Wander through the Museum of Pop Culture in Seattle, Washington, and you’ll find plenty of memorabilia from the Harry Potter films in the “Fantasy: Worlds of Myth and Magic” gallery. What you won’t find, however, is the name of the woman who started it all: the creator of the Wizarding World franchise, J.K. Rowling.
Why would a museum, usually a place attendees go to for information and enlightenment, keep its visitors in the dark? Because of Rowling’s “transphobic viewpoints,” of course.
In a blog post from May explaining the museum’s complicated relationship with the cultural icon, a transgender museum employee called Rowling a “cold, heartless, joy-sucking entity” with “super hateful and divisive views.” Only daring to mention her name once, the post mostly refer to Rowling as “You-Know-Who”.
“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,” the blog post explains. While Rowling’s likeness remains in the “Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame,” where she was inducted by public vote in 2018, curators “decided to remove any of her artifacts from this gallery to reduce her impact.”
This isn’t the first time that progressive Harry Potter fans have tried to wish away the series’ creator. Rowling’s name, previously prominent in trailers for her Fantastic Beasts films, was all but erased from trailer for The Secrets of Dumbledore, which Warner Bros. released in 2021 – well into Rowling’s reign as the world’s most prominent TERF.
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