Thank you J.K. Rowling:

. Ms. Rowling, I must thank you for being such a present instructor throughout my childhood. For teaching me via your books, the founding principals of the ideals I hold to this day. Your essay regarding the rights of people of trans experience has informed me of something important however, and it seems that you have asked the world to respond. Well, you taught me to stand up to bigots and so here I am. I can no longer “…just ignore them…”. My defense has never been in strength or will, but in kindness and love, as you so raised me to do. As such, I hold to the knowledge that wisdom, cunning, bravery, and loyalty, will guide us true. So I have only my Patronus as a shield, and I believe that the time has come to view its form. After all, the world is just one big classroom, and your latest homework leaves much to be desired. Since you wrote an essay with misguiding information that threatens the safety of the lives of my fellow people of trans experience, I can do nothing but respond. Words are powerful, and my family, my fellow people, my fellow humans, are not to be threatened.

Amidst my youth, amid memories of pain and fear, amid memories of laughter and hope, I remember your words. I remember how you taught me that mere children could stand up against what is wrong, how the narrow-mindedness of others was merely something to be ignored and cast aside. I remember it all Ms. Rowling. After all, it is Hermione Granger that I ultimately understood the most. You see, I grew up as a young boy, not knowing who I was, not knowing where my path would lead me. I blocked out so many memories of even greater pain than those of physical beatings and emotional trauma; so much so, that I forgot I was a girl. I latched on to the character of Harry Potter, a young boy who had the world against him and manipulative adults pushing him in the direction they desired. You see, in part, I lived as Harry Potter. I was beaten and called something I was not, though in my case, boy would be the correct word rather than freak. I grew up knowing that I had a destiny that somehow never revealed itself to me in utter clarity. I was blind you see, both physically and emotionally. As it were, that little girl with overlarge teeth kept pushing and demanding that justice be achieved.

Little Hermione reinforced that muggle-borns should not be pushed aside and scattered through the mud. Muggle-borns, people born with magic to non-magical parents; people who were other than they were expected to be. I learned through Mr. Filch that mistreating Squibs was also wrong, other people born not as they were expected to be. Ms. Rowling, I am a woman of trans experience, and I was not born as I was expected to be. I am a woman, raised as a boy, and now ultimately discriminated against for my gender status. Blood status may not apply here, but gender status? Yes, I think this a fair replacement.

The characters you wrote in to the fantastical novels of my childhood were my friends. They taught me to learn and grow and care and stand up against the wrongs that this world attempts to cast upon us. They raised me with love and kindness, as you so clearly intended for them, thus you have succeeded. I grew up and as confused as I was, I ultimately found my truth. I found that I loved to learn, I found that books were and still are my stability, I found that letting people cast me down was not how I needed to live my life. I freed my house-elves, I eliminated my prejudice against the half-bloods, the non-magicals, the squibs and the muggle-borns. I cleansed myself of the wrongs of my internal childhood, and became aware of the greater problems these seeming metaphors represented in the real world. Trans-people like myself are discriminated against, people of color are discriminated against, people with neurodivergent minds are discriminated against, women and people of various sexual orientations, differently abled people and those without the financial means to stand up for themselves with anything other than their lives. All these and many more, Ms. Rowling, are wrong to judge against. All of these and more, are represented by the half-bloods, the muggle-borns, the squibs, the non-magicals, the house-elves, the goblins and centaurs, the giants and half-giants, and again, so many more. You taught me, no, you raised me, to stand up for all of them, to stand up against discrimination, and now, Ms. Rowling, it is you who stands in my way.

I remember being sexually assaulted; when my body became the play thing for someone else, when my mind fragmented in to wailing shards of inoperable nonsense. I remember that pain, as do all people who have been assaulted in such a way. I do not, however, believe that that makes the case for the dismissal of all people who fit in to whatever group in which that person may have been included. I remember the unbridled terror of being made to believe that there was no escape, from when I was punished as a child. I remember being flattened and beaten, as a frightened blind child trying to run away. I remember choking down an orange because I lost the appetite to consume it without someone forcing me to do so. I to this day, do not feel safe in my own bed, because that was where I was always brought for my beatings, brought to, chased to, thrown to, and made in to nothing. I remember that pain and fear, and yet I would never condemn or ask, or demand, or call for the dismissal or prejudice against all people who belong to the group in which the person who humbled me may be included. I, Ms. Rowling, do not discriminate save out of the most reprehensible ignorance that I do not even know of. This ignorance exists in all of us, and all of us should continue to learn and grow throughout our lives to build a safe world for everyone, because ignorance is not bliss, it is an accident, a mistake, a crime, waiting to happen.

You openly support people who speak out against trans rights; that is fair, your beliefs are your own. No, I don’t agree with them, but I am neither going to tell you to disappear just because you are wrong, nor am I about to use a platform such as you possess, one of wealth and connection to try and push you down. If by some magic this letter reaches you, then perhaps it was meant to. Perhaps that trans girl who was unfortunately born with a penis, perhaps that little white girl with brown eyes, a slight overbite, and brown hair that is either as bushy as can be or woven in to curls and ringlets by time, perhaps that blind girl with autism, anxiety, PTSD, ADHD and who knows what the heck else, perhaps that woman, perhaps I, was right. Consider the hurt you cause, Ms. Rowling. Consider the hypocrisy of attempting to oppress a group of people who had no choice in who they are. Consider yourself. Think on how many people who have loved your art and supported your work and wealth, how many of them now disown you? How many of us are prepared to withdraw our support of you, regardless of how much it hurts. And yes, it hurts. My childhood, the safest parts of my young mind reside in the pages of books, and your writings were some of them. But there is power in this. I realized today that while you can defile your work with hypocrisy and false pretense, you cannot take it away. No, Ms. Rowling, once you give something of yourself to the world, it is shared, just like this writing is with everyone, however many or few, who reads it. Hermione Granger, Hogwarts Castle, my house of Slytherin, these are all given forth by you, and I will not let you take this love from me. You are powerless. Your intentional support of hate and prejudice reveals you as what you are, that bigot I was taught by you to ignore and stand up to when my temper gets the better of me. No, I’m not about to punch you in the face or start a society with a terrible name, I’m not about to become a powerful person in this society, or a well-known scholar of my generation. I’m simply going to keep living as I am. I am going to live as long as I can on this earth, loving this life and happy that only death can take it from me. Death can be brought by another, but in the end, death is the last enemy, or friend, depending on your perspective. Only death is the end to this life, and you J.K. Rowling are not that. Yes, I am happy and I do love this world.

How could someone like me live happily? Someone who is a mix of unfortunate white privilege, blindness, multiple traumas, depression and anxiety, confusion and misbehaving neural pathways, how? How could I be happy when cruelty always wishes to take it away, when the pains of my past scream through my mind in consciousness-rending agony? How, when I must stumble and crawl and fight and weep, how? Well, because I am alive, because in my heart and mind, in my love and joy, in my knowledge and wisdom, in my bravery and cunning, in my loyalty and strength, I know who I am. No one can drag that away from me. I am happy because of all the learning I have done, of all the people I have loved and lost, all the strength of those who fight against oppression, and all the glory that rides upon this spinning rock. I am happy, because life is good, and love is good, and people are good when truth comes out. I don’t hate you or anyone who supports you, nor those whom you support. I don’t and I never will. Hate is no medicine. Rage and pain are drivers; knowledge and education are building blocks, compassion and love are healers, and we, every single living being on this earth, we are life. Life is good and pure and no amount of cruelty can take that away. We will fight and die and change and rewrite. We will stand and scream and cry and laugh, and nothing can stop that. My skills are what they are. I write from the heart. I feel the pain of others. I love, and damn powerfully too. I create and I enjoy and I live.

I live, Ms. Rowling, as a woman, and you and your judgements, you and your supporters, you and your money and your intolerant bigotry can never take that away. Lock me up, kill me, beat me, fine. I still lived, I still loved, and I still grew. Life in peace is the victory, and I have had some measure of that. Your essay fails to acknowledge facts that have not been misinterpreted or used to misdirect. Your essay fails to recognize how little your attempt to drive us in to obscurity will actually accomplish. Do you know why that is? That, that is because you have taught your truth, and now when you speak of falsehoods and manipulated thoughts, they ultimately fade in to nothing. You taught us to love, and now you must learn what that can bring about. So I say thank you for teaching me.

Others have and will say many things better than I. I love knowledge, but have little presence of mind when it comes to research, save on those rare days when a flare of consciousness ignites a passion. I will never be a great speaker; I stumble too much with words and constantly rewrite them as it is. I can love however. I can teach as you did. I can heal and I can care and I can be. Do not mistake my simple reflex for anger, I am not angry, I am righteous. Do not mistake my simplicity for lack of information, my instructors would all tell you that I understand far too well what they teach but could never properly express as such. Do not mistake my lowly voice for emptiness. There are millions of people who will and are and have chosen to stand against people like you. Every book you sold is a condemnation of your current stances. After all, I love your books and I’m still a trans lesbian, so you couldn’t have done too much harm to me.

The glory of life is in the future, not in past ignorance. Perhaps when you open your eyes you too will see. I have hope for you, Ms. Rowling, because you too are alive. As long as we are alive, there is a chance to be better, to know better, to grow better, and to live better. Thank you for teaching me that. As it is, I have little words left to say that would fit within this piece without much cajoling, save perhaps two. Two words I utter with all the whispered reverence of a long-remembered love, “Expecto Patronum.”

Elise Jane Tabor