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"Oh, if we're going to conduct an unforgiving forensic examination of Rowling's movement, I suspect we can do considerably better than her failure to disavow every vile and abusive man who happens to share her contempt for anything remotely resembling "woke". There is a perfectly legitimate criticism buried in your observation, although I'd approach it differently. Our Most Blessed of Joannes is frequently moved to righteous indignation by the treatment of women in Iran and Afghanistan. Yet her public advocacy seems considerably less animated by the suffering of women in Palestine, Saudi Arabia and numerous other countries where women endure appalling violence, coercion and discrimination. Forced marriage, FGM, honour killings and religious fanaticism present ample opportunities for someone professing such an uncompromising commitment to women's liberation. One might reasonably ask what determines the geographical boundaries of her compassion. However, this brings me back to my original point, which is that Rowling has unquestionably done genuine good with her considerable wealth. Through charitable giving, funding organisations and establishing services for survivors of sexual violence, she has made material contributions to the welfare of women whose lives have been devastated by abuse. That is a matter of record. It would be intellectually dishonest to pretend otherwise simply because I find much of her contemporary political commentary objectionable. But we must distinguish between the good Rowling can accomplish with her money and the intellectual authority she apparently believes that money confers upon her. And that raises an interesting question. Take away the billions, and what exactly qualifies Rowling as one of the great intellectual authorities on women's rights? She is an immensely successful children's author. An extraordinary commercial phenomenon. She created a fictional universe that captivated generations of readers and generated a merchandising empire of almost unimaginable proportions. Good for her. But she is hardly the intellectual or literary equivalent of Jane Austen, Mary Shelley or the Brontës. Nor would I put her alongside Maya Angelou, Audre Lorde or Alice Walker. Even within speculative fiction, I'd struggle to place her in the company of Ursula K. Le Guin or Margaret Atwood. These are, naturally, literary judgements, and others are welcome to disagree. What interests me is the extraordinary tendency to confuse the financial rewards of creative success with evidence of superior intelligence, analytical ability or moral insight. Commercial success is an astonishingly unreliable measure of artistic merit. Talent matters, certainly, but timing, circumstance, marketing and sheer dumb luck play enormous roles in determining who becomes wealthy and who remains obscure. If box-office receipts were a reliable indication of cultural and intellectual importance, we'd be canonising Fast & Furious alongside the works of Henry James, Ernest Hemingway and James Joyce. Vin Diesel would be pulling up outside Trinity College Dublin to deliver the annual lecture on modernist literature. 1/2
There is nothing inherently wrong with writing entertaining books for children. The Harry Potter novels have genuine imaginative qualities, and their contribution to popular reading culture is considerable. But writing an enormously successful fantasy series does not magically endow its creator with the intellectual equipment of a political philosopher, social historian, legal scholar or feminist theorist. And this, ultimately, is what I find so revealing about her latest essay. She has written herself into the grand narrative of women's emancipation, apparently convinced that she occupies a position of historical significance comparable to the great figures whose intellectual and political achievements helped transform society. Yet virtually every practical advantage she brings to this struggle derives from the colossal fortune generated by a series of children's books. That fortune can finance lawyers, establish charities, support survivors and change lives. Those contributions deserve to be judged on their actual merits. What it cannot purchase is intellectual authority. And it certainly cannot transform a billionaire's personal convictions into incontrovertible truths merely because she has the means to broadcast them to millions. Rowling's money gives her an extraordinarily powerful voice. The tragedy is how increasingly little intellectual discipline she appears to exercise when using it. 2/2"