Harry Potter Is Being Banned. Why? - Megan Phelps-Roper

Generally, it is the Republicans who are saying, "Men cannot get pregnant," and then you have somebody, generally a Democrat, saying, "Men can definitely get pregnant." Nobody in this conversation, nobody is confused that it is females who are getting pregnant. But the battle is over the language, what we are willing to say, whether we're willing to make these changes and make these accommodations for this very small minority of people. And for some people, it feels like so much is at stake on both sides. (wind blows)

Harry Potter is one of the most banned books of the 21st century. Why?

Well, um, I mean, for a lot of people, it was l- it was originally Christians. Um, there was a certain ... And not all Christians. But there was a certain kind of, uh, of Christian who, who believed that they were losing the culture in the '90s. Um, and I think, I think Harry Potter was ... It became, like, it was the biggest target. Um, but there were many things. If you go, if you look back, we, we examine this in our show. Um, you look back, there is Sabrina the Teenage Witch and The Craft and, uh, Charmed, and just many, many, um, different examples of witchcraft in the culture. And, and so Harry Potter became a huge target because, because a lot of people really loved it.

How many bannings has there been in the last couple of years? Has there been any movement to try and get Harry Potter itself re-banned?

There's been some. It's not a lot. It's definitely ... I mean, that, I think it was, it was a product of that moment in, in time. Um, so it's, it's definitely not been, um, I, I don't think a, the same kind of ... A, a target in the same way that it was in the '90s, for sure.

What got you interested in the J.K. Rowling story?

Well, if you ... I mean, you can't, you can't have watched what happened in the summer of 2020. I mean, that, for me, that was really the ... Um, you know, she tweeted in the summer of 2020, June of 2020, and there was this massive backlash. And I think to a lot of people who hadn't been really following the conversation surrounding sex and gender, the, the nature of that backlash, the, the heated nature of it, um, it seemed almost incomprehensible. So for me, it was, it was ... I was coming from a place of, of ignorance and curiosity, um, and just really wanting to understand what was going on. And the more I started to look into it, the more, I mean, the more it seemed like the nature ... The fact that the conversation was happening largely on social media was not serving anyone. Um, it was, it definitely seemed to me to be enflaming, um, enflaming that conversation, to say the least. Um, and so I ended up writing this letter to J.K. Rowling to try to find a better way of having that conversation and really just, again, to understand what exactly was going on, what the nature of the controversy was, and why it seemed like everyone involved felt both embattled, um, and, and just like s- like so much was at stake.