Girl on the Net

“Can you separate the art from the artist?” is a ludicrous question, and it’s one I’ve wanted to tackle for a really long time. The answer is both ‘yes’ and ‘no’ depending on the art, the artist and you, the person who consumes it. There are always examples in the media of artists who have fallen from grace (or, less euphemistically, done something so morally repulsive that the idea of listening to their songs/watching their shows/reading their books now feels obscene), and often when a new person turns out to be a wrong ‘un, some thinkpiece or other claims we must learn to ‘separate the art from the artist’, which makes my brain twitch so I throw down a few notes. I’ve never written properly about this, because apparently I’ve never quite found the right fire to burn the whole question to the ground, but I think I’ve got the torch now, so I’m gonna pick it up and hope you join me in the flames. Let’s talk about ‘separating art from artist’, and specifically let’s talk JK Rowling.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ll probably be aware that a new Harry Potter TV show is in the works. With a host of famous actors on the roster (John Lithgoe! Nick Frost! Katherine Whats-Her-Face from the IT Crowd!), and a few new child actors to take on the lead roles. It’s already grabbed lots of headlines and although some of those definitely deserve to be ‘Dead Horse Flogged Yet Again’, a significant number of them involve stars of the show publicly distancing themselves from the controversy over JK Rowling’s views.

‘Controversy’

‘Views’

I use those words because they come up a lot in the articles about this issue, but let’s be clear: JK Rowling is a passionate, unapologetic, determined transphobe. She does not just ‘hold gender critical beliefs’, she obsesses over those beliefs and dogmatically works to convert other people to join her in holding them. Moreover, she is willing to spend chunks of her significant wealth on legal challenges that actively strip trans people of their rights. She doesn’t just have ‘views’, she uses the power she’s gained via writing commercially successful books to act on them. And those views are not just ‘controversial’, they are specifically and directly harmful to a minority group.

But I really like Harry Potter!

Here’s the truth at the heart of the debate on ‘separating art from artist’: every single one of us has a certain type of art, or a particular artist, that they love so much they would turn their head away from certain bad behaviour if it meant we could continue to enjoy our beloved Thing.

Everyone.

One of the things that boils my piss about this not-even-a-debate is that many lefties who claim you simply cannot separate art from artist fail to recognise that they do this themselves too. We all do! It is human nature!

Personally, I’m thinking of a singer-songwriter who many of my friends have ‘cancelled’ because he’s said some pretty cringe stuff which implies a level of ignorance about feminism (though not outright hostility – his intentions are in the right place, but he’s not done nearly enough work to challenge his own statements and behaviours). I really adore his music, though. It’s been the soundtrack to some of the happiest times of my life, and that carries associations that I find it hard to shake off. Do I condone his behaviour and comments? No. But do they prevent me from enjoying his work? Also no. He’s human, humans make mistakes, and the love I feel for his music is stronger than the irritation I feel about his less-than-perfect personality.

Further along the scale, though, there’s a different singer-songwriter who – when my friends told me of his behaviour – I did stop enjoying. That’s because he turned out to be a rapist. There are certain things that my brain just can’t ignore, and I doubt you’ll be surprised to learn that rape is one of them. It wasn’t that I made a conscious, deliberate decision to no longer support this guy, I just… thought about rape every time one of his songs turned up on a playlist! And ‘thinking about rape’ kills my enjoyment of any song, regardless of how catchy it might be.

‘Cancelling’ an artist is rarely a rational thing

One of the other things that boils my piss about this not-even-a-debate is that so often people on the right present their approach as rational and measured. As if choosing to ‘separate art from artist’ is something that you can genuinely do in a strict rational sense, with no emotion whatsoever. Whether claiming those on the left are ‘cancelling’ artists deliberately (as opposed to just ‘being unable to enjoy someone’s music now they know he’s a rapist’), or asserting that they as more enlightened individuals are capable of drawing a clear line between the artist’s behaviour and this particular piece of art. This is horseshit. No human ever behaves in a purely rational way – we might have invented sandwich toasters and rhetoric and been to the literal moon but we are still just messy animals, after all. Right-wingers who bleat on about the importance of ‘separating art from artist’ practice ‘cancelling’ artists themselves too.

Even the most earnest proponent of the art/artist separation would baulk at ‘appreciating’ art produced by someone who was a known serial killer. More subtly but importantly, right wingers are rarely out there calling for us to enjoy and appreciate art from obviously talented left wing creatives: usually they declare that art to be trash. Of course they do! They have an emotional connection to their own political views which they can’t lay aside in order to enjoy something made by someone with whom they profoundly disagree. None of the conservatives calling for Bob Vylan to be censored after chanting ‘death to the IDF’ at Glastonbury, for example, were keen to add that we should still appreciate their music on its merit.

Can you appreciate brilliant art from someone you profoundly dislike? Perhaps. Can you appreciate brilliant art from everyone you profoundly dislike? Of course not. At some point, no matter how rational you believe yourself to be, your emotions will draw a line under a song, book or TV show because it’s too closely associated with someone who makes you angry or sad.

It is not primarily our rationality that determines whether we ‘separate art from artist’, but the feelings the art evokes when we know what the artist has done. Personally, I love Bob Vylan – they’re an exceptionally fun band to rock out to at a festival, and I think using their platform to draw attention to the genocide that’s happening in Gaza, and call for an end to the conscripted army that is perpetrating it, was a powerful and worthwhile thing to do.

But you might disagree! In fact, me publishing my heartfelt support for Bob Vylan here may cause you to hurl my blog aside in disgust, never returning for any of the smut or other treats that I produce when I’m not wanking on about culture. Tut tut, my friend, it’s just my personal view. Can you not separate the art (my blog posts) from the artist (me)?

What causes us to reject art or artists?

There are four things that might cause us to abandon our love for a particular artist, I think:

1. The scale of the artist’s Terrible Behaviour.
2. The amount of love we feel for the art.
3. How closely their art is aligned with said Terrible Behaviour.
4. Social shame/pressure from peers who care more about their Terrible Behaviour than we do.

We’ve already tackled 1, but let’s hone it with our primary example: JK Rowling. I’m assuming for the purpose of this article that you are not personally a transphobe. After all, it makes no sense to offer the ‘we must separate art from artist’ argument as a reason for continuing to read/watch/engage with the Harry Potter franchise unless you acknowledge, on some level, that her views are extremely bad. If you don’t actually think her views are that bad, then you aren’t offering up this argument in good faith – it’s a smokescreen to deflect from your own transphobia because you think that stating it clearly will get you in trouble.

So for point 1, I’m going to assume you are not a transphobe. Let’s move on to point 2: the amount of love you feel for the art. This is the framing I hear most often when people talk about ‘separating art from artist’. Sometimes they’re claiming they just adore this franchise because they loved it as a child, and they want to continue wrapping themselves in that nostalgia. Other times (and usually with other, better artists) people claim that the art itself has cultural significance or beauty that exists outside and separate to the person who created it. That when you put something into the world, it becomes greater than it was inside the artist’s head, and gains a relevance that the original creator can no longer take away just by behaving in terrible ways.

The latter point becomes moot, I think, when the artist’s behaviour is causing such obvious harm that it is impossible to engage with their art without causing further harm of that kind. Whatever positive cultural significance that art might hold for you (or anyone else), it’s now weighed down by the baggage of the artist’s terrible behaviour in a way that is impossible (and deeply irrational) to ignore.

A recent example of this saw a popular romance convention almost collapsing when authors realised they would be speaking alongside authors who had gained popularity via Harry Potter fanfic, and alongside panels which had HP-related themes. You might think that there are elements of Harry Potter which can still be enjoyed/appreciated as ‘art’ despite the author’s transphobia but as with any view of this kind, the second you put it into practice that view will have an impact on the wider world. And these days, the impact is that a lot of trans people will feel unsafe at your convention, or in your book club. Trans allies will want to distance themselves from you, because they won’t want trans people feeling unsafe in their book clubs, etc. You can talk about cultural significance till you’re blue in the face, but if you refuse to acknowledge that this ‘cultural significance’ is a two-sided coin that carries significance in other ways too, then you’re not really being a cleverclogs cultural analyst, your argument is – again – just a smokescreen. You’re claiming one aspect of a work’s cultural significance while disavowing another, for little reason other than that you personally like the first one and don’t want to think about the second.

I actually have a bit more time for people who just shrug and say ‘I love it’, because at least that is intellectually honest. Just as I’ll continue to love my slightly-dodgy musician (unless he turns out to be a rapist), so you just wanna go on a Harry Potter bus tour without people getting mad.

I hear you. Let’s move on to point 3.

How closely is the art aligned with the artist’s behaviour?

I’m sure someone with more time and inclination than I has read the Harry Potter books and tried to identify obvious transphobia, so I won’t attempt it myself. As far as I am aware, there is little or no indication in the books themselves that Rowling doesn’t believe transgender people are real, or that she wants to exclude them from society. Apart from anything else, her trajectory from ‘children’s author’ to ‘extreme transphobe’ began after the publication of the final book of the series. Documented really well by Contrapoints in this video on JK Rowling, and this later one on the ‘Witch Trials of JK Rowling’ podcast. So her overtly transphobic views were either developed after Harry Potter was finished, or she kept them very well hidden for many years. Racism? Oh yeah there’s plenty of that in the books. Antisemitism? Tick. Bunch of other problematic stereotypes and ideas? Yep. But as far as I’m aware no overt transphobia (though some other books she’s written since are absolutely riddled with it).

So nowhere in the Potter books does Harry call for a bathroom ban, and I think some people reckon that’s enough to get him a pass on point 3 – how closely the art is aligned with the artist’s terrible behaviour. After all, it’s not specifically in the books, so surely the books are OK? But art – especially when the artist is still alive to keep running their mouth and collecting royalties – is linked to an artist’s behaviour in a way that it’s impossible to ignore.

Where your money goes

JK Rowling makes money from anything in the Harry Potter franchise, so every time you buy something in that franchise, some of your money goes into her pocket. What does she do with the money in her pocket? Well, she spends at least some of it advancing her transphobic cause. This year, perhaps buoyed by her success in bankrolling a case that ended up with the UK Supreme Court making a nonsensical ruling that has caused material harm to trans people, Rowling has set up a fund to do more of that sort of thing. I won’t link to it here. She calls it the ‘JK Rowling Women’s Fund’ and it is open to cisgender women who feel like their ‘sex based rights’ (i.e. their claimed, but non-existent right to exclude trans women from a particular aspect of public life) are being ‘eroded’. If you have a gym membership and your gym is trans inclusive, and you wish to kick up a fuss about that, you can apply for funding and Rowling’s pet project might offer you the money to pay for a lawyer to take the gym owner to court.

This is obviously incredibly damaging for transgender people. When it comes to human rights, there are a number of ways to either affirm the rights of a minority group or deny that group those rights. You’ll probably be aware of the most obvious way, which is ‘campaigning to get the government to write/rewrite legislation’. This is what most people will be familiar with, and it’s what we are usually asked to write to our MPs about or sign petitions for. Because we vote for our representatives, and we live in a representative democracy, so those reps should write laws that reflect what the population wants.

There are other ways of influencing the law, though, and one of those is ‘strategic litigation‘. Where you stress-test a point of law with an individual case, knowing that the ruling on that case will potentially be upheld more broadly, in future cases, without ever needing to have representatives re-write the laws that exist already. I’m not against strategic litigation, by any means: it is often used by human rights charities for profoundly good purposes. In fact I imagine (and hope) we’ll see a lot of strategic litigation in the upcoming years that seeks to affirm the rights of trans people. Check out the Good Law Project because they’re working on a lot in this area. But in order to take a strategic case to court, you need to find relevant cases and then throw money/time at them to try and push the decision you want through the courts. It becomes an issue of funding, so sometimes if you have enough money you can push what is otherwise a very niche issue/concern, as long as that niche issue/concern has the backing of a wealthy person. JK Rowling is offering to write cheques to people who want to bring cases with the specific aim of ‘affirming sex-based rights’ (i.e. eroding the rights of trans people). She is throwing some of the power afforded to her by the profit she’s made from Harry Potter into causing material harm to trans people in the UK.

If there were a organisation which existed specifically to advance the cause of trans exclusion, and strategic litigation was one of that organisation’s core tactics, would you be comfortable with a portion of the profits from your purchase going directly to that org?

Sure, the books never detail Harry Potter and Hermione discussing ‘gender critical’ views over a butterbeer, but it’s impossible to argue, in 2025, that Rowling’s art is not aligned with her behaviour. A proportion of the money she receives from the franchise is directly funnelled into activity that seeks to strip trans people of their human rights. That is an undeniable fact. You can acknowledge it or – in order to continue enjoying the art – you can jump through some mental hoops to try and avoid having to think about it.

But it’s very hard to admit I was wrong about this!

Sometimes my friends tell me things about artists I love which cause me to wince. I learn that this one did something awful, or said something ignorant and harmful, and there’s a moment when my heart recoils. Oh no! I can’t believe this person I idolised would say/do something so bad! I maintain that my immediate decision on whether to ‘separate the art from the artist’ is primarily an emotional one. If my heart loves their art enough, my brain will throw up a stud wall: separating the knowledge of What This Person Did from the warm, cosy chamber in which I store the art I enjoy. If my heart is not that wedded to the art, though, or if what they’ve done is so terrible that it triggers nasty emotions, that stud wall never gets built and the ugly knowledge sits next to the art in my head. Every time a song by that person comes up on a playlist, I think about rape, so I skip the track. When I pick up a book by that author, I can’t shake the shocking memory of learning what they’ve said, and I no longer want to start reading.

Those are the emotional connections, and they’re at the heart of why I think the debate about ‘separating art from artist’ is so facile. We all have emotional connections with art that we love, and those connections can be either broken or shored up by yet more emotions: the depth of our love, for instance, or the intensity of our horror at a particular artist’s behaviour. We all do this, I think. I don’t believe you’re a villain if you’ve done it, and I also think that you’ll continue to do it throughout your life. Weighing up ‘good art’ and ‘bad artist’ based on how each of those things make us feel.

The point at which rationality comes into play is when you stand back from the art and assess the impact that your continued enjoyment of it might have on the wider world. In the case of Bob Vylan, continuing to listen to their music and buy tickets to their gigs indicates support not just for the music but the message behind it: Free Palestine. I’m delighted to stand by them in that, and it only makes me love their music more, but some will feel differently. Probably the sort of people who would never have enjoyed their music much in the first place, but who knows – someone on Twitter once decided they no longer liked Rage Against The Machine because Tom Morello brought politics into it, after all.

When it comes to Rowling, stepping back from the art and assessing the wider cultural impact means acknowledging the fact that a portion of the money spent on Harry Potter stuff – games, books, merch, tours, whatever – will go directly towards attempts to strip trans people of their rights. If you want to believe you are rational, you can’t deny this. There is no rational means of separating the art here from the impact the artist has on the world: Rowling herself has made that incredibly clear.

You can argue that you didn’t know that before, like I didn’t know a particular musician was a rapist until someone told me. Likewise it’s possible you didn’t really know the extent of JK’s ‘views’, or how hard she works to impose those views on others. It’s possible that your emotional connection to the material was strong enough that you built an internal stud wall in your brain to separate the facts of JK’s behaviour from your love of Harry Potter, and if so then reading the above probably punched a giant hole in it. So what do you do now?

Separating art from artist is nonsense

I think now is the time to acknowledge that ‘can we separate the art from the artist?’ is a nonsense question. You have clearly been ‘separating the art from the artist’ all the while you didn’t know about, or acknowledge, their views. But there is no rational way to do that now you know the artist is using profits to spread their views directly. It’s time to acknowledge that this art has meaning which extends beyond your individual feelings. That meaning might include ‘making trans women feel unsafe in your women’s book club’, or ‘directly funding work to strip trans people of their right to join your book club in the first place’. In Rowling’s case, it is both. Unquestionably, undeniably both.

When people loftily declare that they are able to ‘separate the art from the artist’ the unspoken addendum is always: ‘in this case.’ I can separate the art from artist in this particular case. Which prompts the question: why?

Why is it possible for you to separate art from artist in this case? You can no longer claim ignorance about the artist’s behaviour, or the way their art funds that terrible behaviour. So you either don’t think the behaviour is that bad (and thus this argument is a smokescreen and not earnestly meant), or you don’t care enough about their behaviour to stop funding it (in which case, be honest about that and stop pretending you care about the people their behaviour is harming).

Social shame

So we come to social shame. The final reason why someone might stop trying to ‘separate art from artist’ and instead acknowledge an unbreakable connection between the two. Because friends/peers/others they respect are frowning on (getting mad about, openly criticising) those who continue to engage with the Bad Artist’s work. The reason people are applying social shame to Harry Potter fans is not because we are getting too emotional about this issue. Unable to ‘separate art from artist’ like other, more rational actors, who are capable of greater detachment. We’re applying it because we think you are behaving either disingenuously or irrationally. You behaviour and stated views are at odds with each other: if you care about trans rights, supporting the Harry Potter franchise is directly contradicting your stated aims. We want to believe you that your stated aims are good (trans people deserve rights!) but are struggling to do that because your behaviour says the opposite.

Continuing to actively engage with Harry Potter means you either don’t know what Rowling’s views are or you don’t care. If it’s the latter, you’re probably not safe for trans people to be around and therefore people want to know – it’s a safety thing. If it’s the former, we want to tell you because we think it’s important to do whatever we can to minimise the harm that is caused when a very financially powerful individual uses that power to try and demolish human rights. If you’re someone I love, personally I want to tell you what impact your behaviour has so you can make a conscious choice to stop, because if I love you then I strongly suspect that ‘helping to dismantle trans rights in the UK’ is something you don’t want to do.

A long time ago I wrote about the idea of assigning ‘offence’. People on Twitter used to do this to me all the time, if I pulled them up on something sexist they said. They’d go ‘oh have I OFFENDED you!?’ as if ‘offending me’ was the crime of which they were being accused. But not only do I personally rarely get ‘offended’, people are rarely upset by these kinds of comments in a vacuum: ‘offence’ is just a shorthand we use when we believe someone is behaving in ways that are harmful. And behaving in ways that are harmful makes you look like a bit of a prick. Social shame is a means of showing people that certain types of harmful behaviour won’t be tolerated.

When I tell someone ‘that thing you’re saying is sexist’ or ‘that author you’re supporting is transphobic’, I’m doing you the courtesy of assuming that you don’t want to be sexist or transphobic, so you’d prefer to know about the issue and adjust your behaviour accordingly. Much like if you were eating a hot dog and got mustard on your face, I’d let you know there was a smear of yellow so you could wipe it off before you left my barbecue. If you don’t wipe it off, I’ll assume you like having a mustardy face. Likewise if you continue supporting the Harry Potter franchise, I’ll assume you support JK Rowling’s views – or at the very least don’t believe them to be harmful – because her use of funds to directly crush trans rights is an established fact.

You don’t have to wipe the mustard off your face if you don’t want to, but you can’t keep talking with it smeared there and expect me not to notice or acknowledge it. Likewise you can’t keep supporting this author and expect the rest of us to turn a blind eye. You certainly can’t expect the us to laud you as a ‘rational’ actor when your behaviour is so grossly at odds with your stated beliefs. No matter how much we love you (the artist), we’ll probably have an emotional response to your art (your views and behaviour). And, as discussed, this is often an emotional thing not purely a rational one. You urging me to ‘separate the art from the artist’ is probably not going to outweigh the repulsion I feel for JK Rowling’s behaviour, and it’s unlikely to outweigh the discomfort I feel towards anyone who is willing to support that behaviour by engaging with her ‘art’.

If you say hateful things or support a hateful person, don’t be surprised when people’s love for you starts to collapse.

 

Postscript: It tickles me that every now and then I get someone telling me haughtily that they no longer wish to engage with my smut because of my lefty views. Usually these people are right-wing men who came for the porn then accidentally stumble across a post on consent, and have now decided they are disappointed in me. I suspect there’ll be one or two of these who click away or block me in response to this. So I want to take this opportunity to say as clearly as I can: please don’t stay here if you hate me. If my views are so abhorrent to you that they punch a hole in the stud wall you’ve built to separate my porn from my politics, then I urge you to head out the door without ever looking back. Click away, block me, or do anything else you like to avoid having to encounter my art ever again.

I genuinely think my case in the post above is worth hearing no matter whether you’re left or right wing, but I’m an unapologetic leftie myself and I don’t try to hide it. I am thoroughly in favour of abandoning art if it gives you sad feelings, and rejecting a particular artist – myself included – if you find their views repellent. On one level because, well, if you don’t like me, then why are you torturing yourself with my work? It’s very bad for you. Go eat a sandwich. On another, more important level: consuming and supporting a particular type of art causes the artist to make more of it. Clicking on my work, sharing it, supporting me on Patreon: all these things keep me going. If you hate the artist (me) and wish they (I) would stop, then whatever you do, don’t encourage me.