The Museum of Pop Culture in Seattle.,WA  still displays Harry Potter memorabilia , but it has removed J.K. Rowling’s name from its Harry Potter exhibition. 

Chris Moore, MoPOP’s exhibitions manager, justified the museum’s action in a 1,400-word blog post titled “She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named”.

“There’s a certain cold, heartless, joy-sucking entity in the world of Harry Potter,” Moore’s diatribe against Rowling began. “Her transphobic viewpoints are front and center these days, but we can’t forget all the other ways that she’s problematic: the support of antisemitic creators, the racial stereotypes that she used while creating characters, the incredibly white wizarding world, the fat shaming, the lack of LGBTQIA+ representation, the super-chill outlook on the bigotry and othering of those that don’t fit into the standard wizarding world, and so much more,” he continued.

On Aug. 6, 2023, MoPOP’s CEO, Michele Y. Smith, appointed in March 2023, said in a news release that the post was “a collective statement” and that “MoPOP has a commitment to diversity and inclusion leveraging the power of arts to drive social change.”

Rowling has been subjected to criticism for what some have called transphobic remarks. In June 2020, she drew outrage when she criticized an opinion piece published by a website that used the phrase “ people who menstruate.” “I’m sure there used to be a word for those people,” Rowling tweeted. “Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?” 

She continued with comments about the concept of biological sex. “If sex isn’t real, there’s no same-sex attraction,” she tweeted. “If sex isn’t real, the lived reality of women globally is erased. I know and love trans people, but erasing the concept of sex removes the ability of many to meaningfully discuss their lives. It isn’t hate to speak the truth.”

On Aug. 6, actor James Dreyfus defended Rowling in an item he wrote for Spiked, a U.K. publication. “Here we go again,” he wrote. “Another institution, brimming with self-righteous faux outrage, is trying to airbrush JK Rowling’s name out of history, Once again, Rowling’s reasonable and rational defence of women’s sex-based rights is being presented disingenuously as ‘hateful’ or ‘harmful’ towards transgender people, and therefore deserving of cancellation.”

You might already know about this controversy if you follow the news in the New York Post, SkyNews, Euronews, The Jewish Press, the Daily Mail , the Telegraph, MSN or Spiked. But for some reason you won’t have read about it in The Seattle Times.