Life in the UK has changed in drastic ways for trans people since Ally visited the isle in our story. I was over there in 2010/11 so on a personal level recent events have all hit so, so hard. I feel and fear for my friends in and from the UK who are persecuted and besieged. I am sure Ally is checking in on Piper in comics we have yet to create, but rest assured that tale exists in the ether as yet to be gleaned.
The assault against the basic human rights and decency of trans people in the UK has been partly led by, of all people, J.K. Rowling. She is a fellow writer. How someone who spends so much time getting to know their characters, and make them come alive on the page, yet doesn't have the desire to understand those in reality who are different than her, is mind-blowing.
She sees trans people as props in some sort of power play. Used in a twisted and dark new story to be told in which she can claim victory and portray herself as the hero. Evidence presented via her horrifyingly arrogant Instagram post the day the UK Supreme Court handed down its ruling proclaiming trans women were not to be considered women, henceforth denied status and protections.
A bathroom ban followed. The very same kind of bathroom ban corporations and rights groups united to fight against here in the US when North Carolina passed one back in 2016. I don't think we'll see such an alliance like that again at any point soon. Most corporations have bowed down and kiss the ring of their new king.
Her reasons for helping push this inhumane exclusionary pseudo-fifth-wave-feminist agenda? Perhaps she just enjoys watching characters suffer. Unlike Kreacher, the house-elf enslaved to House of Black in the Harry Potter series, we have the free will to reject this new narrative she is trying to write and reclaim our own. We might be excluded but we will not cease to exist.
There are deep dives out there into Joanne Rowling's psyche, including her views on how she feels it is tough to be a "woman in a man's world". It's one of the reasons that propelled her to go by J.K. rather than Joanne as the moniker for her books. Supposedly there was talk amongst her editing and publishing team that a female name would alienate young boys. She also uses the male pen name Robert Galbraith for her thriller novels. One of those stories featured a cross-dressing murderer. And as for the name Robert Galbraith itself, one can form a correlation to the real Robert Galbraith Heath.
Her influence in the UK is monumental. She could perhaps help propel anti-trans efforts here. I feel that her influence on the writing world will wane with time, however. Her stories will have less power. It's as if whatever magic she wielded to create her literary legacy is now been consumed and a darker sorcery is now eating away the rotted core.
We can trust that as she fades others will rise up and make things better for trans people in the UK, the US and worldwide. She is just one person and, while we make up only a very small percentage of the population, there are more of us than her.