J. K. Rowling & The Endless Audiobook Scandals

I saw your voice in Professor Umbridge in the new Harry Potter audiobook. I was wondering, are you aware that some fans are calling for a boycott given you speaking on the campaign against trans people? I was not aware of that, no. I'm very sorry. You know, I think we're all living in a period of time right now. We're all going to have to figure out how to live together, aren't we? One percent of women are trans and the hideousness of what's happening at the moment. You know, J.K. Rowling is a very good writer, but that shot of her on her super-yacht with her cigar really kind of upset me. She's been through it, I suppose. No, she hasn't been through anything, actually. She's very powerful. And now for something completely different. This video is sponsored by Valessa. If, like me, you spend way too much time each day alternating between reading about politics and doomscrolling, you probably need an excuse to take a break and touch grass or, alternatively, something else. 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The Air Max is a suction device designed to cover more surface area than other models, making it suitable for a wider range of bodies, and it's comfortable to hold. The Thump is versatile. It thumps, as you might expect, but it suctions and it vibrates too. And it fits and charges in a discreet carrying case so you can be all sneaky with it. The Ultra Blow is something I didn't know existed, and I could have done with having when I had the right anatomy for it, if you know what I mean. Its wide range of movements will take you by surprise. It's absolutely wild. So if any of that makes you want to stop touching grass and go back inside, but for good reasons, check out Valessa and my giveaway using the link below to get free toys or gift cards for toys today. Everybody, everybody transgender. Good evening, ladies, gentlemen, and all non-binarians of high regard. This is a very special seminar on how to sell books to the fabled transsexual. Over the centuries, many have sought to sell both paperbacks and hardbacks to this most elusive flavor of human being. But whether you find a wild transsexual playing a particularly intense game of Dungeons and Dragons or up in the club, we at Audible.com have developed a foolproof way of getting your products from your ununionized warehouses full of hyper-exploited workers and into their backpacks. You see, many people think that you should sell to the elusive transsexual menace by enticing them with things they actually want, like high fantasy novels or ominous literature. But we at Audible have been working on a reverse psychology initiative. We say screw giving them what they think they want and start with selling them the books that fund their oppression. What's more appealing to the dark and mysterious transsexual than products that, with every purchase, makes inevitable the rollback of their rights and their eventual casting out into the green woods of outlawry? Now, I know what you're all thinking. Does this marketing method really work? And the answer is no. But we're bloody well doing it anyway, lads. Send them emails every day. Hear ye, hear ye. All those who J.K. Rowling would throw in prison if she had the means. A fully cast Harry Potter audiobook collection is here. Tired of being happy? Tired of being alive? Forget that there was already a perfectly good set of Harry Potter audiobooks and that we specifically threw millions of pounds at this project right at the point where it was undeniable what J.K. Rowling intends to do to your community. Forget about everything and buy, buy, buy. Embrace the death cult of capitalism in ways previously only thought possible by buying shares in Halliburton. The Harry Potter full cast editions. Why not take a chance on your inevitable downfall? Close your eyes and be whisked away. Harry Potter fans, and I can say this as one, are going to love this. Expecto Patronum! That's quite enough of that, thank you very much. Good evening, muggles. That sounded weirdly like a slur. How appropriate, then, that it's a word made by famous billionaire bigot and walking mould infestation J.K. Rowling. The answer to the question, what if Asmongold was a 60-year-old British woman? I know that the way that I look at things is insane to most other people. My name is Bridget Empire, and I am here today to talk about how I, and presumably you, the girl reading this, have been bombarded with ads for wizard books by said Last of Us zombie. And I'm doing it all for my heart, my soul, the love of my life, the British newspaper that refuses to do advertising for Harry Potter, the Daily Telegraph. Here at the Daily Telegraph, the only newspaper in Britain that matters, we only advertise our very own luxury care package. For just £10.99, you too can take a guided tour around our offices before being lowered in, I mean treated to, a large vat of blood and sacrificed to the great Lord Baphomet. But before you accept the deal of a lifetime and have a hot, steamy date in the blood cauldron with Dan here, let's talk about something somehow even more disturbing. It should go without saying that Harry Potter has lost a lot of its fans between the 90s and today. Unfortunately, as a millennial and as someone who grew up with the series, queuing all night for the last book, owning a bunch of now-thrown-away merchandise, and writing to Rowling multiple times for my sins, I have to put up with everyone in my generation growing up absolutely obsessed with what is, in reality, having read a thousand fantasy books since, a mid-at-best story about a weirdly cruel child who wins everything by default, thinks slavery is good actually, and whose only ambition is to become a magical cop, despite his godfather being tortured in Wizard Abu Ghraib. Harry Potter adults are extremely common, and while most people these days claim, rightly, to hate J.K. Rowling and everything she stands for, it's still hard to walk around anywhere in the UK without seeing Harry Potter merch. Everyone has the books on their shelves, and a lot of these same people are still throwing their money at the franchise, whether through merchandise, playing the antisemitic video game Hogwarts Legacy, a game I like to think of as Skyrim for groipers, or by purchasing one of the most aggressively marketed audiobooks I have ever seen in my entire life. And I do think this is pretty much targeted at millennials in general, because Gen Z and Gen Alpha are not anywhere near as ride-or-die for Harry Potter as people my age, for some obvious reasons, such as, you know, the series finishing before most of them were born, therefore making Harry Potter a book for old people. People wondering why Gen Z aren't all goo-goo for Harry Potter don't seem to realise they're asking the equivalent to, why don't millennials love the Hardy Boys and the Famous Five? Why don't they love the Chronicles of Narnia as much as me? Don't they love obvious biblical allegories? Well, no, millennials apparently love a book series that is basically what if Tony Blair wrote an urban fantasy series? And what if its author wanted your friends and family dead? And what if it was in audio format and featured all of your favourite actors? So, Audible keeps trying to sell me Harry Potter. I'm pretty sure I'm not the only person this has happened to, but if you're a trans person like me, a company repeatedly trying to sell you a series for which every penny goes into the pocket of someone funding frivolous lawsuits and hate groups disguised as charities, designed to destroy the trans community and force us into going back in the closet, detransitioning, or unaliving ourselves, well, it's certainly not going to sell us an Audible subscription. In fact, for me at least, it's done the opposite. Every time I think about maybe signing back up to Audible and handing several of the very few dollars I earned to Jeff Bezos for the convenience of having thousands of audiobooks to hand with just the click of a button, I get another one of these emails. Star powers, a storytelling magic. Harry Potter, the full cast edition. Dark secrets, darker forces. Book three of Harry Potter the full cast edition is here. The Prisoner of Azkaban soars to life led by a spectacular A-list cast and hundreds of voices in an immersive production presented in Dolby Atmos and featuring an electrifying new score. Transport yourself to the world of Harry Potter in a spellbinding listening experience for newcomers and superfans alike. Starring a bunch of beloved actors who you will instantly lose all respect for knowing they sold out the trans community for a quick buck despite them having more money than God and therefore every reason to say no. Say goodbye to any good feelings you have for Hugh Laurie as Dumbledore, Sophie Desiru as Sirius, Matthew McFerrin as Voldemort, Michelle Gomez as McGonagall, Riz Ahmed as Snape, Bill Nighy as Slughorn, Mackenzie Crook as Creature, Stephen Mangan as Nearly Headless Nick, Keira Knightley as Umbridge, Kit Harrington, James McAvoy, Simon Pegg, Matt Berry and maintain your distaste for arch-transphobe and Zionist Tracy Ann Oberman as Hooch. To me, this reads as we threw millions of dollars at someone who wants you dead, indirectly funding efforts to eliminate you from society as we know it. Care to reward us for that? And I vow to use the audiobook library of a public library instead. This episode of Bridget Empire is brought to you by public libraries! All of the world's knowledge and all of the entertainment you could ever need for free! It's basically communism! But why is this audiobook a thing? The last Harry Potter book came out decades ago and there was already a perfectly good series of audiobooks narrated by Stephen Fry that came out with them. How suspicious that the product associated with a long-time friend of Rowling is being redone now that Fry is no longer her friend. Why release new versions of a popular fiction series at a time when its author is the most unpopular she has ever been and when her name is associated with rampant bigotry now more than this once iconic story? Could it be the same reason they're making a Harry Potter show with new actors? You know, because Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint are all nice decent people who don't hate trans people and Rowling openly hates them for it and can't stop ranting about them whenever they deign to show their faces in public? Well, there is that. And there's also the absolute dump truck of money franchises make media companies compare to arts that might be more worth reading. Clearly Audible thinks Harry Potter is a draw, despite there already being audiobooks for that and despite Rowling making the brand pretty toxic these days. Jeff Bezos doesn't care about that though and neither do his underlings at Audible who don't care about trans people at all. They, like all companies, only care about money and you can see that they care about money over empathy for their fellow human beings and about the art they're supposedly passionate about because there was a whole ass scandal this year about Audible royally screwing authors more than they already were, I mean. Like when you have a headline like Audible is stealing from your favourite authors well, that's the kind of dedication to profit over people that ends with you aligning with people whose entire goal in life is to make a tiny minority suffer a life of misery and torment. According to Reuters, Amazon.com must face a lawsuit by independent authors accusing the e-commerce giant of monopolising the retail market for audiobooks and causing them to overpay for the distribution of their works. A federal judge ruled on Wednesday. Rice sued last year alleging Amazon's audiobooks unit Audible violated antitrust law by charging higher distribution fees for independent and self-published writers who declined to participate in a programme that makes Amazon the exclusive distributor for books on Audible for 90 days. The programme offers self-published authors 40% royalties for book distribution compared with 25% for authors who chose non-exclusive competitive distribution. Amazon and Audible did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Amazon has denied any wrongdoing saying the audiobook market is healthy and competitive. Speaking of healthy and competitive Audible having an effective monopoly on the audiobook market and immediately using that power to **** over the very people making them that money isn't, is it? It is, however, the exact kind of thing you would expect a subsidiary of Amazon the monopoly to end all monopolies would do. Amazon is, after all, famous for its plethora of scandals abusing its employees, for example. And so, like father, like son Audible is experimenting in pushing the boundaries of how exploitative they can be. Audible has grown to a place where it's very bad for authors. It's a good company doing bad things. Again, this is dangerous to say. I don't want to make anyone feel guilty. I have an Audible account and subscription. It's how my dyslexic son reads most of the books he reads. Audible did some great things for books. Notably, spearheading the audio revolution which brought audiobooks down to a reasonable price. I like that part a lot. However, they treat authors very poorly. Particularly indie authors. The deal Audible demands of them is unconscionable. And I am hoping that providing market forces will encourage change in a positive direction. If you want details, the current industry standard for a digital product is to pay a creator 70% on a sale. It's what Steam pays your average creator for a game sale. It's what Amazon pays on ebooks. It's what Apple pays for app downloads. And they're getting heat for taking as much as they are. Rightfully so. Audible pays 40%. Almost half. For a frame of reference, most brick and mortar stores take around 50% on a retail product. Audible pays indie authors less than a bookstore does when a bookstore has storefront, sales staff, and warehousing to deal with. I knew things were bad. Which is why I wanted to explore other options with the Kickstarter. But I didn't know how bad. Indeed, if indie authors don't agree to be exclusive to Audible, they get dropped from 40% to a measly 25%. Buying an audiobook through Audible instead of from another site literally costs the author money. It's no wonder then that they are happy to assist JK Rowling in remaking a series of audiobooks without her former friend to try and get people talking about Harry Potter again as if it's an actual piece of literature that matters instead of everyone associating JK Rowling with throwing millions of pounds at the British legal system in hopes that with enough frivolous lawsuits that eventually trans people would be thrown into a wood chipper to save everyone the trouble of litigating a hundred trans who doesn't like looking at trans women legal cases every year. So far, these tactics have had mixed results despite her money. Sandy Peggy case Big L for the trans popes that the British press instead presented as a win for them for some reason. Their judgement, I believe, falls short in many respects and that is why I certainly won't be giving up this legal fight. The Cass Review gave them everything they wanted which included a ban on puberty blockers until a medical trial waiting in the favour was to be conducted and now they're crying about how cruel getting what they wanted was and how this trial they all cheered on should be cancelled. It has since been postponed. A puberty blockers trial was going to be planned to go ahead but at the weekend we learned that it was going to be put on pause so what is going on? Darlington Nurses case kinda fucked us there but a lot of these cases are similar arguments and if they result in contradictory opinions it means that their legal basis the absolute hogwash that was the For Women Scotland decision that kicked off an unenforceable trans bathroom ban that the government championed and then panicked about and subsequently decided to pretend it didn't exist. The return of the people who have kind of taken it upon themselves to be the gender police gender police Everyone on TV at the time from reporters to transphobes to Sir Queer Harmer himself expressed the belief that that court decision offered clarity. I welcome the courts decision and ruling I think it's very important that we've now got real clarity which is going to be really helpful I think for everybody going forward particularly those that have to deal with putting in place guidance so I think that it's a good thing the Supreme Court have come to their decision that does provide that clarity that I think will now enable us to ensure that all the guidance is in the right place and to reaffirm something that I've long argued which is about safe spaces for women that's always been really important and so that's contained within the ruling as well so I welcome the ruling. Well it ******* didn't did it? Because every time someone tries to cite it they reach wildly different conclusions. As for Audible itself for all this squeezing money from authors from its workers and from any customer that will click on one of the thousand Harry Potter promotional emails I got it can't be saving much money at all. In fact given the star power of the cast of this audiobook series it looks suspiciously like they've fucked over the authors that make up 99.999% of their catalogue to instead spend hundreds of thousands if not millions of pounds getting a bunch of A-list actors to speak 3-5 lines of dialogue into an audiobook that no one asked for. And if this article I'm about to read from is to be believed as well as contributing to the JK Rowling fund for unlimited bigotry well ---- because yeah getting back to the audiobooks I have a couple of questions. One Why do they exist? Two Are they even good? Let's ask Sarah Carson at the iPaper in the article The New All-Star Harry Potter Audiobook is an unimaginative mess. We're not off to a great start there are we? Unfortunately despite their pedigree immaculate detail and what I assume must have been a hefty budget they sound like a bad historical reenactment lose the thrill of the story and confirm the uptinct time that Harry Potter is the world's most milked cash cow. Why shouldn't Audible embrace the opportunity 26 years since Fry's recordings to enchant new generations with another take? This new version stars Cush Jumbo Hugh Laurie Riz Ahmed and Michelle Gomez in its first book. The next six released over the coming months will feature Matthew McFadden Keira Knightley Ruth Wilson Kit Harrington Daniel Mays Simon Pegg and James McAvoy I could go on the cast is more than 200 strong how could it fail? Well because while a resplendent cast and beautiful sound effects might be required for say a radio play it turns a novel into a bit of a mess. Jumbo the narrator doesn't have much artistic license and even where she might be able to inject a bit of knowing or dread it's all rather straight because she's there to orchestrate everyone else. And why was the text not a bridge to remove the he said and she said she must ludicrously say all the time ruining the dialogue conversations become staccato the scripture and cursory and the drama well it's all just a bit inconsistent some characters are underwhelming some hammy and over the top there is so much going on that it is impossible to be mesmerised and rather than lose yourself in the action you instead feel more outside of it than ever you don't picture the action you picture the narrator talking on a stage and the actors demonstrating in the shadows behind her it is not helped by those unnecessary sound effects a howl of wind will inform us it is windy and then Jumbo will Aunt Petunia will whimper into a corner before we are told exactly that the Hogwarts Express will screech under platform nine and three quarters which of course we know because we have just been told when you show and tell all at once nothing is left to the imagination I am going to hazard a guess that the author of this piece is no fan of the trans community or at least she is not enough of an ally of ours to not admit having taken part in every theme park video game book movie and all the other bits and pieces of Harry Potter you must consume as someone who grew up in the late 90s in fact in this article she doesn't mention trans people at all so it is reassuring that this audiobook just sucks on its own merits as well as funding the ongoing attacks on people like me and throwing ungodly amounts of money stolen from hardworking authors at actors that already have more money than most medium sized countries make in a year so this series is ---- expensive and funds attacks on minorities so why the hell is it being pushed so hard is it truly worth pushing a frankly almost dead franchise whose author is constantly poisoning any conversation anyone might want to have about it all because you can't be bothered to promote books by less successful authors who have written better books and hate trans people less for publishers who are letting audible distribute well over a majority of their books digital and audio just not checking anything how is this the state of the industry well despite however much their franchise might be in decline when you sell that much to start with you have a long way to fall and why let a series die when there's still milk you can suck out of that dead horse I lost that metaphor somewhere I think but the point is made in say March 2023 in the independent where it was reported that JK Rowling's production company responsible for the strike series which famously discriminated against a pregnant lead actor and the Harry Potter stage play which has reportedly been hit more than most probably because walking into a production of a buy all accounts dog ship play where everyone can see off financially supporting a bigoted monster isn't exactly desirable well that production company suffered a 74% drop in profit that kind of drop off is genuinely huge and shows that Rowling's reputation is having an impact on her sales but 26% of a million dollar franchise is still more money than most of us will ever see in our lives even then with a production company tanking it was about time to start up some new productions eh a new star so the cast on TV and in audio two productions that'll get those profits back up Rowling shouldn't care she's a billionaire she makes billions every year even if sales decline there's a long long way to fall but those companies still need to make those ridiculous piles of money **** trans people they say in their boardrooms we'd screw over everyone on earth for a single bloody dollar hello I like money but then there's the elephants in the room JK Rowling's relationship with the narrator of the original Harry Potter audiobooks about oh long time ago now in the 90s um my agent called me up and said there's a children's story uh would you do an audiobook it was called Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone unless you're American um so I went along and I met the the author who introduced me to Joan Rowley and met her and she was really nice I said to her do you know what I think I think this is pretty good I think it's going to do well she said well actually um I've already finished a second one and I said good for you um the way she tells it I'm a lot more patronizing than I like to remember but but by the third one this had become something of a phenomenon it's been long discussed that one of the reasons Rowling is so intent on remaking Harry Potter for TV is that she would really really like her brand to not be associated with three lead actors who don't actively hate trans people she is apparently delusional enough to think that those three actors specifically have been hypnotized have caught the woke mind virus if you will and that a new generation of actors will definitely agree with her completely on everything Rowling's relationship with Stephen Fry however the original narrator for her audio series is a little more complicated Stephen Fry is an interesting case he's an openly gay liberal celebrity and while Rowling Zilk might like to think they appeal to gay people because they think trans people existing is inherently homophobic it's not usually the case 74% who said they did not support trans people admitted they did not know a trans person the study revealed that nearly 70% of non-LGBTQ plus young adults supported trans people of the age 89% of LGBTQ plus young adults who said they supported trans people lesbians were most likely to say they both know a trans person that's at 92% and express support for trans people that's at 96% detailing key insights about trans allyship the research found that personally knowing a trans person doubles the likelihood of trans allyship the people more likely to be on their side and agree that trans people suck and should all bugger off are straight men according to the data lesbians are in fact the most trans supportive group of all people even more supportive of trans people than trans people are and even in the disgustingly transphobic bog that hangs over the UK the most prominent gay male celebrities Ian McKellen and Graham Norton for example are openly trans allies to the point where Graham Norton became a target for rallying under hateful little cult a while ago British playing a crumb of empathy towards trans people for example J.K. Rowling then deluged with the kind of anger rage and attempts at censorship seems to me something more than just a middle aged man kind of not being able to say something he used to say in the days of empire all I'm painfully aware of is that my voice adds nothing to that discussion and I'm sort of embarrassed that I'm somehow drawn into it you know and if people want to shine a light on those issues then and I hope people do then talk to trans people talk to the parents of trans kids talk to doctors talk to psychiatrists talk to someone who can illuminate this in some way you know I am very aware that as bloke off the telly you know your voice can be artificially amplified Stephen Fry is in a similar boat he and Rowling were friends and friends for a long time according to Stephen Fry at least Stephen Fry claimed to be pro trans and was always troubled by Rowling's views but he thought he could still make the friendship work I and many other trans people were pretty put off by this after all how can you call yourself an ally if you remain friends with the very person who's putting the most money and weight behind the hate movement you supposedly allied against in fact despite claiming he stood firmly with the trans community following these comments he would interview Rowling and promote her work the footage of which is probably on the screen for you right now this doesn't look like the actions of an ally does it but as Stephen Fry said at the time appearing on Roger Bolton's Beewatch podcast three years ago he said the fight for trans rights was an issue where two sides are very sore and anxious about their enemies he went on to say Rowling's a friend of mine and I have trans friends and intersex friends who are deeply upset by her that's a circle I have to square personally I'm not going to abandon my friends it was an argument he did not want to get involved in because it was upsetting for both sides I would wish them both to retreat and to consider that it is possible for trans people to live full and accepted lives according to their terms in society and for women to have all the rights and dignities that they demand he said but it isn't possible if each side looks on the other as an enemy again this false equivalence between transphobes and trans people and this false conception that for trans people to have rights cis women must lose some is absolute nonsense and something he seems to have arrived at to try and please both sides and to keep both sets of his friends this is not a sustainable position in fact it is one more likely to piss off both sides than anything else and so we have Fry in 2022 proudly declaring he will remain friends with Rowling despite her views and in December of 2024 Fry looked even more like he was going to side with the transphobes and his friendship with Rowling appearing on the far right slot podcast Trigonometry ooh what an edgy name and bad mouth in the charity Stonewall claiming I'm not sure I do support them I have no interest or support in this current wave of nonsensical it's shameful and sad it's got stuck in a terrible quagmire now most of us assumed this was about Stonewall's support of trans people although I guess you never know Stonewall have tried to toe the line a bit in recent years and especially recently have been very disappointing but that would be the most likely explanation you would think so he's falling down the Rowling hole then well hold on because in June 2025 Stephen Fry recorded an episode of the Show People podcast in which he said she has been radicalised I fear and it she has been radicalised I fear and it maybe she has been radicalised by TERFs but also by the vitriol that has been thrown at her Fry told the Show People podcast it is unhelpful and only hardens her and will only continue to harden her I'm afraid she seems to be a lost cause for us she started to make these peculiar statements and had very strong difficult views she seemed to wake up or kick a hornet's nest of transphobia which has been entirely destructive I disagree profoundly with her on this subject I am angry she does not disavow some of the more revolting truly horrible violently destructive things people say she does not attack those at all she says things that are inflammatory and contemptuous mocking and add to a terribly distressing time for trans people she has crowed at the success of legislation in Scotland and elsewhere declaring things about gender so I am very happy to go on the record to say that I am really angry my view about all things of a sharp and difficult nature is that it is much more important to be effective than to be right this was quite the change of tone from someone who was insistent on trying to please both sides and even thinking trans people might be a little worried over nothing and from what he said I personally suspect the for women Scotland decision and the subsequent attempts at a bathroom ban woke him up to how bad things had really got him and when you are shocked out of your liberal bubble and you are scared for your trans friends it has got to be hard to see your friend on the other side celebrating on a super yacht with a whisky and a cigar it is very hard to maintain this illusion that both sides have a point when one side is clearly being attacked and the other side is acting like a Saturday morning cartoon villain JK Rowling did not take this well in fact she claimed that she had never been friends with Stephen Fry despite all evidence and testimony to the contrary and in a very high school manner which did not help with the accusations that she is neck deep in a cult responding to the only base liberal Julia Morn of the Good Law Project saying in response to Fry's comments Really creditable this from Stephen Fry I have spoken to so many of JKR's once friends who now despair at her privately but won't do so publicly which is very much the British way and why nothing ever changes for the better Rowling said It is a great mistake to assume that anyone who claims to have been a friend of mine was ever considered a friend by me From that point on not only did Rowling have a burning hatred for the cast of her movies but also for her audio books So what better time with her bridges burned and her production company failing to recreate what worked before decades after anyone cared at the height of her unpopularity Well both Audible and Warner Brothers don't seem to have read the room on that front I can't wait to be bombarded with ads for a Harry Potter show absolutely nobody asked for all the time as well as these audio books One thank you Unlike Stephen Fry though who recorded the Harry Potter audio books decades ago the actors for this new series have slowly started to find out that their appearances in this series are not uncontroversial and the different actors have reacted to this realisation in different ways Really they should have expected this frankly they should have turned down the roles on principle and spoken out on behalf of the transgender community but they didn't and so they end up in situations where they are asked about how they feel being associated with the 21st century Anita Bryant and they can choose to ignore it apologise or double down All of these paths have been chosen by certain actors but still I'm in two minds about how much these actors knew how much appearing in this series would tarnish their reputations given how some of them reacted Having been to some more rural areas recently I've noticed that so many people just don't know how bad things have gotten It's hard for me to believe but I've seen this from even queer people It feels weird for me to hear that some really thought that they wouldn't be seen as endorsing Rowling by appearing in this but apparently that's how it went for To my LGBTQ plus fans and especially the trans community I want to speak directly to the concerns that have been raised about my involvement in this project I hear you and I understand why this is painful for many I want to be clear that I stand with trans people and support trans rights fully and without hesitation When I accepted this role I did so as someone who has always loved the stories and what they meant to so many especially those who found comfort and identity in that world I now understand more clearly how deeply complicated and hurtful this association can feel and I take that seriously Being an ally means listening even when it's uncomfortable and taking accountability where it's needed I'm committed to doing both Following this she made a donation to the Callen Lorde Queer Health Organisation Now this is something but it isn't actually much of an apology and I'm just going to be blunt here You cannot call yourself an ally if you're actively working on making a fortune That will go directly to efforts to end trans existence in the UK Just straight up you're not an ally On the other end of the spectrum Keira Knightley just laughed in our faces and said Sorry we all have to learn to live together And to that I can only say Uh **** Keira Knightley I was not aware of that no I'm very sorry Um you know I think we're all living in a period of time right now We're all going to have to figure out how to live together aren't we There's been trouble brewing for Rowling on the TV show N2 with Papua New Guinea who's set to play Snape in this series sang an open letter in support of trans rights to which Rowling said sadly in response I don't have the power to sack an actor from the series before trying to say that she would never do that which based on her previous behaviour with Strike and other things I simply do not believe And the fact that she claimed the people who signed this petition were motivated by fear shows she simply does not believe anyone would willingly support trans people They would have to in her view be evil or be being coerced by evil This is the kind of stuff that makes the decade old series being constantly advertised and pushed at me in the year of Our Lord 2026 so bizarre It's not going to hit the same J.K. Rowling does not have the good will she had in the 1990s We know her now unfortunately and she's not someone many of us want to support The only people who will buy all this ---- again are people who would have bought anything Harry Potter because they're super fans This massive advertising push this splashing of cash on new and big name actors it might as well be flushed down the toilet or at least shat on the floor and magicked away but it should have been spent on those authors that Audible fucked over to get money to do this endeavour in the first place And the fact that with every passing day Rowling becomes more off-putting and poisons the very perception of this franchise is probably not helped that Rowling hasn't paused their hateful tirades for even a second In fact quite the opposite every day Rowling is tweeting up a storm saying things like this I've been trying to get arrested for knowing what a woman is for a couple of years now and no luck at all Yet they persecute and harass working class women who need to crowdfund their defence I've been discriminated against for far too long Now that the trans activists aren't only stalking harassing doxing threatening and physically assaulting women our politicians might finally take the violence as such a key feature in this totalitarian movement seriously Every trans activist determined to push their unfalsifiable ideas of gender onto the whole of society will rightly be judged by history as having enabled harm to women and girls in service of a dangerous quasi-religious ideology That last tweet by the way uses right wing slot papers misrepresenting data to conclude that all trans women are inherently evil SA and R crazed monsters that live to be violent towards cis women The Telegraph article for instance is titled Almost two thirds of trans women prisoners are S offenders And as you might imagine the article makes it extremely hard to fact check its claims It attributes this outrageous claim to official figures and instead of pointing towards where those figures can be checked simply states it has been revealed Ok, where? Not only that but the article focuses on the case of a prisoner who depending on which source you go with might not even be transgender But even if this person was one person doing something awful does not mean the entire community is like that Most people can recognise that collective responsibility is blatantly discriminatory Adolf Hitler was white So is JK Rowling But as awful as she is I think it would be pretty silly to claim that she was responsible for the crimes of the Third Reich It seems like this Telegraph article might be referring to data from the official UK Prison Service statistics for England and Wales released in late 2024 Which are pretty hard to find any data like this in Even on a cursory glance you can see that 83% of trans prisoners are in male prisons Part of the situation Rowling paints and in fact something that is actively dangerous for these prisoners for reasons I've explained in prior videos On the 23rd of December 2024 in the source that must have been where the goddamn Telegraph took this figure from not the report itself but a question from one MP to another we get this information Of the 245 transgender prisoners who reported their legal gender as male i.e. those who now identify as women, non-binary or gender fluid on 31st March 2024 151 were convicted of an S offence This includes both contact and non- contact offences This is very different to two thirds of trans women being predators Two thirds of trans women in prison so not representative of trans people as a whole were convicted of an S offence An S offence does not equal what Rowling is implying it is and in fact you might have immediately clocked that there is a common offence of this category that many trans women are forced in to survive that we are driven to because it is extremely hard to get a job as a trans woman and I think conflating with what Rowling is implying is genuinely sickening But even if every case were what she implied it was that would not mean that all trans people do this Most trans people are not in prison Lots of men commit the sorts of crimes that Rowling is attributing to trans people here We don't claim that every man is guilty of that crime because that would be ridiculous And the other argument she brings up in that rant has nothing to do with trans people at all She brings up an article from LBC talking about the kind of stories she pushes about trans women with the vast majority committed by cis men And the article spends a bunch of its word count writing about how awful trans women are and how unisex spaces are evil Meanwhile none of its data backs up any of this And this data is purely about crimes committed by cis men against cis women Leave us out of this Do you know who's been long overdue a challenge? The trans community Oh they've had their guard down for too long if you ask me The fact that anyone is still comfortable giving this woman money frankly makes me sick And the fact that Audible felt like it was a good idea to blast people over and over again with this woman's work Begging people to throw money at someone who talks like this about a minority group currently fighting for its ******* life because of the money earned through Harry Potter going towards erasing us from existence makes me wonder what the people who work there have been smoking You're going to piss off a lot of people for every person who's going to spend their hard earned cash on a story that already exists in audiobook form And the purchase of which is actively going to fund the fight to strip trans people of any rights and protections A fight that has seen the UK go from one of the most LGBT friendly places in the world to on par with Russia, labelled as a state that is actively hostile to queer people Is this really what you want to make your flagship product? The thing that you want to lead with in all of your advertising? You know trans people read too right? This is the person Audible, Warner Brothers and so many people are hitching their wagon to Someone so outrageously bigoted that she can't even go on press tours for her own works anymore because she can't go one minute without frothing at the mouth about how all trans people are inherently demon worshipping rat people who should be banished into the sewer like the morlocks And you can't separate this woman from the brand She has won the sweetest contracts in publishing She has say over every project with her IP She gets tons of money from all of it And new material from the franchise is always going to involve her directly Send money directly to her And involve input from her that immediately makes it toxic to a huge segment of the population And young people just aren't taking up Harry Potter like they used to No wonder they didn't grow up with the series coming out like we did With the characters growing with us The genre transition from children to young adults happening as we made that transition in real life Harry Potter is the story of a previous generation I never gave a ---- about the famous five or whatever older generations were reading I wanted something that spoke to me Not children that grew up 30 years before I was even born And this goes further than just age Although I think it might be way more significant than many people would like to think But the political climate is just completely different to how it was when Harry Potter was written These days it reads at best as something written by someone impossibly ignorant of the state of the world As the New York Times put it in a recent article The same is with Forge in a different world Theirs is a generation that came of age after the global financial crisis of 2008 and has since witnessed long periods of stagnant wages and declining state stability Not only in America but also across much of the western world They are a generation that is barely known an optimistic period of politics A generation more likely than their predecessors to view their lives as controlled by external forces rather than by their own choices and will Rowling foregrounds ideology in her books and that means that her novels feel dated in a way that others do not First conceived of over 30 years ago the Harry Potter books are very much a product of 1990s liberalism A moment when World War II still occupied a central space in the cultural imagination and when it was still possible to believe that the best bits of the old political order could be retained alongside the gentle incorporation of the new That's why millennials like Harry Potter are a whole lot more than younger generations do The story captures a worldview that is no longer attractive to young people shaded by the experiences of economic decline political polarisation and spiralling identity politics They have fallen out of love with Harry Potter because they have fallen out of love with the worldview the series represents Which is to say that young people have fallen out of love with liberalism And it's not like anything new Rowling writes is doing numbers either The only things she's made that are profitable are from literal decades ago People do not like the Corman Strike novels and not just because she keeps trying to shoehorn her weird and predatory views of trans people in there at every second In fact, J.K. Rowling's latest book didn't even make it into any of the major top 10 bestseller lists of 2025 despite her being arguably the most famous author on the planet What's more, this year she was replaced as the UK's top all-time bestselling author not by some dastardly transgender villain but by Julia Donaldson the author of The Gruffalo a delightful children's book written by someone who hasn't made it This whole situation this constant bombardment of Harry Potter as the franchise that we must buy and buy and buy just isn't going to work anymore Why would I throw money at an audiobook of a series of books that already had audiobooks that everyone has already read a thousand times that support someone who wants me if not dead then forced to live a life of horror and misery I don't want to read The Wizarding Archive featuring 80 articles and anecdotes from JK Rowling I would rather gouge my own eyes out Have none of you heard the good news? Woke is back! The backlash to Trump is here The UK has spent so long stamping on the faces of trans people that there are a lot of people realising that constantly bashing on us hasn't solved anything and that maybe we're just people Rowling has been at this for so long and so loudly that there is basically no one left in the country who doesn't know that she's a transphobic colossal piece of ---- although a lot of them don't know the extent of it The conversation is no longer about whether she's transphobic or not it's about whether there is an ethical way to interact with her fandom That's not a healthy place for your flagship franchise to be in So dump it WB says ******* Batman why are they even bothering with a washed up twee piece of extremely 90s tiaboo slop like Harry Potter The time for the wizard book is over We don't have to put up with this ---- anymore and if you're trying to reach new audiences you're going to have to do better than Harry Potter In a post 2008 world never mind a post 2020 world the story of Harry Potter reads as alarmingly naive cruel and bigoted With the eyes we have now we can see the antisemitic goblins the pro-slavery elf story the copaganda the promise to never dare reform a system that is textually built on human supremacy and we can choose to reject it Thank you Audible for always when I'm at my weakest and considering resubscribing reminding me that you don't believe people like me deserve to exist Maybe one day you will change Maybe one day Jeff Bezos won't own everything on earth Maybe one day people will finally shut the **** up about goddamn Harry Potter Read a new book and that goes for you too the girl watching this Read a new book too Books are good Come back next week and tell me what you read Put what you read in the comments below We'll do a book club in the comments section or something I guess Until then Thanks for watching and thanks for reading Read a new book and that goes for you too the girl watching this Read a new book Come back next week and tell me Put what you read Thanks for watching and thanks for reading the book club in the comments section or something I guess Until then Thanks for watching and until then bye the book or something Until then thanks for reading the book club in the comments section I guess Until then bye the book club in the comments until then thanks for reading the book club in the comments section until then bye Teller, Bartry, Coy, Ariella, Procua, Robin, Thomas, Emily, Eisenberg, Garlick, Scape, Kira B, No Sparkling Heart, Kujan, Jay, Corey, Mighty and the Sword, Carolyn, Imogen Q, Luciana, Fritz, Andrade, Adam, Harry, Endof101, Cav, Keiser, Deirdre, Tortilla Azul, Liron, Adam Lees, Dinah Neville, NoDotThatPaul, MB, Wandering Wonder, Lex, Phoenix, EndofCredits, Mirady, JTinger, Boney Ear, James W, Thorngill, Debra Laboon, Zelos, Atheneum, Vince, Whittaker, Millie Lissette, Jay, Franklin McManus, Susan Foster, Helen Reale, Ciaro Whiskey, Alcatel, John N, Lloyd, Luciente, Jason, Kribitz, Shield, Dayden, Robin Podolsky, Nana, Posh, Jesus, Casual Observer, Manta Ray, Courtney, Bermack, Sleepy Slug, Soma Piglet, Braindouche, Aunty Wolf, Diana McMillan, Callie Margolino, Alejandro Lillie, Howard, Lott, Marky, Love, Zach Beaver, Miami Afki, Kamui, Eva Kabab, Marty Hunter, Rob McCallum, Jamie Savarian, Melissa Allen, and I got it right eventually. Why am I tripping now? I did so good. To Axis Buildings and Sarah Francesca Smith, thank you all for having me in your ears and in your hearts. Merry... St. George's Day? No, I don't want to celebrate that. Easter? That was a bit ago. Have a good day. If you can help, then help. If you can't, then I guess don't. Good ----, bad ----, this ----, that ----, that's probably it. That's my rap line. I should stop. I'm going to stop recording now. Thank you for watching. Remember to hype, I guess. Bye-bye.