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Your points are convincing, alas, it doesn't matter if they are. Rowling is a TERF, and as per intersectionality worldview, she has to be every other reprehensible thing you can think of: a Nazi anti-Semitic bigot, a pro-slavery racist, yada yada. I think it was the Dr Drew episode with Ben Shapiro, Segun Oduolowu and Zoey Tur, apparently Ben would've been against the civil rights movement if he was alive at the time and the evidence of this was his supposed hatred for transgender people. BLM has to be pro-LGBT too in order to "fight intolerance". Feminism has to be pro both for the same. All rally against the evil white man and the white adjacent man to fight oppression. The success of Hogwarts Legacy might rile up many, but it is a "you lose even when you win" situation. That so many people like this horrendous, bigoted IP whose main series revolved around a Wizarding War against Wizard Nazis and this game that allows you to play as a transgender hero and whose lead designer was pressured to quit for what he'd said on his personal YouTube channel, would be cited as evidence that we have a long way to go in our noble fight against intolerance and hatred. They're all compromised, including infamously politically incorrect IPs like GTA and Saints Row, but the woke crowd shall continue to pretend that they're still bigoted and sexist and racist as the companies let them have mile after mile.
There's a similar sentiment in the OP:
But both of these I think have the diagnosis backwards. It's not any characteristic or opinion of Rowling that causes the HP fanbase to hunt for phobia-epicycles. It's rather the zeitgeist and the neurotic characteristics of the HP fanbase that sends them down this route, and they'd be doing it even if Rowling was a (even more) scrupulous adherent of woke signalling on social media.
There's social credit to be made in purity spiralling regardless of whether Rowling has heterodox opinions or not. Do you really think Internet People wouldn't be trying to nitpick problematic parts of Harry Potter absent the TERF stuff? I don't.
They're not beating the dog with any stick they can find because the dog's been bad. They're beating the dog with any stick they can find because a track record of having a good Beating arm is how you get credibility amongst your fellow animal control enthusiasts.
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I don't necessarily think his feelings on trans people are relevant, but I would certainly expect that Ben Shapiro would have been against federal civil rights legislation, regardless of his personal feelings on race relations and how people should be treated. I'm sure he now vehemently denies this because the Civil Rights Act has been branded as something that you could only oppose if you're a racist, Ben isn't a racist and doesn't want to be seen as one, ergo he has to say that he supports the Civil Rights Act and would have supported it if was around back then. Nonetheless, I would expect someone who favors limited federal government power and strong freedom of association rights to be highly suspicious of the more aggressive aspects of civil rights law.
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