Protesters: You Can Love Potter Without Financing Anti-Trans Bigotry
Leading Off: J.K. Rowling celebrates on her yacht, but the backlash over an anti-trans ruling begins in the US and the UK. Is Trump tired of losing? The top story lines as the week begins.
by Valorie Van-Dieman
When people buy Harry Potter merchandise, they’re funding anti-trans hatred. That was the message delivered by the trans rights group Transexual Menace on Saturday when members picketed and distributed leaflets to potential shoppers at the Harry Potter Store in Manhattan.
The picketing was a swift response to last week’s UK Supreme Court ruling that denied trans women protection from discrimination under the UK Equality Act. The suit was brought by the group For Women Scotland, an organization that is dedicated to opposing trans rights and is financially backed by the Harry Potter author and well-known transphobe J.K. Rowling.
Rowling’s monetary contributions constituted well over half of the group’s legal fund, according to news reports. Rowling, who has spent much of the past several years spreading anti-trans hate and disinformation, has close, longstanding ties to For Women Scotland and its directors.
Rowling, whose net worth is about $1 billion, posted a photo on social media shortly after the UK court ruling, celebrating her victory on her yacht with a cigar and a glass of wine.
It was a much different scene in Manhattan on Saturday, though, when Transexual Menace protesters held signs and talked with passersby and shoppers about Rowling’s involvement in the anti-trans movement.
“A lot of people don't necessarily know what J.K. Rowling has been up to,” said Noah, a protester who asked that their surname not be used to protect their privacy. “Lots of people are just living their lives and not paying attention to what kind of stuff J.K. Rowling puts out on the internet or where she's donating her money.”
Throughout the three hours of picketing, the protesters said, they encountered many people who wanted to stop and have conversations with them or voice support for their cause. “People were curious and wanted to hear why we were out here,” Noah said.
The Transexual Menace, an activist group that traces its roots back several decades, returned to prominence this year in the face of a wave of anti-trans measures across the United States. The NYC chapter is just one of nine new regional chapters to spring up after its revival. The need for grass-roots activism cannot be overstated: More than 850 anti-trans bills have been filed in state legislatures across the United States this year.
The backlash has already begun in the UK over last week’s Supreme Court ruling denying trans women protection under the Equality Act. Thousands of trans people, relatives and allies clogged the streets of London and filled Parliament Square on Saturday in protest, a turnout that surprised both the police and organizers.
The UK court found that the words “women” and “sex” as they appear in the Equality Act do not apply to trans women, a decision that opens the door to exclusion from single-sex spaces and broader discrimination, especially over employment.
But the “bathroom policing” that the ruling seems to encourage will make single-sex spaces less safe, the UK trans TV personality Jaxon Feely said. “If I walk into a women’s toilet now and say, ‘Well, I was assigned female at birth,’ people are not going to be happy about that. I feel like people are going to be quite intimidated.”
Already, though, anti-trans groups are seeking ways to exploit the court’s decision to win a broader suppression of trans rights.
The setbacks in the UK overshadowed court victories in U.S. courts late last week. A federal appellate court in Washington State blocked the Trump administration’s effort to move forward with its ban on trans military service, dealing President Trump the latest in a series of defeats on the issue.
And a federal judge in Massachusetts blocked Trump’s passport decree that gender markers must reflect a person’s assigned sex at birth. The judge found the directive “arbitrary and capricious.”
Does protesting matter? It’s hard to measure the direct impact of any one action, the Trans Menace protesters noted. After all, changing people’s minds is always a difficult task, especially when it means taking a critical look at a writer whose books many people grew up loving.
“A win would be just planting the seed in their head, sowing the cognitive dissonance of like, ‘I really like Harry Potter, but where this money is going is kind of weird,’” one protester, Anabel Ruggiero, put it. Ultimately, with an action like this, they said, the goal isn’t to change a person’s mind on the spot.
“I know it sometimes takes more than, you know, 30 seconds on a street corner to change your mind about something. What I hope is that we made an impression that people will take away and think about over the next couple of weeks,” Noah said.
Planning a protest? Assigned Media wants to publicize your event, wherever you are, no matter how small or large. Contact us at AssignedMediaProtests@gmail.com and we will help spread the word.
Valorie Van-Dieman (she/they) is a reporter and editorial assistant at Assigned Media. @valorievandieman.bsky.social