Having made a point of fending off legal action whenever possible to safeguard the enormous pile of money she’s made from creating Harry Potter, you’d have thought J.K. Rowling wouldn’t be too pleased to discover people are wearing bootleg merchandise ripping off one of the literary universe’s most recognizable signatures.
After all, this is the same Rowling who previously sued her assistant for a litany of alleged theft offenses, including the stealing of various items of valuable Harry Potter merch. She’s also been involved in several high-profile libel and plagiarism cases, and the author almost always comes out on top.
However, when the unofficial apparel in question supports her personal beliefs and often-incendiary opinions, it clearly gets a pass. After being confronted by one of her Twitter followers sporting a t-shirt emblazoned with “TERF is the new Feminazi” in the unmistakable Harry Potter font, Rowling couldn’t have been more endorsing.
Of course, it’s rarely a surprise these days to see the brains behind one of pop culture’s biggest juggernauts throwing her weight behind societal sentiments that not everyone tends to agree with, but we wonder if she’d have been any less forgiving were the bootleg Harry Potter gear to bear a message supporting trans rights.
That’s an entirely different debate for another time, though, but at least we know the unofficial empire born from the adventures of The Boy Who Lived can literally create just about anything for anyone regardless of where their loyalties lie when it comes to hot-button issues.
