Archive for June, 2020

Updated Examples in EADiva and an Apology

The EADiva website no longer uses examples drawn from the Harry Potter universe. The new finding aid is up on GitHub and examples are incorporated into all 155 element pages. I am grateful to Christy Bailey-Tomecek for helping me in proof-reading. All errors are ones I introduced after her first read.

Several years ago, I began to hear from friends that J.K. Rowling was engaging online in transphobic circles. By 2019, she’d become so vocal about it that I resolved to rewrite the EADiva examples, which were all based in the Harry Potter universe. I decided to combine that work with moving EADiva from WordPress to a static site generator.

As her rhetoric escalated from 2019 to 2020, I continued to justify not yet addressing it by telling myself I was going to get to it as part of this planned project.

But that did not change the experience of people using the site.

I am sorry that I let it get to a crisis point to change. I have known for several years that she is outspokenly transphobic toward trans women, trans men, and nonbinary people. I should not have waited until her words reached a crisis point of hate to remove references to her work. I deeply regret my passivity in leaving these examples up this long.

I also acknowledge and apologize for a second reason that I should not have left these up as long as I did, a reason that I should have chosen a different subject for the examples entirely. Although Rowling’s open transphobia developed after I created the examples in 2014, the many instances of racism in the series have been discussed for ages. Every fictional world may be problematic, but I chose to work in this world when creating the EAD3 examples in 2014, long after I’d heard what should have been more than enough.

I apologize to those whom I made feel less welcome or reminded of hate when creating and leaving up these examples. For not being mindful of they harm they could cause. For only addressing it now as these reach a crisis point. I will do my best to do better in the future.

(this post is cross-posted with my personal blog)