Is it OK to like J.K. Rowling?

Is it still OK to like Harry Potter?

How about J.K. Rowling?

Because, you know, her stance on transgender individuals isn’t PC.

Well, frankly, I couldn’t care less about what’s PC and what’s not. I do care about people’s feelings, though, and I think Rowling’s opinion on the matter is entirely off-base.

She tweeted: “If sex isn’t real, there’s no same-sex attraction. If sex isn’t real, the reality of women globally is erased.”

There are so many things wrong with this tweet I don’t know where to begin. First of all, transgender people are NOT saying sex isn’t real. Secondly, same-sex attraction isn’t dependent upon someone’s genitalia; it’s about the person they are. And speaking of the person they are, suggesting that “if sex isn’t real, the reality of women globally is erased” makes the identity of than half the population dependent on a single factor alone. Sex.

My reality wouldn’t be erased if I were of a different sex. I wouldn’t somehow cease to exist, and my life wouldn’t somehow become meaningless.

Rowling is simply flat-out wrong on this issue, and her opinion is hurtful and demeaning to a number of people. The fact that she says “I know and love trans people” sounds an awful lot like the old cliché, “A lot of my friends are Black.”

About that book...

Rowling’s opinion puts me in a bit of an uncomfortable position. A while back, I wrote a book called 50 Undefeated that profiled 50 individuals from the past and present who overcame prejudice and bigotry. I devoted several pages of the same book to celebrating the lives and perseverance of transgender individuals, and I have grappled with whether or not to remove Rowling as a subject.

Ultimately, I chose not to.

While this may seem like a contradiction and might lead to criticism or accusations of hypocrisy, I think it’s the right call for several reasons.

The first, and most profound of which, is the fact that Rowling is dead wrong about people being defined by a single aspect of who they are. Women are not defined solely by their sex, despite what Rowling’s comments appear to suggest, any more than Rowling herself should be defined solely based on her misguided and hurtful attitude toward transgender individuals.

People are complex, and that can certainly be said for every one of the people I profiled in 50 Undefeated. Rowling is no different. A survivor of sexual assault and domestic abuse, she overcame incredible odds and numerous rejection letters to achieve enormous success. And once she did, she gave so much money to charity that she lost her billionaire status.

None of this makes her comments about transgender people any more acceptable or any less hurtful. But neither do those comments diminish her achievements or her deeds of compassion.

Defining prejudice

Yes, people are complex.

But we seem to have forgotten that in the 21st century. We define people by a single aspect of who they are — something we find offensive — then discard like them like compost, then move on to fatten up the next sacred cow for slaughter. That single aspect might be the person’s race, their political party, their gender, sexual orientation, religion, you name it. We choose one thing, one single thing, and dismiss an entire person’s character, their life’s work and the totality of who they are, based on a single tweet, a single word, a single glance.

That’s the very definition of prejudice.

It’s as if all the things we’ve decided to willfully violate everything we purposely codified into our anti-discrimination laws. Repeatedly.

The controversy over Rowling’s words didn’t come from anything she’d written in one of her novels. This time. But there was a time when she was castigated for supposedly spreading “satanic” ideas about magic in her Harry Potter books that were offensive to people on the right. It’s almost as if authors these days are bound to be criticized for offending someone’s sensibilities.

Addicted to outrage

This isn’t about censorship, a word that has been so overused it’s become both a cliché and an enigma, used in so many different ways it’s all but lost its meaning. It’s about creative freedom: something that has been stifled to some extent by the refusal of people on all sides to expose themselves to things that might offend them.

But even that’s not really accurate. If they were honest with themselves, they might admit that they enjoy being outraged, because it makes them feel superior. If people didn’t enjoy being outraged, it wouldn’t sell newspapers, boost ratings, and get political candidates votes and donations. Outrage stokes prejudice — judging others based on a single facet of who they are or are perceived to be — by justifying it. And we as a society encourage it!

There’s a saying popular in evangelical circles: “Love the sinner, hate the sin.” It’s been used so much that it’s lost its impact, but it’s a concept worth revisiting, whether you’re an evangelical Christian, a Muslim, a Hindu, or an atheist, because it works regardless of one’s creed. You can accept a person and repudiate their actions. There’s no contradiction there. But we’ve gotten so caught up in identity — in condemning who people are rather than what they do — that it’s become almost a foreign concept.

There’s no contradiction in me condemning J.K. Rowling’s stance toward transgender people in the strongest possible terms, and at the same time lauding her talent as a writer, admiring her ability to overcome obstacles, praising her charity work, and affirming views she shares that I happen to agree with.

That’s why I left Rowling in the pages of 50 Undefeated. If you want to know my views toward transgender rights, you can read some of the other profiles in that volume. The purpose of writing it was not to condemn people but to applaud actions: to show that prejudice and bigotry could be overcome. It’s gotten harder, though, in an era when we judge others based on one-dimensional views and 240-word tweets.

That’s a shame.