Hating Others is Self Harm

A trans person's journey to loving my inner J.K. Rowling

I grew up on Harry Potter. Before I could even read them on my own, my siblings and I would sit on my parent's bed and my mom would read a chapter out loud to us each night. Eventually, I grew old enough to read them on my own and I devoured each new book days after they came out. Then I continued to reread the series about once a year until I was well into college.

And there were parts of the books that started feeling uncomfortable to me as I aged. For example, the way Rowling would joke about Dudley as reaching “the size and weight of a young killer whale,” was less funny to me each time I picked the series back up. 

Even so, I was disappointed when I discovered J.K. Rowling’s perspectives on trans people. Learning that one of my childhood heroes believes things that are so diametrically opposed to my own views felt confusing and sad.

But sad and confused barely begins to cover the way the left views Rowling. The general consensus seems to be that she's a terrible person who deserves nothing but scorn. While I can empathize with the pain many feel around her, I actually see this hatred as a form of self harm.

Note: for the purposes of this article, I'm using “hating someone” and “believing that someone is a bad person” interchangeably.

When you say someone is a bad person, you are buying into a worldview of good people and bad people. Within this paradigm, if you were to do the things the bad person does, it would make you bad. Essentially, you are saying that the seed of badness lives in you. And in this way, you cannot hate another person without opening the door to hating yourself.

For example, as I struggled to understand my own gender identity, I had a part of myself that would whisper painful things in my ear like “trans people are just delusional and you're no different. You'll never be a real woman.” I hated this part. It was saying all of the same things J.K. Rowling was, and she was “bad.”

I experienced fear, shame, and confusion around these thoughts. I had spent dozens of hours reading and watching video essays about gender and logically, I disagreed with what these thoughts were saying. But even so they persisted. I wanted them to just leave me alone but they wouldn't. I felt as though I were rubbing my skin raw trying to scrub the badness away.

Only in learning to love and accept that skeptical part of me did I find ease with my gender. This didn't mean agreeing with the conclusions that this part of me was drawing, but being able to empathize with the feelings and needs underneath those perspectives.

When I finally tried empathizing with that part of me, I discovered that it felt frustrated and scared. It had a need for authenticity, and could tell I was trying to fit myself into a mold that wasn't quite right for me (the mold of being a trans woman).

This opened up space for me to get curious about identities that resonated with all my different parts. These days I find some flavor of gender fluid or gender nonconforming tends to resonate with me. Since integrating this part, my gender has become a source of joy and play for me. Now, when people ask me for my pronouns and I give them a goofy, confused smile and shrug: “I'll take whatever you've got lying around.”

I've spent much of the last few years doing healing work, aiming to change how I relate to the world so I can live a more harmonious life. And I've found unconditional self love to be the single most powerful tool for my healing. The ability to look every part of myself in the eye, regardless of what that part thinks, what it's done, or what it's afraid of and witness it with compassion has been transformative.

Changing my behavior to be in integrity with my values tends to flow naturally once I've empathized with the parts of me that are acting in ways I want to change. 

But you can't love yourself unconditionally if you hate others. The act of hating others makes your love conditional. 

To be clear, I am not saying that there is anything bad or wrong about hating people. That would be engaging in the very moralistic thinking I'm suggesting we move away from. I do not wish to shame people for hating others any more than I want to shame people for cutting their wrists or burning themselves. I see all of these as tragic expressions of unmet needs. I want us to learn how to move beyond hate, not because it is righteous to do so, but because I think it will contribute to our own well being.