Hobby Spaces Have a Transphobia Problem

Calling your community inclusive is incompatible with platforming transphobes, hope that helps.

Image credit: Pixabay via Pexels

This is not a video game review, or even specifically about the games industry – it’s more of a rumination on hobby spaces in general. I hope you’ll read it anyway.

Over the last year or so, I’ve been expanding the hobby content I consume and share beyond just video games to include books as well. Reading and gaming have been my ride or die hobbies basically my whole life, and while I’ve been consuming and creating video game content for years, reading has always just been reading.

However, I started to discover a few BookTubers last year, and a few expanded into several, and soon, alongside the let’s plays and analysis videos about games, I was also watching a lot of content about books. I started a reading journal, which has been delightful, as well as sharing my reads on Instagram.

Unfortunately, I did pretty quickly notice a problem that has led me to unsubscribe from quite a few BookTubers, and that is rooted in a certain degree of hypocrisy that I couldn’t look past.

BookTube is meant to be a place of shared love of reading. Some channels focus on certain genres, and some cover a broad range of books. If you asked any of these creators, they’d almost certainly say that anyone is welcome in their community, particularly those who have book clubs or Patreon community spaces like Discord servers. Reading is for everyone is a common maxim.

Image credit: cottonbro studio via Pexels

And yet, as a trans person in these spaces, it is clear to me that these creators are just paying lip service to inclusion, and I do not feel safe or welcome. That is almost entirely down to JK Rowling. Platforming a transphobe is incompatible with a safe and inclusive space.

I’m not going to be calling anyone out by name in this post, but the specific examples I mention below are from actual videos or channels I have watched.

Platforming J K Rowling actively harms trans people

I want to make it clear right here – J K Rowling has explicitly stated that people continuing to spend money on her properties emboldens her, and she believes that people are in support of her views when they do so. She has also stated that she spends her money in deliberate ways that support transphobic and harmful legislation in the UK, going so far as to launch a new organisation dedicated to removing trans people’s rights. People platforming Harry Potter and Rowling’s other works do material harm to trans people in Britain.

A lot of creators own Harry Potter books. I’m not saying that people need to throw away something that was a big part of their childhood – it took me quite a long time to get to grips with that and it’s absolutely not my business if someone wants to hold on to something that has meant a lot to them. However, if you are claiming to have a welcoming community, there are things you can do to mitigate the impact of this on your audience.

Image credit: L. Whittaker via Flickr (License: CC BY-NC 2.0)

The barest minimum thing you can do is not display the books or talk about them at all. The Harry Potter books have very distinctive spines and stand out on shelves, causing me psychic damage when I have to see them. So just put them away! Talk about other books, do not dedicate time and space and energy to this series and this author. You’re meant to be book reviewers – if you need a touchstone for that genre or that time period, read something else. And if you absolutely must refer to them, acknowledge the actual harm done by the author, make your own stance clear and stand firm against bigotry and transphobia. Do that every single time. Caveat your references in the real-world impact.

It’s nuanced, sure, but creators can and should do better

There are some Bookish creators who are doing well in this. Actively covering diverse authors of all kinds of backgrounds; specifically calling out that JKR and Harry Potter have no place on their channel because of the transphobia; explicitly stating that they do not display or recommend works by transphobic authors, no matter how good those works are or important they are to the creator; acknowledging personal and complex reasons for keeping hold of some of the books.

It must be understood that this is a nuanced issue, and even though I think there’s a correct way of doing things, it could just as easily be argued that another approach is better. I’m not really interested in litigating the details when so many people haven’t even made the most minimal of efforts. I don’t think it’s useful to immediately condemn people without trying to understand where they are coming from. Still, there are instances where a lack of caring, wilful ignorance, or even deliberate actions are evident.

As a consumer of content, I can vote with both my time and my money. I’ve unsubscribed from creators who have done things like saying they are rereading the books, or in some cases reading them for the first time (you have even less of an excuse!) or have talked about the books in a positive way without addressing the harm J K Rowling has caused. Even this year, some creators have rearranged their shelves to give more prominence to the Harry Potter book, or have said that they are reading and enjoying the books at the moment.

These things in particular feel very much like deliberate acts of planting a flag in their content. I do not understand how someone can claim to welcome all comers to their channel and then do this. It is a physical and emotional kind of shock each time it happens.

You cannot reason your way out of this

People have tried to justify or defend this behaviour. An argument I have seen is that women content creators, especially those who favour romance or romantasy genres, are denigrated as less worthy in some way than people who read classics or literary fiction. The reasons given are things like ‘reading should challenge you’ and ‘books should have a message or something to say about the world’ or equally ridiculous things. We all know that it’s because romance is a genre favoured by women, and women aren’t allowed to like things.

That is a LOT of romance novels. Image Credit Bjørn Bulthuis via Flickr (License: CC BY-SA 2.0)

This is absolutely a real thing that creators have to deal with. However, transphobes often see any increase in trans rights as a degradation of women’s rights, or even causing actual harm to women, and one thing becomes an extension of the other. My expectation that they support trans rights (or are at the minimum not actively platforming transphobia) becomes an attack on women. Having to do anything to acquiesce to anyone’s requests triggers a long-held defensiveness which is being misdirected. It is not trans people who are causing harm here, and it is bizarre and foolish to think so. The villain is the patriarchy (it’s always the patriarchy).

I’m also sure there are probably people out there who simply support JKR and her transphobia.

Video games and board games also need to contend with this topic

Gaming doesn’t get away with this either, but I’ve spoken a lot before about the issues surrounding Hogwarts Legacy so I don’t really want to dwell too much on it here other than to simply state for the record – if you platformed Hogwarts Legacy or any other Harry Potter games, you cannot claim to have a safe and inclusive community space. The video game press was massively disappointing in this regard, too, continuing to platform and review the game.

But while I have been composing and considering this post, another industry that I care a lot about has come out swinging for trans inclusivity.

As well as being a big video gamer, I am a huge fan of board games. It’s one of my favourite things to do with friends. Rarely do issues of trans rights come up in the board game industry (aside from aggressively gendered language in game rulebooks), but last month, CGE (a huge publisher) announced a new Harry Potter licensed game. Disappointing news. Frustrating, even. Harry Potter has been over for 18 years. Find something new to make games about. Not necessarily surprising, though.

What I didn’t expect, however, was the incredible response by the board game criticism community. Starting with No Pun Included, reviewer after reviewer made statements that not only were they not going to cover the new Harry Potter-themed game, but they were also no longer going to cover any games by the publisher in question.

Image credit: Wikimedia Commons CC BY-SA 4.0

I want to highlight what Efka from No Pun Included said about their decision: “Boycotting someone sounds like a big thing, but we want to make it clear, from our side it isn’t. We’re simply choosing to no longer cover an established publisher who made business decisions that are resulting in harm to a marginalized community.” His whole statement is great, as are the ones from other creators, such as Tom from Shut Up and Sit Down.

It’s that easy, folks! The ease with which the board game community rallied around this issue threw other hobby spaces’ failures into relief. I was already working on this article, but having a different community that I care about do so much better made the bookish and video game communities' lack of action feel so much worse.

Creators need to reckon with the dissonance that results from claiming to be inclusive while promoting and funding franchises that have caused huge harm to marginalised communities.

Ali’s Update Corner

Hey everyone! I had actually started a game to review (The Rise of the Golden Idol), but it is taking me way longer than 10 hours to finish! It’s just like an expanded version of the first game, The Case of the Golden Idol, though, so if you enjoyed that, you’ll enjoy Rise. I will be back with a more traditional post soon.

I hope you found this piece interesting. I know it doesn’t really fit with what I usually publish here, but I had a lot to say about the topic and it just felt like it was getting increasingly relevant. I also wasn’t sure I would be able to think about anything else if I didn’t excise this from my brain space. I’d love to hear your thoughts and experience, but more than anything, I’d love it if you could share this post. It means so much to me as an issue and I’d love to see other creators think about it and make improvements.

PS - a huge thank you to my friend Dan, who helped with making the structure of this piece come together and telling me off for having too many examples.