People should really just be allowed to tell their stories without having shit flinged at them :/
You just underlined a main point of feminism right there.
The right to put in a female main character without being told--and rightfully so--that she has to a be a man, because boys/men will not read about a woman. The right to tell our side of the story, and not be unjustly maligned in
nearly every single work we appear in.
But we don't have that yet--and frankly, I think it's absurd to say "Oh, don't critique! Don't critique!" when it comes to "shit-flinging." If you feel you've been insulted by something, you generally get the right to insult back.
I think it's fairly clear by now that the author of the article felt insulted.
If I wrote a book about a guy being tortured and treated unfairly for no reason it doesn't make me hate men, it just means I wanted to write a story with a subject that for one reason or another interests me.
Just saying--it's very different to say that the work has sexist, etc., themes and call the author whatever. This is why one usually says the work is "problematic," even, just to say that it furthers and strengthens certain tropes that are hurting people right now.
I dunno, really, if she's sexist or not. All I'll discuss on this front is her work =)
I don't follow the criticism of Rowling at all, personally. Hermoine may not be the main character, but she sure as hell is portrayed as babysitting the main character often enough. There are plenty of other strong female characters, such as the Molly Weasley and Prof McGonagall. Consider also that Harry's mom can really be considered to be the one who defeated Voldemort, with her sacrifice being the source of the protective magics that made Harry who he was, and setting the entire pretense of the series in motion.
If anyone thinks the above is spoiler-worthy, I'll do so.
. . . The best you've got is the mother-sacrifice, the women who gets married and has a horde of children (what did she do before getting married? What are her interests? Does she like to do anything other than mothering? What does it say about a woman who needs to kill and demean Bellatrix LeStrange in order to prove that she has worth in the series--according to the author, anyhow?), and McGonagall, a woman whose entire apparent role in the series is to be snippy and vaguely noble?
I just... I'm going through what I remember of the books, and I remember lots of well-developed male characters to very few well-developed female ones. If you really want the list to be "Lily, Molly, McGonagall, Hermione," I'll say... what, "Sirius, Lupin, Arthur, all of Molly's sons, Snape, Dumbledore, Harry, Malfoy, Neville, Ron."
I don't even really feel like that's scratching the surface. But maybe that's just me.
The thing is, I understand people's desire to defend literature. Really, I do. The series was fun, daring, imaginative. But I really can't support Harry Potter as a feminist work. Because it wasn't one.
I'm also still pissed about what happened with Snape, but that's neither here nor there. Also disappointed because I thought Ginny was going to end up absurdly powerful and awesome as the only daughter after seven sons, but apparently not.