Link: https://www.thepinknews.com/2026/09/14/jk-rowling-condemns-lilly-wachowskis-clearly-fabricated-claim-shes-funding-trans-genocide/

The Sense8 creator said: “JK Rowling funds trans genocide, full stop. So, if you support Harry Potter, you’re supporting trans genocide.

“The money that goes into you enjoying these products, a portion of that money goes to JK Rowling and that money goes into her funding anti-trans legislation all over the world.”

Wachowski suggested that trans allies should boycott work that benefitted Rowling financially, including HBO’s upcoming TV adaptation of the Harry Potter series.

“In the same way that if you are against Elon Musk, you boycott or don’t buy Tesla; and if you’re against global warming/climate change, you try not to buy as much gas, you try to mitigate your use of these products,” she said.

I'm with Wachowski on this, up until she starts going after the fans. Let the billionaires fight, but leave people alone who just want to enjoy things in a fucked-up world. If you grew up reading about witches and wizards, you're not complicit in what the author supports. You just grew up reading magical fantasy, and that's fine.

That said, I hope JKR takes these words to heart and makes her claim true. I don't think she will, I think she's just trying to fend off negative PR while willfully doing the things that generates negative PR and for good reason, but I'm glad she's not leaning into the hate like some others have done. Maybe she'll realise she's hurting people and shift her focus? Probably not, though.

Also, I love that she's the "Sense8 creator" and not the "Matrix creator". The first Matrix movie was very good (the others, not so much), but Sense8 was also very good, and also relevant as it featured not only a trans woman playing a trans woman, but it dug deep into the concept of human compassion by empathically linking a set number of people. Interestingly, Japan had a very similar story that came out around the same time, Kiznaiver. I used to think Sense8 was "the Netflix adaptation", but it came out about a year before. I don't think either one influenced the other, but they share the same concept. In Sense8, it's all people who were born at the exact same time as some global event (I don't recall what exactly). In Kiznaiver, it's a technology that links 7-9 people who come in contact with it, as an experiment. But the idea of dividing pain/suffering equally between the people, and people leaning into the strengths of others, and ultimately making you wonder what if everyone was connected this way, are key themes of both. So, super relevant here in that JKR is demonising and weaponising her wealth against people who are different from her; rather than trying to bring others up, she is trying to push others down. And more than just trying; she's very successful at it.

The Wachowskis also made Cloud Atlas, which is an absolute clusterfuck of a film, but I love it. I just wish they retained the format of the book. So, in short, the book told seven stories that were connected by kindness and art (different art) that survived from generation to generation, inspired by the art which came before. All of these segments are at least 100 years apart, I think. One is set in the far future, and another is set in a post-apocalyptic world. One is not set in our time, but in the 1970s. The other four are what you would call "historic" times. In the book, it was the first half of the first six told chronologically, the entire seventh, then the second half of the first six told in reverse chronological order... thus, 1A, 2A, 3A, 4A, 5A, 6A, 7A-B, 6B, 5B, 4B, 3B, 2B, 1B. The movie just... throws all the scenes in a blender and they come out in what seems like a random order. It still works, but it's hard to follow, and at 3 hours long, it's difficult to go back and watch it again, but I've done so a few times.

I'm down for whatever they make. I also won't apologise for liking the Harry Potter stuff. I'm not interested in the new series. I liked the first four books, and Half-Blood Prince. I liked the first four movies, full stop. I watched the Fantastic Beasts movies; none of them were good. I haven't been too interested in the games, but I did play Hogwarts Legacy. It was made without JKR's approval, and features a trans character. In fact, you can be trans in the game and literally no one but JKR has an issue with it. There are several things you can do to make your gender appear one way or another. Anyone can use any hair, any body build (basically breasts and hourglass figure or no breasts and parallel figure), so you can totally mix it up, be as non-binary as you want, and then you get the final word on whether you're a "witch" or a "wizard" and everybody respects your pronouns, full stop. The game is also constantly on sale on consoles and has been frequently given away on PC. They don't want JKR making money on it. And the broom flying is awesome, shame they didn't put Quidditch in it. But you can explore the whole castle, and it's set 100 years before Tom Riddle (or Albus Dumbledore, I forgot) was born.

Enjoy what you like. But don't go out of your way to support trans genocide.

If you're still a fan after knowing what your support and money is going to, honestly fuck you. It doesn't matter if Hogwarts Legacy has a trans character when she makes 50-100 million off of it and other HP media each year. Let Harry Potter die already.

No. Stop funding J.K. Rowling's hate. A significant portion of every dollar you spend on Harry Potter anything goes directly to her hate organization(s). Directly. She has said as much. Stop funding her hate. Just stop it. There's other media to enjoy.

Fuck Rowling stans.

You know how easy it is to not fund genocide?

Depending on if your government is using tax money to do it.

Genuine question, what about buying second hand? She doesn't get any new money, so if you wanted to read the books/watch the movies because you support the actors, that would be fine, no?

Stop supporting anything she does. Another commenter said "it's very easy to not fund genocide". Don't support people like her, even second-hand. You're still benefiting her by keeping her creations relevant.

Thank you for your take :)

No way you can expect anyone to read that after the first sentence. You highly earned a tag edit. And the first one was not complimentary as it was

The Harry Potter franchise has grossed $35 BILLION dollars of revenue so far. Rowling is a billionaire. Even if HP sales went to 0 tomorrow, she would still be a billionaire. While not buying her stuff is good, 1) sales data shows people are still buying her stuff and 2) we should be going after her obscene wealth. No moral person is a billionaire.

It's very simple. Stop funding genocide. Saying "oh she has billions of dollars, what does it matter if I buy a movie or book?" is exactly HOW she has all that money to fund hate. STOP FUNDING HATE. It's that simple.

My favorite thing about Hogwarts Legacy, didn't play it my partner did, but I know one day people are going to mod unreal engine games massively and it'll offer a bunch of assets and tools that will make it so fucking sick.

I am paraphrasing but I have seen some people argue that by consuming media created by JKR, you could be creating new fans.

I think that if you want to consume any media related to JKR, you are morally obligated to pirate it so that not a single cent goes to her.

If, for example, you like your pirated Hogwarts Legacy game and want to support the studio, they have other games you can buy as proxy. You can even check if they have direct donations and pay them the full game price. Same thing goes for the movies, buy a different movie from the same director or actor so that some of the sale profit goes to them sidestepping the digital ownership of Rowling.

I won't even condone pirating it. There's so much more media out there that you could spend your time and money on. Things that weren't created by someone who hates a whole group of people just for being themselves.

To be clear, I'm a cis white male. I have trans friends but that's as close as I get to the trans community. It just doesn't sit right with me to read or watch anything related to Harry Potter ever since she started being so vocal about her hate. That kind of person is exactly the kind of person we don't want to support. Go watch anything else. Go read anything other than HP. There's so much more.

Joanne's agent calls Lily's statement a defamatory allegation. Okay, file the defamation suit. I would love to see how this shakes out in court.

Actually pretty hard given how many products turn out to have financial links to Israel, but at least it's easy to identify what does and doesn't fund Rowling.

To fascists, fascism is free speech and other free speech is fascism. To everyone else, a spade is a fuckin spade.

Take her wealth, use it to fund gender affirming care for her victims, and put her in prison until she's willing to teach writing at a free community college

Me: who the hell is Joanne?

I just realized I've never heard her first name before

For me the golden rule here is "how do my actions affect trans kids?" (And adults too for that matter).

For most people, playing a HP video game will make HP content more recent in their brains and come up more in their thoughts and conversations.

For a lot of people, knowing what the author supports makes HP less fun... just like Ender's Game before it, and countless other properties.

It makes sense that a loss of a cherished story from childhood is felt as a loss, and the books and related media were important to a lot of us growing up. There might be some contexts where talking about HP doesn't increase the demand for it, or enrich JKR, like if you're criticizing it or talking about how you don't like it any more, etc.

If someone theoretically never knew anything about JKR and never told anybody about HP, then theoretically them enjoying the stories would have no effect on anything. If someone is in that boat, awesome. Keep living your best life, theoretical HP-enjoyer who doesn't discuss it!

Crazy how people think it's cool to just "enjoy things in a fucked up world". When the thing they're enjoying is genocide.

Sure. Ok bro.

Is she going to stop doing it though?

Sure, if you can replace it with something better. But if you can't do that, and you can just kill off something from your childhood that you enjoyed, that makes you a rather cold person, and then what's the point? If we haven't got compassion and love, what's left? Just coldness for those we hate? That's no way to live.

Do I regret that a book series written by a bigot got so big? Well, yeah. But we didn't know it at the time. I'm not going to apologise for something that caught my imagination 25 years ago.

Also, people aren't about just one issue. Boy George is gay, and he supports the genocide in Gaza. What does that mean? It just means one rich guy who used to make good music is a POS. Doesn't mean everyone who likes Karma Chameleon supports genocide. Though, I find myself not choosing to play it as much. Likewise, I don't read the Harry Potter books constantly. I just won't apologise for the past. I don't live there anymore.

Cool. I spend nothing on her stuff after finding out she hates trans people. I wanted to donate the books, but my wife wants to keep them. I got the game for free.

I mean, if you wanna judge a book by its cover and tell the person, that says a lot more about you than it does me. And you can't really dispute that since you said you can't comprehend a post longer than a Tweet or a TikTok video.

That said, I wish I could figure out this user tagging thing. It sounds kinda useful. I thought it was a PieFed thing, but you're on Lemmy.world. It could be the interface I'm using. The app I use doesn't present the option, either.

She would say that, but doesn't change the fact that she absolutely is.

Because Joanne hates it.

Didn't she name that character Sir Assaultya Mannington or something?

It's entirely possible to have the ability but not the desire to read a wall of text.

Not reading a wall of text doesn't reasonably preclude someone from disputing a claim unrelated to the content of that text, it's odd that you'd think that.

Complicit probably isn't the right word, but to claim there's no link at all is factually incorrect.

The fact that a proportion of the money in rowling's hands goes directly into funding anti-trans efforts isn't in dispute.

She's the first in line to back up that claim.

If your enjoyment of the media isn't soured by that, thats your call, everybody does what they can live with.

If your enjoyment of the media isn't soured by the knowledge that it directly funds hate and genocide, you're a piece of shit.

Are you 100% sure that every piece of media you enjoy was produced by a saint?

Or do you just not enjoy things? I doubt this.

I think it's more likely that you do enjoy things that were made by rotten people, but you don't think it's the same thing.

It’s entirely possible to have the ability but not the desire to read a wall of text.

Okay, but if you refuse to comprehend and understand what someone is saying, your ability isn't relevant. The person you're telling the world you aren't listening to isn't obligated to take you seriously at all. Because you're not making arguments. You're stating that you're ignorant — whether or not this is true is not relevant, because you're presenting that about yourself. Who am I to dispute your claims about you? I don't know you IRL. I'm just going to take your word that you're a pigeon on a chessboard — rather than make an intelligent move, you're just going to knock over all the pieces and make a big show of it.

When the creator tells you that they're a piece of shit with their actions and words, you listen. Rowling is one such creator. Stop defending her.

No.

if you can replace it with something better

Pratchett.

The Tiffany Aching books specifically if you want a direct replacement (but better), the rest of his work if you want more.

When people do fucked up shit and my consumption gives them the means to continue doing fucked up shit, I stop consuming. It's not a hard concept.

Woody Allen is a predator? Guess I'll wait until he's dead before I re-watch Annie Hall. Bill Cosby is a rapist? I don't need to buy Leonard Part 6 on DVD. Hell, Chipotle got caught union busting? There's other Mexican places that are better anyway. I can choose not to engage once I know it's a bad thing.

Stop trying to justify your own moral failing by saying, "Well I bet everyone does it and they just don't know it!" No one makes perfect choices, and you're right that some of the stuff I consume is probably made by bad people and I just don't know it yet. The difference seems to be that once I do know, I change my behavior.

That's an opinion, sure.

There's a great deal of modern day interactions that are similar in nature, where each person draws their line is up to them.

How people view other peoples line is also up to them.

What i was getting at here wasn't the subjective morality or ethics, that is an interesting subject though.

That I currently enjoy? To the best of my knowledge, yes.

You see, not supporting genocide is a really low bar.

Not supporting a sex pest is a really low bar.

Not being a Nazi enabler is a really low bar.

If you can't find media without resorting to supporting genocide, what the fuck does that say about you?

That an ongoing genocide isn't worth the tiniest inconvenience to your enjoyment.

When people say most wouldn't have hidden the Jews in their basements, they're talking about you. You, who can't be fucked to walk away from a media franchise. Much less put your life on the line to help others.

There are many words for people like you. But simply put.

You are a coward.

Yeah the game was every bit as tactless and casually bigoted as the books. They make as prominent Asian character an alcoholic, just stereotypes everywhere. And the trans character was such a token addition to quell the outage from antisemitic tropes and a had designer being a white supremacist.

If you read much as a kid you knew back then the books weren't well written. The stories were fun but never has Jo been a competent writer. The books are riddled with plot holes and inconsistent themes and straight up retcons because she didn't keep notes and is a hack writer. But there are actually good books with cohesive themes and messages that aren't rambling messes filled with inconsistent ideals and casually racist ignorance. The Harry Potter books are not well written, at all. She contradicts herself constantly, breaks her own world building, and half forms ideas that she abandons halfway through each book. Seriously, read any actually good author, Rowling writes like a fucking middle schooler. I have in fact read shit written by middle schoolers that was more cohesive than Jo's attempts. And this is all coming from a person that grew up with Harry, reading the books as they came out. Hell they helped me figure I was queer. But they're not well written, at all, and Jo is a monster and bigot and is responsible for killing trans kids. Be better.

Not going after fans. Going after CUSTOMERS. Very clearly this is about GIVING MONEY to a militant bigot, not about being a fan of Harry Potter.

Are you 100% sure that every piece of media you enjoy was produced by a saint?

This is a situation where we are 100% sure. Your argument here seems to be, "Well, if I didn't look into it, I wouldn't know, so why can't I just pretend I don't know?"

You're perfectly entitled to stick your head in the sand but please don't cope out loud in my direction.

So you wanna support people that support her? Second hand still doesn't support them.

Look at you trying to justify why Harry Potter is more important to you than trans people's lives.

Yes but it's real easy to not buy HP trash.

The rise of Donald Trump has shown me that a full third of the population is unrepentantly mean and bigoted and actively wants people like me dead. A full half the population doesn't care that they want to kill me as long as I didn't disturb their peace, and if I do then I'm the problem. And most of the rest seem willing to sacrifice trans kids to the bigots and uncaring majority in a misguided attempt to save themselves. Humans aren't good.

Can be quite hard, if you pay taxes, or buy anything unfortunately

It is directly relevant if you're making a claim against that ability.

since you said you can’t comprehend a post longer than a Tweet or a TikTok video.

It isn't what they said, at all

No way you can expect anyone to read that after the first sentence.

Is what they actually said.

The person you’re telling the world you aren’t listening to isn’t obligated to take you seriously at all.

Fair.

You’re stating that you’re ignorant — whether or not this is true is not relevant, because you’re presenting that about yourself. Who am I to dispute your claims about you? I don’t know you IRL. I’m just going to take your word that you’re a pigeon on a chessboard — rather than make an intelligent move, you’re just going to knock over all the pieces and make a big show of it.

I'm not the person same person from that reply.

While that imagery is vivid and amusing, it's a lot to read from a two line reply that doesn't mention intelligence at all.

People are people, peoples perception of "good" and "bad" is relative and contextual.

Take that in to account when building your expectations of people.

I personally try to take the approach that everyone is inherently selfish and will do what's best/convenient for themselves (and perhaps the people closest to them).

and i mean selfish as a neutral descriptor, not a derogatory term.

No expectations, no disappointment, but i know that's not a viable approach for a lot of people (and i'm not immune to the occasional hope of someone pleasantly surprising me).

I'm not saying i don't expect good things/behaviours to happen, i just try not to build expectations on that eventuality.

Ok there's a difference here, and the difference is effect.

I like HP Lovecraft's work and he was a racist piece of shit.

I liked Harry Potter and JK is a transphobic piece of shit.

But HP is dead and his stuff is public domain so none of my money goes to racist organizations.

If I bought any Harry Potter stuff, some of that money would go to JK who uses that money to fuck over trans people.

No one is saying you can't enjoy Harry Potter, and it's wild to think that you can't imagine enjoying something without buying it.

If I really wanted to reread the stories, I'd pirate them or borrow them from a library. Same with the games. JK won't get a dime from me and hasn't in a long, long time.

If people like Harry Potter, I don't judge them poorly, but if they are buying it now, I do judge them.

That's not very useful though. There are perfectly sound arguments that empathy and altruism are inherently selfish and self serving. Selfish behaviors can be pro-social, but humans tend strongly toward the anti-social ones in spite of being intrinsically social creatures. Humans are not good.