Edinburgh Tour Guide Replaces Harry Potter Tours With LGBTQ+ Ones For Pride #shorts #harrypotter

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Edinburgh Tour Guide To Replace Harry Potter Tours With LGBTQ+ Ones For Pride Month #shorts #harrypotter

A tour guide in Edinburgh will replace Harry Potter themed tours of the city with LGBTQ+ ones for Pride Month, after feeling “conflict” about the personal opinions of author JK Rowling. Fraser Horn, founder of tour company Street Historians based in the Scottish capital, said he was “really conflicted” about whether or not to continue giving the tours due to Rowling’s contentious views on trans rights.

The views of the author, who penned the Harry Potter books and will serve as an executive producer for the new TV adaption, include but have been limited to calling trans women “crossdressing straight men”, making fun of inclusive language and campaigning against Olympic boxer Imane Khelif who was thrust into the centre of a gender storm during the Paris Games. After the UK Supreme Court issued a ruling last month setting out the definition of a “woman” for the purposes of Equality Act 2010 as being rooted in biological sex rather than gender identity, a decision that has been heavily criticised as exclusionary to trans women, Rowling confirmed she was responsible for a £70,000 donation to the gender-critical group that brought the case to the UK’s highest court. Harry Potter themed tours in Edinburgh are a popular tourist attraction given Rowling lived in the Scottish capital when she wrote the books and is believed to have sourced a great deal of inspiration from the city for the settings of her children’s novels. Commenting on his decision to halt the tours in June, Fraser wrote on his blog: “There’s an increasing amount of negativity around the [Harry Potter] series which is making it much harder to conjure up affection, and for that reason the Edinburgh Street Historians are having internal discussions. “JK Rowling, for years beloved by many due to her championing of some pretty great causes related to children’s books and funding research into multiple sclerosis, got involved in politics. In particular, LGBTQ+ politics was her issue. In particular, comments about the trans community.”

Speaking to Edinburgh Live, Fraser said it felt “good” to make his position on the issue clear. “Some companies have put out statements [about Rowling] and others have said nothing and seem to feel it’s not their business to comment. I think it is our business. We’re in a position to say things and we have a responsibility. If the world is becoming a less welcoming place, it’s our job to make the world more welcoming,” he said.

The LGBTQ+ tours that will take place in June focus on the stories of queer Scots from throughout history and takes guests across the city. The Harry Potter tours are set to resume after June but Fraser is unsure whether to continue with them, saying whilst he enjoys how passionate guests are for the content there “comes a point where it’s harder to justify.” “I’m really conflicted on this and a lot of tour guides are thinking similar. Not all, but some definitely are,” he added.

The tour company’s decision follows the news, earlier this month, that artists around the country were offering donation-based cover-ups to people who had Harry Potter tattoos but now feel disillusioned with the series.
Helena Gifford, who runs Hella Tattoos in Brighton, posted a reel on Instagram in which she revealed a stencil on someone’s back reading: “F*** TERFS. Free Harry Potter coverups.” TERF stands for trans-exclusionary radical feminist and is frequently used in a pejorative way to describe people who hold gender-critical views; many gender-critical feminists view the word “TERF” as a slur. Speaking to Brighton newspaper The Argus, Gifford said: “I saw a post that JK Rowling had funded the ruling, and I got really annoyed. I thought that if I had a Harry Potter tattoo, I would want to get it covered.” Instead of paying, she asked clients (or allies) to donate to a GoFundMe to raise money for Trans Pride Brighton.

#lgbtqia #edinburgh #harrypotter #trans #scotland #tour

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