The terrible truth about J.K. Rowling

In which Auckland Museum cancels a natural history exhibition because of associations with the author of Harry Potter.

Last week journalist Duncan Greive reported on the months of in-house discussion at Auckland Museum that led to the cancelling of Fantastic Beasts: The Wonder of Nature. It’s an exhibition that draws links between natural wonders and their fictional counterparts in the Harry Potter universe. The decision was ultimately based on the views of a small group of staff members who declared they were “deeply uncomfortable” with the exhibition because of the associations with Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling. 

Rowling is often slated for her perceived transphobia. Concerns about the exhibition were raised by staff to Auckland Museum’s leadership team. Staff declared that J.K. Rowling’s “transphobia is not casual or covert”, that if the exhibition went ahead LGBTQIA+ kaimahi (staff) would be “alienated” and “unsafe” and the exhibition would be a “deterioration of our safe space”.

As a result Auckland Museum pulled out of hosting the exhibition. The museum did this despite indications that the exhibition would be extremely popular, that it would earn significant money and withdrawing from the exhibition would risk the Museum’s relationship with exhibition creators, the British Natural History Museum. The Auckland Museum said it would instead hold an exhibition “more closely aligned with our values” and cited concerns about reputational risk.

But what’s so terrible about J.K. Rowling? Is she really so ghastly that transgender people in Aotearoa would be made unsafe because of an exhibition associated with her franchise? 

Despite stubborn rumours, it transpires that the really dreadful thing about Rowling is not that she fears or hates transgender people–she doesn’t–but that she believes in biology. The prolonged and sometimes violent fuss made about Rowling’s supposed transphobia erupted after she made a tweet in December 2019: 

It’s a tweet steeped in tolerance and acceptance rather than hate yet, for statements like these, Rowling is routinely hounded with death and rape threats. The tweet was made in support of Maya Forstater, a researcher working for an international development think tank, who lost work because of her “gender critical” views. The gender critical view is one that says that while transgender people are entitled to human rights, and while gender can be expressed in multiple ways, it is biology that makes us male or female. In this view, no one can be born in the wrong body and changing sex is a mystical rather than a reality-based concept. 

These beliefs, entirely uncontroversial 15 years ago, and at the heart of all evolutionary and biological science, are now deemed transphobic by gender activists. Such activists believe it is an inner gender identity that determines our true sex and should be the basis of all policies and laws. A male who identifies as a female, from the moment they announce it, must be recognised in law and policy as a female. Any other position is “transphobic”.

After multiple hearings and appeals the UK Employment Tribunal ruled in favour of Maya Forstater and set a precedent that gender critical views are a protected characteristic under the UK’s 2010 Equalities Act. It is now established in UK law that you can’t get sacked for believing in biology. 

More accusations of Rowling’s “transphobia” followed another tweet Rowling made in June of 2020. This one pointed out what she perceives as the problems for gay people and women if biological sex is denied.

The spectre of J.K. Rowling’s belief in biological sex, her defence of gay people and her concern for women’s rights may indeed make a handful of employees at Auckland Museum feel uncomfortable and unsafe. They’ve been well-trained. The common rhetoric within trans activism is that to mention the facts of biological sex is hate speech and causes literal harm to vulnerable transgender people. It’s an inherently fragile and precarious position to decide your own safety is determined by everyone in society adopting your world view. It also reeks of authoritarianism.

Auckland Museum is not some quaint faith-based private venture. It’s a rate-payer funded public institution with a natural history department and it has cancelled an exhibition because of its links to someone who believes in biological sex. What’s next? If the Auckland Museum wants to run an exhibition on the wonders of evolution will they withdraw because fundamentalist creationist Christians declare they are “deeply uncomfortable”? Will an exhibition that focuses on astronomy not astrology be cancelled when they receive hand-wringing emails from staff members who strongly identify as Sagittarius or Gemini and lament the deterioration of their safe space?

Auckland Museum could have stood for tolerance, science and sense. Instead its actions add weight to the alarmist view that science-based views are a threat to human rights. Its actions affirm the misogynists who can not handle women in the public eye expressing opinions they find objectionable. It has given credence to the bullies, who rather than dealing with the substance of an opponent’s arguments, resort to spreading lies and slander. It has empowered the control freaks who resemble J.K. Rowling’s sugary villain of a teacher Dolores Umbridge. 

When Harry Potter speaks urgent truths that Umbridge considers unsafe, the teacher issues Harry with detention. In Umbridge’s kitten-themed cutesy office Harry Potter is given a magical quill and lines. Night after night, with Umbridge smiling on, Harry is forced to carve the words I must not tell lies ever deeper into the back of his own throbbing hand. 

Auckland Museum is terrified of any whiff of controversy. Perhaps rightly so. The repercussions of standing up against ideological close-mindedness have been made blatantly clear. Dolores Umbridge would be proud.