This is not a drill: it’s time to #cancel JK Rowling

Rori Porter
4 min readDec 19, 2019

I am not very fond of cancel culture. Typically you see cancel tactics used against people who lack power, which is my biggest problem with how you see “canceling” implemented. Cancel culture can be toxic and often seeks to destroy the lives of average people who made mistakes online. You see people doxxed and threatened, and in this way cancel culture is very dangerous. When wielded as a weapon against people who can’t hold their ground and fight back or issue an apology through a PR firm, cancel culture can be devastating. This is why there is such a movement against cancel culture — it’s not equitable.

But JK Rowling is not that person. She is a celebrity with enormous brand properties, financial resources, legal assistance, PR firms, and security, all amounting to a person who has the means to weather a social media storm.

Rowling commands an enormous audience and she has historically misused her platform in ways that can only disenfranchise minority people. Hook-nosed goblin bankers, anyone? Oh, and how about the two instances of Asian representation only serving as props for white characters? How about native cultures gleefully being appropriated to add realism to her “Fantastic Beasts” backstories?

Do I even need to mention the insult of retroactively making a character gay, rather than admitting…

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Rori Porter
Rori Porter

Written by Rori Porter

Queer Transfemme writer & designer living in Los Angeles. She. Stage name: Thirstie Alley

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