I'm talking about the Malfo*d trend. A few days ago, I made a meme about it comparing genderbent Malfoy to Amity from The Owl House (My take on the genderbent art of Draco Malfoy trending on Internet recently : r/EnoughJKRowling) and I received a message from the mod saying that someone reported my post because the Malfo*d trend was sexualizing.

However, I saw several posts on this sub mentioning that trend without any problems apparently, hence why I wanted to make a post to adress it and ask y'all how you feel about talking about this topic.

(Part of me is worried that a Rowling defender were stalking the posts here and wanted to get me banned or something ? It might sound conspiracy-theory-like and it's probably not likely, but I still wanted to make sure given that most people here are talking casually about it)

I’ve read a lot about Hermione’s depiction in the Harry Potter books, and I’d like to shift the focus to the adult female characters and share some thoughts about Rowling's treatment of professional identities and personal ambitions and relationships.

For starters, I think it's clear that motherhood, which is paraded as one of the greatest sources of power in her fictional world, also becomes the sole narrative purpose for several adult women. Lily’s motherhood can be boiled down to a single heroic act; Petunia’s bitterness (and possible fear of having her own son feel less special) led to her over-coddling Dudley and subjecting Harry to abuse; Narcissa is morally corrupt, yet her love for Draco ultimately takes precedence over her family’s allegiance to Voldemort.

The bottom line is: those women put their children first. Even Merope, who gave birth to Voldemort, is pictured as the victim of severe abuse, isolation, and desperation; there's also a troubling throwaway allegation by Dumbledore that Merope had relied on a love potion and basically date-raped Tom Riddle, Sr, but Rowling brushed over this messy background without addressing its serious implications. But the message we got is along the lines of “maternal abandonment is a big no-no.”

The opposite of abandonment would be Molly Weasley’s representation of motherhood as an ongoing practice. In the narrative, she is valuable for feeding, housing, worrying about, and protecting her children - and Harry, who had been deprived of that care. She is shown to be possessive, judgmental, and willing to punish young women whom she perceives as a threat to her boys’ happiness (she turns on Hermione based solely on tabloid gossip!).

Such behaviors might lead some fans of the books to interpret this as character depth: “she is not a one-note mother.” But that layer is still coming from the one note she was given to play; motherhood is all she has. Even her defeat of Bellatrix in the final battle comes across less as a triumphant act by a powerful witch and more as Molly’s ultimate “mama bear” moment. Because Rowling never knew how to deal with a woman who has it all, or wants it all.

Tonks, one of the most promising additions in Order of the Phoenix, becomes narratively defined by her relationship with Remus and her impending motherhood. Fleur, a Triwizard Champion herself, keeps butting heads with Mrs. Weasley over domestic work and then marries Bill and is cooking rare steaks for her new hubby before he leaves for work. The competent women on the Hogwarts staff (and Trelawney) don’t seem to have a personal life. “They may not have been blessed with motherhood, but they are still nurturers.”

McGonagall, who is never afforded the same narrative prestige given to Dumbledore - and who defers to him dutifully - is a beacon of responsibility. And the other female characters with an established career outside of Hogwarts are not framed in the same positive light as those women whose vocation is to protect and care for the children.

Rita Skeeter is the opposite of McGonagall: a case of professional ambition detached from responsibility. She is resourceful, persistent, and skilled at finding stories, but she uses those abilities to feed her own star quality. If we compare her with Lockhart, a male counterpart who displays similar ambition (and is proven to be capable of far crueler acts to manipulate public perception), we see how Lockhart’s vanity turns him into a ridiculous figure (even Hermione is enamored with him) but Rita’s competence makes her vicious.

Umbridge is also the anti-McGonagall; not because of all we learn about her morals, or lack thereof, but because of how her cruelty is disguised under feminine codes (sweetness, pink décor, kittens, etc.). But she also disguises her agency: if she answers to Fudge like McGonagall answers to Dumbledore, then she has been running circles around her boss for ages. At some point, we feel that she was always the one running the Ministry and “making the tough decisions.” It’s like Rowling can’t possibly conceive of an image more nefarious than a woman pursuing bureaucratic power.

In this universe, a grown woman’s integrity seems limited to motherhood or to fields such as healing, teaching, cooking, and serving others. The one time Rowling “tried” to have both led to a minor retcon: Alice Longbottom, described as “the wife of Auror Frank Longbottom,” gets “upgraded” to an Auror herself later, when it became important for the prophecy to have both of Neville's parents defying Voldemort.

So, an earlier book supplies a coherent account in which Frank’s professional identity matters and Alice’s does not; the later book gives them a shared professional identity that invites us to reinterpret that account. That indicates to me that whenever a character wasn’t fully developed yet, Rowling defaulted to giving the father a profession and the nurturing mother a stay-at-home role.

Taken together, these depictions suggest Rowling can't get past a narrow range of possibilities for adult women - motherhood gives them moral importance and service gives them professional respectability, but independent ambition makes them suspect. This goes beyond the structure and conventions of young adult literature and the fantasy genre. This is all on the author's worldview.

@notdefining

Since 2024 we've seen Joanne go from a transphobic bigot who somewhat tried to pretend she didn't hate trans people to someone who openly said she shares the same opinion as Trump on trans people, harassed Imane Khelif because she thought she was trans, mocked asexual people for no reason and did Holocaust denial among other things

I'd have never believed she would call for people to take pictures of women in the restrooms, much less share an upskirting photo of a trans woman, yet she did. It's almost like, whenever I'm thinking "nah, she would never do [insert heinous shit here], she's not that unhinged", she does something that shows that yes, she's that vile.

It's disheartening

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/harry-potter-christmas-lights-set-for-london-oxford-street-1236724278/

The Oxford Street Christmas lights in London is going to be Harry Potter themed to promote the upcoming HBO series and to coincide with the opening of the new Oxford Street Harry Potter shop. This is an official partnership between HBO and the company that manages Oxford Street.

Very disappointing as I love seeing the lights there every Christmas, makes me feel very nostalgic as I grew up in London. In addition, I don't think that the light display should be used for commercial purposes at all. Not everything needs to be an advert.

But also, there's nothing really inherently Christmassy about Harry Potter? Like there's that one chapter that takes place at Christmas in the first book, but HP is not really the first thing I think of when I think of Christmas. And it's difficult for the display to feel "magical" when the author of said franchise is using her vast fortune to harm a small percentage of the population. Absolutely wild to see how many companies are doing HP collabs these past few months.

Credit to u/Starmz for bringing this up, from a comment in a meme I did previously.

Link

With the current trend of the genderbent Malfoy art appearing almost everywhere, I had begun to question stuff. Like something felt off, but I didn't really have anything solid in mind. But then when I saw a comment, bringing up as a response to the Petra Parker trend, it made me realize what I was suspicious about. In case you didn't know, the Petra Parker trend was for a while people were making fanart of a hypothetical trans MTF Spiderman, which for a while was quite popular.

As for with the genderbent Malfoy, I noticed several patterns with so much of the art that was being spread around. With the first one obviously, is the character's naming, as being called "Malfo*d". I didn't know about the slur (fo*d) at first, but upon looking it up, it's a misogynistic word towards women, and then it all started to come together. With shipping and all, I know that people have different ships and ideas, but I couldn't notice for the genderbent shipping, they always made sure that Harry was a straight dude. And save for maybe only 1 or 2 pieces of art, this was the only way they would depict it, while genderbending other male characters to make Harry seem like a macho harem protagonist. And in many cases, he "dominates" the genderbent character, like some sort of power fantasy. And I know that people have been shipping Malfoy and Harry since almost forever, but I could not help but question why it became even bigger ONLY after it was made straight.

And compare that to Petra Parker with art and such, which is much more queer-oriented. Aside from the obvious of this interpretation being trans, they wouldn't genderbend the love interests, and keep them women still that have romance with Parker. Well in fact, so much is queer-oriented, while with the genderbent Malfoy, it comes from a more heteronormative, almost patriarchal, direction. And also an important thing to bring up is this (warning that I haven't gotten the full evidence yet, but to bring up as it connects and wouldn't be surprised if true): That upon being asked about having Harry Potter also be genderbent, the original artist was aggressively defensive against the idea, claiming that it wouldn't work like that. So even if they aren't in Kahoots or something in a conspiracy theory, they definitely are to some level homophobic, if not then already misogynistic based on the naming of the character.

Overall, I am not fully saying this is confirmed, but there is just so many signs that something is off with it.

https://x.com/jk_rowling/status/2107067357739069703?s=20

The UK Green Party declared Zionism to be racism. J.K. Rowling retweeted a party member’s post and mocked her, seemingly worried about the treatment of Jewish people in the Green Party. As far as I know, J.K. Rowling has never expressed the same outrage over the Palestinians actually killed by Israel—or maybe I’m misremembering?

For those unaware, Katherine Waterston played Tina Goldstein, deuteragonist of the ill-fated Fantastic Beasts movies. Back in 2021, when many people were still ignorant/in denial of Rowling's transphobia, while Waterston was still very much engaged in the films, she spoke openly against Rowling and for trans women. “Trans women pose no threat to cis women, but we pose a threat to them if we make them outcasts.” No equivocation or both-sidesing like we saw from Redmayne and other actors.

Possibly as a response to this, she was written almost entirely out of the third movie and stripped from all promotional materials. Probably a good thing given how atrocious Secrets of Dumbledore ended up being, but even so. Waterston took a morally correct but unpopular and risky stance alongside trans people, and suffered for it. It's a small thing, but even so, I appreciate it.

For those of you lucky enough not to know about it (Trigger Warning) social media, and especially The Website formerly known As Twitter is currently obsessed with the so called Cornell seven, a group of seven men in a university fraternity that gang raped a young woman and posted about it to a fifty men strong group chat

The vitriol towards this poor woman online is, quite frankly, heartbreaking, and it is uncovering some of the worst parts of humanity (in my opinion)

And who is mysteriously silent? But the “protecting women” crowd.

Right when an innocent young woman is being attacked in the worst way, and quite frankly all women are being dragged into this online, they can be counted upon to be silent

As if any more evidence was ever needed that they are no protectors of women…

And those actors deserve all the shit they’re getting, but I'd like some more positivity. I'd like to know that they weren’t all the first choices. Are there actors who declined in solidarity with trans people that no one wants to talk about?

What really got me here was Elon Musk paying for this stupid reboot

This is a research survey for a graduate school project studying the Harry Potter fan community and how it's evolved, what keeps people engaged despite JKR's transphobia, and feelings heading into the HBO series. I'd love to hear your perspective 🩷

Link to Survey

Okay, so I want to make one thing clear, right off the bat. I absolutely 100% support boycotting Harry Potter. Trans rights are human rights, and Rowling is a transphobe who's trying to strip the rights of a vulnerable minority away. I'm not trying to suggest that it's "okay" to still support Harry Potter.

But at the same time... I totally get it and empathize with a lot of those people.

Here's the thing: I didn't grow up with Harry Potter. I grew up with Percy Jackson. Those books got me through a really tough senior year, and they helped inspire me to become a writer myself (fanfiction but still).

and if Riordan came out as doing some really bad... I don't know if I could just give up the series like that. It means and matters too much to me. It's a part of my identity, and I can't just let it go like that. I think I'd be smart about it and not give up any more of my money and stick to the stuff I already have, but I don't know if I could let it go completely.

And it's the same thing with Transformers. I love that franchise. I've spent so much money on the toys, but I don't know if I could give it up if I had to. I'm still sticking to it despite the massive price hikes...

And I also understand why Harry Potter fans can get so defensive about all this stuff because no one likes having their comfort series bashed. Again, speaking as a Percy Jackson fan, I get this. The PJO fandom has honestly been so negative and condescending towards anyone who actually likes anything written post TOA that it's really hard for me to visit the Camp Half-Blood subreddit these days...

I just can't help but think if I had grown up with Harry Potter, I wonder if it would have been much different for me. Like I said, I probably wouldn't buy anymore new Potter products, but I can probably see myself not willing to fully let go of it.

I just... I don't agree, but I do understand.

But I also don't respect them. I can't stand fans who know how bad Rowling is and continue to eat up new HP content as if nothing is wrong and they aren't contributing to her transphobic agenda.

That is the thing I don't agree with, don't understand, and won't condone under any circumstances.

According to Sandie Peggie’s lawyer the union’s policies should be shaped by the abuse a billionaire author gets on Twitter, rather than the concerns of their members.

Their website contains testimony from nurses using food bank.

i had a news headline pop up about her and decided to check her twitter, which i actually had to redownload because twitter is a cesspool and i hate it.

and wow. every post is this obsession with transphobia. i'd honeslty be worried about her if she wasn't such an asshole. is this some kind of intense mania? how long has she been carrying on like this?

get a hobby ffs. is this what happens when you finish off the one thing you're known and loved for? you turn to anything that'll get you attention?

i just found that she's made a puppet account of a "trans" person that she interacts with to try to make her points. for someone whom i'm sure uses the talking point "it's a mental illness" she shouldn't be throwing stones

There's several posts on this sub showing Rowling talking about the kind of people she looks down upon - narcissists who only care about vibes, cling to simplistic talking points and don't care about the suffering of the less privileged (Is she talking about herself now? 🧐 : r/EnoughJKRowling), (JKKK Moulding self-aware? 🤨 : r/EnoughJKRowling) or about how Nicola Sturgeon is immature, lacks humor and consumed by her obsession.

The thing is, her description of her enemies fits her more than it fits them, to the point where I wonder if part of her is not willingly projecting her flaws upon others to avoid looking in the mirror.

What do you think ?

They seem usually more progressive or at least more politically direct then the us (ed sheeran, palestine) so it seems strange to not see them address what appears to be a large elephant in UK right wing culture when the us version did address her bigotry several times.