No, Stewie. You Can't Have it Both Ways.

Breanna Stewart is finding herself on the wrong side of history with her Harry Potter partnership.

The summer of 2018 was one hell of a time to be a wrestling fan. While WWE was doing some interesting things, I found myself gravitating more toward pro wrestling in Japan, as well as Ring of Honor.

Ring of Honor has been a staple of American professional wrestling for decades, and during the mid-2010s, they really ramped of their partnership with New Japan Professional Wrestling.

I talked about my fandom of wrestling a few weeks ago, and I'm going to transition here.

I promise.

But in 2018, wrestling was a nice escape for me. So when I saw that Ring of Honor was going to be at the 2300 Arena (see ECW Arena in the early 2000s) in Philadelphia for a show, I knew that I had to treat myself to go.

I was looking forward to the action, yes, but I was also excited to see my favorite wrestler perform – Marcy Scurll.

Scurll, a UK wrestler known as the Villain of the Bullet Club, was a good wrestler. But as an entertainer? He was arguably the most talked about "independent" wrestler of the year.

While I'm not in the camp of praising celebrities or treating them as anything other than people, I also believe in celebrating the people who help you escape the horrors of everyday life.

So for the first time ever, I paid for a meet-and-greet opportunity before the show.

I was a 32-year-old dude, and it was just to get a photo and tell him thanks for making the world a little less shitty.

Oh, Michael. If you only knew.

See, wrestling had its own #MeToo movement, called #SpeakingOut. And wouldn't you know it – Mary Scurll was on it. Scurll was accused of sexual misconduct when he had sex with a 16-year-old wrestling pupil in London (where that age is OK legally, but fucking disgusting).

Scurll issued a weak-ass statement, essentially saying that it was true, saying he wanted to seek forgiveness for "unknowingly contributing to a culture that for too long has promulgated ego over humanity and hurt many along the way. For those of us with a voice that can reach beyond our own doorsteps, it is our shared responsibility to be better and do more."

When that happened, I didn't have any second thoughts.

The eight Scurll shirts I had? Thrown in the trash.

The Halloween costume I had? Trashed.

The picture my buddy bought for me and framed? Trashed.

I mean, fuck. The only photo I have of my on top of the Great Wall of China is in a Marty Scurll shirt.

We can be fans of celebrities, but we do not know these people at all. When they truly show us who they are, it's up to us to hold them accountable and not support them anymore.

And make no mistake about it, Breanna Stewart – J.K. Rowling has told us many times just who she is.

Stewart, who has a shoe deal with Puma, announced another Harry Potter-inspired collaboration for her Stewie 4 shoes.

The fantastic Emily Adler spoke with Stewart about the backlash she faced, and as always, Adler did a great job putting the piece together.

Like many, Stewart's love of Harry Potter goes back to her youth, channeling the importance of the books on her childhood and the magic they had.

I never read the books. I never saw the movies. But I know many people who have, and they all feel the same way.

At times, I'm sad that I didn't get to experience that, but my Christian biological father (yes, the piece of shit I wrote about last month), didn't allow me to read them because of the wizardry in them.

It's funny in hindsight, knowing how closely aligned he and Rowling are around LGBTQ issues.

And the way that Stewart feels is understandable. But she asks a question in the piece that is worth highlighting.

“How can I have a world where I can do both, where I can talk about my shoes of Hedwig and [Nagini], but also continuing to actively show support in the transgender community and making it so these shoes are a direct reflection of that, to counterbalance everything that J. K. Rowling has done and said."

To be blunt, Stewie, you can't. Because by partnering with Rowling and Harry Potter, you are hurting the trans community.

You aren't hurting a community that is told it doesn't exist. That is under attack every single day by the current administration.

It's a community that is having its rights stripped away. A community where 46% of young trans and nonbinary people contemplated suicide in a calendar year.

And the thing is – Stewie knows this. Adler highlighted in her article about the backlash that Stewart received when she had this partnership with the Stewie 3.

At that time, Stewart asked for "grace and understanding."

A player that could deserve grace and understanding is Hannah Hidalgo, who is one of the recent recipients of NIL through Unrivaled.

Hidalgo shared a video on Instagram from Candace Owens talking about same-sex marriage being a sin.

It's deplorable, terrible, and Hidalgo deserved the criticism that she received.

But she was also a 19-year-old who is recovering from a lifetime of indoctrination of catholicism.

I wasn't raised catholic, but I was raised in a strict christian home. I was told that same-sex relationships were wrong. That you would go straight to hell. That it was "Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve."

I am forever thankful that I was able to realize at a young age that it wasn't right. That we should "treat others like we want to be treated, so why is it different for people who are attracted to the same sex?"

"Because it says so in the Bible," I was told and subsequently told not to question them.

With Hidalgo, in her Player's Tribune piece, she danced around it without really addressing it head-on, but there is time for her to actually have growth and realize the error in her ways and thoughts and upbringing.

I'm not her biggest fan. Hell, I'm not a fan of her at all. She has a lot to prove to a lot of people, and far be it from me to tell anyone – let alone a queer person who felt harmed by her actions, words, and rhetoric – how to feel.

We don't have to like these people because we don't know them!

But there's a greater chance of Hidalgo showing growth as a 20-year-old than there is for Rowling.

Since 2018, Rowling has been a vocal TERF (trans-exclusionary radical feminist). In 2024, Rowling said that trans kids do not exist. This year, in April, "the United Kingdom's Supreme Court unanimously passed a ruling that limited the definition of a woman to be based on "biological sex" under Britain's Equality Act, excluding trans women from being protected from discrimination. In response to the ruling, Rowling gloated in several X posts celebrating "terfs" and referring to the ruling as "TERF VE Day," a "play on V-E Day, the formal end of World War II and Nazi occupation in Europe," said USA Today. She capped off the thread with a photo of herself drinking a cocktail and smoking a cigar, captioned "I love it when a plan comes together."

Rowling is a soon-to-be 60-year-old transphobe, who is three times the age of Hidalgo.

We know who Rowling is, and there will be no changing that fact.

That's what's so disappointing about it, Stewie. You can still hold a place in your heart for Harry Potter. You can come out and say how much it meant to you as a kid, and you're so glad you were born at a time where you could escape in the Harry Potter magic.

But you don't get to ask for grace and understanding with a shoe release and then come back and do it again.

I'm sorry, but you don't.

Because even if the profits that Rowling sees from that are small, you're still amplifying her name. And by amplifying her name, you're amplifying her rhetoric.

The Harry Potter video game looked really fucking cool. But there are a lot of fun video games out there that don't line the pockets of one the world's biggest transphobes.

By doing so, you're amplifying hate. And transphobia. And erasure.

You have the lightning bolt tattoo after your Achilles injury. That's meaningful to you, and it's a way to pay tribute to a world that meant so much to you as a kid.

But what you're doing now is showing that a player that means so much to young kids – including trans kids – is picking the side of evil over good.