What Happened to J.K. Rowling?

When we're vicious towards our political opponents, we make them more vicious in turn.

A few days ago I saw a profoundly sad tweet from J.K. Rowling. In response to a critic who couldn't reconcile her Harry Potter series with her current political activism, she wrote:

"You appear to have skipped the bits where a narcissistic villain and his acolytes, all of whom had an innate advantage over those they were persecuting, tried to create a totalitarian state with themselves as leaders, all while claiming they were the truly oppressed ones."

I'm not a Rowling hater. I recently re-read the Harry Potter series and loved it. I'm profoundly glad that she's spoken up on trans issues, and I think it's essential that we preserve female-only spaces (especially abuse shelters and prisons). I just wrote a piece in which I'm sharply critical of the "Kelly Loving Act," a bill moving through Colorado's state legislature that would punish parents who don't affirm their child's gender transition.

And yet, for all that, I see something ghoulish in comparing trans rights activists and trans women who want to compete in women's sports to Death Eaters.

This is especially sad because Rowling didn't used to talk this way. I reread her 2020 piece explaining why she felt called to speak up on these issues, and I was struck by her empathy and care for trans rights activists and for trans people overall. She wrote that the trans rights activists who attacked her for speaking out "clearly believe themselves to be good, kind and progressive people."

Writing about the trans folks that she came to know, she said, "in addition to a few younger people, who were all adorable, I happen to know a self-described transsexual woman who’s older than I am and wonderful. Although she’s open about her past as a gay man, I’ve always found it hard to think of her as anything other than a woman, and I believe (and certainly hope) she’s completely happy to have transitioned."

I'm not sure if the substance of what Rowling's fighting for has changed. But her tone certainly has. Where once she came across as kind and empathetic, now she can come across as bitter and vituperative.

So what changed?

Since speaking up in 2020, Rowling has received an absolute flood of hate and vitriol. She's gotten death threats and bomb threats. Activists have called for her murder. She's been doxxed at least once. When she goes outside now, she describes feeling scared of people who look like LGBTQ activists; and with good reason.

I think all of that hate and vitriol has done real damage to her soul.

When I suggested this explanation on X, the answer I got back was some variation of "she's a big girl, and she can take care of her own emotional state."

That's true; and I'm certainly not absolving her of responsibility when it comes to letting herself become radicalized. We all decide what will and what won't break us down into someone we never wanted to become.

But I also think that these rejoinders miss more than half the story. When someone is radicalized, we should spend less time criticizing their decision to become radicalized; and more time asking how our own actions (or the actions of people on our team who we didn't call out) may have radicalized them.

Because the truth is that I've seen this story play out over and over. I talk to a lot of folks who hate the other side, and their story is always the same: someone (or lots of someones) from the other side hurt them very badly, and since then they've learned to guard their hearts. They've learned that offering love and open arms gets them burned. They've learned that their opponents will try to cut them; and so rather than laying down their swords to meet in peaceful conversation, they've learned to cut their opponents before their opponents can cut them. Fighting fire with fire feels a whole lot safer than trying to play nice with the arsonist.

I've seen this in my own life too. I've had progressive friends flay the skin off of me for speaking up against Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) and Critical Race Theory; and afterwards, I had a hard time wanting to be kind and loving towards folks who endorsed those ideologies. A big part of me thought that, if they were going to cut me anyway, I shouldn't bother being nice; and I should cut them first and cut them harder in order to protect myself. Luckily I've made wonderful friends in the DEI movement who have shown me that not all DEI practitioners, or strains of DEI, are bad; and so my heart has thawed. But it was a struggle. I cannot imagine how angry I would become if my family and I got death threats in the thousands the way that Rowling has. I don't think the human soul was made to bear that kind of pressure without getting at least a little bit deformed.

And if our nastiness towards our political opponents can deform their soul, if it can make them less loving and more nasty towards us in turn, then don't we have an obligation to try and stop? Not only for our sake, but for theirs. We are our sibling's keeper, after all. We should try to behave in such a way that we do not cause our cherished brother or sister to stumble.

As Michael Wear, founder of the Center for Christianity & Public Life and a former Obama advisor, writes in The Spirit of Our Politics:

"Christians take injustice more seriously because we are not mere materialists. We believe there is more to the human condition than our physical well-being. We understand that human beings have souls, and we care for the whole person. Unjust systems and conditions that tempt people to anger and despair are, for this reason, more evil, not less, than secular activists claim."

If injustice tempts our fellow human to anger and despair, then we should fight that injustice. That's true even if the injustice is coming from our own lips.

If you find yourself thinking about how you've treated people on the other side nastily, then my intent is not to shame you. Frankly, I think we've all been there (I know I have). But if you also decide that you want to stop, then I highly recommend checking out the work of the national nonprofit Braver Angels, which does incredible work to help people all over the political spectrum to let go of their fear and anger towards the other side.

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