Irony Alert: How Writing Harry Potter Fanfiction Helped Me Figure Out My Identity as a Nonbinary Person
What could be more ironic than that?
TheAngelCookie at DeviantArt
It’s Pride month, so I reckon it’s a good time to share my own journey into self-discovery. … I was just speaking to my therapist recently about some of the things weighing on me lately. One of the things pissing me off in the last few weeks was a heated argument I had with a long time friend about a controversial celebrity defamation case and the rampant vitriolic misogyny surrounding it (which we have both settled and moved on from).
And the other thing pissing me off was JK Rowling going off in another unhinged and convoluted rant on Twitter defending the Neo-Fascist (caught on radio spreading antisemitic conspiracy theories), self-confessed NON-Feminist (it’s on video), pro-men-with-guns-in-women’s-bathrooms (that’s on video too), anti-Trans activist Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull, more widely known as Posie Parker.
Somehow JK Rowling managed to torture logic into painting Posie Parker as a Feminist, despite Posie Parker openly stating that she is not, and painting Trans advocates as the Nazis, despite the fact that the actual Neo-Nazis came out in support of Posie Parker, not in support of Trans folk.
Honestly, it’s not surprising anymore, given that all the usual Neo-Fascist Right Wing suspects like Matt Walsh, Steven Crowder, Ben Shapiro and Jordan Peterson have thrown their support behind JK Rowling herself. You would think that anti-Feminists coming out of the woodwork to support her rhetoric would give her pause to question her positions.
At one point, a few years ago, I thought that maybe JK Rowling was just an ignorant middle-aged Liberal with unconsciously outdated Reactionary traditionalist views of sex and gender. But now it is more clear than ever that she has become a disingenuous middle-aged Reactionary Bigoted Billionaire “Karen” (as the kids today call ‘em) outwardly pretending to be a Progressive or Liberal to keep up appearances, and hypocritically taking on a male pseudonym to pen her transphobic Cormoran Strike series (seriously, how the hell does she have the nerve? It’s like she’s deliberately trolling us… 😒).
In other words, she has more or less turned into Lucius Malfoy.
Somehow JK Rowling went from being a Socialist Feminist in her youth — a fan of outspoken British-American Communist Jessica Mitford — to being a Reactionary “Liberal” Capitalist (Rowling still calls herself a Leftist and a Feminist, but I don’t see her regularly and consistently sticking up for Women’s Rights to Bodily Autonomy in America, or speaking up for the working classes, or against racism, or calling for the end of fossil fuels, and taking Climate Change seriously, etc… Apparently nearly everything that Progressives and Leftists stand for isn’t as much of a concern for her as Trans people simply trying to exist is).
Becoming a Liberal Capitalist or Social Democrat Capitalist is pretty much to be expected from Left leaning folk who become Billionaires (and as a Realist Socialist, I get it, and I’m kind of okay with it), but there is no inherent reason that becoming a Liberal Capitalist would turn JK Rowling into a Social Conservative or a Social Centrist with Reactionary traditionalist and essentialist views of sex and gender. That was a choice she made based on whatever reasons that only she can know for sure.
I’m more or less the same age as Rowling, from more or less the same cultural background (British working/middle-class) but I was raised by an anti-War, anti-Nuclear activist. I was a full-blown Socialist by my mid-teens, and I was also imbued with the values of the Intersectional Feminism of the day, informed by the works of activist and academic luminaries such as Angela Davis.
Long before that, when I was about 4 or 5 years old, still growing up in the UK, I told my mother that I should have been born a girl. She bought me girl and boy toys and let me play with her make-up. But by the time I reached Middle-School age, I had already figured out that most people thought that sort of thing was weird, and that most other kids tended to harass kids who didn’t fit into gender norms. At that point in my life, we were living in America — San Jose, California to be precise.
In order to fit in and avoid bullying, I practised being a boy. It didn’t really work very well, because people always “mistook” me for a girl anyway (which was more than fine with me — it made me happy). Adults who didn’t know me would regularly say things like, “Oh, what a cute girl you have,” to my mother.
Most of the kids I was around knew I was a “boy”, because they knew my name was a boy’s name. But that didn’t stop a lot of obnoxious guys from calling me a girl anyway (because apparently, I still acted and looked rather “girly”), which they presumed was an insult. When I responded with “Okay! So what?” or “What’s wrong with girls?” back in the day, hecklers and outright bullies couldn’t really provide a retort for that, and they’d usually just wander away in confusion (nowadays, I expect many of those raised by Conservative parents and anti-Woke YouTubers would have a quite a few choice insults at the ready).
By the time I was in High School, the bullies just called me “Gay” or “F**”. I didn’t really care about the terms intended as insults, mostly because I was rather immune to insults having endured so many of them, and in small part because I was already leaning Bi. In my last year of Primary School and in Middle School my BFF was a girl, and we were alarmingly precocious, and in High School, one of my closest guy friends was out-of-the-closet Gay, and we “messed around” a fair bit in private.
Regardless, I was still practising my impression of being a dude, and still in the closet in regards to my preferences and my gender identity. Indeed, I really was no longer sure at that point if I was actually a girl “trapped in a boy’s body” or if I was part boy, part girl (I didn’t have the language back in the late 1970s to describe my gender identity, and I didn’t really identify with the term androgynous). In retrospect, I think that might have had something to do with going through male puberty.
The first pieces of media in which I found characters I could identify with I discovered in my Primary School days in the UK, such as in Enid Blyton’s Famous Five series.
That was my first irony. I identified a bit with George, a boy “trapped in a girl’s body”, just because I understood the struggle he was going through. He wore “boy” clothes, and had at least managed to convince his parents to get him short haircuts, and he vehemently hated his girl name, Georgina, hated “girl” clothes, and hated being regularly misgendered by people including his parents and best friends.
To this day, most readers of the series view him as a girl who was a Tomboy, when it should be perfectly clear nowadays that he was a Trans-boy. To be fair, I don’t think Enid Blyton herself understood the difference between being a Tomboy and being Trans (though I’m pretty sure the term Transsexual was already in play when she was writing the series in the 1940s and 50s).
But the irony is that I actually identified much more with Anne, the youngest of the siblings who were George’s cousins and best friends. The boys tended to treat Anne a bit poorly, frankly, as if being a girl, not to mention younger than them, was an excuse to be rather patronising to her at best, and rather rude to her at worst.
The other stories which had characters I identified with were the Oz books. To begin with, I identified with Dorothy, one of the few female central protagonists which I was aware of in Fantasy Kid Lit back in the day, and I was delighted when I discovered The Marvelous Land of Oz.
For those who don’t know, the story largely centres around a boy by the name of Tip, who was later revealed to have been Princess Ozma, kidnapped as an infant by the Wicked Witch, Mombi, and transformed into a boy. Tip had no clue that he was actually a she until Glinda the Good Witch revealed all at the end of the book and transformed him back into Ozma.
One might fairly ask me why I continue to refer to Tip as a boy, but that is largely because he identified as a boy until he learned he was a she, and at first Ozma wasn’t entirely sure if she wanted to be a girl. But by all indications, she got over that fairly quickly and fully embraced being a girl. In my early Primary School years, I didn’t really care about that — I was just happy to come across a character who represented me — a girl “trapped in a boy’s body”.
By the time I was in 6th grade, when I began experiencing an early onset of puberty, and in Middle-School, the story took on a new context, because for all intents and purposes, by then I was Nonbinary, even though I wasn’t at all that certain about it.
As a teenager I discovered a few more books in which I found some semblance of representation: a science fiction book by Robert Heinlein, I Will Fear No Evil, and the works of science fiction author Jack Chalker. I Will Fear No Evil features an elderly billionaire who chooses to have his brain transplanted into the body of a much younger person (but only after they had died for some unrelated reason, thankfully), and he ends up in the body of his female secretary. There was a lot of bisexuality in that book too, as far as I recall, which also resonated with me.
I’m not so sure how well that book would hold up today, and I’m not at all a fan of Heinlein’s Real Life politics. But one thing that I appreciated about his books is that he was all over the map both politically and socially speaking. It was a wild, informative, and fun roller-coaster ride exploring many different types of political and social structures through his works (though some of his biases and bigotries were apparent to me, even as a teen). He eventually settled in his later books into a consistent pattern of Communalism and Civil Libertarianism, though still firmly framed within the context of American Capitalist Libertarianism. He was a mixed bag… and for me, that’s okay enough to not regret reading his books.
As to Jack Chalker’s books, most of his book series featured a lot of body swapping and gender swapping, and they were for a period of time my favourite sci fi books. So many of his series featured gender swapping, there’s not much point to going into any one book specifically.
Those books felt like representation to me at the time, but again, I’m not sure how well they would hold up today. I expect that on rereads I would find a lot of problematic material.
Back to Real Life: For decades since I was a teenager, I wasn’t sure who I was. For one thing, as I indicated above, I didn’t have the terminology to describe myself to myself. All I knew was that more often than not I felt a significant amount of dysphoria. I still felt “stuck”, and I do till this day, in the wrong biological body. But there are also periods of time when I’m fine with being male.
If I had to quantify it, I’d say 60–70% of the time I identify as female (to myself mostly. I’m only Out to my therapist, my sister, one of my closest friends, and on medical forms, unless you count being Out online). I still feel that dysphoria, but I’m resigned to it. So for decades, I wasn’t sure if I was Binary Trans, or Nonbinary Trans.
But when I read the Harry Potter series, back when JK Rowling wasn’t all TERFy, I found several characters I identified with. One was Hermione, the feminist and political activist swot (aka nerd in American lingo).
Then there was Tonks, the Metamorphmagus who could magically alter her form at Will, and to me she was coded as Nonbinary, and either Bi or Lesbian (her hooking up with Remus Lupin never made any sense to me, especially as he seemed too old for her and coded as Gay).
But oddly enough — or not so oddly — Harry Potter is perhaps the one who resonated with me the most. In large part due to the horrific levels of Child Abuse he faced (nowadays, the Dursleys would likely face jail-time if they had been caught out. Keeping children in tiny cupboards under the stairs, starving them on a regular basis, and physically and emotionally abusing them is criminal behaviour). I wasn’t kept in a cupboard, but I did face a lot of physical and emotional abuse.
But another major factor was the “His Mother’s Eyes” trope. In literature and in a number of philosophical traditions, the eyes are “The Window to the Soul”. JK Rowling hammered that trope hard — she wasn’t subtle about it (subtlety isn’t exactly her strong suit).
And Harry reacted the same way his mother did to the horrible behaviour of his father when he entered Snape’s Worst Memory in Order of the Phoenix. … And Dumbledore himself makes it explicit in Snape’s memory sequence near the end of Deathly Hallows that Harry’s Deepest Nature (or Soul, if you will), was much more like his mother’s.
To me, that’s code for Harry having a female Soul in a male body. And on some level, that’s what JK Rowling was saying too (how’s that for another irony, eh?). Her traditionalist and essentialist views of sex and gender were less pronounced when she wrote the series, but it was nonetheless clear that she saw compassion as an inherent female trait, and aggression as an inherent male trait.
Another irony in the series which still makes it hard for me to wrap my head around JK Rowling’s TERF-ishness, is featuring Polyjuice Potion gender-swaps in two scenes in the series. One of the scenes is the scene in Half-Blood Prince in which one of Draco’s minions turns into a girl when keeping watch while Draco was in The Room of Requirement, and the other scene is in Deathly Hallows when Hermione and Fleur become Harrys in the Seven Potters sequence at the beginning of the book.
So there I was, reading a series in which characters could magically change sex and gender at Will, and that was something I desperately wished was a reality. I still wasn’t certain if I was Binary Trans or Nonbinary Trans, but I was starting to get an inkling in the back of my head.
I started writing a bit of fanfiction in 2009–10, but in the Hobbit/LotR fandom. It wasn’t until 2014 when JK Rowling admitted that Harry and Hermione were probably a better fit for each other than a couple who had such a toxic relationship that they would need Couple’s Therapy for their relationship to survive (**cough…Ron and Hermione…ahem** — but that’s a different topic not worth arguing about, because it’s subjective), that I felt freed up to write Harry Potter fanfiction featuring Harry/Hermione (I’m a shipper, so sue me. 😝).
At first I wrote a few short stories and mini-novellas, but for my magnum opus I had a plan. I was going to explore my identity, my experiences as a child abuse survivor and as a teenager, wrapped up in a cross-genre Romance/Political Thriller, chock-full of LGBTQ+ characters — and Harry was going to be a genderfluid metamorphmagus
And so I did. It was a massive trilogy length novel, and by the end of it I was in a place in which I knew for certain that I am Genderfluid Nonbinary. … However, even in that fictional acknowledgment of my identity, I expressed my anxiety at the idea of Coming Out to anyone but my closest friends:
Harriet felt so relaxed the following morning that she almost forgot to change back into boy form until she saw herself in the mirror after a quick shower.
For a moment, Harriet considered returning to Hogwarts as a girl, and just changing back into Harry whenever she felt in the mood. But a knot of anxiety formed in her stomach at the thought. Dean, Neville, and Viktor were still the only ones besides the Coven who knew that Harry could turn into a girl — not counting Dumbledore.
Viktor and Neville had never actually seen Harry as Harriet though, and as far as Dean knew, Harry had simply been disguising himself as a girl during the search for a Ministry facility just to keep the Ministry off his trail.
Harriet wasn’t sure that she was ready yet for anyone else to know that she actually liked being a girl sometimes. That sort of thing was definitely looked down on in the non-magical world — Uncle Vernon wasn’t the only one who thought people who sometimes presented themselves as the opposite gender were freaks — and Harriet was quite certain that most wizards would think she was a weirdo too.
There was no question that she had been growing more and more resigned to being famous as the Boy-Who-Lived, but Harriet still felt that she would much rather not be the centre of attention and potential scorn at Hogwarts yet again. Besides, it was still very important to keep being a metamorphmagus a secret, Harriet reminded herself. Sighing, she watched as her features changed and she was Harry once more…
It wasn’t until 2018 — ironically, not so long before JK Rowling Liked a transphobic Tweet about “men in dresses”, and claimed it was a “middle-aged” moment — that I wrote a more aspirational three chapter short story in which Harriet Potter was a much braver person than me.
In that story, baby Harry[et] was dropped off on the doorstep of a Child Services agency by the Dursleys, who had decided they weren’t keeping Harry[et].
Subsequently, after not being able to place Harry[et] in a foster home, due to his/her “strange abilities”, Harry[et] was taken in by a boarding-school — which was more of a reform school for rich kids who got kicked out of other schools, really — which contracted with the State to foster orphans with “unusual abilities”.
Unfortunately for Harry[et], the school just happened to be run by a few TERFs. But that didn’t stop Harry[et] from being a “troublemaker” and sticking up for herself at every opportunity, sometimes in perhaps inappropriate ways.
Hermione ended up at the same school after her parents were killed in a fire, and she just happened to have a few cat-features in a riff on her polyjuice predicament in Chamber of Secrets.
I wrote the fanfic from Hermione’s point of view, as she is the central protagonist of the story. After one of the nastier bullies at the boarding school yanked Hermione’s cat tail, Harriet threatened to pummel the boy picking on her. And then the following ensued:
Footsteps on the graveled path captured the attention of all three girls and Harriet groaned. A young, severe looking woman with very short chestnut hair was striding down the pathway; she was wearing what appeared to be a security uniform: a crisp white shirt with black epaulettes and a gold patch on her chest, and a well ironed black skirt.
“Oi — what’s all this then, Potter?” she barked. “I hear you’ve been causin’ trouble again — threatening one o’ the payin’ students.”
Harriet scowled, saying nothing.
“If you’re talking about Edgar Theodore Stanfield the III, then he had it coming,” said Abigail haughtily. “I’m a paying student too, Vivian, and he was molesting my friend — he should be arrested. … And he was smoking cigarettes too,” she added for good measure.
“Yeah, right, Pincher,” sneered Vivian, “like anyone’s gonna back new money like you over a Stanfield. You wanna watch yourself — hangin’ out with freaks like these two isn’t doing yourself any favours — if you’re not careful you’ll lose movie night privileges.”
Then Vivian turned her ire back on Harriet.
“And you,” she snapped, “What’d Miss Hastings tell you about pretendin’ to be a girl? You’ll be cleanin’ toilets for a week if I catch you at it again.”
“I am a girl,” Harriet hissed, reaching for her belt buckle. “Want me to show you?”
“You wanna make that a month then? I’m sure the janitors’d like a break from toilet cleanin’ for a month.”
“So what else is new?” Harriet muttered angrily, dropping her hands.
Hermione watched in fascination as Harriet’s hair shortened and her facial features altered, becoming slightly more angular. But other than her untidy black hair being short and her face being slightly more boyish, there really wasn’t any other visible physical change of note. Considering he was only ten that wasn’t surprising, but Harriet’s eyes — Harry’s eyes now, Hermione supposed — still seemed too pretty to be a boy’s eyes, really.
Vivian seemed to be thinking along the same lines.
“I’m warnin’ you — “
Harry stared mutinously at the security officer and reached for his belt, and this time he really did undo it and had his jeans down to the top of his thighs, exposing his briefs before Vivian yelled at him.
“Alright — alright! Zip it back up you little hooligan!” Then she turned around and marched off, muttering something about the “freaky little brat” under her breath.
“It’s okay,” said Harry once she had gone, “You can open your eyes now, Hermione.”
Hermione peeked out from between her fingers before lowering her hand. Harry grinned at her ruefully.
Anyway, despite the more distressing aspects of the scene, that’s what I mean by aspirational — being brave enough to make more of a stand for my gender identity in Real Life. … I’m brave enough to stick up for others’ gender identities in Real Life, and I’m brave enough to occasionally post non-fiction essays and rants on the topic and LGBTQ+ fanfiction online, but I’m still a work in progress, I guess.
I have the utmost respect and gratitude for all of the brave Trans folk who post on a more regular basis, and for all the brave Binary and Nonbinary Trans YouTubers, all of whom put themselves at risk in this political climate to educate cis folk, and even some of us Binary and Nonbinary Trans folk. I know I’ve learned a lot myself from folk like Jessie Gender and Council of Geeks (Vera Wylde), among others.
As for me in the meantime, I have too much emotional investment in writing Genderfluid Harry[et] and LGBTQ+ Harry Potter related fanfiction in general to give it up. … And at the very least, now I have the added context of my fanfics being a middle finger to JK Rowling…
Disclaimer: All bits of the fanfics which seem familiar are all JK Rowling’s (unfortunately), and the fanfics are not monetised in any fashion whatsoever.
