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Amy Hamm: Woke academics claim J.K. Rowling guilty of being Voldemort

They also accuse her of something called 'celebrified transphobia'

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Two Australian academics working in “celebrity studies” published an article this month that refers to J.K. Rowling’s fame in the past tense and argues that Rowling has morphed into the evil fictional supervillain of her own series.

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Rowling “was a global prestigious celebrity,” they wrote, but is now, on account of her tireless work to uphold the rights of girls and women, a “monarch dethroned,” and a “haughty TERF ‘champion.’” (TERF stands for “trans exclusionary radical feminist” and is a slur used to denounce those who dare question gender ideology.) The article, from academic journal “Celebrity Studies,” is titled “J.K. Rowling ‘embodies the divisive and bigoted evil she once created a boy wizard to defeat’: investigating celebrified transphobia using field analysis and audience research.”

Amy Hamm: Woke academics claim J.K. Rowling guilty of being Voldemort Back to video

“Celebrified transphobia,” according to authors Sarah Scales and Joanna McIntyre, happens when “cis celebrities entering public discourse about trans people use their elevated social platform to espouse transphobia. We identity this ‘evil twin’ of trans celebrity activism as celebrified transphobia, a relatively new, mediated and worryingly emblazoned form of transphobia.”

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Stripped of academic-speak, what the authors are saying is that when famous people speak, a lot of people listen. Which is fine, they argue, so long as the celebrities parrot the orthodox ideas that the authors believe in. A failure to do so, they say, amounts to evildoing. The article’s title uses a quote from a survey respondent who compared Rowling to the wicked nemesis that Harry Potter must defeat.

If you’ve read the Harry Potter books then you’re familiar with Voldemort, the primary and most malevolent antagonist of J.K. Rowling’s wizarding universe. Voldemort is so evil that many of the series characters — adults and children alike — shrink or shriek in horror at the mere mention or thought of his name, hence Voldemort’s “he who must not be named” moniker.

If I could suggest a similar moniker for Rowling, it is this: She Who Requires No Introduction. A 2003 Ipsos-Reid poll showed that 44 per cent of Canadian households owned at least one book in the series. A 2018 estimate suggested that 1 in 15 persons on this planet have read one of her Harry Potter books. Hardly a week passes that Rowling isn’t trending on social media for her latest work or commentary.

There is nothing past tense about Rowling’s fame. If we were to believe the authors of the article in “Celebrity Studies,” we might think that Rowling is only mentioned when being pilloried. That is false. They write that Rowling’s “unique celebrity journey detoured sharply when she used digital media culture to come down from her ‘ivory tower’ and resettle in the field of gender politics,” and that “her celebrified transphobia had negatively impacted the overwhelming majority of current and former fans.”

And yet HBO, with Rowling as executive producer, is premiering a remake of the Harry Potter series this coming December. Rowling’s celebrity, and career, are doing just fine.

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The authors, when not lamenting the “immense hurt expressed by and for trans/queer (Harry Potter) fans,” compare Rowling to Kevin Spacey and Armie Hammer, two celebrities whose reputations were tarnished by allegations of sexual misconduct and assault. They assert that Rowling, like Spacey and Hammer, engaged in “conduct generally agreed to be inappropriate.” (Spacey was acquitted of criminal charges and settled a civil claim earlier this year. Hammer has not faced criminal charges for his alleged crimes.)

Rowling has never been investigated for, charged with, or convicted of any crimes. What she has done is insist that humans do not change sex and that women deserve single-sex spaces. Comparing Rowling to men accused of sexual crimes is not unlike my sons accusing me of torture for my unrelenting demand that they brush their teeth before bed each night.

Unable to disguise their animosity, the authors also refer to Rowling’s “perceived generosity” in donating $160 million to charity. (This dollar figure is more than a decade old, and Rowling has since donated much more of her wealth to charities and persons whose benefit from her generosity is undoubtedly material, in addition to being perceived. Including me, after Rowling gifted me a Gucci purse two Christmases ago.) “(I)n something of a feedback loop, this perceived generosity further bolsters her status and role as a maternal figure,” write Scales and McIntyre.

For their overall analysis, the authors surveyed 242 adults and found a handful of persons whose sensibilities were insulted by Rowling’s reality-based views on the immutability of human sex. Meanwhile, Rowling has galvanized potentially millions of persons across the world to defend not just women’s rights, but fundamental human liberties. Her current pinned post on X, with more than half-a-million “likes” — which would serve an excellent lesson to these academics — is this:

“If you believe free speech is for you but not your political opponents, you’re illiberal. If no contrary evidence could change your beliefs, you’re a fundamentalist. If you believe the state should punish those with contrary views, you’re a totalitarian. If you believe political opponents should be punished with violence or death, you’re a terrorist.”

To impart a final lesson: If your ideas require dressing up in academic jargon, because they sound foolish in plain language — they are all but certainly are.

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