HBO is setting the stage for what it hopes will be the “streaming event of the decade” with its upcoming Harry Potter series. The network plans to adapt each of the beloved franchise’s seven original books, aiming to captivate a new generation of fans who may have missed the initial Pottermania sparked by the release of J.K. Rowling’s novels and their subsequent Warner Bros. film adaptations. Should this series succeed, it might even inspire Rowling to pen more stories in the magical universe that catapulted her to billionaire status.

The show’s success, however, depends on whether audiences choose to tune in to HBO’s rendition of Harry Potter, which is being executive produced by Rowling herself. While having a franchise’s original creator involved can often be beneficial, in this case, Rowling’s participation casts a shadow that HBO finds challenging to dispel. Rowling has been outspoken in her controversial views, particularly regarding transgender rights, making it difficult for fans to engage with the series without indirectly supporting her stance and the broader implications of her actions against a marginalized community.

Rowling has long positioned herself as an advocate for cisgender women’s rights while simultaneously promoting transphobic views. Recently, she praised the International Olympic Committee for its decision to ban transgender women from competing, and in doing so, implicitly misgendered 2024 boxing gold medalist Imane Khelif. This was just the latest example of Rowling using transphobic rhetoric, prompting Khelif to file a criminal complaint against the author last summer.

Speculation about Rowling’s views had been circulating due to her interactions with trans-exclusionary radical feminists (TERFs). However, it was in 2019 that she openly identified with this ideology, particularly when she expressed support for Maya Forstater. Forstater, a British tax consultant, found herself in the midst of a legal battle after her contract was not renewed by the Centre for Global Development, following her social media activity that misgendered and denied the existence of transgender people. Forstater, who describes herself as a “gender-critical activist,” sued the organization, citing the UK’s 2010 Equality Act as having been violated.

Despite the Equality Act’s provisions against discrimination based on “gender reassignment,” Forstater claimed she was being targeted for her beliefs. Initially, a judge dismissed her case, deeming her views incompatible with human dignity and rights. However, Forstater appealed and won in 2021. While Rowling’s tweet was not directly responsible for Forstater’s eventual compensation of £106,400 ($141,683) in lost earnings and damages in 2023, her public support lent significant weight to the transphobic culture that persists in the UK. By aligning herself with figures like Forstater, Rowling has encouraged the normalization of harmful ideologies, contributing to increased hate crimes against the LGBTQ+ community. Her influence and wealth allow her to amplify and promote a TERF agenda, which seeks to enforce gender essentialism and marginalize transgender individuals at a societal level.

Rowling’s tweet was not what led to Forstater ultimately receiving £106,400 ($141,683) in lost earnings and aggravated damages in 2023. But Rowling’s willingness to openly align herself with TERF agitators was significant because she was lending credence to the larger culture of transphobia that has plagued the UK for decades. By supporting Forstater, Rowling was encouraging the public to embrace their hateful beliefs and to think of transgender people as threats to society. That kind of rhetoric has been linked to spikes in hate crimes directed at queer people. Rowling knows full well that her celebrity helps her amplify transphobic ideology in ways that people like Forstater could not on their own. Rowling also understands that her wealth puts her in a prime position to advance the TERF agenda (read: enforcing gender essentialism and erasing trans people from existence) on a societal level.

That’s exactly what Rowling was doing in 2024 when she donated £70,000 ($93,212) to For Women Scotland (FWS), an advocacy group that challenged Scotland’s 2018 Gender Representation on Public Boards Act 2018. The Act’s definition of women included people who had “the protected characteristic of gender reassignment.” FWS won its initial judicial review in 2022, which deemed that defining women was outside of the Scottish Parliament’s purview. That decision was reversed in 2023, and in 2024, an amended version of the Scottish Gender Representation Act that used the British 2010 Equality Act’s definition of women — which included trans women — was signed into law. That same year, FWS filed and lost another judicial review against the amended Scottish Gender Representation Act challenging its use of the British 2010 Equality Act’s definition. And while FWS could not appeal that decision, the case went all the way to the UK Supreme Court, which ruled that the legal definition of a woman is based on biological sex assigned at birth. To pay for this extensive legal battle, FWS turned to crowdsourcing, and Rowling was all too happy to dump tens of thousands of dollars into their cause.

This UK Supreme Court’s definition is itself problematic because human sex biology is not a binary. And in addition to preventing transgender people from having their gender identity legally recognized, the ruling makes it much harder for them to pursue legal action for gender-based discrimination. Rowling celebrated the Court’s decision by posting a photo of herself with a very clear message: “I love it when a plan comes together.” The plan in this case was to help bankroll an anti-trans group’s campaign against trans people, and it culminated with the passage of a law that reduces all women living in the UK down to the way their bodies are perceived when they are born.

Rowling has been transparent about her desire to keep assisting people in their efforts to rob transgender people of their dignity and human rights. That seems very much to be the entire point of The J.K. Rowling Women’s Fund — an organization Rowling launched in 2025 that claims to be “fighting to retain women’s and girls’ sex-based rights in all aspects of life.” The Fund offers financial support provided by Rowling to cisgender women who are looking to file lawsuits. The Fund’s website makes no mention of gender as a concept, but it explicitly points to the For Women Scotland case as the kind of “victory” that it wants to see more of in the world.

Rowling has been rich enough to pour cash into organizations like this for some time now because she continues to hold primary intellectual property rights to the entire Harry Potter property. Every Harry Potter book, movie, video game, stage show ticket, theme park pass, and piece of merchandise that’s sold puts money into Rowling’s pocket, which she can use to keep her crusade against trans people going. Given the property’s lasting popularity, Rowling, who is currently worth about $1.2 billion, could probably do all of this even if HBO wasn’t producing a new Harry Potter series. But because the network is and it wants to keep the show going for at least a decade, Rowling will have even more capital at her disposal to impose her retrograde views onto others.

Clearly, this doesn’t concern HBO’s executive leadership whose primary goals are to boost the company’s stock value while taking home outsized paychecks and hefty exit packages of their own. But it is absolutely something that HBO’s subscribers should be thinking about as Warner Bros. cranks the Harry Potter hype machine up ahead of the show’s premiere later this year. HBO does not want you to think about how it is platforming a known bigot and making it easier for her to spread patently hateful, harmful messaging that can endanger people. And Rowling would probably rather people not consider the fact that there are plenty of other magical academia series to become obsessed with.