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Culture War Roundup for the week of November 25, 2024

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and in the stage show made Hermione black (and then tried to gaslight her fans into believing she always was).

It wasn't actually Rowling who decided to cast a black actress. She did praise the choice, however, and then said "The books never specified Hermione is white." Which is technically true, but while I wouldn't go so far as to call it "gaslighting" (Rowling didn't actually claim that canonical book-Hermione was black) she was pretty obviously taking the piss out of people who were complaining about the casting.

I wouldn't call Harry Potter "woke" in general, unless anything liberal is woke. It's got some multiculturalism and very tepid feminism, and nothing else that would offend your average conservative. Rowling is a standard liberal feminist Gen-Xer with slightly heterodox (by today's standards) views on trans people. You're right that gay Dumbledore was a retcon. (Rowling claimed he was always gay in her head; whether or not you believe her, she clearly knew it wasn't something she could put on the page in the 90s/early 2000s.)

The movies and games have been much woker than the books (no doubt with her approval).

Regardless of whether Dumbledore was gay in Rowling's head when she wrote the first book, I think it's worth keeping in mind that she had pretty clearly already decided on it by the time she wrote the seventh, which seems to be designed around the gay Dumbledore even though it doesn't make it explicit. I think the common suggestion that she more-or-less invented it on the spot in the interview where she announced it is clear copium.

I think the common suggestion that she more-or-less invented it on the spot in the interview where she announced it is clear copium.

Sure, but that's the [classical] liberal argument where "it doesn't actually matter, it never actually says in the books, Just Like You (angers the traditionalists), It's Not Special (angers the progressives)".

Which, I'll point out, is generally how those who are feminist-but-not-gynosupremacist treat womanhood in general (because that is how they were raised). It's common in media properties created by Gen Xers (because they were the most exposed to that viewpoint); that's why 4chan loves My Little Pony (G4 only), for instance.