Sex does not equal gender, and pronouns do not equal sex or gender. I like the wording of this definition, because it accurately portrays how I came to understand my own gender and how other people experience it as well. In my own basic terms, sex is whatever physical components you have that are the traditional binary genders (and also intersex individuals!), while gender is, simply put, how you feel. Whether you feel masculine, feminine, or on the nonbinary spectrum, or if you feel you have no gender at all. And pronouns are just words, in all honesty. Why sweat it if someone decides one set feels better for them and it makes them feel more comfortable and happy as a person? It may not be what you're used to, but its certainly not hurting anyone so why care?

Again, going back to my previous points, why must queer topics in stories be under such a heavy veil that it takes a practiced eye to see it? I know that more recently there has been a larger influx of mainstream openly-queer books, but I honestly think it's sad that it's taken us so long to even get to this point.

This, to me, seems like the epitome of "I didn't mean this originally but I'm under flak from fans and I want to look more inclusive." This statement is so obviously an afterthought that was never intended in the original story. (Again, I have never read Harry Potter, I am only taking info from articles and such that I've read up to this point, so excuse me if it is otherwise.)

If "sensitive readers" would have noticed "hints of his homosexuality," why not make it more explicit? Why should LGBTQIA+ readers have to reach for and read into things just to gain a smidge of representation? Seems lazy to me.

the act of closing up or blocking off; obstructing; also, concealing (Merriam-Webster)

(The meaning may be easily derived from context but I was curious as to what specifically it meant; since they obviously chose that instead of "omission" or "avoidance")

I think this is where a lot of fans have an internal moral dilemma, between wanting to "take the text back" for themselves and interpret it in a way that is more inclusive than Rowling meant, or knowing that Rowling meant it in a certain way that they don't agree with and having to deal with that, if that makes sense? It is up to the readers to decide whether or not being a Harry Potter fan is to be a fan of JK Rowling as well, and whether or not that is a dealbreaker for them and thus leaving the fandom and moving on to other things.

This reminds me of why my parents always had a policy when I was younger to "read the book before watching the movie." The space left between the lines in a text allow for someone to really imagine and make the story unique to them, and it's a lot different than watching a movie where everything is laid out for you to just passively consume. I wonder if there are Harry Potter fans who haven't read the books but have watched the movies, who might be missing out on contextual evidence for other people's interpretations of the text and if that could be a reason why there is such a divide between fans - because the movies are supposedly so strictly adherent to JK Rowling's interpretation of the books. I have neither read the books nor watched the movies so I don't know how true that statement is, but I believe it was mentioned in the Vanity Fair article "JK Rowling's Tweet Shows the Divide Between the Writer and the Phenomenon She Created."