25/12/2021
bell hooks, the queer feminist writer who recently passed on, long ago had choice words about the Harry Potter franchise created by transphobic writer JK Rowling. So reports Steve Brady, writing in the Winter issue of California based radical newspaper Slingshot. He notes that as long ago as 2004, in her essay Men, Masculinity and Love, hooks reported “While feminism may ignore boys and young males, capitalist, patriarchal men do not. It was adult, wealthy white males in this country who first read and fell in love with the Harry Potter books … J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books are clever modern reworkings of the English schoolboy novel. Harry as our modern day hero is the super smart, gifted, blessed white boy genius (a mini patriarch) … the Harry Potter movies glorify the use of violence to maintain control over others … “ Steve Brady says “ in 2004, long before Rowling became notorious for public transphobia, bell hooks saw the looming patriarchal potential there”.
