She Who Must Not Be Named: Seattle Museum Scrubs Author JK Rowling From Harry Potter Display
Seattle’s Museum of Pop Culture is apparently triggered by free speech. The museum has removed all references to novelist J.K. Rowling in a Harry Potter display, calling the author “transphobic” for believing biological sex is real.
To date, more than 500 million copies of the Potter series have been sold worldwide but yes, let’s pretend the author does not exist.
Transgender community and their allies directing their rage Rowling for the sin of expressing her personal opinions on transgender issues.
She took a public stand supporting researcher Maya Forstater after Forstater was let go from her job for making comments labeled as “transphobic.” Social Justice Warrior’s branded Rowling a “TERF,” which stands for “trans-exclusionary radical feminist” for doing so.
She triggered the SJWs again, for daring to “misgender” the person behind a Twitter account allegedly tied to to Luis Morales, also known as Synthia China Blast, convicted of murdering a 13-year-old child in a racist gang attack.
Chris Moore, the Exhibitions Project Manager at Seattle’s Museum of Pop Culture, explained the decision to disappear the author in a post on the museum’s website. Moore says Rowling is a “cold, heartless, joy-sucking entity” and accuses the author of promoting “transphobic” viewpoints.
“There’s a certain cold, heartless, joy-sucking entity in the world of Harry Potter and, this time, it is not actually a Dementor,” he wrote.
We would love to go with the internet’s theory that these books were actually written without an author, but this certain person is a bit too vocal with her super hateful and divisive views to be ignored. Yes, we’re talking about J.K. Rowling, and no, we don’t like that we’re giving her more publicity, so that’s the last you’ll see of her name in this post. We’ll just stick with You-Know-Who because they’re close enough in character.
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While the Harry Potter series is a major player in the pop culture sphere, we wanted to give credit to the work of the actors, prop makers, and costume designers in our Fantasy gallery. We learned that You-Know-Who was a problem, which is why you’ll see the artifacts without any mention or image of the author. After all, Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, and Rupert Grint are all incredibly vocal allies. Should we forget their work now that the original author is terrible? I’m not even talking about “separating art from artist” but giving credit where it’s due. I’ll never be able to purely enjoy Hagrid or Stephen Fry again because of their support of the author, but I’ll always be a wreck when Dumbledore… y’know. No spoilers. Besides, there’s plenty about Dumbledore that I’ll be a wreck about.
As for the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame, this list of inductees has a long history that didn’t start with MoPOP, EMP Museum, or even the Experience Music Project. It was founded in 1996 at the Gunn Center for the Study of Science Fiction and came to MoPOP in 2004. The inductees are specifically chosen by public voting. You-Know-Who was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2018 before she became the face of trans-exclusionary radical feminism (TERF). If you keep looking in there, you’ll see other figures with questionable if not downright disturbing pasts. But what does that mean? Are MoPOP’s hands tied on something that is in our building? Again, it’s complicated. For the time being, the Curators decided to remove any of her artifacts from this gallery to reduce her impact. It’s not a perfect solution, but it’s what we were able to do in the short-term while determining long-term practices. As we’ve continued to learn and grow, they’re planning on continuing to add context to creators and content through our blog and possibly in-gallery QR codes.
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