There is no ethical consumption of HBO’s Harry Potter series

In the coming years, HBO wants its new Harry Potter series to become “the streaming event of the decade” as it adapts each of the franchise’s seven original books. The show could very well become a hit that captures the imaginations of a new generation of fans who weren’t there for the first wave of Pottermania that intensified with the releases of each book and Warner Bros.’ subsequent film adaptations. And if this Harry Potter is a success, it could give author J.K. Rowling a reason to consider writing more stories set in the magical world that turned her into a billionaire.

But all of that hinges on whether people will actually watch HBO’s Harry Potter, which is being executive produced by Rowling. In some cases, a franchise’s creator being so closely involved with new versions of their work can be a good thing, but Rowling’s involvement in this show casts a shadow over it that HBO can do very little to counteract. Rowling has made it abundantly clear that she thinks attacking transgender people via the legal system is a worthwhile cause and a good use of her vast personal fortune. And as much as Harry Potter fans might be excited to see what HBO has cooked up, there’s no way to watch this show without supporting Rowling’s bigotry and the structural violence she’s inflicting on a vulnerable minority.

For years, Rowling has trafficked in garden variety transphobia under the guise of being a champion for cisgender women’s rights. Last Thursday in a post praising the International Olympic Committee for banning transgender women from competing, Rowling implicitly misgendered 2024 boxing gold medalist Imane Khelif. The post was the latest instance of Rowling using transphobic dog whistles to attack Khelif, which is what led the athlete to file a criminal complaint against Rowling last summer.

Many people had previously gleaned from Rowling’s online interactions with trans-exclusionary radical feminists (TERFs) that she might hold transphobic views. But it wasn’t until 2019 that she came out as a TERF herself while weighing in on a precedent-setting UK legal battle. On Twitter, Rowling voiced her support for Maya Forstater, a British tax consultant whose contract with the Centre for Global Development was not renewed in response to concerns about her tweeting and retweeting multiple posts misgendering and denying the existence of trans people. Forstater — a self-identified “gender-critical activist” — filed a lawsuit against the CGD and its president Masood Ahmed alleging that her non-renewal was a violation of Britain’s 2010 Equality Act.

While the Equality Act barred discrimination based on “gender reassignment,” Forstater claimed that she was being unfairly persecuted for her personal beliefs. One judge tossed the case out, ruling that Forstater’s views were “incompatible with human dignity and fundamental rights of others.” But Forstater was able to appeal, and in 2021, the Employment Appeal Tribunal decided in her favor.

Rowling’s tweet was not what led to Forstater ultimately receiving £106,400 ($141,683) in lost earnings and aggravated damages in 2023. But Rowling’s willingness to openly align herself with TERF agitators was significant because she was lending credence to the larger culture of transphobia that has plagued the UK for decades. By supporting Forstater, Rowling was encouraging the public to embrace their hateful beliefs and to think of transgender people as threats to society. That kind of rhetoric has been linked to spikes in hate crimes directed at queer people. Rowling knows full well that her celebrity helps her amplify transphobic ideology in ways that people like Forstater could not on their own. Rowling also understands that her wealth puts her in a prime position to advance the TERF agenda (read: enforcing gender essentialism and erasing trans people from existence) on a societal level.

That’s exactly what Rowling was doing in 2024 when she donated £70,000 ($93,212) to For Women Scotland (FWS), an advocacy group that challenged Scotland’s 2018 Gender Representation on Public Boards Act 2018. The Act’s definition of women included people who had “the protected characteristic of gender reassignment.” FWS won its initial judicial review in 2022, which deemed that defining women was outside of the Scottish Parliament’s purview. That decision was reversed in 2023, and in 2024, an amended version of the Scottish Gender Representation Act that used the British 2010 Equality Act’s definition of women — which included trans women — was signed into law. That same year, FWS filed and lost another judicial review against the amended Scottish Gender Representation Act challenging its use of the British 2010 Equality Act’s definition. And while FWS could not appeal that decision, the case went all the way to the UK Supreme Court, which ruled that the legal definition of a woman is based on biological sex assigned at birth. To pay for this extensive legal battle, FWS turned to crowdsourcing, and Rowling was all too happy to dump tens of thousands of dollars into their cause.

This UK Supreme Court’s definition is itself problematic because human sex biology is not a binary. And in addition to preventing transgender people from having their gender identity legally recognized, the ruling makes it much harder for them to pursue legal action for gender-based discrimination. Rowling celebrated the Court’s decision by posting a photo of herself with a very clear message: “I love it when a plan comes together.” The plan in this case was to help bankroll an anti-trans group’s campaign against trans people, and it culminated with the passage of a law that reduces all women living in the UK down to the way their bodies are perceived when they are born.

Rowling has been transparent about her desire to keep assisting people in their efforts to rob transgender people of their dignity and human rights. That seems very much to be the entire point of The J.K. Rowling Women’s Fund — an organization Rowling launched in 2025 that claims to be “fighting to retain women’s and girls’ sex-based rights in all aspects of life.” The Fund offers financial support provided by Rowling to cisgender women who are looking to file lawsuits. The Fund’s website makes no mention of gender as a concept, but it explicitly points to the For Women Scotland case as the kind of “victory” that it wants to see more of in the world.

Rowling has been rich enough to pour cash into organizations like this for some time now because she continues to hold primary intellectual property rights to the entire Harry Potter property. Every Harry Potter book, movie, video game, stage show ticket, theme park pass, and piece of merchandise that’s sold puts money into Rowling’s pocket, which she can use to keep her crusade against trans people going. Given the property’s lasting popularity, Rowling, who is currently worth about $1.2 billion, could probably do all of this even if HBO wasn’t producing a new Harry Potter series. But because the network is and it wants to keep the show going for at least a decade, Rowling will have even more capital at her disposal to impose her retrograde views onto others.

Clearly, this doesn’t concern HBO’s executive leadership whose primary goals are to boost the company’s stock value while taking home outsized paychecks and hefty exit packages of their own. But it is absolutely something that HBO’s subscribers should be thinking about as Warner Bros. cranks the Harry Potter hype machine up ahead of the show’s premiere later this year. HBO does not want you to think about how it is platforming a known bigot and making it easier for her to spread patently hateful, harmful messaging that can endanger people. And Rowling would probably rather people not consider the fact that there are plenty of other magical academia series to become obsessed with.