You can't stand against tyranny without standing up for trans people
I’m reading On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder. Highly recommend for this current moment in time. It’s partially because of this book that I’ve revived this blog. I want to document what is going on because it is bad here in the US under Trump and Musk and fucking DOGE, and I know it’s going to get worse.
I’ve only come across one point in the book I disagree with:
“One novel known by millions of Americans that offers an account of tyranny and resistance is J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. If you or your friends or your children did not read it that way the first time, then it bears reading again.”
He was talking about the necessity of reading, to fill our minds with words and ideas that don’t come from the news media, which I agree with! I’m trying to read more this year, and write about it. But there’s really no reason to reread that particular series in the current day, when the author is one of the planet’s most virulent transphobes. In fact, it’s one of pop culture’s great ironies that a woman whose bestselling books taught millions to defy racism and authoritarianism became such a prominent bigot in the following decades.
I read the series between 2005 and 2007: started after the 6th book came out and before the 7th. I know this because I remember waiting for the last book to come out, but also remember that someone spoiled the ending of book 6 for me before I could read any of them. (They did ask if they could tell me, I just assumed wrongly that I wouldn’t remember since the characters meant nothing to me. But the names were so silly they stuck in my brain.)
The books were a big part of my childhood. If I had been more decisive in my youth, I would have gotten a Deathly Hallows tattoo, along with the triforce from Legend of Zelda: two triangle symbols. Glad I didn’t! My name is Link, I don’t need more Zelda references, and of course as a trans person I hate Harry Potter now, more than I hated Ender’s Game in high school - at least Orson Scott Card was always a horrible person. How could a woman I looked up to like that betray me?
The book release timeline is how I know I was about eight years old when my father taught me about the Nazis. He compared Hitler to Voldemort, which I imagine a lot of parents in the 90s and 00s did. Death Eaters were obvious fantasy Nazis, they wore tattooed symbols which were analogous to swastikas, their magical bloodlines were a substitute for Aryan racial purity bullshit. And of course, the underlying message was always there, in 2005, in 2025, in the subtext of every Holocaust story I went on to read or watch as a kid, Anne Frank and Number the Stars and The Book Thief, AND stated aloud right then when I was eight: “Hitler was an evil man, maybe the most evil man to have ever existed. Genocide is the most evil thing a human being can do.”
My next question, naturally, was what happened to Hitler? Who killed him?
The last Harry Potter book had yet to come out, but it was already obvious to me that Harry would kill Voldemort. Any other ending would not be satisfying. So I wondered if, by fantasy logic, there was a “chosen one” who assassinated Hitler, putting an end to World War II.
I was somewhat disappointed when I found out that Hitler killed himself. I was quite a bit more disappointed when I found out how World War II actually ended: with my country dropping the atom bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, where there weren’t even Nazis. (Of course I’m no fan of Imperial Japan either, but that was a whole other history lesson.)
Anyway, On Tyranny was good, easy enough to read and understand, and it was only $11 on the Kobo store (kind of like Kindle but not owned by Amazon). I’m sure I’ll refer to it again so I’ll get my money’s worth. Even if I take the reading recommendations with a grain of salt.
You have to stand up for trans people. There were Germans who looked the other way when Jews, Romani, and gay people were rounded up. Trans people are a small and vulnerable community who want nothing other than to exist in peace, and they have been violently targeted by the right as of late. I think it’s the least you can do to not endorse the works of a famous author who had come to represent transphobia incarnate. And no, I’m not going to bring any of that negativity here by repeating shit she said. Look it up if you really want.
It’s a small little thing, but it DOES matter what books you read, what words and ideas you fill your head with. It matters that we consider the context of the words that are written and who wrote them. In the end I don’t care if you reread the books, just please check them out from the library and donate money to a trans charity instead of going to Harry Potter World and buying a bunch of Hogwarts house merch. And like, think about the books critically. Maybe even write about it. But keep me out of those conversations. I’m going to read some new books. Stay tuned for my thoughts.