JK Rowling ’embodies the divisive and bigoted evil she once created a boy wizard to defeat’: investigating celebrified transphobia using field analysis and audience research

For two decades, JK Rowling was a prestigious global celebrity, the widely adored creator of beloved Harry Potter series and Wizarding World mega-franchise. However, in 2017, Rowling began to promote ‘gender critical’ transphobic ideology on social media and was consequently pejoratively labelled a trans-exclusionary radical feminist (TERF). This article examines Rowling’s momentous shift in celebrity status and expound what we identify as celebrified transphobia. To analyse impacts of Rowling’s celebrified transphobia, we follow Stewart and Giles (2019) in using a field migration framework to analyse celebrity status, combining it with audience research. We argue the Wizarding World should be considered a cultural field and, as such, its defining criteria is a constitutive element of Rowling’s celebrity status. Examining effects of these criteria intersecting with Rowling’s celebrified transphobia, we present qualitative and quantitative analysis of data from an online survey with current and former adult Harry Potter fans (n = 242). This audience research reveals a defining principle of the Wizarding World cultural field is trans/queer inclusivity – despite being founded by a self-described transphobe. Although Rowling’s celebrity capital facilitated her field migration into gender politics, we find this transformation significantly depleted her once-elite status in the important cultural field of the Wizarding World.