There is also this….revisionist tendency to say that JKR has always been a closet bigot and conservative and right-wing since she got famous, but that’s not even entirely true. One of her first major political stirrups was criticising Tory austerity measures and David Cameron, (she also once said “people who send their children to boarding schools seem to feel that I’m on their side. I’m not.”), donating to Labour and being openly supportive of the British welfare state. She has, in at least one interview (from 2000) self-proclaimed to be left-wing. As early as 2003, she claimed that one of her biggest writing influences was a Jessica Mitford, who Rowling described as a “self-taught socialist”.

This isn’t to apologise for her behaviour or rehabilitate her into some former activist who is still worthy of saving; it’s to contextualise her recent descent into TERFdom compared to her previous political stances she’s openly held. She was probably never going to be a staunch ally for equality and diversity, and yes, a lot of the HP series were very problematic in retrospect, but she could very easily have gone the other way and at the very least turned out to be less of a bigoted shitbag she is now. The fact that her politics in late 2000′s/early 2010′s were similar to so many people who are now activists and organisers for queer, BIPOC and vulnerable communities should tell us to be all the more careful about radfem ideology and transphobia in progressive spaces.

It’s comforting to say “we should have known in hindsight that she was always going to become a TERF, the early signs were all there!” but that’s also not true. We have to recognise that the toxic ideology, the active harm she chooses to participate in, was a deliberate choice; this was a path she chose to go down, not one that was pre-determined for her. It’s also an easy way to separate ourselves from being critical of radfem influence; “JKR was always a right-wing bigot and that’s why she became indoctrinated with radfem bullshit. I’m not a right-wing bigot, therefore unlike her, I will never fall for radfem bullshit.”

People who become radicalised, including those to become radfems, were not always irredeemable right-winger proto-Conservatives doomed for extremism and hatred, and that’s the point. The revisionist idea that she was always beyond salvaging erases how TERFs recruit people (especially vulnerable, impressionable people) in queer, progressive and liberal circles and how easily their dogwhistles can go undetected. The idea that JKR was already a closet right-winger from the get-go and therefore could never have been a good person is ultimately unhelpful because all it does it separate from the reality of how radfem doctrine spreads. TERFs sell their own toxic, harmful views packaged as progressive ideas as part of their strategy and that’s why their ideology is dangerous and requires constant vigilance to drive out.