Emily Articulated: Ethical

By Emily Erickson
Reader Columnist

I was gifted my first Harry Potter book in third grade. It was wrapped alongside my siblings’ copies, with strict instructions to wait our turn and read them in order. As the youngest, and the obvious recipient of Book 3, I was assigned to wait (an everyday kind of injustice I’d come to expect).

I don’t remember how long it took or where I was when I finally opened Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, but I remember the feeling: being catapulted, headfirst, into another world. My body might have been in bed or on the living room couch, but my mind was fully elsewhere — Hogwarts, the Forbidden Forest, Hogsmeade, Diagon Alley. The wizarding world didn’t just feel real; it felt like an extension of me.

That sense of transport came to define my relationship with Harry Potter. The books (both read and listened to) became a kind of refuge. They steadied me before track meets, distracted me from my parents’ fights and softened moments of distress. After my mom passed, a friend took me to Universal Studios’ Wizarding World of Harry Potter. It’s one of the only clear memories I have from that otherwise hazy time.

Later, the world expanded to midnight movie premieres with friends and the podcast Harry Potter and the Sacred Text, which invited listeners to engage with the series as something reflective and communal. I even played Hogwarts Legacy with my partner — an unexpected overlap between his love of gaming and my attachment to this world.

So when the new HBO Harry Potter series was announced, I wasn’t surprised by how quickly it found me — trailers sent through friends and my algorithm. There was excitement, nostalgia and, also, backlash. One post, in particular, stuck with me. It simply read, “There is no ethical way to consume the new Harry Potter series.”

The statement points to a larger, more complicated truth: J.K. Rowling’s views on gender identity have, over time, moved from controversial to harmful, especially in their impact on trans and nonbinary communities. What began as online commentary expanded into public positions and political advocacy. In response to criticism, Rowling has said she is a “supporter of trans people’s right to live free of persecution” and that accusations of transphobia “incorrectly implied” harm. And yet, the broader effect of her platform — and the policies and rhetoric it intersects with — remains deeply controversial, regardless of her intention.

Even those involved in the new series have acknowledged the tension. John Lithgow, set to play Dumbledore, called Rowling’s views “ironic and inexplicable,” and admitted that the backlash to his involvement is upsetting, noting that people are “vehemently opposed” to his participation — even as he emphasized that the original story itself shows “no trace of transphobic sensitivity.”

This moral juggling demonstrated by Lithgow resonates. A series that raised a generation to care about injustice, to defend people without power, to believe that love could conquer evil and that bad actors could be vanquished, now has to be weighed against the moral pitfalls of its creator.

But this tension isn’t unique to Harry Potter. It’s embedded in nearly every aspect of modern life. You can support a local restaurant, and yet, they might source from Amazon or Walmart. You can choose the fair trade, organic coffee, only to learn the retailer is corrupt. You can stop listening to one artist, only to find out the platform you’re listening on (or not listening on) is also bad. I’ve even been critiqued for not making my own tofu — a food I choose from my “ethical” diet — because the packaging is wasteful. Even our most intentional choices are tangled in systems we don’t fully control.

And the hard truth is: It all matters. Our choices matter. Harm matters. Opting out of responsibility matters. 

But so does capacity. Because the constant calculation — the endless weighing of every decision against its ethical cost — leads to a kind of moral exhaustion. When everything feels equally urgent, it becomes harder to show up where it counts: organizing, advocating, protecting.

Meanwhile, the scale of harm at the institutional level continues largely uninterrupted. They laugh at our cardboard straws while fueling environmental destruction, starting wars and profiting from political instability. Public systems are dismantled and social services sold off to the highest bidder. These forces operate at a magnitude that dwarfs individual consumption choices, even as we’re encouraged to fixate on them — scrutinizing our every action while far larger powers move with far less resistance.

And so we’re left in the in-between, caring about so much that it becomes difficult to care about anything at all. Trying to disengage without becoming apathetic. Trying to participate in ways that have real impact, and avoid those that directly cause harm. But mostly, just searching for something, anything, that feels safe enough to hold onto, that might actually stand the test of time.

Emily Erickson is a writer and business owner with an affinity for black coffee and playing in the mountains. Connect with her online at www.bigbluehat.studio.