Sitting Out The New Harry Potter Game Is The Bare Minimum

Two years ago, I wrote a 7,000 word article titled, “Why You Shouldn’t Be Excited For The New Harry Potter Game.” It’s the only article I’ve ever completed and rescinded from publication for fear that I would incite division within the Epilogue community, a place generally devoid of controversy and grandstanding. Out of a concern for avoiding division, I shelved my thoughts, second-guessing the convictions that I poured into this article which made the case that you cannot simultaneously call yourself an ally to transgender people and play Hogwarts Legacy. 

Fast-forwarding to 2023, I have zero hesitation making that claim, for things have gotten so much worse, so rapidly. JK Rowling, author of the Potter series, has devolved from dogwhistling her hatred of trans people to blatantly calling us “violent, duplicitous rapists.” Any debate about whether Rowling was truly transphobic has long since passed, and pretending otherwise is simply trollish skepticism. Her rabid obsession frothing over our lives has become the singular issue for which she uses her platform. Rowling has taken every possible attempt to make the Harry Potter series and her hateful bile synonymous, citing that each royalty check further legitimizes the correctness of her “gender critical” delusion. 

Dismantling Bad Takes That Defend Hogwarts Legacy

In 2021, when I wrote my pleading case for why people who otherwise called themselves allies should reconsider giving Hogwarts Legacy any money or attention, the most common refrain I heard was that this was a case where you can separate “art” from “artist.” I do not believe that is possible here. But as we will see, I think such a belief betrays substantial cognitive dissonance.

Another flimsy defense was that people expressed sympathy with the ways Rowling was cashing in her fame, money, and good will to stoke widespread bigotry towards transgender people, but they still really wanted to play the Harry Potter game. Easy solutions were proffered: pirate the game, buy it secondhand, wait for a severe discount, watch a playthrough stream, and so on. But even if you are thoughtful enough to refuse bankrolling one of the foremost popularizers of contemporary anti-trans sentiment, I still don’t think there’s a legitimate defense of wanting to play Hogwarts Legacy here. By playing it, or by engaging in anything Potter related, you are feeding oxygen to the forest fire closing in around our human rights. Keeping Potter alive keeps transphobia alive, and there’s no way around that fact – economic participation or otherwise. 

A final fallacious defense of allies’ defense of enthusiasm towards Hogwarts Legacy is that it was unfair to boycott the game because doing so was unfair the developers, Avalanche Studios. This defense takes two prongs: (1) that it was unfair to the hardworking developers who had nothing to do with how Rowling has metastasized her magical franchise into a vehicle for trans hatred, and (2) that the studio itself had put out a paltry press release that attempted to distance Hogwarts Legacy from Rowling herself, stating that she had no influence on the game’s creation. 

These two bad reasons are coming from a good place, at least, but they are still bad reasons worthy of ridicule. First, while it’s laudable to worry about labor malpractice in the gaming industry, e.g. crunch, pay, etc., it’s no secret that the individuals creating Hogwarts Legacy have been paid throughout its cycle of development. At worst, the studio might close or be repurposed if Hogwarts Legacy fails, but even then, the obvious question remains: do we seriously have an obligation to buy every AAA-style game out of economic concern for the developers themselves? If someone were to seriously respond by saying yes, it’s our responsibility, then go ahead and empty your bank account. Otherwise, you are never, under any circumstances, obligated to buy a big-budget game to support creators. 

Additionally, the fact that Avalanche Studios felt the need to distance themselves publicly from Rowling speaks volumes. Not only is this separation economically untrue, as Rowling obviously profits off the licensing of this intellectual property, but it callously compartmentalizes the situation. By making this statement, the studio obviously thought they were softening the blow of backlash from the LGBTQIA+ community once the game started taking regular press tours ahead of release. But you cannot pretend like the media we consume exists in a vacuum from the real world influences shaping its creation. Rowling shaped the Potter universe, and clearly the hostile reaction from trans people and our allies was enough of a concern that the game was further shaped in response to these outcries.

One of the major outcries against Hogwarts Legacy during its development cycle was regarding the presence of lead designer Troy Leavitt, who has luckily since left. An open Gamergater, enemy of social justice issues, and outright pouty incel, Leavitt’s views were publicly available on his YouTube channel. Like Rowling, Leavitt was skeptical of trans people’s existences, alternating between ridicule and disgust. Even though he is gone, many of the core design decisions influenced by Leavitt undoubtedly remain in the final product of Hogwarts Legacy. The fingerprints of far right delusion cannot be fully scrubbed from this game, no matter who you try to distance it from.

The Cynical, Distracting Inclusion of Trans People in Hogwarts Legacy

Fast forward to 2023, in the days leading up to Hogwarts Legacy’s release, Avalanche Studios has once again put trans people in the gaming headlines – albeit in a cynical attempt to regain some lost goodwill for the project, or give ideologues a seeming justification to point to when trans people declare that playing this game is a harmful act for this community.  

The headlines in question involve the game’s character creation options that seem to allow players to create a trans protagonist for their playthrough, as well as the inclusion of the Potter series’ ever openly transgender character. I do not think you can reasonably use either of these defenses to suggest that, even if Rowling has lost the plot foaming hatred from her lips, at least the game is supportive of trans people and represents us. This excuse once again fails to address the concerns of trans people like me.

In a AAA-scale release, giving the player character creation options to make a trans protagonist are worth celebrating, no doubt. Even though I also sat out Cyberpunk 2077 in the year of its release, I could at least appreciate the excitement of making V, the protagonist, a trans woman – one who was uncritically seen as a woman by other characters in the game. It sounds silly because it ultimately doesn’t matter, but knowing that my female V was trans (I will never forget choosing between “Penis 1” and “Penis 2”) was a genuine delight; furthermore, Cyberpunk contains some of the best trans representation I’ve seen in a big-budget game in Claire, whose monstrous vehicle even sports a trans pride flag on the back, while not reducing Claire to her gender.

These character creation options in Hogwarts Legacy are under additional scrutiny given what we’ve discussed about Rowling’s antagonism towards trans people. Cyberpunk’s character creation was far from perfect as well, but the fact that there is no possibility of creating a non-binary character makes the association between voice, appearance, and gender feel stunted, tacked on to seem more progressive than it in fact is. Obviously, when you think about the context of Hogwarts, a school for developing young people who can use magic, there are a couple concerns here: (1) if magic exists, why is there basically a lack of gender variance in the game outside of the binary, (2) since gender identity primarily forms in childhood and adolescence, couldn’t there be a more open discussion of the seismic shifts that are included in socially transitioning, and (3) how in the heck is this wizarding world set in the late 1800s establishing transgender people as part of its world when there hasn’t been a single mention of one in any other Potter project following this timeline?

Furthermore, I think the inclusion of an openly trans character in Hogwarts Legacy can be seen as a progressive step for the IP, but I cannot read it that way. Again, this inclusion feels cynical, a way to legitimize Hogwarts Legacy to those who are on the fence given the concerns of trans people about this game. But stop and think about this: the trans character is a woman named Sirona Ryan. Though I wouldn’t think twice about this name in another context, we’re talking about a world with characters named after reductive stereotypes. For example, one of the only black characters in Harry Potter is named Kingsley Shacklebolt and one of the only Asian characters is named Cho Chang. To that end, the “I-can’t-break-out-of-stereotypes” naming conventions follow their way into Hogwarts Legacy. Sirona is a trans woman, so obviously her first name should include “Sir” and her surname should be masculine coded. You can’t make this stuff up. 

Hogwarts Legacy’s efforts at performative trans inclusion feel transparently like pandering and appear like a last ditch effort to avoid some unsavory news coverage. After all, major gaming outlets like IGN who claim to champion human rights still awarded this game a glowing 9/10, with the only mention of Rowling appearing in a pinned YouTube comment which at this point has received a fair degree of criticism. There are outlets like GameSpot who have been generous enough to lend trans people like Jessie Earl their platform to speak to the issues outlined above. (And if you aren’t familiar with Jessie’s work, she has an amazing explainer on this entire situation that I highly recommend.) But my overall impression when looking around major gaming publications, only a select few have addressed these concerns explicitly in or alongside their coverage. I can only think of one that went far enough, placing an outright blanket ban on coverage for Hogwarts Legacy, and that’s ResetEra. Hats off to them. 

Your Choice: Hogwarts Legacy or Trans Lives

If you’ve made it this far, we’ve reached the binary decision facing us all with Hogwarts Legacy: either you take trans people like myself’s concerns seriously enough to sit this one out in solidarity, or you admit that your entertainment is more important than our lives. There is no third way out of this dilemma. 

I am by no means exaggerating when I say that you are choosing between trans lives and the Tory wizarding school game. You cannot have your game and play it too, here. Otherwise, your allyship is simply hollow, only there when it’s convenient for you. To make my point perfectly clear, let’s take a look at the issues trans people are facing in 2023 before returning to an explicit discussion of Hogwarts Legacy. 

2022 was the worst year on record for anti-transgender legislation in the United States. In that 12 month period, over 150 anti-trans bills were introduced across the country. Ranging from issues restricting gender affirming healthcare to bathroom bills to gender marker restrictions, anything remotely connected to trans people has become directly targeted by right-wing lawmakers. Last February, Texas’ governor Greg Abbott declared that parents supporting their children through gender transition, whether socially or medically, were guilty of child abuse. This decision caused the Department of Family and Protective Services to investigate these parents, separating them from their children while accusing them of a major crime, and causing countless families to flee the state for safety.

Alabama made headlines for making transgender related healthcare a felony if trans people received this treatment before 19 years of age. By shattering the Overton window, other states copied this legislation. Soon after, we saw several states discussing similar bans for adults up until 26 years of age. Again, trans people were screaming from the rooftops begging cis people, or at least other queer people, to fight back against the lurches towards genocide. These laws were never about protecting children.

Drag shows have become a major target of this anti-trans legislation. While not always trans themselves, drag shows became seen as synonymous with trans people and the “agenda” of LGBTQIA+ people more broadly. Thus, in 2022, over 140 drag shows were protested and threatened by violence from Nazis bearing assault rifles and flying swastika flags. Meanwhile, police officers stood down. Several bomb threats canceled these events, some taking place not in bars or clubs but in public libraries and private venues. 

These bomb threats became a theme of 2022 anti-trans activism. The Boston Children’s Hospital had to deal with months of ongoing bomb threats and other declarations of violence simply for offering treatment for transgender minors. Several other hospitals were targeted for similar reasons, threatening the safety of medical professionals and invading the right of families and individuals to make medical decisions privately with their own doctors. Instead, these villains, taking cues from monsters like LibsofTiktok and Tucker Carlson, falsely spread claims that these children’s hospitals were performing irreversible surgeries on minors – something manifestly untrue. 

On a less deadly note, 2022 was also the year of reigniting illegitimate fears about trans women in sports settings. Whether we point to adults like Lia Thomas, who briefly made these fascists pretend to care about women’s swimming, or young people who simply wanted to play sports with their friends in high school, the issue has always been transparent to trans people: these concerns about trans women in sports were never about protecting anybody or creating conditions of athletic fairness. They were excuses to stoke fear and hatred to people who already detested our existence. By creating this boogeyman to dominate headlines, we saw states like Utah inexplicably ram through a bill banning all trans women from youth sports – despite only one transgender girl in the entire state participating in such activities. An entire legislative session took place because of one girl, and was vetoed by the governor (who has since reversed his protective position towards trans rights), before being forced through anyway. 

Florida led the charge on other fronts, severely restricting classroom discussion of LGBTQIA+ identities with its notorious “Don’t Say Gay” bill. The bills in Florida have been especially pernicious because of how intentionally vague they are written. While those concerned about education caught wind of one-third of the provisions in this house bill, namely that these restrictions applied to Kindergarten through 3rd grade, other provisions in the bill left the window wide open to legal scrutiny by declaring that the same penalties applied if any discussion of queer identities was “developmentally inappropriate.” Whoever this law expects to determine this developmental inappropriateness is besides the point; queer people know all too well the sort of rhetoric that simply having children in proximity to queer people is itself inappropriate. This law, broadly drafted, thus created a chilling effect at all levels within education. Many schools halted the ability of students to declare their own chosen names and pronouns; others implemented policies that require schools to alert every single parent and guardian at a school if a trans student used their preferred bathroom or locker room. As intended, this legislation has scared people back in the closet. 

Florida even took the egregious step of kicking all adults receiving life-saving gender affirming healthcare off their Medicaid coverage, effectively detransitioning thousands of people across the state or forcing them into black markets with sketchy sources for their hormones. That same stacked medical board declared that no child in the entire state, even with parental support and the guidance of certified medical professionals, could receive such care. Removing this care means suicides, full stop. It’s pure evil. 

The Human Rights Campaign estimates that 2022 saw over 300 anti-LGBTQIA+ bills across all but 14 states. You have to consider the dramatically negative impact that these bills have on the life of queer and especially trans youth. The Trevor Project, an LGBTQIA+ youth charity who we’ve raised money for with our Epilogue events, published a study surveying queer youth in January of this year. I will let the statistics speak for themselves: 

• 71% of LGBTQ youth — including 86% of trans and nonbinary youth — say state laws restricting the rights of LGBTQ young people have negatively impacted their mental health.
• As a result of these policies and debates in the last year, 45% of trans youth experienced cyberbullying, and nearly 1 in 3 reported not feeling safe to go to the doctor or hospital when they were sick or injured.
• A majority of those trans youth (55%) said it impacted their mental health “very negatively.”
• 75% of LGBTQ youth — including 82% of transgender and nonbinary youth — say that threats of violence against LGBTQ spaces, such as community centers, pride events, drag shows, or hospitals/clinics that serve transgender people, often give them stress or anxiety. Nearly half (48%) of those LGBTQ youth reported it gives them stress or anxiety “very often.”
• New policies that will ban doctors from providing gender-affirming medical care to transgender and nonbinary youth make 74% of transgender and nonbinary youth feel angry, 59% feel stressed, 56% feel sad, 48% feel hopeless, 47% feel scared, 46% feel helpless, and 45% feel nervous.
• New policies that will ban transgender girls from playing on girls’ sports teams and transgender boys from playing on boys’ sports teams make 64% of transgender and nonbinary youth feel angry, 44% feel sad, 39% feel stressed, and 30% feel hopeless.
• New policies that require schools to tell a student’s parent or guardian if they request to use a different name/pronoun, or if they identify as LGBTQ at school make 67% of transgender and nonbinary youth feel angry, 54% feel stressed, 51% feel scared, 46% feel nervous, and 43% feel sad.
• 58% of LGBTQ youth, including 71% of transgender and nonbinary youth, feel angry about new policies that ban teachers from discussing LGBTQ topics in the classroom. Among trans youth, 59% feel sad and 41% feel stressed.
• 66% of LGBTQ youth, including 80% of transgender and nonbinary youth, feel angry about policies that will ban books in school libraries that discuss LGBTQ topics. Nearly half of LGBTQ youth, including 54% of trans youth, also felt sad about these book bans.

We are destroying the lives of queer kids. Any pretense that this wave of anti-LGBTQIA+ legislation was about “protecting children” is a transparent farce, and anyone promoting such bills should be ashamed of themselves. If these statistics break your heart like they break mine, then you must take action to bash back against these bigots. These are not issues we can afford to ignore.

Connecting The Dots

Speaking in terms of 2023, things are already worse. Before the month of January ended, Alejandra Caraballo reported that states had introduced 242 anti-LGBTQ bills with at least 238 of these being anti-trans bills. That’s approaching double the worst year on record for trans rights in one month. So when you consider the fact that things are accelerating dramatically towards genocide, we acknowledge one additional fact. In places like Oklahoma, one of the battlegrounds racing to the bottom on these issues regarding transgender human rights, JK Rowling was quoted directly on the floor by Senator James Lankford in his staunch anti-trans positions. 

JK Rowling’s influence does not stop across the pond, or on Twitter. Her influence is directly impacting the human rights restrictions going on across the United States. She is by no means the sole driver of this anti-trans sentiment, but we do a disservice to trans people and our concerns about safety when we sweep her under the rug as some deranged old hag whose misguided concerns are rooted in traditions of feminism. Her deliberate words embolden far right fearmongers to stoke the flames at the stake of our already precarious livelihoods. She cannot get a pass simply because the books she wrote when we were children made us feel good. As long as Potter is relevant, her views will be relevant.

As exhausting as it is to recount the neverending onslaught of anti-trans legislation from the past calendar year, it’s important to lay all of this out before returning to Hogwarts Legacy. To reiterate my thesis, I do not think it is possible to validly reconcile your desire to engage with Hogwarts Legacy in any capacity with the part of yourself that thinks you are an “ally” to our cause. 

Kaile Hultner of No Escape magazine wrote an excellent piece last year addressing the backlash that some cis people were feeling as their trans friends demanded they sit out the release of Hogwarts Legacy. To an important point I’d like to address here regarding why this binary dilemma is so obviously clear cut, I will quote them at length:

“See, gender is not the only type of thing that can be ‘performed.’ Friendship and allyship can be as well. A ‘performative ally’ is someone who pays lip-service to supporting (for example) queer and trans people in public, yet either falls way short in terms of meaningful action or is actively hostile to queer and trans people in private. The performance aspect comes in when (for example) they post ‘trans rights! ❤️’ on Twitter every June 1, followed by conspicuous silence on queer or trans issues for the rest of the year. Performative friendship is a very real thing as well, when someone claims vocally up and down over and over to be here for you, whatever you need buddy I got you, and then when push comes to shove, when a friend is in need, they’re nowhere to be found.”

If you are going to go on calling yourself an ally to trans people, and you also have plans to engage with the new wizarding school game, then you must concede that your allyship is performative. Allyship matters most when things get tough. And as you can see above, things are tougher than any other period in my lifetime right now. Now, more than ever, trans people are desperate for allies to stand up with us and for us, speaking loudly and directly against the neverending injustices that we face, injustices we face for simply being ourselves.

When you make excuses or give pretzel-knotted caveats as to how you justify both your concern for trans people and your desire to play Hogwarts Legacy, I cannot honestly believe you. Or, at the very least, I will forever doubt the depth and sincerity of your ostensible allyship. Now is far from the time making all-or-nothing exclusionary arguments – trans people don’t need to make what few allies we have feel like we are a hostile and unfriendly group of people who maybe don’t need protecting after all. But at the same time, all you have to do here is ignore one fucking video game. Make us feel like our concerns are valid, like our human rights matter, like transphobic hatred deserves rebuke and intolerance. Every time you uncritically mention Hogwarts Legacy or try to justify your interest in it, you are alienating people like me.

And I know I’m not alone in feeling this way about the choice regarding Hogwarts Legacy. Leading up to the publication of this article, I’ve spoken about the Hogwarts Legacy situation with my trans friends, including members of the Epilogue Community. Jennifer Bradley, also known by her username Drathjennifer, wanted me to include her thoughts here: “Personally, The Wizard game just makes me exhausted to think about. It’s well known that JK Rowling is very anti-trans, and that uses the success of the Harry Potter series in general to state that people agree with her views and uses the profit she receives from the series to promote her views and anti-trans programs. So seeing people planning to purchase the game despite this information and ignoring that a vast majority of trans people I have seen stating they are not comfortable with that decision is extremely annoying, and of those that purchase it and then state they do support trans rights; I personally find those claims to ring at least slightly disingenuous when they won’t commit to supporting trans people at the simplest of concessions.”

Why Potter Fans Feel Defensive Over Hogwarts Legacy

We’ve reached the point where you might be feeling rather defensive about all of this. Are you a bad person if you want to play the wizarding school game? No, but you’re doing nothing worthy of respect either. Are you forbidden from ever engaging with Potter, a series that still somehow brings you comfort? Of course not, and as far as I’m concerned, the thousands of Potter-related dollars I have spent in my lifetime are bankrolling JKR as much as the transphobe who threw $300 on the Hogwarts Legacy collector’s edition to “own the libs.” But there is still a critical difference here, right?

One of my favorite games writers, Stacey Henley, published a fantastic article about the perceived issue of trans people like myself “bullying” cis people for playing Hogwarts Legacy. In this article, she recounts how several streamers feel attacked when trans people criticize them for engaging with and thereby bringing an uncritical spotlight to this game, and how this attitude is completely unfair:

“Unable to deal with the difficult emotions that come with wanting to support something morally compromised, they call the other side bullies for pointing it out. You made me feel bad, therefore you’re bad. It’s the logic of children. Meanwhile, the other side are regularly piled on with hate, slurs, death threats, and all kinds of harassment – not by the original Be Kind side, but by a third side of trolls who spend their entire existence online attempting to make life miserable for anyone who is a minority, whom they deem to be ‘woke’, or just whoever they feel like going after.”

Herein lies the critical difference: the whole framing of the debate around Hogwarts Legacy and the moral culpability of those who engage with it presumes that this is a both-sides issue where there are fair viewpoints on each side. Of course, Henley later elucidates, the asymmetry here does not warrant pitting cis and trans people against each other as enemies. Nor does it enable a “two wrongs make a right” attitude, where you said something hurtful to me so now I’m justified in being hurtful in return to even things out. Rather, Henley writes, this is a “one wrong makes the news and one much larger and more vitriolic wrong is ignored because it only happens to trans people” asymmetry. Trans people, as is well documented, face far greater scrutiny for their behavior than their cisgender counterparts; yet, in an equal and opposite manner, the most pressing issues that impact our human rights are met with crickets. I don’t want cis people to feel fearful of offending trans people, I simply want them to listen to us when we choose to speak up.

If you are still feeling defensive, it’s probably because of a few reasons: (1) you grew up with Harry Potter and so the series brings you a great degree of nostalgic childhood comfort, and (2)  there’s no ethical consumption under a capitalist system anyway, so dying on the hill fighting against Hogwarts Legacy when so many other products are compromised seems arbitrary.

Let’s start with the second point of defensiveness first. Simply put, I completely agree that digging into the morality behind any capitalist consumer option is a losing game. No matter where you turn, someone is being exploited or oppressed; no matter what you buy, there is a tradeoff of harm. But to this end, I think of Hogwarts Legacy like I do the fast-food restaurant Chick-Fil-A. 

Sure, someone might object to the cruelty with which the chickens in their meals are produced, or the environmental impacts of factory farming that their company participates in. But those very real reasons are fatuously easy to object to because you can point to tons of other fast food restaurants and levy the same criticisms, concluding that these issues are not unique to Chick-Fil-A specifically, thereby dismissing the argument that Chick-Fil-A is a company you should stop supporting. In the same way, you might shrug and respond that all games have problematic elements about how they’re made – and that you’re being asked to choose between two options you hate: pretending you don’t care about those problems involved or taking an annoyingly principled stance and never eating any fast food again. 

It’s an impossible dilemma, you might protest. In both cases, however, I think there is a deciding factor: how much do you care? And better yet, how much do you care about queer people? To what degree are the purchasing choices you make influenced by the knowledge that Chick-Fil-A donates to anti-LGBTQIA+ causes, that JK Rowling fuels transphobic hatred under the palatable guise of feminism? Does that knowledge change the choice you want to make – or not? 

I deeply understand what it’s like to crave that familiar comfort, to just not care about the ethics of your decisions for a second and simply enjoy something without feeling guilty. We all deserve that sometimes. And hey, skipping Chick-Fil-A won’t put theocrats out of business, nor will skipping the new Tory wizard game unseat Rowling from her mansion. But that’s not an issue at stake here. Instead, it’s a question of how the decisions you make shape and reflect the kind of person you want to be, not naively expecting that boycotting is an effective tactic of economic protest.

The Inextricable Relationship Between Harry Potter And My Childhood

But to the first point of defensiveness, the comfort that Potter brings, I think I have the most to say here. Many Epilogue readers will be unaware that I grew up absolutely obsessed with Harry Potter. In fact, Harry Potter is inextricably bound to some of my most cherished childhood memories. 

I remember checking out a copy of The Chamber of Secrets from the school library in 2nd grade because I was so excited about the series that I couldn’t wait for the copy of The Sorcerer’s Stone to be returned. I remember reading it in a single night and dancing around my mother, who was laid off from work at the time, eagerly listing reasons to make a trip to the local bookstore and purchase a personal copy of the book series. I remember going to see the first Potter film at the cinema together with my estranged dad, and my enthusiasm caused him to read the books as well – perhaps the only positive memory of my father.

I remember skipping school in 7th grade with a group of friends to see the fourth Harry Potter movie, our teacher finding out and trying to get our parents in trouble for truancy. I remember how I couldn’t shut up to my friends about Emma Watson’s beauty. (A fun adulthood realization: this group of friends have all come out as some variety of LGBTQIA+ since then.) So many sleepovers, so many nights with my portable DVD player out. Gathering around the fire to spend the night playing Potter “Scene It” or going back and forth quoting the films word-for-word with my best friends – all of that is locked away, forever trapped in the past when things weren’t destroyed.

I remember binging the entire backlog of Mugglecast, the first podcast I ever got into, in the weeks ahead of the Deathly Hallows release. I remember drinking my first coffee (it was awful) while waiting in line with friends at midnight for Deathly Hallows, staying up 22 hours post-release to finish the book in one sitting. The joys of entering the bookstore and pulling a house pin from the sorting hat, dressing up like our favorite wizards, and piling around the endcaps waiting for the boxes to be cut open to provide us our pre-orders – those can never be taken away from me.

I remember the needle permanently inking the Deathly Hallows symbol into my collarbone at 16 years old. It was my first tattoo, and served as a proud badge of my passion for many years – that being nerdy could be celebrated. I remember how I drew up an elaborate chest piece design that featured a giant golden snitch, with cursive traditional American cursive reading, “I open at the close.” Thank the gods I didn’t go that far. And now, when I see my collarbone reflected in the mirror, I feel great discomfort. I feel alienation from my own reflection, wondering what design would best cover up the Deathly Hallows symbol or whether I should simply get the design colored in with the colors from the trans pride flag as a sort of rejection of the need to hide from my past passion.

I cannot truly disentangle my sense of adolescent self from the Harry Potter series, no matter how much I currently wish to. And that fracturing of identity, that broken cliff where I used to cling to trust and safety, where I felt seen and understood – it’s impossible to come to terms with. So I, and so many trans people like me, are grieving. That’s why this moment with Hogwarts Legacy so sensitive, that’s why this topic is so difficult: our childhoods have been cruelly, undeservingly, and irreparably severed from us. Like a horcrux, this part of our souls have been forever fractured off, trapped somewhere we can’t reach any longer.

I am not mourning J.K. Rowling, nor the parts of her that I formerly admired, like how she was a self-made billionaire whose role as a single mom was deeply resonant with my own upbringing, how she donated so much of her fortune that she lost her status as one of the richest people in the world. That person is dead and gone.

Instead, I am mourning the community that her books fostered. I am mourning the creative projects like Mugglecast, Harry and the Potters, “Accio Deathly Hallows,” Harry Potter and the Sacred Text, and so many other expressions of passion that have brought meaning and joy into my life. 

I am mourning goofy college Quidditch teams. 

I am mourning terrible video games that never managed to capture the magic of Hogwarts. (Looking at you, goofy PS1 Hagrid.)

I am mourning Quirrell’s Turban, the wizard rock band that my best friend and I formed in the MySpace era.

I am mourning the countless nights in bed when Jim Dale’s voice drifted me off to sleep via audiobook. 

I am mourning the fact that when I walk up to my life’s equivalent of the barrier for Platform 9 ¾, the gateway has been sealed with solid brick, forever relegating me to the muggle world outside of the fandom.

More than anything, I wish I could return to that world when Harry Potter was a safe place for people like me, where being different, being an outsider, was presented as okay. But I can’t, nor can so many trans people. And that’s what makes people’s enthusiasm for Hogwarts Legacy so awful to endure. It’s a reminder that, despite everything – the bigotry, the harassment, the violence, the curtailing of human rights in nearly every state – the response from the Potter fandom has been a resounding shrug. We don’t ultimately matter. And that hurts like hell.

Listen To Trans People & Fight For Our Existence

When people express excitement for this franchise, they are symbolically belittling and dismissing the endless concerns trans people like myself have about the way that perpetuating Potter’s popularity perpetuates transphobia. And each time we have this conversation, we’re opening a door for transphobes to waltz through and harass us off the internet. But in this moment where the silence around trans issues is deafening when I speak outside of insular trans circles, Hogwarts Legacy is a moment on the precipice where screaming into the void still can do something. By standing up against this game, and the vitriolic views that it reminds us of, you are enacting a tiny but nevertheless significant act of sorely needed solidarity with the trans people in your lives – an act for which many of us would be incredibly reassured.

Ultimately, I cannot stop anybody from playing Hogwarts Legacy, but I will forever feel distrust towards those who choose to do so. When it counted most, when doing anything was better than doing nothing, you stayed silent. You wanted your little role playing game. In reality, there are thousands of games released each year – there is no shortage of engaging games to immerse yourselves within. If Hogwarts Legacy is a must, you are going out of your way to participate in something with an explicitly transphobic context, so that’s on you. Personally, I have not seen a single convincing justification for engaging with Hogwarts Legacy other than critiquing it as I have done above. At the end of the day, you’re just making convenient excuses.

So if you find yourself suddenly changing tunes, I will reclaim an idea from this soiled franchise: that the weapon we have in this fight for equality is love. The way we can fight back against the tsunami of anti-trans rhetoric is to lift up the people who are most vulnerable and defend them against every attack from the political right. Transphobia is a hydra that will not be easily slain. But if we focus on loving and protecting those around us, reminding them that they matter, that we are on the same side – this is a meaningful way to prove your allyship, not buying this forsaken wizard game.

Please sit out Hogwarts Legacy. As far as I’m concerned, that’s the bare fucking minimum. More importantly, reach out to the trans people you may know and check in on them. Times are scary and we are hurting deeply right now. We need every true ally we can get, not just the performative kind. And sure, sitting this game out will not remotely impact the bottom line of either Rowling or Avalanche Studios. But in the fight against transphobia, we have to start somewhere – and I think the reason Hogwarts Legacy has become such a contentious cultural moment is because everyone can start here. Take this first step and save your money; give your attention to something – anything – else. 

If you’re on our side, the fight is still entirely ahead of us. There’s much more work to do.

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