The coffeeshop mums behind me:
“We’re reading Harry Potter right now.”
“Is it not scary?”

Well of course it’s bloody scary.

I had forgotten just how much until I was the one reading it out loud to a 6 year-old. A face sticking out the back of someone’s head? A murderous whisper in the walls? Creatures that suck your soul out through your mouth? I often hear parents saying they’ll stop after book 3, as if all the bad stuff happens later on. Ha. The books get bigger, yes, and more dramatic, but just wait til you’re the one whispering murderously at bedtime, kill, kill…

It is scary, but that scariness is part of a much larger world. Say what you will about JK Rowling, she knows how to build a bloody world, and this is very much one you want to live in, for as long as possible. Has anything ever been reread/re-listened to as much as Harry Potter? How many millions of humans has Stephen Fry read to sleep over the years?

Yes, that world has danger in it. But the danger can be got through. There will be sadness, people will be lost along the way, it will get hard, but it will. be. got. through. And along the way there will be chocolate frog cards, wands that turn into rubber chickens, chipolatas, giant pumpkins, gernumbly infestations, squashy-faced cats, treacle tarts, talking portraits (sidebar: paintings can talk; photos can only move?), nutty professors, frilly robes, quidditch, wandlore, unicorns…

The best parts aren’t when Harry is facing down Voldemort; those are just the ends, when you’re already feeling sad because you know the book is almost over. The best parts are when he’s wandering Diagon Alley, or lounging around the Burrow, or even stuck in Privet Drive. The best parts are when you, the reader, can most feel like Harry. That’s when you fall in love with the books. That’s where you want to live – over, and over, and over again.

And the danger? The very dark darkness that lurks throughout? The real fear of things that are really scary? You can take it – kids can take it, and want to take it, and need to take it.

“Fairy tales, then, are not responsible for producing in children fear, or any of the shapes of fear; fairy tales do not give the child the idea of the evil or the ugly; that is in the child already, because it is in the world already. Fairy tales do not give the child his first idea of bogey. What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of bogey. The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon.”¹

or

“Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.”²

I like both versions. It’s hard to read Neil Gaiman right now, but that doesn’t change the fact the man knows how to put together a sentence. No offense, Gilbert Keith.

But I don’t want to talk about Neil. I have, enough. I’ve had my reckoning. (The look on my 27-year-old queer coworker’s face when I confessed I had a Sandman quote tattooed on my back. I know.)

It’s an extension of the SFF issue isn’t it? Children need fairy tales. Children need stories filled with magic and peril. The magic expands their minds, confuses them as to what is possible, stretches their imaginations. The peril shows them that danger can be faced, demons defeated, good triumph over evil. That bravery isn’t about feeling no fear; it’s being the Cowardly Lion and roaring your foes down anyway.

Contention: That scariness (within reason) – that darkness – isn’t the problem nearly as much as the editing is.

Why is Totoro okay for literally anyone, but Into the Spiderverse isn’t? Totoro has darkness, after all: a sick mum, a missing child. But it is summer-paced; it is almost more a place you are than a movie you watch. It doesn’t happen to you; you sink into it.

The scariness of Harry Potter comes as part of a much larger/longer world. It demands attention span; it is not edited for the YouTube generation. Children need that darkness/peril/fear/depression/cruelty. They do not need – and often can’t handle – loud noises/fast editing/constant action. Me neither.

It’s hard to put your finger on exactly what makes these differences, what pushes a movie from one side to the other. Lots of things, I’m sure. But you know it when you see it. Watch a movie made forty years ago and breathe a sigh of relief. (Amazing, isn’t it, that a forty-year-old movie sounds old? It’s just an 80s movie. Which may be inappropriate for kids for plenty of other reasons…)

There were two mums in the bookshop last week, one describing the plot of The Velveteen Rabbit to the other, who was pushing a baby in a pram. Once she got to the burning, the latter said, “Oh, so skip that one, right?” As if this was something so clearly belonging to a former age when adults enjoyed traumatizing children. Not for her child, in this sanitized modern age!

I didn’t interrupt. I do sometimes, which is probably not very English. I’m supposed to pretend I can’t hear people having conversations right in front of me because they are not, after all, talking to me. But I think it’s part of my job, as a responsible bookseller, to put them right. This time though I let them walk away; the subject was too big.

I wanted to shout, It's a wonderful book! I give The Velveteen Rabbit at baby showers – there’s a whole rabbit theme – stuffed animal, blanket – it’s fantastic! Were you never a child? Have you no soul? Yes, it is sad, but do you honestly think you are doing your child any favors by not allowing them to feel this, specific sadness? It is soul-expanding sadness! It is the very definition of love. What you love, so hard, becomes real.

I won’t belabor it (more). If you know, you know; if you don’t, you have another book to read.

We are pan narrans. Stories are inextricable from the human condition. One of the things they do is provide us with a safe space in which to encounter ideas we would not otherwise come across in our day-to-day life. Ideas we may one day need to understand – so we better encounter them as children, to give us time to grapple. To raise a human being is to help them learn to be human. The more stories they’re exposed to, of all sorts, the better.

“For though Hansel and Gretel are still running silently through the dead forest, someday, no, soon, the forest will come to life and help the children with pointers, and when they get there, they’ll be welcomed with a subtitle: “Hello, there you are at last!”³

Children need fear, and mystery, and wonder. They need to be lost. Because if they are never lost they will never learn how to find themselves. Mother isn’t here now.⁴

¹G.K. Chesterton
²Neil Gaiman
³Günter Grass
⁴Stephen Sondheim

Recipe: Spanakopita Pasta, a great alternative if you need the comfort of mac n cheese but also like bitter greens. A bit like my parents in pasta form.

The Thing about JKR

We are allowed to talk about it. You and me. With our friends, over a cup of tea. We can say, “I don’t know if I feel, really, that a trans woman is a woman.”

Because we are women. We have been womaning for a while now and we know that it is not easy. You can’t just… become part of it, like book club. We have fought, every inch of our lives, and it doesn’t feel fair – that this could be co-opted, or devalued.

We are allowed to have this conversation. I, and the other cis women of my acquaintance, are allowed to have these thoughts.

But we need to remember that this experience we have, of being women, born as women, with every intention of dying as women (probably sooner than we should, thanks to the many “female troubles” that medical research has failed to care about): is not universal.

I know what it is to be me. I have absolutely no idea what it is to feel like I was born in the wrong body. None. Whatsoever. I cannot even begin to fathom it. It is not real -- to me.

Nor do I know what it is to move through the world as a Black person, as someone who doesn’t speak English, as a non-American, as a million other things that are not, exactly, me. I cannot, on a fundamental level, understand any experience of living that is not my own.

But. I can try. For what it's worth. Read books, listen to podcasts, listen. I can leave a space where that understanding might be, and I can fill it with the lived experience of other people, who do have it.

This is what it comes down to: It’s not up to me, or your mom, or your mom’s OB, or the president of the United States, or JKR. It is up to you. If you say you are a woman, you are a woman. Because I do not get it I have no option but to accept this truth from anyone who does.

My understanding or lack thereof is – and I cannot stress this enough – entirely irrelevant, and should have no bearing on anyone else's access to whatever it is they need to access.

This is a difficult thing to talk about on the internet. Because what I am saying is that I am committing a kind of doublethink, which is easy to take out of context and/or deliberately misunderstand. Easier to keep it all between friends; definitely stay away from Twitter.

But JKR, no, she keeps going. She has nothing against trans women, she has trans friends… She’s just very, very concerned about the “real,” “biological” women. What about them? Have we forgotten how much they still need fighting for?

No, thank you, I have not. I am still a woman. I know. We all bloody know. (If you don’t, try biking down a shared pathway. The women will immediately get out of the way. The gay men and black men will get out of the way. Straight white men will stand their ground. Because straight white men have no concept of their bodies as under threat. They move through the world as if they have every right to take up space. The rest of us have no such illusions.)

Women have so few safe spaces. JKR knows the fear is real. She wants to protect women. This is good. This is also where it all goes wrong.

JKR says one of the things we need to protect women from are men-who-say-they-are-women. Biological women need their safety, she says. They are under threat, she says, which is true, from trans women, she implies, which is not.

The solution to taking care of one vulnerable group is not to throw another, perhaps even more vulnerable group, under the bus.

“But,” say some of my friends, trying so hard to do the right thing, “what about a person who’s been abused?” They paint visions of someone coming into the women’s changing room in a dress, swinging their dick around. It’s an image JKR has worked hard to make real, so when she’s accused of TERFiness she can hold up this straw man and say, No, look, I’m not hating those people; I’m just protecting these other people!

As if there is a conflict. As if we all need to choose between the abused woman and the trans woman; we cannot possibly accept the reality of both.

What trans woman in this world, conscious every second of the fragility of their body, would walk into a women’s changing room at any stage of their transition and make it obvious they had been born a man? (If someone does show up in a dress, swinging their dick around, guess what! That’s a man. They’re not allowed. Treat them accordingly.)

Women are marginalized. Trans women are marginalized. All are in danger and in need of protection. I do not understand the experiences of all women, and frankly most of them are none of my fucking business. But I can hold the space, just as I do for Black Lives Matter, to Protect the Dolls.

When JKR comes down on the side of women – by pretending there is a side with other women against them, she is not helping. By funding “sex-based rights” she is not helping. She is under the mistaken impression that she gets to say who is a woman and who isn’t, and it. is. not. helping.

Think what you want. Say what you think in private. Talk to your friends. Write on a blog that no one reads. But remember that your private misgivings, anchored as they are in your non-definitive experience of living, should never be allowed to threaten or endanger other humans. Especially not other women.

Recipe: Richard is very excited about making an absurd amount of these for Lunar New Year. I'm letting him.

The things you didn't realize you had to worry about

It’s inevitable: Every time we set foot in the English countryside, I’m reminded of Bill Bryson talking about the dangers of cows. Because they are dangerous, apparently; they will attack. Bill learned this at some point after moving here, and understandably felt the need to spread the word. And the English people he told said Well yes, of course, you’d better watch out if you’re in a field with cows. And the Americans he told said Why would I be in a field with cows?

Why would I be in a field with cows. I never was, in America. I can’t imagine a scenario where I would be. Cows are… elsewhere. Somewhere in Iowa, possibly being tipped. But Bryson is from Iowa, so maybe it’s actually Ohio. America just has so much space I guess the cows and the people all have enough of their own and never have to share it.

There was a sign at the edge of the field: "Stay safe – use a lead around livestock. But release your dog if chased by cattle." Why would I be in a field with cows indeed.