastes change.

There's some music I liked back when I was a kid that I don't I wouldn't listen to now but not because anything about the creator changed.

Well are the behaviors that are that if maybe there's just not stuff that offends you that Yeah, I just I think that could be it.

Which is why I have struggled with some of this.

I can't imagine like it's fine to not like harry potter.

I just like if you like it and you're like I can have nothing to do with it now because I disagree with the things J.

Rowling has said, I I really don't understand that, but it's clearly something that a lot of people feel, which is fine.

I do think that there are feelings that people have as a consequence of feeling attacked not abstractly, but by the legal system on account of their identity.

That can sometimes make certain bad actions from people more viscerally felt than they are for other people.

women who have been victims of sexual assault might feel more strongly about watching someone like Bill Cosby or R kelly, for example, people who are now the subject of like the slate of 20 odd laws, anti trans laws who who are now are denied.

The legal ability to transition might feel more strongly about R.

Rowling's statements and the extent to which she may have empowered.

Arguably some of that legislation here in the United States, people who have, you know, recent relatives, great grandparents and such who were sharecroppers or slaves themselves might have a different attitude towards the founding fathers and their owning of human beings than someone for whom it's more of an abstraction or who is a more recent immigrant to United States of America and I think that those are legitimate and I have empathy for it for those reasons.

And I think that if I were trans, I probably would feel differently about J.

Rowling the way I might feel more strongly about people who have been anti black.

I can absolutely understand feeling differently about JK rolling based on the things she said, if you fit into that category, it's the and now I can't enjoy harry potter and I agree and that's the part I have, which is totally fine if you feel that way now I can't enjoy harry potter now I judge everybody else who does.

Well that I think it's probably that's where I have a little bit of an issue and and the kind of censorship drive to say this stuff shouldn't exist in the public sphere.

I mean if we started down that road, there'd be no books on the shelves.

I am really excited for this video game, I have to say it takes place, I believe in the 1919th century.

So before the Harry Potter story takes place and you're going to be in one of one of the Harry Potter houses and it sounds really exciting.

I'm gonna have to wait for it to come to the Nintendo switch though because that's the station, that's the system that I own.

And I think that might be, can you play remotely with people?

Okay, well, if you can, if you want to look me up on Nintendo online, I'll be the trans character.

I will be in the house no doubt about that, no doubt about that at all.