SpIns and Intersectionality

This blog post is going to be a bit all over the place, but I have some thoughts around special interests (SpIns) and intersectionality that I wanted to share from my lived experience as an autistic member of the LGBTQIA+ community. Growing up, my main SpIns were Pokémon, Dragon Ball Z (DBZ), and Harry Potter (HP). The last of these three has since become tainted by the transphobic vitriol spewed by its author, JK Rowling, as well as by the many other issues that I have come to recognise in the original source material (e.g., fatphobia, racism, homophobia).

In online queer communities, there is a lot of discourse around HP and JKR. There is a subgroup that tries to “separate the art from the artist”, as well as a subgroup that is adamant that everyone should “just move on” and make sure to get rid of all their merchandise and any HP tattoos that they may have. These discussions can get incredibly personal and guilt those who still find some form of enjoyment in the HP world, but they get personal like this with reason: JKR actively campaigns for the removal of trans rights and has tremendous political influence in the UK, with her ‘gender-critical’ activism having contributed to misinformation and anti-trans legislation.

As an AFAB (assigned female at birth) agender person who identifies under the trans nonbinary umbrella, JKR’s views and persistent campaigning against my existence and those of my peers feels like a personal attack. I also find myself experiencing tremendous grief for the loss of a public figure I used to look up to and a previously beloved SpIn, the latter of which might be difficult to understand for the “just move on” subgroup. HP gave me a lot during my tween years, adolescence, and early to mid-twenties. I would frequent MuggleNet, theorise about what would happen in the seventh book, and travelled to the UK twice (once with others, once by myself) just to see the studios and attend a HP convention. I also met fellow ‘Potterheads’ from all over the world and once met up with a group of friends from the MuggleNet convention in Brussels.

For many of us, HP was a story of love and community, of standing up for our values and rights and ensuring that everyone could live freely in the world. Hogwarts would always be there to welcome us home, no matter our stories or our backgrounds. Many of us used fanfiction to enrich the series and identified as Slytherin, seeking justice for the house that seemingly villainised determination and ambition. The series became so much more than what JKR had written, which was similar to what happened in the DBZ fandom, where fanfiction added so much more depth and allowed us to explore parts of the series that were never considered in the source material.

Without my SpIns like HP and anime, my social interactions with the outside world would have been limited to non-existent. My ability to move past tremendous anxiety and independently travel to unfamiliar locations would have faded. My SpIns have always been what has tethered me to the outside world and have always been how I have built my identity and connected with others. Since the loss of HP to JKR’s transphobia, I have sold or given away most of my previously beloved merchandise, vouched to never purchase HP-branded items again so as not to fund JKR, and returned to the comfort of Pokémon (with much of my wardrobe now Pokémon-themed).

Yet there is sadness. I have not been able to part from my physical copies of the original seven books (some of which signed by actors who played in the movies) or from my wands. At times of overwhelm, I still take comfort in re-reading the books. I still vividly remember being 10 years old, desperate for my Hogwarts letter to arrive after I turned 11 (after already having dealt with the heart-breaking blow of not having magically become a Pokémon trainer at age 10). I miss the community that I was a part of, and feel lost and untethered when I dwell on this loss too much.

Of course I know there are other communities, and thankfully I have other SpIns. I still have Pokémon and DBZ, I occasionally still return to series like The Tribe (I miss the old The Tribe roleplaying boards), and many beloved new SpIns have crossed my path (e.g., 2005-2010 Doctor Who, Ace Attorney, Stranger Things, Good Omens). Yet for me, HP was at the very core of my being, part of my core group of SpIns that felt like they raised me into adulthood. While I don’t think art can necessarily be fully separated from the artist when said artist is alive and causing active harm to the community, I also don’t think it’s quite as simple as “just moving on”.

So where does intersectionality come into play? I guess my main point is that the intersection of being autistic and an LGBTQIA+ person can make it difficult to ‘toe the line’ on issues like the HP controversy. A neurotypical queer person might be able to ‘shut down’ a previous interest like HP, but this is much harder for autistic people, who may not be able to move on or can only do so partially. The loss of a SpIn is not mere ‘nostalgia’ for someone with an autistic neurotype.

Based on my personal experience, I also think childhood SpIns are harder to move on from than SpIns acquired later in life. Take The Owl House for example, which I was absolutely obsessed with until it became marred by an untimely cancellation (with Disney executives presumably not approving of a story with neurodivergent queer characters). I still love The Owl House, but as the three-episode special that ended the series did not allow for thorough exploration of the lore and resolution of some of the series’ main red threads, I lost my adoration for the series. I still look at fan-comics every now and again and feel fondness towards the series, but do not feel the same drive towards this SpIn as I used to. Yet where with HP there is tremendous grief and loss, I only feel a slight tinge of sadness and emptiness with The Owl House, which is easier to redirect.

In the end, art will always be influenced by artists’ explicit and implicit biases and worldviews, with SpIns becoming marred by the artists’ personal views always a possible occurrence for any autistic person whose main SpIns lie in media (movies, series, books) and fandom. Transphobic views are inherent in some of my beloved anime like Steins;Gate and some of my beloved sitcoms like Friends and The IT Crowd, and my beloved Community has also been affected by criticism around how satire is used to bring sensitive topics to the forefront. I would hope that others know that consuming a type of media does not automatically imply that a person shares the views held by artists who created said media, and that we can live and let live without passing judgement.

That of course does not mean that we should not highlight problems inherent in any media or that we should not push ourselves and others to learn more from those who are different from us and offer new perspectives. I love learning from those with different backgrounds from me, and love that more inclusive and diverse magical worlds are being brought to life through fantasy book series like Nevermoor, Legendborn, and Witchlings (all of which I would recommend as more inclusive alternatives to HP). Representation matters; we all want to be able to see ourselves in the media that is around us, and not be harmed or othered. A Kind of Spark (both a book and a TV series, created by an autistic author and portrayed by autistic actors) is a healing example of this as far as non-stereotypical autistic representation is concerned.

I hope that we get more and better representation as time goes on, without resorting to censoring material that has become outdated. Rather than censoring works like those of Roald Dahl, we are far better off analysing the problematic views inherent in any works and having honest and open discourse about these matters, without erasing the positive components of the work or passing judgement on those who resonate with the source material. Once a story is told in any form, it belongs to and is changed by those who take it in, and that is as it should be.