Tattoo artists offer free cover ups to former fans

On what’s become known as “Harry Potter day”, tattoo artists are offering free cover-ups for people with a Harry Potter tattoo who want to distance themselves from creator JK Rowling’s gender-critical views.

May 2 has been dubbed “Harry Potter day”, because it commemorates the date of the Battle of Hogwarts, the event that ended the Second Wizarding War. This is when Harry Potter and his allies defeated Lord Voldemort.

The free cover up offer comes after the UK Supreme Court issued a ruling last month setting out the definition of a “woman” for the purposes of Equality Act 2010 as being rooted in biological sex rather than gender identity, a decision that has been heavily criticised as exclusionary to trans women.

As a result, this has led both the FA and the England and Wales Cricket Board to bar transgender women from playing football or cricket at all levels. Also, just days after the ruling, it was announced that trans women held in custody by the British Transport Police (BTP) will now be strip searched by male officers, not female.

The case was brought to court by gender-critical campaign group For Women Scotland, and Rowling has confirmed in a social media post that she previously donated money to FWS.

Artists around the country have posted online to offer cover-ups to people who had Harry Potter tattoos – one of the most famous ones is the Deathly Hallows symbol – but now feel disillusioned with the once-beloved series.

Helena Gifford, who runs Hella Tattoos in Brighton, posted a reel on Instagram in which she revealed a stencil on someone’s back reading: “F*** TERFS. Free Harry Potter coverups.”

TERF stands for trans-exclusionary radical feminist and is frequently used in a pejorative way to describe people who hold gender-critical views; many gender-critical feminists view the word “TERF” as a slur.

Speaking to Brighton newspaper The Argus, Gifford said: “I saw a post that JK Rowling had funded the ruling, and I got really annoyed. I thought that if I had a Harry Potter tattoo, I would want to get it covered.”

“It’s not a nice thing to have to deal with and if I were trans, I can imagine it being really upsetting.”

She said that she has already received 50 enquiries and completed them for free, stating that they are not easy cover-ups to do as “a lot of people have big or dark ones”.

Instead of paying, she is asking clients (or allies) to donate to a GoFundMe to raise money for Trans Pride Brighton. She has already raised £250.