100 Years From Now, Transphobia Will Always Have Been Wrong

A parallel between Wagner’s antisemitism and Rowling’s transphobia

Statue by Bernd, TV by Pexels, zombie by unknown artist, all from Pixabay

I recently enjoyed the essayist Claire Dederer’s book Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma. She probes the impossibility for art appreciators of entirely separating artists from their art.

Mostly, she talks about the problem of art that is widely agreed to be great (or, in any event, highly enjoyable) but that was created by men who are sexual predators.

She also talks about the music of Richard Wagner, who was an antisemite, and J.K. Rowling, who is a transphobe. For me, this illuminated a parallel between antisemitism and transphobia.

Wagner’s Antisemitism

The composer Richard Wagner (1813–1883) was antisemitic. Dederer quotes Simon Callow:

“Wagner’s anti-Semitism… was more than a bizarre peccadillo, beyond a prejudice: it was an obsession, a monomania, a full-blown neurosis. No conversation with Wagner ever occurred without a detour on the subject of Judaism. When, towards the end of Wagner’s life, the painter Renoir had a sitting with him, Wagner interrupted his own pleasant flow of small talk with a sudden unprovoked denunciation of Jews which rapidly became rancid.”