J.K. Rowling dismisses her transphobic legacy: “I’ll be dead”

For some “Harry Potter” fans, their love of the franchise is over, tarnished by its creator’s very public stance against trans rights. But as J.K. Rowling, the author of the boy magician books, said in a recent podcast, she’s not concerned.

On the podcast “The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling,” Rowling said that fans “could not have misunderstood me more profoundly” when they expressed concerns that her legacy as a writer is “ruined.”

As reported by Variety, Rowling said in the first episode of the podcast, “I do not walk around my house, thinking about my legacy. You know, what a pompous way to live your life walking around thinking, ‘What will my legacy be?’ Whatever, I’ll be dead.” 

Hosted by Megan Phelps-Roper, who spent over 25 years in her grandfather Fred Phelps’ extremist Westboro Baptist Church (which Rowling once criticized), “The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling” is produced by the Bari Weiss-founded media company Free Press. Variety writes that the podcast “attempts to draw parallels between attacks on Rowling by far-right Christian groups over the Harry Potter books — as somehow harmfully promoting witchcraft — and more recent furor over Rowling’s statements about trans people. Phelps-Roper is looking for commonality between the intolerant right-wingers who wanted to ban and burn the Harry Potter books and trans activists who have threatened Rowling.”

The podcast includes interviews with Rowling conducted at her home castle in Edinburgh. It comes on the heels of a New York Times opinion column by former Books Review editor Pamela Paul headlined “In Defense of J. K. Rowling,” and in the recent aftermath of a letter signed by thousands of Times contributors protesting the paper’s coverage of trans people. 

Want a daily wrap-up of all the news and commentary Salon has to offer? Subscribe to our morning newsletter, Crash Course.

As NME reports, on the podcast Rowling “defended her right to espouse her views on various subjects. She said: ‘I never set out to upset anyone. However, I was not uncomfortable with getting off my pedestal.'” The writer who once, as Variety wrote, “suggested that trans women ‘retain male patterns of criminality,’ which makes them likelier than cisgender women to physically or sexually assault someone in a women’s locker room or shelter,” also said on the podcast, “I care about now. I care about the living.”