notes on a sweater design
i’ve been working on a sweater design for my 30th birthday in april for several weeks now, and i’m really excited about the concept - a deconstructed deathly hollows yoke. a few weeks ago, jkr said some shitty things once again (this time terf-related), and so i’ve been mentally and emotionally wrestling with my feelings about her as a person and her as an author and the world of harry potter that she created that continues to bear her touch while also having grown far greater than her, and where my sweater design fits into all of that. these head and heart gymnastics are much more complex than even my long-winded blog posts could reasonably unpack, and also the issue as a whole is something i think we constantly have to address and navigate throughout our lives. i wanted to take some time to write out my thoughts for you though, especially since my politics and values are always forefront in my business decisions and it would be remiss of me to not address something shitty that was said that directly relates to my queer/trans community. so here we go, the beginnings of some unpacking:
i still want to design the sweater - it’s been enjoyable to knit, i’m having fun dyeing the yarn, and the stitch markers i’m making for it are the most fun i’ve had with stitch markers since figuring out last year’s moon signs stones.
it would be disingenuous for me to pretend that i no longer cared about the worlds of muggles and non-muggles and magical beasts. when i was eleven, i waited desperately for my hogwarts letter, and i still secretly take solace in the fact that my birthday overlapped with the wizard wars and so it was most likely lost. i literally grew up with the books, aging almost completely in line with hermione and ron and harry, and every single book felt like the most important adventure i was going to undertake. it formed a massive part of my adolescence, and the magic continues to permeate my adulthood. it also formed an integral space for folx in my life - it was a fictional world that celebrated the weirdos and the strange kids, the ones who didn’t fit into the normal (muggle) world. that was necessary for so many of us to find, especially during adolescence and, in my experience, especially for the queer kids (the irony sucks, trust me).
it would also be incredibly hypocritical of me to suddenly “cancel” jkr for this specific tweet because the fact of the matter is that she’s been problematic for years - she herself has sued fans, she sold the franchise to a company that’s infamous for their litigious nature, she barely wrote bipoc characters into the series and didn’t write any queer ones in at all (and no, claiming dumbledore was gay after the fact doesn’t count as being part of the queer canon), and she’s simultaneously rooted in white feminism much of the time while also frequently writing entire chapters without including any female (never mind trans/enby/gender non-conforming) characters. jkr as a person is very flawed. she has also donated the vast majority of the money she’s earned off the proceeds to charity, so unsurprisingly she’s also more complex than just her flaws.
the series and worlds she’s created as a whole have grown so far beyond her that i don’t believe she, or any one person, can lay claim to them in entirety anymore. there has been so much good created in the world because of the harry potter world - not jkr, but the work itself - that to disavow the ways it has inspired so many people, especially millennials who grew up with the books and are now at an age where we’re beginning to have actual clout in our own worlds, to rise up and fight oppressive powers would be a true shame. check out this, this, and this example of radical work led by potterheads in the real world.
we need to hold our elders accountable for their words and actions, especially if they are still with us.
we also need to become better elders for those coming after us, which means consistently doing the work and getting used to being uncomfortable.
sometimes, that means figuring out how to navigate when people who created important works that have shaped and influenced our lives let us down. jkr isn’t alone in this. for myself personally, i grapple regularly with her, with margaret atwood, and with tolkien. dr. seuss wrote early cartoons that were racist in their treatment of japanese characters. alice in wonderland was based off a little girl who may have been groomed by lewis carroll. the reality is that most of the authors of our canon are problematic, and viewing them through a 21st century lens complicates this matter further - how much of the lens through which we analyze our canons should be through current eyes versus contemporary ones? (i would argue that we should primarily analyze them through current eyes with acknowledgement and awareness of how the contemporary lens would have influenced the actual creation of the work.) also, it does not escape me that all the authors i just listed are white people. as for me, i’m sure that in twenty years i will look back at much of my work and cringe from more than just generalized anxiety replaying old anxieties - i know that there are emails i sent ten years ago that i still cringe thinking about today, because i didn’t know then what i know now.
we are responsible for learning and growing no matter our age. when our elders stumble or completely stop doing this, whose responsibility is it to push them back into forward motion, and how do we properly compensate those people for their labour?
capitalism complicates all of this, of course. is jkr going to make any money off of my sweater design? hell nope. in fact, it’ll be avoiding any exact reference specifically to avoid the litigious actions of the company who happens to hold rights to harry potter * cough cough disney *. am i profiting off the work of a problematic human? indirectly, yes. while i probably will never make back the hours of labour i spent on the design and all the samples, and the yarn and stitch markers just pay for their materials and labour like the rest of my products (golden ratios of profit don’t really work when you’re dealing with natural dyes and farm yarns), i will be making money in exchange for my work. and some of that money may come as a direct result of people connecting to the inspiration behind the design, not because they like the specific design or because they know and trust my patterns or really love my yarn. would i be making this design if i wasn’t planning on selling the pattern? yes, but it probably would have gone on the back burner for a while while i work on upcoming book samples and i definitely wouldn’t be spending additional hours grading a bunch of sizes and knitting kid and adult samples.
so, it’s complicated. as i continue to get older and the rose-coloured glasses of childhood continue to slip away, revealing the cracks and flaws in the humans i used to revere, i also continue navigating how i interact with the work that brought them into my life. sometimes i stop engaging with it entirely; other times, i shift the way i engage with their work, twisting and turning it until i figure out how it still fits, or maybe decide it just doesn’t anymore. for harry potter and his worlds, it’s too big a part of my life for me to excise. i’ll continue to watch jkr’s progress as a human, and expect more of her, and likely be disappointed at points again too. i hope she learns why her recent words were so harmful to the community i love and call family, and if she doesn’t, i might be writing a follow-up to this post. i’m going to leave you with a few more resources that have been helping me process the complex feelings i have about this particular situation, and with similar situations:
a podcast i love listening to called still processing - this particular episode feels relevant, in a not-exactly-related way
book 4, episode 12 and book 4, episode 13 from harry potter and the sacred text, talking at points about fandom, judgement, and how we do and don’t hold people accountable because of how we view them
jenny o’dell’s how to do nothing - this excerpt in particular really captures the dangers of only processing situations in online (especially social media) spaces (and as a side note, this book is shifting the way i’m planning on engaging with social media moving forward):
[T]he platforms that we use to communicate with each other do not encourage listening. Instead they reward shouting and oversimple reaction […] So connectivity is a share or, conversely, a trigger; sensitivity is an in-person conversation, whether pleasant or difficult, or both. Obviously, online platforms favor connectivity, not simply by virtue of being online, but also arguably for profit, since the difference between connectivity and sensitivity is time, and time is money. Again, too expensive. (pages 23-24)