A transgender activist in a “PROTECT THE DOLLS” t-shirt told Halloween shoppers in a street video that wearing a Harry Potter costume makes them “not an ally to the trans community.” The @DefiantLs account posted the clip to X, where it has drawn roughly 170,000 views and 1,700 replies, most of them hostile to the activist.
He tied the costumes to J.K. Rowling, saying Rowling takes the money people spend on them and uses it to pass anti-trans legislation. He compared the purchase to claiming to be an ally to immigrants while voting Republican because you didn’t know about ICE, and he closed on the word genocide. The video offers no sales figure and no legislative filing showing that costume revenue funds any bill. Rowling’s public campaigning has centered on sex-based rights for women and girls.
The replies went straight at the escalation from a costume purchase to a crime against humanity. One user wrote: “Oh, no. I’m not an ‘ally to the trans community.’ How am I ever going to recover from that?” It collected about 421 likes. The @DefiantLs post framed the clip as proof that Rowling had trolled her critics so hard that Harry Potter is no longer an option for them.
Another post, on Bluesky, pushed the same message. Torriyah Falana wrote: “This may sound like I’m too woke but idc. If you’re purchasing a Harry Potter costume, law enforcement costume (police, SWAT, army, etc), or Dolls Kill costume in the year 2026, fuck you.” The franchise sat on her list beside police uniforms and a clothing brand.
The costume scolding is the newest installment of a campaign that has run since 2020, when Rowling’s comments on sex and gender made her a target for activists. Members of the original film cast broke with her publicly, and trans activists have repeatedly called for boycotts of her work. Daniel Radcliffe was among them. Every new Harry Potter release since has drawn the same demand to stay away.
The sales record shows how that demand has gone. When activists organized a boycott of the video game Hogwarts Legacy in 2023, the game sold more than 12 million copies in its first two weeks and earned $850 million. It finished 2023 at more than 22 million copies sold. The books sit at more than 600 million copies sold worldwide.
The campaign then moved to HBO. Rowling is an executive producer on the new series, and activists have argued she should have been left out of it. John Lithgow, cast as Dumbledore, drew criticism for joining the production. HBO content chief Casey Bloys answered the objections on The Town with Matt Belloni: “Harry Potter is not secretly being infused with anything.” HBO kept Rowling on the project.
The network has also treated the series as a priority. HBO renewed it for a second season before the first aired. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone now premieres on HBO Max on December 25, 2026, a year ahead of the 2027 window HBO first announced, and Kit Harington has been cast as Gilderoy Lockhart for season two. The Halloween costume shoppers being told to stay home are buying into a franchise that is eight weeks from a Christmas Day launch.
Warner Bros. and HBO have run the numbers on the boycott and kept going. The game outsold the campaign against it, the books outsold every series in publishing history, and the studio moved the premiere up. A street video aimed at costume buyers asks for a smaller sacrifice than the boycott of a $70 game did, and that boycott did not move the sales chart.
When the HBO series lands on Christmas Day, will the activists call for another boycott, or will they have to explain why the largest fantasy franchise in publishing history keeps growing without them?
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