An Open Letter To J.K. Rowling About Feminism

Dear J.K. Rowling,

I’m writing to you, humbly, to thank you.

Being a fan of your Harry Potter books has saved me countless times in my life, and I would like to repay the favor — with some words of my own guided by some words that over the years I have learned from your magical books and your speeches, interviews, and writings in the Muggle World.

Recently, it has been heartbreaking for me — as someone who has cherished your work since I was a small girl, to see you feeling so lonely in using your position to give a voice to the voiceless women in your life who are very afraid to share spaces that have been their safety with those they do not consider women biologically.

As someone who can empathize with your position — that bathrooms have historically been a place where women fleeing the mistreatment of men have found refuge that has kept them alive — and also knowing that historically the separation of bathrooms between genders and the societal expectation to follow that division, has, in some respects made public bathrooms a sanctuary some women have come to depend on.

I can understand as a woman the want to safeguard that safety for them, and for you. That empathy for victims, I applaud. I share that with you.

I would like to share with you, my own journey to feminism as an adult woman for you to consider in your position as equal to your own — that was steered by the world in your Potter books more than most would ever expect in a story most think is about a young BOY learning to believe in HIS magic enough to save the wizarding world from a Dark Lord.

When I was a little girl, I was unsafe at home. I wasn’t emotionally safe in my home with parents who were supposed to love me unconditionally but did not. It caused sadness and depression so early on in my life. Depression would become my best friend who, out of a want to protect me, would try to end my life many times in the years to come.

During those early days, I started reading your books. Your first Potter book was my own acceptance letter to Hogwarts and into a world of magic and adventure where I could safely process the dynamics of my own home through the magic of your words. And I was no longer a Muggle.

At home, I wasn’t safe with my older brother who faced the same conditional love, although the rules were different, from my parents, his friends, peers, and society. It was a standard of perfection he could never meet, but in their eyes, he could do no wrong. He turned all the anger he felt over this inward, and often a lot spilled out at me — his younger sister. And more than once it nearly, psychically cost me my life. In those moments, I would remind myself how hard it must be to be Dudley or Malfoy. So much pressure and so much praise at home. And the kind of bully that turns you into towards those you don’t consider your equal. And like magic, his Cruciatus Curse became easier to withstand. I was learning Defense Against the Dark Arts.

At my own school, I wasn’t safe with all my teachers. I was a shy, unpopular, sad, and fat. Though teachers appreciated my talent, wit, rule-following, and creativity, they were uncomfortable with my sadness and put conditions around the praise they would give me versus the praise they would offer other students with more socially acceptable appearances. The exclusion I felt added to my perceived differences that eventually cost me an entire semester in my high school years. In those moments I’d try to remember Snape, uncomfortable teaching Harry — the living reminder of his greatest love and greatest loss, and how cold and resentful that made him. I would look for the Hagrids and McGonagells and Hootchs and focus on their classes instead. I’d even spend my free time in classes I couldn’t stand, sneaking off to spend time with my favorite teachers. And like magic, potions class seemed easier to tolerate.

Throughout my schooling, my friends were very few. Most of them could not withstand the scrutiny of befriending someone so unpopular for long. I was mocked and labeled by other students and there was no avoiding their torment. I would spend recesses hiding under playground equipment trying not to be seen while my peers spit on me though the cracks they could find. And my teachers did nothing. But I also didn’t tell them because I was ashamed of my otherness. I didn’t fit in and it was obvious to me too.

I grew up in a family that rejected popular culture and didn’t talk openly about sex and I found it hard to find common ground with my peers. I was the freak, from the wrong kind of family. A muggle amongst the wizards that walked the halls of my school. In those moments I found comfort in Hermoine's spirit. Her thirst for knowledge of the world she desperately wanted to fit into. I found comfort in the books of my school library and started a SPEW of my own. Writing letters to the president and talking with my teachers about the bullying and lack of inclusion I saw going on to those with mental disabilities at my elementary school.

I became their fiercest friend and ally. And spent all my free time with them and advocating for them. I was advocating for better treatment for myself by using my power to include those I had more privilege than. And soon after I started advocating for all sorts of victims human and non more fiercely than I ever did for myself. I was recognizing my own power as a Witch.

But I still had to take classes I couldn’t test out of. I would find myself feeling sick and sad so often having to continue public school. And I would often ask for a pass to go to the bathroom so I could be alone and cry or throw up. At first, I’d just go to the girl's bathroom whenever I needed to. But I learned quickly it was no sanctuary for me. Girls would judge me, spit on me, harass me, tease me, call me names, laugh at me for being large, laugh at me if I peed too quickly, or farted too loudly. There’s the fat girl, so different, not one of us normal pretty small girls. In those moments I would think of Moaning Murtle, haunting the girl's bathroom of her school for all eternity, just wishing someone would ask her why she was crying. I didn’t want to wait as long she did to be listened to. So I stopped crying.

As I got older I tried to claim other sanctuaries, the library, the computer lab, the teacher's bathroom, the nurse's office, all somewhat softer sanctuaries but none of them completely safe from the cruelty of others. I was constantly reminded of my otherness everywhere I went where others were present. So I got strategic in my quest for sanctuary. I’d ask for a pass to the bathroom when no one else had asked to go, and I’d roam the halls of my entire school, bathroom to bathroom, until I found a bathroom that happened to be unoccupied. I’d find a stall, enter and lock the door, sit on the toilet, raise my feet up so they couldn’t be seen or my shoes recognized if another girl entered the bathroom. Then I pressed them against the door so no girl could enter. If a girl entered the bathroom I would hold my breath get very still and make no noises. I’d listen for sounds that she was uninterested in this stall, and wait for the sounds of confirmation that she had finished and left so I could feel safe in the bathroom again. If another girl rattled the door of the stall I would hold my breath and make a wish and hope that they didn’t look through the crack to see me. Their teasing would get so much worse if they saw me hiding. If they called out to see anyone was in the bathroom I pretended I wasn’t and I hoped they wouldn’t check. And I’d try to remember how long I’d been hiding so that I could get back to class before my teacher would notice I’d been gone too long. In these moments I would think of Harry Ron and Hermoine roaming about the castle under the invisibility cloak. To sneak off to the restricted section, or the forbidden Forrest, or Hogsmead or the Shrieking Shack in pursuit of information or friendship, and I’d realized I’d created an invisibility cloak of my own.

When I was older and got my period it was a heavy flow that always showed up when I least expected it. I’d notice mid-class my pants were covered in blood and I’d try to wipe off what I’d left on the seat of my desk by coughing into my shirt and rubbing my sleeves on desk chair to clean up unnoticed. I learned to wear sweatshirts and dark colors so I’d be able to clean up these messes. When I stained my clothes, girls would make fun of me for it. They never extended me a tampon or a sweatshirt to wrap around my waist. They’d point and laugh. There’s that fat girl, she bleeds so differently than us. When this would happen I would think of Mudbloods, teased, and pushed aside for blood that was less pure. I would use the same sleeves to wipe my own tears and I realized I’d found a way to give myself a Wizarding Robe.

After that, when my period struck I’d usually just go to the nurse, pretend I was sick, and go home every time it would happen. But since my parents didn’t trust the world enough to let their daughter walk home from school alone and my parents worked jobs, that stopped being an option pretty quickly. So I adapted. I started wearing heavy pads every single day so I could pee a little in them if I wasn’t safe to go to the bathroom but couldn’t hold it in. Oh, and in case my period came. I’d also wear heavy perfume because I was scared girls would smell the blood and know and out me. I was trying my best to be as undetectable as possible. To mask the smell of my blood from the snakes moving around the pipes of my own school. In these moments I’d think of Undetectable Charms and Polyjuice Potion and realize I was casting spells and creating elixirs of my own for my protection. And like magic, by pure wishing, my periods came less and less often.

And without even knowing it at the time, I had taken Hermoine's advice and started peering around corridors with my camera by joining the school newspaper as a photographer.

I started out just taking assignments from my new favorite teacher and working alongside peers finding their own voices too, to put out the news. And soon enough with our teacher's encouragement, I was writing features and creating photo illustrations and design to accompany them that helped tell the real story of underdogs and victims of our school in a magazine format that our classmates actually wanted to read.

In a way, it was our own kind of Dumbledoors Army. Students preparing each other for the world, learning the real magic we’d need to be safe in it, not just to pass exams.

And we found refuge in our journalism room, our own Room of Requirement. But the superintendent of our school district didn’t want a publication that was honest. He didn’t want a publication that talked about how unprepared we were for school shootings or the number of pregnant teens that walked our halls. Even when we were writing facts. But we wouldn’t back down. We published our truth anyways. And it cost our teacher, our own Hermoine at heart, who had rescued many high-school rejects in her years as a journalism teacher, her job. And in her absence, our school lost a safe place that was a hope for so many. And I no longer felt safe at my Hogwarts.

After that, I could barely find the courage to come to school anymore, so most days I didn’t. I couldn’t just go about the business of attending classes anymore and ignore the pain that was happening in the halls I was walking through. And the pain I was walking through.

I pretended, and after a while became, physically sick on and off for almost a year. And my parents racked up debt trying to figure out what was wrong. I had stopped caring about what was wrong. In the last visit to the doctor for my “mysterious stomach pains” that had kept me from school for 3 months, the doctor was concerned for my uterus and my ability to have children despite the fact that I knew I never wanted them.

I was pressured by my mother who desperately wanted grandchildren someday into letting a male doctor I had never met before, perform a Pap Smear. So there I was, a 17-year-old virgin mortified of her body, facing her first Pap Smear unprepared and inexperienced. I hadn’t even had my first kiss.

My mother and father held my hand and watched me while I cried and screamed. It was so painful and uncomfortable I couldn’t even let the doctor finish. But, I realized I’d have to face it again if I kept complaining my stomach hurt so I forced myself through the painting in Hogsmeade and back into school to appease my parents and to save myself from future torture.

I literally snuck into school late every morning through a back staircase through our high-schools theater, past our art room, and into the common room on the second floor surrounded by all the classrooms where classes where held that encouraged students to use their own voice. Journalism, Debate, Theater, Art, Forensic speaking….My own Gryffindor common room of sorts. And the teachers and classmates I loved and who loved me, made sure I had a safe passage, despite the risks to themselves.

Teachers gave me their codes to the school doors students weren’t supposed to use. I would bring my lunch to eat in these classrooms. And I would spend every moment of self-study time I had creating art in these spaces. And for a brief moment, before I graduated, kids who had rejected me my entire life were starting to see value in my artistic voice, where they’d never seen value before. I had become an exceptional Witch. And I was earning points for Gryffindor.

After graduation, I left college halfway through my first semester, another place I didn’t fit, to my parent's disappointment, to pursue another magical world. Photography. My wand had chosen me, and making magic with it for me was easy. I far outpaced all of the instructors teaching basic photography courses at colleges in my town. And I found their awe and praise boring. I wanted to learn. Like Hermione, I wanted acceptance, not success. I wanted to fit in. So I decided to teach myself. And I gave myself a pass to visit any restricted section I thought might help me online.

As I started finding admiration and success as an artist in my city by posting my art online, I saw myself begin to take pride in my status and start to unconsciously lord it over younger women who I loved who looked up to me — and who weren’t successful in a profession yet. Much later I’d realize I was resentful they were wildly successful in other pursuits that I, as a talented adult fat woman, had still not been included in. Trendy fashion, healthy romance, fair payment, kindness on sight, and offer of friendship or kindness before a test of value. I was resentful of the Restricted Sections my beloved sisters did not trust me to enter, and I created a magical world I was pressuring them to enter, where I was Master. I was recruiting my own army.

And some of them did join. They became models for my art and it was fun at first, but soon it became a way for them to stand out on social media and be popular and admired. And then I felt like I had to get better and more powerful at this new brand of magic because it must be the answer to true acceptance for us all. I was learning success was never enough.

Eventually, my closest friends and companions told me how insecure in themselves they were becoming constantly listening to my need to be a Prefect. How overbearing and cautious I had become about using my voice to tell stories that would only be seen as good.

In that moment, I realized my own insecurities had caused them pain, and I was horrified. Suddenly, I realized I’d stopped growing and moving towards acceptance and had sacrificed the true friendships I had with people who knew me well, to sit in front of the mirror of Erised more and more, And I hadn’t even realized I was going mad.

Once I realized this, I realized my friends weren’t quite as close as they once were, and I was embracing new ones who shared my need for things to fit inside the box I was creating for myself. And, I realized I didn’t like the box I thought I needed to fit into to tell stories with my camera.

It was painfully hard for me to walk away from photography, it was a slow fade, but my ego was too attached. So it was time to walk down another corridor. Pick up a completely different kind of wand. And I’ve been afraid of revisiting that dream again all these years even when I’ve really wanted to.

Since then, I have relied on the stories of hope and love and friendship within the pages of your books to lead me down too many corridors to count. I’ve had a fashion brand, I’ve made rugs, I’ve done videos, I’ve toured with musicians, I’ve marketed, I’ve ghostwritten. And I each corridor I entered I found varying levels of success and reach. I thought I could keep my ego away by only being a voice for those less fortunate than me and teaching others to do the same. I was becoming a servant of sorts, a house-elf like Dobby really, apologizing for every mistake, beating myself up over every wrong word, and forgetting the power of my magic because I was constantly lending it to those less powerful than me to do basic emotional or physical chores they should have been able to do themselves — and might have learned if I’d let them. But hey, one is glad to be of service.

But I soon realized, the ways people can be less fortunate and in need of help are as numerous as the characters in your books. It’s not just Muggles vs. Wizards, it’s Mudbloods, and squibs, and half-giants, and Azkaban prisoners, and Sirius blacks, and dementors, and dragons, and centaurs, and unicorns, and elves, and goblins, and St. Mungo's patients, and three-headed dogs, and Buckbeak, and werewolves, and shaggy dogs, and Black-family traitors, and Krercher and Mundungus, and Hermoine, and Luna, and Burty Crouch Senior and Junior, and death eaters, and Dobby, and Dumbledore, and Voldemort. And so many others, all with backstories of their own.

All with reasons for being the who that they are that have nothing to do with the what that they are. And my head was spinning. Who first? Who needs it the most? Where do I start? Who do I save first? I feel like I have to save everyone, and I’m not even prepared to save myself. And I longed for a world where the answers were easy. Muggles and Wizards. Separate and fine with it. For our safety and theirs. We both win.

But do we? Should we arrest or expel from our magical world the Mr. Weasleys who bring magic to muggle artifacts? The Hermoines who leave their parents behind to pursue their own magic? The Hagrids who see the beauty in creatures we’ve long ago written off as beasts? The Aunt Petunias who loved their sisters so much but could never admit they were jealous of that unshakable acceptance of yourself just as you know you are, even when it scares or confuses those around you? Or, are we better for including them?

And then I realized the villain you wrote about with the most viciousness and least forgiveness and backstory was the character that in appearance and total heartbreak and fear was actually the character that to me at many times in my life I felt the most like.

The woman who appeared as “a large, pale toad, rather squat, and having a broad, flabby face, very little neck, and a wide, slack mouth.”

The woman who in your Potter series, you, a woman too, left for dead in exchange for the freedom of what you considered a more worthy and relatable female story. Hermione first. And I followed you.

I, like everyone else, found more hate and anger for this woman than I ever had for Voldemort, despite his crimes being much more widespread and the number of deaths on his hands being more numerous. This woman was always scarier to me because she was relentless, successful, and sweetly vile to characters I dearly loved in a way not even she could understand. And you gave us no context for it.

She was the woman in your stories who was the most like me as I grew older, surrounding herself with pretty things to try balance out the ugly she was constantly being told she was sometimes by men but most often by other women.

Our only difference when I read these books as a child was that I lacked a feeling of position or power to have any impact on the life of anyone, even my own. I suspect like most children, you can relate to that helplessness.

But from reading your books, I learned early on that a toadlike woman would also have power someday and what not to do with it.

However, your books didn’t give me much guidance on what a woman or child who looked like me should do with their power. Not any that seemed very magical to me anyways.

The other female characters in your Potter books, the ones that looked like me who you wrote with the most compassion for, were a woman who spent all her time alone with plants and handed out earmuffs so children could block out the screams of babies, and a woman who claimed she was “big-boned” when wizards knew the truth of her Giant blood and she only found any true romantic acceptance through the very last one of her own kind.

You were teaching me I had a place in the magical world you’d created, but it wouldn’t be one of too much importance or backstory. At best I would be a comfortable or amusing sideshow, at worst I would be the greatest villain the Wizarding World would ever know, but also not know because how could a woman ever be a Dark Lord? And I’d die a slow and painful death in Azkaban, alone. No redemption for me. Your fellow sister.

So without knowing it, very early on in my life, internally, I had declared myself a future Umbridge.

Unforgivable. And I turned all my anger and resentment inwards. To try to protect others.

I was being so tortured by my own self- punishment and my need to be perfect again, that I required others to play by the same rules of self-torture I did, and told myself and others lies about my own understanding of power to try to get them to listen.

Not unlike your Umbridge I’ve even tried to carry Horcruxes around like facts in a heart locket around my neck even though it was hurting me living with them more than anyone.

I’d become so numb to the Horcruxes I’d created in my own heart that it felt comfortable to sit with the pain of others. Empowering even. I know the way forward. I’ve hurt the most. Lean into it.

Like your Umbridge, I tried to fill the empty space around me with pretty things. Pink and dresses I was never safe or allowed to wear as a little girl. Comfort I never knew or had to lose in the first place.

And I continued to resist the urge to take my overwhelming amount of pain, and turn it outwards. I held it in. And I tried to create art that was about what was wrong with the world instead of what was wrong in my heart. And I passively guilted and dismissed others who didn’t do the same. But every subtlety angry or scared and entitled post I wrote about knowing the right way forward, to live, or to be, or the right laws to pass etched its way into my own skin by blood. I MUST NOT TELL LIES. But I pushed through the pain. Because I, like Harry felt I was claiming my birthright to my own voice.

For many years I kept working and serving, and self-punishing, and holding it all in to not hurt anybody the way your Umbridge did. And then, last year I had my period, every day, for 8 months.

My doctors couldn’t explain it. Stress maybe. But I was being slowly drained of iron, energy, and hope. A dementor’s kiss of sorts. And like Harry, after 8 months of waiting and hoping and watching myself die from across the lake, I too realized no one was coming to save me.

So, I cast my Patronus, my inner truth that I never wanted children by birth, and had a surgery to save my own life that required me to burn the inside of my uterus. I said goodbye to what for all of my own life, from the perspective of others, especially my mother, had defined my claim to womanhood. The ability to create new human life with DNA of my very own.

And as you continued to write more about all my beloved characters in your Potter books over the years, I’ve waited for you to come back for her. And for me. To invite me into the club of redeemable humanity beside you. To show her and me the same compassion and thoughtfulness you showed Voldemort. To ask why was she the villain she was? What was the stuff that made her the who that she was?

But I already know the answer because I’ve read your books and your most recent blog post about your dynamic with your own father.

I’ve also been in her shoes and in her head many times in my life. And I know at some points, in some ways, you have been too — because you created her.

I’ve checked the Daily Prophet from time to time, hoping to catch you writing about her, really writing about her. In any other way other than pure distaste and dismissal for a woman who quests for acceptance in the Wizarding World was so limited from birth — her success was dictated by playing by the rules of not only men but abusive men.

So far have you, sister, already flown to look down on her and me with no interest in redemption.

How sad am I as a feminist and a fan of the stories you have given me that the scariest villain in my favorite bedtime story was and may always be, a powerful old ugly overly feminine woman who doesn’t know how and never learns how to lead in love? And as such spends all the rest of her days locked in Azkaban forgotten. While droves of men in your stories, like Lucious Malfoy, objectively equally as cruel and terrible and worthy of repulsion, never even have to see the inside of its walls.

In the muggle world, when asked about your inspiration for her, you speak of a woman in your own life who Shall Not Be Named and say it was a woman “whom I disliked intensely on sight.”

And I paused in reading your interview to wonder why that is. And as if I had taken a bit of Liquid Luck, you answered.

“The woman in question returned my antipathy with interest. Why we took against each other so instantly, heartily and (on my side, at least) irrationally, I honestly cannot say.”

You dismissed her, and she showed interest anyways. And that made you uncomfortable. I wonder what else made you uncomfortable about her I thought. And you answered that too.

You described her “pronounced taste for twee accessories”, including “a tiny little plastic bow slide, pale lemon in colour”, which you felt was more “appropriate to a girl of three.”

I wonder why a grown woman acting like a girl in a way you outgrew long ago made you so uncomfortable.

That you didn’t answer. My luck had run out. I imagine that much like Slughorn, it was a truth you couldn’t face. So you didn’t. And I can honestly understand that.

There are memories in my own life I have altered to be able to live with. Memories I’ve bottled and never rewatched. Memories I’ll never share. Memories and truths I refuse to know.

I’m not perfect. And I do not expect you to be. I have my own fears and trauma, and I know you do as well. I’ve had a fear of my own name, especially my last name. You have a fear of your own too it seems since you use a lot of pen names and to my knowledge have never used your full birth name on writing of your own that you’ve released publicly.

And that’s okay. You grew up in a scarier and less magical world for women and young girls than the one I have been fortunate to know. You as a little girl did not grow up reading the Potter books. But I, thankfully, did. I grew up with them year by year, and they guided me through my development. So I do not judge the pace you personally are taking towards believing your name and your opinions and your stories can be considered equally amongst men’s.

I do not judge that you are writing bedtime stories and movies centered around boys and men instead of girls and women, because I learned very young by reading your books that I can learn from a story centered around a boy as much as I can learn from a story centered around a girl. We’re not really so different.

You, Joanne, have given girls and boys the power of transfiguration. And despite the rules and limitations that you have created in the Wizarding World that I call home to women who look like me, I have found the magic inside me to grow beyond the need for your permission.

I have forgiven myself for my crimes against other women and men, which are numerous. And I have forgiven women and men like you for their crimes against me and women who look like me.

And while many of us have died, trying to shrink ourselves into your limited definition of a woman, I choose not to lock you away in Azkaban for life. I choose to cast a spell of forgiveness instead of a spell of protection. I choose to cast the most powerful spell one can ever cast. A spell of Love.

And as Women step forward asking for an open door to my new magical world, who test the bounds of womanhood as I understand it…I embrace them.

And if they bang on the door of my bathroom, a place where I only now feel safe due to my own magic after 31 long years…

Alohamora. I open the door and let them in.

And before I relock the door behind them, to keep us safe, I remember the first major trauma you and I Joanne, ever shared. The first story you ever told me as I tucked myself into bed as a little girl and read myself a bedtime story.

I remember a time in which a young girl, different by birth than her peers, abused by her friends, found refuge alone in a bathroom with her own tears and met a giant troll.

I wonder what would have happened if her friends, whose words had sent her there to cry, hadn’t swallowed their pride, broken all the rules, and entered the girl's bathroom to fight alongside her.

She might have been fine on her own. Escaped or harnessed her own power to survive. She may have become the girl who lived. A legend in her own right. A survivor.

But I’m glad she didn’t. I’m glad she choose humility and unconditional friendship that night over the want to let herself be scared and alone to feel safe.

I did not want to imagine a world where Harry, Ron, and Hermoine grew up to be Snape, James, and Lilly. Dead too soon. Dying painful, sad, horrific deaths. Never knowing life without war or fear or utter loss.

I prefer it the way you wrote it. The friends who lived.

Who stood by each-other and stood up to fear and fought hate far before the adults of the Wizarding World ever thought they were ready to.

Honestly, where would we all be if they hadn’t? Where, Joanne, would you be?

So I leave the door of womanhood open. To trans-women, and to you, and to your books. Because you, Joanne, taught me how.

It’s been exactly 13 years since your final book in the series, and 13 years since I left my high school to pursue adulthood. And although the scar your books left on me has pained me on and off all these years…

Today I choose to live while the other survives.

And for the first time, in very many years, I was able to revisit Hogwarts by reopening your books. And my scar did not pain me.

You might ask, after all this time?

And my answer is finally, honestly, Always.

Someday, I hope, your scars will heal too. And all will be well.

For now, I’ll go about saving our world, fighting for true equality with love and the eyes of a child, right under your nose, undetected. Trying to bring only my light, not my own past and fears, to every new battle I join in to fight against darkness amongst my future friends. And I will try to never judge the fights and sacrifices and freedom they need to make to find their own light. Someday, I truly hope, you will join us.

Until then, Mischief Managed.

Love,

She Who No Longer Needs To Be Named A She