J.K. Rowling and the Questionable Purchase

What does it mean to buy a 'Harry Potter' video game in 2023?

Last week saw the release of Hogwarts Legacy¹, the first open-world video game based in the Wizarding World of Harry Potter. The game’s release has been a point of contention because it’s the first major Harry Potter thing² released since the Wizarding World’s creator, J.K. Rowling, cemented herself as a transphobe with a very large microphone.

For a trans person, I can only imagine how painful this must be. You have a person with a very large platform, who is spreading negative propaganda about who you are, and the people you thought were your allies can’t even be bothered to avoid playing a video game. As someone who likes Harry Potter³, but also wants to support the trans community, I’ve been turning this over in my mind for weeks now, and this clumsy Substack is the best conclusion I’ve come to, and it still probably falls short. However, I feel like I need to write down where I’m at because this is one of those pieces that’s going to keep bouncing around my head until I set it to paper.

Now as Hogwarts Legacy finally is finally available for purchase, longtime fans of the Wizarding World who were newly appalled by Rowling’s attacks on the trans community now to be standing at a crossroads: Either support the trans community and leave Harry Potter behind entirely, or accept that you care more about a video game than you do about your trans friends—because purchasing Hogwarts Legacy is supporting Rowling.

This argument rests on the idea that as long as the Wizarding World is financially successful, Rowling remains financially successful, and therefore has more power to harm trans people.

This is a lot to unpack, but I am increasingly feeling like the choice is a false one.

The calls to boycott the game as a symbolic gesture feels like an over-simplification of the issue—one that’s particularly attuned to the flattening effect of social media, where we strip away nuance in favor of conflicts that keep us constantly engaged. So you take something that seems innocuous—a video game about going to wizard school—and it becomes a stand-in for your entire belief system and the belief systems of those around you.

Hogwarts Legacy | Image via WB Games

A video game, in and of itself, is not transphobic. The game’s content is not transphobic, and Avalanche has gone to great lengths to make the game feel inclusive (also, from a business standpoint, inclusion is simply the better option; you sell more games when more people feel welcome to play it and see themselves in it).

I’m reminded of the controversy over Chick-fil-A, whose owners are notoriously anti-LGBTQ+. A chicken sandwich is not homophobic, but the guy at the top of the corporate food chain is. So again, if you buy the thing, you are implicitly supporting the views of the person profiting from the product.

When we talk about boycotts, we’re usually demanding specific outcomes. When it comes to Rowling and Harry Potter stuff, we know we can’t get the outcome we want. She’s not going to part with the rights to Wizarding World—and in an age of IP, Wizarding World remains an immensely valuable brand, so this stuff will keep existing.⁴ So that leaves us with the symbol: If you buy the game, you’re against trans people, and if you abstain from buying the game, you support trans people.

Of course, from the buy/support angle, things get very fuzzy very quickly. Wealthy people like Rowling and Chick-fil-A owner Dan Cathy have vast stock portfolios, and simply by participating in the economy, you’re likely enriching them. Also, once you’ve reached the upper echelons of wealth like Rowling and Cathy, there’s no coming down. The power of compounding interest and the way ultra-wealth perpetuates itself means that it’s almost impossible to lose it. We can say, “If you don’t buy the wizard game, then you’re depriving Rowling of a sale,” but we also know that even if not a single copy of Hogwarts Legacy left shelves, it wouldn’t change Rowling’s wealth. Some may argue that this stand sends a message that Rowling is so toxic that she must be separated from the thing she created, but only she can make that choice, and her current M.O. is to simply double down when confronted with the harm she’s causing.

I, personally, wouldn’t want to be defined by one purchase, especially if the purchase itself is not actively transphobic. There’s something particularly dystopian about our values being determined primarily by what we do or don’t purchase.

But that’s just me. I cannot tell anyone else how to feel. If you think I’m bad or anti-trans because I bought Hogwarts Legacy, I don’t think there’s anything I can do to change your mind. My feeling is that being alive in 21st century America means you work to support the causes you believe in while also understanding that supply chains being what they are means ethical consumption is highly unlikely. For example, most modern devices have rechargeable batteries. Rechargeable batteries require cobalt. Cobalt mines run on modern-day slavery. I don’t have an answer to this problem, and I feel like this frustration is one many of us feel. We see a world spiraling out of control, constant exploitation and degradation, and we’re looking for a way to “be good.” We know so much and we know it all of the time, so we’re clinging to our morality with both hands, and when someone says, “You bought this thing so you are bad,” it’s understandable to get defensive. We don’t want to be told we’re bad, and we don’t want to be told it by strangers online who don’t know us. But maybe we’re bad.

Perhaps I’ve been wrestling with this topic so much because of my own ambivalence. Is buying the Harry Potter game irreconcilable with being pro-trans because the creator of Harry Potter is anti-trans? Perhaps I’m not as much of an ally as I thought, or maybe I should try harder—although if I avoid buying the game, donate to trans advocacy groups, and vote for pro-LGBTQ+ politicians, will I have done enough? The questions are so big and the stakes are so large, that perhaps it’s comforting to have the battlefield simply be on whether or not someone buys a video game.

I wish I had an answer, and I don’t. I support the trans community. I have trans family and trans friends that I want to see protected. Perhaps I’m being selfish or trying to have it both ways—but if that’s the case, it feels applicable far beyond this one situation of whatever I buy being a statement on what I believe based on the beliefs of the person selling it to me. If I buy a pack of gum from Walgreens, do I support a company that essentially lied about its shoplifting problem? If I go to a movie, can I ensure that every piece of this experience—from the distribution to the production—met my ethical standards, and if not, should I just embrace ignorance since it’s hard enough to be alive as it is?

This is why I can’t be mad at people who are mad at me about buying Hogwarts Legacy. Things are bad right now, and we’re trying to pick our battles and maintain as much mental bandwidth as we can. My fear is that when we look around us and only see enemies, then the only people left smiling will be the nihilists who own the arena.

1. Disclaimer: The game, although developed by company Avalanche, was distributed by WB Games, which is a part of Warner Bros. Discovery. I am an employee at Turner Classic Movies, which is also a part of Warner Bros. Discovery.

2. While you could argue that the Fantastic Beasts movies were “major,” they failed to connect with audiences, and by the most recent entry, The Secrets of Dumbledore, interest appeared to have all but evaporated in this misbegotten prequel series.

3. This is also probably a good point to mention that there are trans people who also like the Wizarding World, and Rowling’s heel turn has been particularly painful, and I don’t want to create a false dichotomy of trans people on one side and Harry Potter fans on the other.

4. I believe the real Rubicon comes when Rowling inevitably returns to Harry Potter and makes it overtly anti-trans. As of right now, the books are kind of confusing because Voldemort’s villainy is about his desire to create in-groups and out-groups so that the in-group (pureblood wizards) can make the world “safe” from the out-group (anyone different from them). In essence, Rowling seems to have adopted the beliefs of her antagonist rather than her protagonist. I could also write a whole paper on how the Obscurial would be a terrific metaphor about denying your true self if its author wasn’t bent on making sure that trans people deny their true selves.