Monsters: A Fan's Dilemma

Dederer uses the example of how the Harry Potter mania of the early 2000s and 2010s was undercut when J. K. Rowling began making anti-trans statements online, illustrating how an artist’s biography can stain the reception of their art. Recalling her own children’s love of Harry Potter, Dederer explores the downfall of Rowling through a personal lens. She observes that the Harry Potter universe “offer[s] a navigable system for belonging” to its fanbase, especially LGBTQ+ children who face social exclusion and persecution in the outside world. In light of the safe space that the books and movies had provided for this community, Dederer identifies Rowling’s use of anti-trans rhetoric as particularly hurtful.

The author shifts her focus to the early days of her career as a film critic in Seattle. As a young woman surrounded by older male colleagues, she recalls feeling incapable of critiquing films objectively. In retrospect, she realizes that the men surrounding her only assumed a position of objective authority because they were ignorant of their own biases. This allusion of objectivity, she argues, was a byproduct of their hegemony, and of the luxury they enjoyed by primarily watching and critiquing films made from a male