Did the title catch your attention? Yes, I thought it might and no, it is not click bait.
I am going to be setting my unfinished Harry Potter art quilt on fire since I am unable in good conscience to finish it and glorify the inspirational work given the the blatant transphobia and hate spewed by the author of the series towards trans women.
Would I feel the same if I was not the mother of a wonderful child who is Trans?… I don’t know, but I suspect I would since celebrating the work of an author that is deeply imbedded in her “TERF-dome” does not feel right no matter how many warm memories I have from reading the books to my children as they grew up.
Am I sad, yes, and the truth is that the quilt has been folded away and not worked on for well over a year as I grappled with this issue on my own all the while quietly removing HP merchandise from my life.
A few months ago I mentioned this quandary publicly and got a wide variety of responses and a good deal of surprise from those who were not familiar with the idea of the group of women who call themselves Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists (TERFs) and had no idea there was even an issue. Want to learn more.. this is a good read
But there is an issue and it is up to each of us to decide how best to to deal with it in our own lives. To be clear I am not going to hate on anybody who still loves their HP merch, you do you, I just can’t do it any more.
( As a deep but relevant aside I have never met a person who is truly secure with themselves who wanted to deny another human their basic rights… just saying)
I am no longer able to put my energy and talent into something that gives me a queasy feeling thinking about each unsupported trans person who is being targeted with hate just for wanting live their life as their true self each time I unfold the quilt to begin work again (believe me I have tried more than once).
Nor can I hang it in my house or send it out on tour knowing that my art would be so closely associated with the author’s name.
Truthfully this is a big fucking bummer since I had done some amazing work on this piece before I learned more about the author’s strong belief’s and it weighed on my heart.
Good art means nothing if I cannot display it with pride which is also why I will not be selling it, giving it away or even auctioning it to raise money for a Trans positive program. Each piece was hand done with a variety of thread techniques and while it is hard to let that sort of work go, I have the ability to take the skills I honed and use them for a project better aligned with my intentions.
Some will argue and there is a school of thought that we should separate the “art” from the “artist” and good works can come from bad people but I am just no longer willing to do the mental acrobatics that would allow me to not have to take a careful look at my own standards and the behavior I am willing to tolerate from others, including creators of other forms of art.
So into the fire it is going to go and while it closes a chapter for a single quilt it continues my personal journey aligning my art with my personal ethos, which is way harder than I ever imaged it would be.
