In case you have not yet seen, Romance Con and Julie Soto mutually agreed that she will not appear at this year’s event. This was announced on the Romance Con social media accounts on Tuesday and then updated on the Romance Con website on Wednesday. 

 

Also, for the past several weeks, we have been finalizing a partnership with a summer camp for trans youth that is very close to our team, located in a red state. It has only not yet been announced because the team there is understandably busy at this time of the year. 

 

With regards to EnchantiCon, our sister fantasy con, the Harry Potter-related content at that event comes specifically at the request of our trans and nonbinary community members. Since J.K. Rowling showed her true colors online, and we subsequently ended LeakyCon, we received a significant amount of feedback from these community members fearing that their last safe space to discuss Harry Potter would be disappearing. 

 

The primary goal of all of our events, including Romance Con, is to provide fans with a safe and welcoming space to engage in fandom, a goal that is especially critical for fandoms that are lacking in safe online spaces. In the case of Harry Potter, these safe spaces have disappeared intentionally for the sake of reducing the online footprint — and by extension power — of the author who causes so much material harm. While some segments of the former fandom community feel that this should extend to people’s internal experiences, and are well within their right to distance themselves from any discussions of the fandom, not all feel this way. There is no harm committed when privately enjoying a story that has been foundational. Furthermore, for many trans fans who attended LeakyCon and plan to attend EnchantiCon, the process of continuing to discuss Harry Potter is transformational; it includes mourning, catharsis, and reclamation of our own histories. 

 

The majority of the programs being referred to online were submitted and are being run by queer and trans people themselves. Nevertheless, in promoting these parts of the event, our team has been attentive to the line between reassuring our existing community that they are not being rejected and limiting the exposure the franchise gets outside of the rooms where the conversations will be happening. 

 

In all of this, our primary goal is to give trans and nonbinary people who still have feelings about Harry Potter a safe space to talk about them. While we welcome criticism of us and our event, we take the protection of our panelists and staff very seriously and will not tolerate any harmful comments regarding or towards them. 

 

We understand if you continue to be uncomfortable, but we hope that this context will help you feel more assured.