How do we become the people we are? Humanist common sense proposes that people are born with a rational "self." But poststructural theory proposes a subjectivity formed in interaction with cultural discourses. Poststructural theory offers teachers fresh ways to teach critical literacy and thinking and provides students with ways to resist ideas about who they ought to be. The Harry Potter novels provide many illustrations of humanist discourses at work in the construction of gendered identities. Those who believe the world can be changed for the better can find hope in the idea that the story of who we take ourselves to be is never concluded. Always changing and becoming, readers (like the writers of Harry Potter fan fiction) can and do create new discourses that counter old ones. Teachers can invite teens to read and write against the grain and to create new discourses of gendered identities beyond the male/female binaries of humanism.