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Joined 8 days ago
Cake day: May 3rd, 2026
  • anna@retrofed.comtoTrans Memes@lemmy.blahaj.zone•She wants us dead 🙃English
    5321·
    6 days ago

    I loathe JKR as much as anyone else, but I do wonder why the whole “there is no ethical consumption under capitalism” thing seems to end exactly at Harry Potter and nowhere else.

    No trans person I know who goes nuclear about everything related to consuming or discussion Harry Potter has any issues with the endless promotion of ‘approved’ products and companies that are often even an integral part of online ‘trans culture’, like…

    • Instagram/WhatsApp/Facebook/YouTube et cetera (pro-queerphobia, pro-fascist corporations actively funding and supporting alt-right movements across the world and helping alt-right actors make databases of queer people)
    • Discord (surveillance company working with ICE, handing over trans folks’ personal information to the cops, the age verification scandal et cetera)
    • Minecraft (created by alt-right figurehead Notch, owned and operated by notoriously evil company Microsoft)
    • World of Warcraft (Blizzard, notoriously anti-union, pro-sexual harassment corporation)
    • … and so on.

    Of course not all of these are directly equivalent to JKR and HP in terms of tangible impact on trans people specifically, but the scale is definitely off. Why do folks cut off friends for discussing Harry Potter fanfiction but not for ordering a skirt on Amazon or encouraging vulnerable trans folks to hand their data to Discord?

    The older I get, the more it seems like a teenage in-group out-group peer pressure thing than a real world view. Hating on Harry Potter signals you’re a good person, and that gives one a feeling of belonging in the community and having an identity that stands for something. It’s more of a rebellion thing than anything. At the same time, being a ‘Discord trans girl’ has an ‘uwu cute’ aesthetic and therefore must be good and desirable, no matter the implications.

    It’s a vibes-based world view.

    Of course JKR is evil and I want her prosecuted for what she’s been doing to hurt us. I just think shaming random people for enjoying Harry Potter is ineffectual and hypocritical when practically nothing else is so heavily policed; and while ‘mainstream trans culture’ online promotes and supports so many other evil companies and their products.