This week, HBO delivered the corporate version of the Expelliarmus or disarming curse for the long-standing cancel campaign targeting “Harry Potter” creator J.K. Rowling. We have been discussing this campaign against Rowling, a feminist who has opposed transgender policies that she views as inimical to the rights of women. The cancel campaign against Rowling has been extreme and unhinged from blacklisting her books to even barring the playing of Harry Potter games in pubs. Even authors who support Rowling’s free speech have been targeted. Nevertheless, HBO, which has also been targeted in the past, is now saying enough. Rowling’s work will continue to be featured and developed by the company.
HBO has enraged the anti-Rowling movement by announcing that it will not yield and will continue to work with the author: “J.K. Rowling has a right to express her personal views. We will remain focused on the development of the new series, which will only benefit from her involvement.” It added that “her contribution has been invaluable.”
HBO has a new upcoming Potter series set to premiere on HBO’s Max streaming platform in 2026.
Both Harry Potter stars, Daniel Radcliffe, who played Harry Potter, and Emma Watson, who played Hermine Granger, have joined the criticism of Rowling. However, the criticism itself is not the primary problem, even if they unfairly characterize Rowlings’ actual statements. That is a use of their own free speech rights. However, the cancel campaigns are far more damaging for free speech, as I discuss in my book, The Indispensable Right.
The issue of cancel campaigns came up in my recent debate at Harvard Law School on free speech with Professor Randall Kennedy. Kennedy defended cancel campaigns as the exercise of free speech. There is no question that such campaigns involve the act of free speech as people rallying for or against viewpoints. However, the impact of such campaigns, particularly in higher education, is to limit the diversity of viewpoints and reinforce an orthodoxy on our campuses. It is not to express a view but to seek to silence an opposing view. It is the antithesis of free speech values in higher education.
It also has a damaging effect on an academic community. When students see faculty supporting the canceling of conservative, libertarian, or dissenting speakers, it is hardly an invitation to speak freely yourself in class.
The same is true for publishers. We have discussed companies discontinuing publication of Rowling’s work and both editors and writers joining blacklisting campaigns against her and others. We have even seen the embracing of book burning.
For the activists behind this massive cancel campaign, HBO’s announcement is nothing short of a corporate Cruciatus (torture) Curse. However, both the arts and free speech are the winners in Rowling’s continuing to produce and expand her legendary body of work.
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Mermaids touts itself as one the United Kingdom’s “leading LGBTQ+ charities,” committed to “supporting transgender, nonbinary and gender-diverse children.” Over the last three weeks, the taxpayer-subsidized group has faced intense scrutiny. In late September, it was condemned for giving out so-called “breast binders” to children against their parents’ wishes. This week, a trustee of the group quit after it was revealed he had both advocated for destigmatizing pedophilia and spoke at a conference hosted by a group that serves pedophiles.
The perversions linked to the so-called charity drew the ire of British author J.K. Rowling, author of the “Harry Potter” series and notable critic of transsexual extremism, misogyny, and those who reject the reality of biological sex.
Responding to a tweet that said Mermaids was on its way to “be the new Savile” — a reference to the notorious pedophile and rapist Jimmy Savile — Rowling noted how the group’s influence would not have been possible “without the money and public support of certain corporations and celebrities, who eagerly boosted them even though the red flags have been there for years.”
We've now learned that Mermaids appointed a paedophilia apologist as Trustee and that their online moderator encouraged kids to move onto a platform notorious for sexual exploitation. This is a charity that's achieved unprecedented influence in the UK. 2/5 https://t.co/7guDJYAalJ
Extra to a host of big corporate sponsors like Starbucks, Mermaids has benefitted from donations from high-profile celebrities like Emma Watson, an actress who came to prominence in the “Harry Potter” movies.
I donate to @Mermaids_Gender and @mamacash. If you can, perhaps you’ll feel inclined to do the same. ❤️
Rowling suggested that “Mermaids’ fingers were all over the Tavistock Gender Identity Clinic debacle.”
The Tavistock clinic, opened in 1989, is shutting down this year. It was accused of hurriedly foisting puberty-blocking drugs onto children, which reportedly cause sterility and deformities. One former patient, Keira Bell, took Tavistock to court, claiming that the clinic didn’t challenge her ahead of prescribing her sterilizing medications when she was a minor.
They've been allowed into classrooms, trained police and had unprecedented influence over health policy, even though by their own admission they aren't a medical charity. We've also found out they're sending devices to flatten breasts to underage girls w/o parental consent. 4/5
Rowling raised the matter of Mermaids sending so-called “chest binders” to children without their parents’ consent. Chest binders are pieces of compression clothing that flatten a woman’s chest to make her more “male-presenting.” They reportedly can cause breathing difficulties, chronic back pain, headaches, skin infections, broken ribs, and malformations of the spine. 97% of those who use them suffer health problems as a result.
The Telegraph reported late last month that Mermaids was sending “potentially dangerous chest-flattening devices to 13-year-olds against their parents’ wishes.” In one instance, Mermaids agreed to send an adult whom they believed was a 14-year-old girl a breast binder, despite her informing them that her mother would “not allow” it.
According to the Telegraph, Mermaids has been running a free “binder scheme” since 2019.
In addition to pushing these devices on children, the group allegedly told individuals whom they believed to be minors that sterilizing puberty-blocking drugs were safe and “totally reversible.” A study published last month in the Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy indicated that such claims are far from being true.
Parents have suggested that Mermaids also convinced children they were transsexual and that hormones and mutilation might “cure” their issues.
Stephanie Davies-Arai, founder and director of Transgender Trend, a group that combats the mutilation of children, told the Telegraph that Mermaids “are giving out inaccurate and partial information and they are encouraging people to trust in what is a medical experiment.” When the Telegraph published its report revealing how Mermaids circumnavigated parents and contravened their wishes in efforts to mutilate their children, Rowling welcomed greater scrutiny of the organization.
On September 29, it was announced that the U.K.’s Charity Commission would be investigating Mermaids. A spokesman from the commission stated, “Concerns have been raised with us about Mermaids’ approach to safeguarding young people. We have opened a regulatory compliance case and have written to the trustees. We now wait their reply.”
One of Mermaids’ trustees from whom the commission wanted to hear, Dr. Jacob Breslow, resigned days later, on October 3, after it was revealed he had previously given a presentation at an event hosted by B4U-ACT, a group that promotes services and resources for pedophiles.
In his presentation and in its corresponding paper, Breslow employed the phrase “minor attracted persons” instead of “pedophile” to when referring to degenerates who are sexually attracted to children.
According to Breslow, “Allowing for a form of non-diagnosable minor attraction is exciting. … This understanding may displace the stigma, fear and objection that is naturalised as being attached to minor-attracted persons and may alter the terms by which non-normative sexualities are known.”
Breslow, who had been a trustee of the children-focused group Mermaids up until this week, also stated, “Many tend to begin with the linkage of paedophilic desire to harmful and abusive relationships and acts … rather than questioning, normative gendered and sexual intelligibility.”
Rowling wrote that an individual who had been arguing for the destigmatization of pedophilia, never recanted those beliefs, and “then wheedled” his way onto the board of a charity for vulnerable kids should be fired. She went onto tweet that either Mermaids did not do due diligence or “they were fine with [Breslow’s] views.”
When you appoint a trustee to a children's charity, you do due diligence. A simple google search would have enabled Mermaids to read Breslow's own words. Either they did literally no checking, or they were fine with his views. Either way, it's a catastrophic safeguarding failure. https://t.co/TBWHiDbXca
India Willoughby, Britain’s first man to read the news while claiming to be a woman on Channel 5, suggested that someone “needs to take legal action against JK Rowling.”
Rowling embraced Willoughby’s initiative, writing, “India, I swear to God, if you want to start a petition for Mermaids to take me on in court, the first signature will be mine.”
India, I swear to God, if you want to start a petition for Mermaids to take me on in court, the first signature will be mine. https://t.co/1HZ6BbCX55
Rowling highlighted that some of her leftist critics were apparently less concerned that a trustee for a so-called trans charity for children “wrote sympathetically about orgasming ‘on or with’ a child … but that the TERFs might ‘twist’ his appointment.”
Perfect example. The problem isn't that a man who wrote sympathetically about orgasming 'on or with' a child was made trustee of a children's charity, but that the TERFs might 'twist' his appointment. Then straight back to the self-soothing mantras, with a glow of inner virtue. pic.twitter.com/KwDWSK2B79
In light of this recent controversy, Mermaids has shut down its hotline, citing “intolerable abuse.”
Due to intolerable abuse, we have made the decision to close the helpline and webchat services for the rest of today and tomorrow. Next week, to enable us to take all volunteers off the rota, we will reduce hours to 9am to 6pm only.
American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
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American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
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American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
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American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
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