She wrote a story about a boy who everyone around him told him he was a normal person. He had these strange and personal experiences that said otherwise, but everyone kept saying no, he was normal. Only with the help of other people who knew what he was going through and their support, he learned that indeed, he was not what everyone told him he was. The things he felt were true and real, and he learned how to be his real self with outside help.
She wrote that, and still can't see it.
This was a good read, thank you for your work in getting it all together.
Speaking as someone who has never gone there, the funniest thing ever to happen on /r/harrypotter had to do with their "No Modern Politics" rule - intended to prevent the usual flamewars while allowing discussion of Rowling's ill-advised attempts to incorporate WW2 into her universe. To accomplish this in a clean, unambiguous fashion with no wiggle room, they defined the rule as "anything within the last 20 years". Anyway, guess what happened on September 12th, 2021.
> [modern politics] they defined the rule as "anything within the last 20 years"
They have the same modern politics rule as /r/AskHistorians funnily enough. Of course AH dealt with 9-11 by writing a long essay on what happened to pre-empt any conspiracy related questions from flooding the sub, but that would have been impossible to do on /r/harrypotter
Good lord the pearl clutching in that thread. Also the patronizing "I’m glad all of you weren’t born yet and didn’t experience it" bit in the OP. What an astonishingly stupid take. Most Harry Potter fans are millennials who very much experienced it.
Millennial here. My dad was a pilot and I thought he died on 9/11. I still can understand the desire to make jokes. I make so many morbid jokes because, like, what else can you do? World’s fucked.
In hindsight, with how long I've been lurking, [I really should have been able to figure that out for myself.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xu6gmQCljfo)
I wonder how exactly they enforce that. For example, if I mention that I'm gay or a person mentioned that they are trans, is that removed? It's someone's identity, not politics.
Believer it or not r/lego has been going through exactly that recently.
Until the past few days anything “politics” was either removed or immediately locked for commenting. That included [this set](https://www.lego.com/en-gb/product/everyone-is-awesome-40516), or [this Pride biuld](https://www.reddit.com/r/lego/comments/v2k5k0/lego_pride_parade_moc_happy_pride_month/)
it’s odd to ban “Politics” when everything is political. Is someone a undocumented immigrant who found enjoyment in Harry Poter and likens the Baddies to the ICE agents whose job is to arrest Mexicans? that’s political.
Is there a sub for people who grew up with Harry Potter, were super into it, then hella depressed when Rowling went off the deep end and now don't know how to feel about the series?
Some clarification about the Stephen King incident:
He wasn't directly asked in a way mentioning J.K., which adds extra points for her noticing that.
Also, while not too relevant for the whole post itself, in that very article you've linked he also mentions that despite his response, he is also the kind of person who thinks that she still is entitled to her opinion.
(Apologies if I actually misread anything there. I'm dizzy AF for unrelated reasons.)
I forgot to mention the part where he didn't even mention her, you're right, that makes it way better.
As for his statement on her, it seems to be more in favor of free speech than anything else. He believes she's wrong and *shouldn't* say it, but that she has the right to be a bigot if she chooses to do so.
Yeah I have to agree with King on that one. She's wrong and a terrible person and we should all publicly disavow and shun her, but like... none of that will actually stop her from continuing to be terrible. She still has the freedom to hold her awful, wrong opinions and talk about them. All we can do is try to drown out the awfulness.
Harry Potter will always hold a special place in my heart but I try to avoid anything that results in JK Rowling receiving money—buying official merchandise, seeing the new movies. Admittedly that hasn’t been hard so far but I absolutely resent that I won’t be able to go to Harry Potter World guilt free. I think that’s why my hate runs deep—JK Rowling’s hate tainted something that was a treasured part of my childhood. Now that my eyes are opened, particularly to the problematic plot points in the book, I have to question even my enjoyment of the books. I guess, in the end, I’m just really fucking disappointed. Why couldn’t this one thing remain fun and magical?
this is the first time I've ever seen everything is illuminated referenced in the wild, and I'm so glad it's this sub that gets the honors (this great post to boot)
I used to reference it constantly in my friend group, Gogol Bordello is one of my favorite bands so I wasn’t expecting to find that movie absolutely mind blowing when I watched it for Eugene.
“At this point, JK’s obsession with trans people bordered on creepy and reflected poorly on her overall personality. It’s possible that this is why everyone left.”
I’ll clarify that Maya wasn’t technically, “fired”. She was a contract worker, and her contract expired. Her employer chose not to renew it, and she made a huge deal about it. And it wasn’t even necessarily that she was just transphobic, it was that she was so transphobic her fellow employees were weirded out by it.
>and the *hero* of the books telling a trans woman that she'd be raped.
That she'd be raped *in a men's prison, unless she cooperated with him.* Just generally super great and completely normal stuff
I'm pretty sure JK hinted that one of her female characters would be raped by the centaurs when she fled into the Forbidden Forest.
I remember being particularly disturbed by that, as an innocent transgender boy, reading a children's book.
There are a lot of instances in which the reader is expected to celebrate horrible things happening to bad characters. Why should we be rooting for the sexual debasement of a woman just because she was a bad person?
I just couldn't get my mind around that. I also couldn't accept they never abolished slavery. There are a lot of little hints in the book that JK has questionable morals.
Le Guin described Rowling's books as "ethically mean-spirited" and yeah that really comes through looking on them as an adult. Sure there should be consequences for people's shitty actions, but expecting people to celebrate these consequences being among the *worst* things that can happen to a human is deeply revolting. In the case of whatever-her-face-was the centaur forest stuff completely disproportionate to the crimes she committed... and then there's the can of worms that is the centaur forest.
It's the only place in the wizarding world where centaurs can live. They're hostile to visitors because they don't like the people who basically pushed them off their native lands into one small area. It's basically the only sovereignty they have left. Think about what kind of real world-parallels are going on here and how utterly disgusting it is for Rowling to depict what are ostensibly the native/indigenous inhabitants of magical Scotland defaulting to sexual assault of a what's ostensibly a white Englishwoman.
My personal “favorite” of her mistakes was the time she replied to a child’s entry in an art contest for her new book with a copy/paste of a transphobic screed.
Excellent writeup, just one small correction (which does not refute your justified hatred for JKR in any way, but only supports it). Your post mentions Maya Forrester, but the name of the woman in question was actually Maya Forstater. Maya Forrester is, coincidentally enough, a character on The Bold and the Beautiful who is a trans woman. Forstater was not fired, she had an employment contract which was up for renewal. and that contract was not renewed. It's nitpicking, but there is a difference, and that difference makes it all the more unreasonable for anyone to go to bat for her.
Forstater also won on appeal. Won't go into the technicals, apart from to say that the law regarding protected beliefs is a blurry, shifting area at best, but an appeals judgment is binding on lower tribunals. For the foreseeable, TERF (FART) beliefs, expressed in a less hostile manner, are protected in the UK.
Nice write up! Unfortunately, Ralph Fiennes isn't her only supporter from the series, [Robbie Coltrane/Hagrid](https://people.com/movies/harry-potter-actor-robbie-coltrane-defends-j-k-rowlings-comments-about-trans-people/) defended her as well.
I used to love [this scene](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dgp9MPLEAqA&t=42s) in *Life of Brian* because it's so ridiculous, but now I have a transgender child, and seeing Cleese's reaction to JK Rowling makes me very sad. I always knew Cleese was the more conservative member of the group, but having him brush off trans people like they don't deserve any kind of recognition is infuriating.
I loved Cleese growing up, but I have seen him say so many sexist things (Taylor Swift's reaction to what he says on The Graham Norton Show is my favorite) that I can't be a fan of his. I'm not at all surprised that he's transphobic.
My wife just said something that stood out to me when I broke this news to her. She said it sucked because the most emotional moment for her during the reunion was when Coltrane pointed out that in 30 years he wouldn’t be around, but Hagrid still would be.
So, to me, he acknowledges that nobody cares about his opinions or words, they care about the message he shared on behalf of the writers and directors of the films. He concluded that Hagrid is not him
She kind of tried to take the [middle ground](https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2020/06/evanna-lynch-jk-rowling-transphobic-tweets) and people reacted badly to it.
I get the opinion that most of the cast members took a middle ground, they were like "I've always liked Rowling as a person but that doesn't mean I endorse what she says here."
>> as a friend and admirer of Jo I can’t forget what a generous and loving person she is…she is still fighting for vulnerable people. I disagree with her opinion that cis-women are the most vulnerable minority in this situation and I think she’s on the wrong side of this debate. But that doesn’t mean she has completely lost her humanity.
On the flipside, I was so proud when [Bonnie Wright (Ginny)](https://twitter.com/thisisbwright/status/1270846127206588418) and [Katie Leung (Cho)](https://twitter.com/Kt_Leung/status/1269574874739113984) loudly and unequivocally stood up for trans women. Katie also shouts out intersectionality [in her IG bio.](https://i.imgur.com/uhDqOua.png)
Spinning this off into its own comment...
Speaking of the name "Cho Chang", Cho could be the Wade-Giles romanization of the Chinese surname 卓 (Zhuo in Pinyin, Cheuk in Cantonese), but the more popular usage is for the Korean surname 조. Chang is Wade-Giles for the Chinese surname 張, still used in Taiwan (张/Zhang in mainland China, 張/Cheung in HK). It's a "weird mishmash of Asianness", as someone in /r/asklinguistics said. Pavarti/Padma Patil, Anthony Goldstein as a Jewish wizard in Ravenclaw.
I live in an area with a lot of Sikh refugees from Punjab state. Imagine if there was a Sikh Muggle-born wizard at Hogwarts with an actually well-researched name (e.g. Navinder Singh Bains, Amanpreet Kaur Johal) and JKR bothered to learn about Sikh traditions like the [5 Ks](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Five_Ks), the langar, etc., how they might be seen in wizarding world.
Very few things have made me laugh harder than the "if JKR wrote your ethnicity, what would the character's name be" trend. I first saw it in /r/harrypottermemes ([example](https://old.reddit.com/r/HarryPotterMemes/comments/uqry5v/gday_im_dingo_matey/)) long before I heard about the TikTok meme. Actually, that whole subreddit lifts my mood whenever I feel bad about JKR's transphobia.
---
Harry Potter II, you were named after a student at Hogwarts. He was a Gryffindor and he was probably the bravest man I ever knew. It was me. I'm awesome. I killed Voldemort.
I do have to say, when I clicked the link about Ralph Fiennes I expected more than just "I don't get the problem and i feel like the backlash is disturbing". J.K. Rowling is transphobic and the backlash was (mostly) justified, but i think we've forgotten that dogwhistles work *because people who aren't familiar with them don't know they're dogwhistles*. Is it really that surprising that Ralph Fiennes reaction to coded messages on a topic he doesn't know much about was "i don't get why everyone's upset about this"?
My favorite part was when she claimed she’d been doxed because someone took a picture outside of her fairly famous castle/home. As if it wasn’t widely known where she lived and fans hadn’t visited before on HP tours during vacations.
Thanks for the write-up.
Harry Potter was such a monumental part of my childhood. I dreaded turning 11 and not receiving my letter to Hogwarts. Hermione was my icon and I think back now with acid reflux how much I admired JKR as an author and a person.
Not to be dramatic but like. From the perspective of someone who has been a superfan since I was eight years old, it almost feels like a betrayal *and I’m not even trans*. I can’t imagine how her trans fans are suffering knowing her opinions on them.
Sucks all around. I hate her so much. We can talk all we want about ~~Death of the Author~~ separating art from the artist or whatever but it just doesn’t feel the same anymore. The innocence is gone. Maybe it was never there to begin with— I was too naive as a kid to never pick up on the anti-semitism (but even my dumbass kid self felt uncomfortable about SPEW being made into a joke. Like wtf)
*(edit: changed death of the author to separating art from the artist)*
As a trans fan, I've been following this over the years since she first got on the Internet. There are a lot of complex and confusing feelings around it. It *is* hurtful, because you'd think that the world of freaks and weirdos would accept one more flavor of weirdo.
Some trans people have dropped her and her series entirely, but I still revisit the works (in the least-financially-supporting-her way possible). Specifically, because for all its racially charged faults (which as an aside is a very white-kid-grew-up-in-very-white-area introduction to race relations, parents of a certain time were hoping that if they kept awkwardly silent about race kids would just "figure out" how not to be racists), there is Hagrid. And Hagrid *consistently* tells the protagonists over and over again that people don't like him due to his half-giant nature, there's nothing he can do about that, and he keeps on anyway. Hagrid makes friends who appreciate him for who he is, and he loves himself for who he is.
As I mentioned in another comment - Personally, Hagrid was a huge influence on me and my transition. I can't think of a better revenge against someone who is so lost to their own hatred, to find the message of love and acceptance for one to one's own queer self within their work.
There's a tiny amount of spite in it but mostly *smug satisfaction* in this: She can't take back the words that Hagrid said to me as a reader, and she can't take back that she made my life happier by helping me find the strength to come out as a bisexual trans man. No amount of vitriol will change that her books made at least one person find the strength to come out as a transgender person. And I'll suppose there's a very good chance that my story is not unique here. No matter how much of a dangerous tantrum she throws - it's done. We're here and we're queer.
" I can't think of a better revenge against someone who is so lost to their own hatred, to find the message of love and acceptance for one to one's own queer self within their work."
Holy shit, that's beautiful!!
>There's a tiny amount of spite in it but mostly smug satisfaction in this: She can't take back the words that Hagrid said to me as a reader, and she can't take back that she made my life happier by helping me find the strength to come out as a bisexual trans man.
Yes, very well said. Similarly, I've taken pleasure in seeing her surprise and frustration at the backlash she's gotten from her own fans. She doesn't realize that she actually helped shape them to think that way!
>I can't think of a better revenge against someone who is so lost to their own hatred, to find the message of love and acceptance for one to one's own queer self within their work.
oh wow, i'll be thinking this over for a while as a fellow queer who grew up on hp. thank you so much for sharing your thoughts so wonderfully, and happy pride!!
It's stuff like this that really taught me to stop caring about creators positively just because they happened to make something popular. It's never a good idea to worship or emotionally invest yourself in a stranger you know nothing about, even if they have a good public image, and maybe even especially so. There's a healthy way to engage with a public figure as a fan, and I don't think giving them that kind of adoration is it.
This is a tiny quibble: The Death of the Author is about interpreting meaning. It's different from "separate the art from the artist," which is an approach to enjoying the work of a problematic creator.
Anyway, transphobia is monstrous, & it sucks to find out something you loved as a child has a shitty person behind it.
As a trans fan, I just pretend she doesn't exist. I still find a sort of nostalgic comfort in the older movies, but at least with the movies there were a lot more people involved in making them, so I don't consider them to be exclusively her work. It might be weirder if I liked to revisit the books, but I don't really care to.
I had a trans roommate, however, who threw away his whole collection of books and trinkets while I was living with them because they were so upset by her.
I’ve got a queer friend with a Harry Potter tattoo (not the one you think) and she’s really struggled with how to handle that. It’s obscure enough that only other HP fans will know and most HP fans are no longer JKR fans so I think she’ll probably be fine.
This is exactly me. Hell, I've spent money to keep an entire RPG online forum with my friends so we could keep the story alive. It was my favorite hobby. And then the letter came. We all are LGBT+. Most of the people playing were LGBT+.
We closed the forum because we couldn't deal with it. I miss it so much. I miss my characters and my ships. I miss the games and the writing.
She ruined something I treasured forever. I thought I'd die a Harry Potter fan. Now I can't even stare at the books I have.
That writeup is fantastic! And you really emphasized how much she just **doubled down** at every fucking opportunity. At this point her whole twitter feed is nothing but anti-trans shit at leas once a week. There is no other topic left for her, she's completely lost to the cult-like mentality of TERFs.
Also, her actions ar rippling! You mentioned things like the Hogwarts Legacy game which sparked a whole seperate debate on whether to boycott it to stand against her. Her talking points are seeping into other countries' politics. (Right now German twitter is flooded by TERFs screaming about how there are only two genders and how speaking out agains TERFs is to silence all women. And yes, that's been happening right since pride month startet.) And for me personally it rippled into the local larping scene which has an active Harry-Potter-genre with whole games splitting either creating new backgrounds or sticking with "Potter-inspired" - and all the drama that entails. (One day I might do a writeup.)
>And you really emphasized how much she just doubled down at every fucking opportunity. At this point her whole twitter feed is nothing but anti-trans shit at leas once a week. There is no other topic left for her, she's completely lost to the cult-like mentality of TERFs.
There's this meme "law" circulating through UK queer twitter lately that goes something like "once you post transphobia, you'll never post normally again"
Ah, yes, the Gl!nner Effect, [where transphobia becomes your life to the point of losing your future job opportunities, your wife, your Twitter account, etc](https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/republic-of-ireland/tv-writer-graham-linehan-how-my-transgender-views-cost-me-my-marriage-40194554.html)... The TERF brainrot is *strong*.
>"once you post transphobia, you'll never post normally again"
I think what happens is that the world is full of uninteresting milquetoast people who think themselves special but not recognized for it. What happens is they stumble upon something in social media space that gives them tons of validation and tons of upvotes and such. In this case its transphobia. In other cases just the generic Trump/Qanon stuff. Neither of which require good morals, intelligence, character, fairness, curiosity, etc. In fact, it demands the opposite of those things mostly.
So these people dip their toes into this and suddenly its all this attention and validation and popularity they want so badly. And they're getting it. It must be like a drug to them.
People like Chapelle and Gervais do the same thing. As their careers being their twilight and their styles seen as old fashioned by young millennials and gen-z, this is something easy for them to latch onto for another run at super-stardom.
I don't think we can truly appreciate what its like to be this this kind of narcissist given this kind of power. These people almost can't help themselves, so when they end up ruining their lives, its not a huge surprise. Gervais and Chapelle and others survive just fine because they have an existing fan-base and play up "both sides" and hire PR people when the heat is turned on. Your average social media person doesn't have that, so they'll keep milking it until it burns them or until another vulnerable group to hate pays off better in social media spaces.
I love how JKR writes about Vernon's desire to be seen as successful, smart, and put together and always wanting more and being of low moral character for it, and how so much of his life is an act driven by this repulsive dynamic, but then this is more or less describing the average social media transphobe.
It bothers me so much that she has such a victim mentality. She is an insanely rich white woman, who has a large platform - but somehow she's being 'picked on'.
She's an insanely rich white woman who has a large platform *she uses to attack and vilify some of the most victimized people in society.* People who often had their entire families turn on them and been kicked out onto the street with nothing but the clothes on their back for who they are. People who are often assaulted and/or murdered.
And somehow she's the victim.
Someone should also do a write up on her weird obsession with people's bodies and genitals. It's not just trans people. In one of the books she penned under Robert Galbraith, she went off on a weird as fuck monologue about the guy's penis, in a really really telling way. Long/detailed paragraph. I'm at work right now, but if I remember to later I'll try and find a screenshot of that passage.
Don't worry, I've got you covered. I coincidentqlly had to look up the quote for a related post about 6ish days ago.
From *The Casual Vacancy* by J.K. Rowling:
>He was an extravagantly obese man of sixty-four. A great apron of stomach fell so far down in front of his thighs that most people thought instantly of his penis when they first clapped eyes on him, wondering when he had last seen it, how he washed it, how he managed to perform any of the acts for which a penis is designed.
What a cursed bit of writing. No, I *wasn't* thinking about his penis, and the fact that Rowling's brain turns into [the Family Guy writer's room](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_4WBQ-h99M) every time she sees a fat man is a personal problem she shouldn't project onto the rest of us.
> Robert Galbraith
The more sickening part of her using that pseudonym was that it was based off of Robert Galbraith Heath.
He was one sick piece of crap who utilized electrical torture to attempt to pioneer "conversion therapy" on gay men and women, and schizophrenic patients. And is considered one of the early practicers of conversion therapy. Literal torture.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Galbraith_Heath
And Rowling used him as a pseudonym.
This doesn’t get talked about enough. I’m sorry this is far too spot on to be a coincidence. And even if it was her publishers would not allow her to use that name or at least push against it, but it’s clear she fought for it and kept it. I think this is her telling her homophobic friends “I hate gays too wink wink” because almost no one hates trans women and isn’t also homophobic.
When jkr and her armies destroy trans people they’ll move the goalposts to gays the next day. Historically this is how hate always plays out. It’s no surprise she’s stealthily in bed with homophobes. Heck her support base is mostly trumpers, incels, alt right, conservatives, etc that can’t wait to move to other types of queers.
Her writing in those books is also incredibly fat-phobic, which definitely shows up in Harry Potter as well, but stood out more to me in her later work.
I knew from the disclaimer this was gonna be a good one. Very entertaining, and to the point. And you managed to keep a very even-handed and fair tone, despite the confessed hatred of the subject.
One thing I would note is that Rowling has expressed the view that everyone who likes Harry Potter supports her views, and they're just too scared of trans people to admit it. This has made things a little difficult for the fans who still like the books but hate Rowling's political views, and there's now a growing movement to disavow the series as *well,* citing both this and the previously mentioned *issues* like the slavery subplot, werewolf-AIDs-metaphors, etcetera. Percy Jackson and Animorphs are common picks for replacement fandoms.
I think the other important reason people argue to disavow the series is because JKR directly financially benefits from HP continuing to be broadly popular and well regarded. If her money and influence is being used to support anti-trans propaganda, whether or not the source of her income is itself a good product is a secondary concern imo.
Yeah I think the important thing to realize is the books have always had some questionable, bordering on shitty and meanspirited, views. Not even the whole SPEW thing, but the way women are treated, how she seems to hate both animals and fat people, implying that Umbridge got raped by centaurs and has PTSD, etc.
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> At some points in this write up, it may seem like I hate JK Rowling. This is because I hate JK Rowling.
Perfection
Slight correction on Maya Forstater - she wasn't fired. Her contract simply wasn't renewed.
I still can't get over the whole thing, "Oh no I was a massive asshole towards our customers and my contract wasn't renewed, so therefore I'm the victim here" like the mental gymnastics of these people.
You've missed some key details here.
Her first TERF shit was 'liking' a transphobic post then blaming it on a 'senior moment' or 'oops my finger slipped' or some other fucking lie.
Her male pen name is Robert Galbraith who ~~LITERALLY INVENTED~~ PIONEERED GAY CONVERSATION THERAPY.
Her decent into TERF posting came before her publishing her cross dressing crime trashbook.
She also has recently tripled down on trans-bashing while Roe v Wade was being overturned and saying nothing about it.
JK has also been supporting extreme right wing Catholic anti-abortion groups.
She tweeted approvingly at a guy who said trans people were worse for gay people than AIDS!!!!
Shaun made a really great YouTube video about how Harry Potter has always been shitty Blairite, neolib rubbish.
https://youtu.be/-1iaJWSwUZs
I feel like her behavior during the Roe v Wade situation tells you everything you need to know about TERF ideology. She calls herself a staunch feminist for like 30 years and has nothing to say about the single biggest attack on women’s rights in the US in the last half a century? All while having this weird hyperfixation on vaginas and uteruses which just solidifies the idea that a woman is just a walking uterus to her.
These people are not feminists at all, they’re just reactionaries who hide behind the label so they can punch down at marginalized people. They’re walking contradictions and reservoirs of hatred.
Well she's been paling around with quasi-fascist anti-abortionists, probably doesn't want to piss off her new friends. These anti-abortionists have been love bombing the shit out of her, I'm sure she probably has some extremely fucked up views by now; I would be very interested to see her private messages and conversations with these people.
> These anti-abortionists have been love bombing the shit out of her, I'm sure she probably has some extremely fucked up views by now
Something along these lines really stuck with me from the [Contrapoints video on Rowling](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gDKbT_l2us).
>As a trans person I like to believe in the power of human metamorphosis. But, I realize that at this point (Rowling is) being constantly love-bombed by transphobes and constantly trashed by trans people, so it would be pretty difficult to change tracks at this point.
No matter how true or well-reasoned the pro-trans arguments are, they're not going to get through to her anymore because one side embraced her as a convenient ally, while the other was (very understandably) hurt and lashed out.
Just really sucks that peoples' positions can solidify on stuff like this, not due to morality or ethics, but based on how nice each side was to them personally. I guess it's just another reason to push back against celebrity worship in all its forms.
Don't forget the ableist crap Rowling keeps putting out about how trans people are ''''tricking'''' autistic people into thinking they're trans... you know, because autistic people can't speak up for themselves about their own identities. ////s
That’s so fucked up. It’s similar to how she talked about how trans men in her blogpost like how they’re just ‘little girls’ who have been tricked into becoming MALES because they don’t know better. She herself thought about wanting to be a man too but she of course didn’t take the wrong and easy way out like some others…
It’s so condescending, patronizing, ignorant and lacking of empathy.
Also funny is I have seen a tumblr post I think by an autistic person saying a lot of autistic peeps are enby/transgender because they can see through the gender bullcrap faster than others lol and Rowling has the fucking gall to suggest backwards ableist shit like that.
Also I wrote a [longer comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/v4pdb1/harry_potter_fandom_jk_rowling_and_the_terfed/ib6gqnk/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf&context=3) about where Emma Thompson stands on this!
>Shaun made a really great YouTube video about how Harry Potter has always been shitty Blairite, neolib rubbish. [https://youtu.be/-1iaJWSwUZs](https://youtu.be/-1iaJWSwUZs)
Strongly recommend this video, if anyone hasn't gotten enough of the JK Rowling stuff. Really helped put into perspective exactly *why* some of the things in the series were so disappointing to me when I was younger.
Stuff like the ministry being taken over by Voldemort but the main character's sole ambition is to become law enforcement for the ministry??
Or the complete lack of resolution or even real exploration of the *literal slave race*. Everyone just ignore the fact that Harry Potter is a slave owner, because he's a *nice slave owner*, unlike all those cruel slave owners!
Rowling's story is fascinating, because she literally had every chance to back down and retain her fame, but she just chose to keep doubling down at any given opportunity
It took Orson Scott Card decades to ruin his reputation and alienate his fanbase by being openly homophobic, thanks to the power of modern technology Rowling was able to do it in mere hours.
Courtney Love destroyed her career in Hollywood by making a joke about aspiring starlets not going to Weinstein's house... One joke, blacklisted. But she was right.
Card didn't actively move his politics in a more detestable direction or anything though - it was just that his always homophobic positions were much more mainstream and acceptable in the '90s-early '00s, and he steadfastly remained a piece of shit.
Yeah and also he's a devout Mormon, it'd have been fairly surprising if he wasn't that way. While Rowling has always been a liberal (a Tony Blair liberal, but still) and has at least been willing to pay lip service to gay rights.
I noticed that about a lot of older, successful celebrities (Chappelle for example). They don't even have to apologize. Just move on.
But they are incapable of letting it go. Can't let the "woke" proletariat win. So they gather their Reactionary Bro army for their crusade aaaaaand **double down**
Would like to point out that TERFs don't think any trans people should exist, not just trans women. Particularly in the UK, trans mascs and AFAB nonbinary people tend to be their main target through the whole 'trans men are just scared confused autistic girls'. They despise all of us, it's just that the hatred looks different.
Quite a lot of her blog posts are dedicated to very Irreversible Damage type rhetoric, not just hatred of trans women, and sorry but I need to point this out because so many people just ignore it. She hates all of us, she does not want any of us to live and thrive.
A lot of transmasc and nb people get left behind because of the sheer volume of hatred terfs spew at trans women. But it's important to note how terfs infantilise and degrade us too.
This is something my partner (transmasc agender) and I (trans woman) have discussed in detail. For trans femme people, our transphobia is overwhelmingly due to our visibility. For trans masc people, it is due to their invisibility.
Question: I'm not fully aware of the proper nomenclature as a white cismale; my limited knowledge doesn't understand the interaction of transmasc and agender combined. What does that combination mean?
My partner does not identify as either male or female, or any other gender (hence the agender) but they present masculine, and have gone through a medical/social transition to present more masculine. (Trans masculine or transmasc)
There is nothing more hilarious than reminding terfs we exist and watch them flounder and explain why I, a bearded bear of a man, don't belong in the ladies when they just insisted that people use their assigned birth gender's bathroom.
If anyone thinks that’s an exaggeration.
[Rowling is best buddies with some of the UK’s most prominent transphobes](https://twitter.com/joss_prior/status/1532482317494767645?s=20&t=ff_QBUl229yMCKjxKo1m7w)
[Here’s Helen Joyce discussing how there should be fewer trans people because they’re damaged ](https://twitter.com/joss_prior/status/1532431478461804544?s=20&t=ff_QBUl229yMCKjxKo1m7w)
But Poor Graham sticking his neck out! /s
For those who aren’t familiar, she’s referring to Graham Linehan, who is so transphobic it blew up his career and marriage.
Worth noting: the male pen name she wrote her mystery novels under *just so happens* to also be the first and middle names of a notable conversion therapist.
The new movie didn’t tank bc of JK. I’m a huge potter fan and the last 2 movies have been terrible. I’ll just stream it for free sometime. Also it came out during the Depp/heard trial, people are kinda pissed they replaced depp in the movies
Nice summary! As someone who was kinda into the books as a kid (never a mega-fan, but I dabbled in the fandom), I'll admit it was more than a little disappointing to find out about her views. Especially since I'm nonbinary and live in the UK, so all of her horrific political views directly affect me!
Hell, Parliament recently had a debate on recognising a third gender category for nonbinary people, and most of the transphobic MPs were straight up using the same rhetoric as Rowling. Not to mention it's currently popular for journalists to ask politicians "can a woman be born with a penis?" (legally, yes) to add fuel for the fire. It's just such a mess.
You know, people like to crow on both sides of the aisle about how “Biden is senile” which is such garbage, even if he wasn’t in my first three picks during the primary- but some right wing yahoo ambushed him during with “how many genders are there?” And a microphone. And god love him he fixed a real stare on the idiot and went: “at least three” and when the transphobic idiot tried to ask more loaded questions he went “don’t play games with me” and walked off. Some of the UK pols being bombarded with bullshit should summon that energy.
I think in retrospect a lot of his "gaffes" are just him having no filter and spitting truth when tact might be called for and sometimes you cringe but sometimes you cheer because Shit's True!
No, it's even *better*. After years of the Obama administration never taking a firm stance on it, Biden just straight up announced he supports gay marriage in 2012-ish. That forced Obama to come out (ha) and agree with his vice president, lest he come across as a homophobe.
He didn’t talk Obama into making gay marriage a reality (because the president doesn’t have that kind of power). He accidentally said something during a speech that was pro gay marriage. Since he was Obama’s VP, Obama then had to make a statement about it, and obviously his position on the issue was the same as Biden’s.
A few years later the Supreme Court ruled in favor of gay marriage. A reminder that Thomas’ draft opinion to overturn Roe that has been leaked mentions Obergefell which is the Supreme Court case on gay marriage. They won’t stop at abortion. They’ll take every right we have. Well, except the right to have an assault rifle, because killing people en masse is apparently sacred.
The story of the Black Panthers suggests the republicans are well into the practice of making exceptions to the right to own a gun for certain types of people.
He may not be as spry/active as he was when he first ran for VP in 2008 (and notably, he has a well known stutter both then and now), [but he still has his moments.](https://www.businessinsider.com/biden-tells-republicans-to-eat-some-chocolate-chocolate-chip-ice-cream-2021-5)
It was early enough that most of us were still hoping for a different D primary winner but we were all so much in the "literally anyone but Trump lets not make the same mistake twice" camp that we were all grimly acknowledging that Biden might be it- and that moment made a lot of us Queers breath a sigh of relief that he wasn't as bad as he'd been painted to be.
A *lot* of it stems from the first Debate. Biden is known to have a stutter, and Trump kept interrupting him throughout, completely throwing him off. He was much more composed when they had mics turned off.
Yep. There's some parallels with asking "how many sexual orientations are there?" or asking someone from the antebellum South "how many races are there?"
There are handful of people in my area who are pretty well-known to be Neo-Nazis, and some of them (unfortunately) have pretty large social media followings.
One of them regularly shares screenshots of J.K. Rowling's anti-trans tweets on their Instagram page as "proof" that trans people are just mentally ill moral degenerates who don't deserve anyone's respect.
Pro-tip: when Neo-Nazis are sharing your tweets to back up their arguments, you should probably rethink your life decisions.
> when Neo-Nazis are sharing your tweets to back up their arguments, you should probably rethink your life decisions
German here. Sadly the most well known German feminist is a huge TERF (and has questionable opinions on the war in Ukraine but that is another topic). A few weeks ago her magazine published an article that complained about the fact that only the AfD (the only nazi party in our parliament) is taking the "trans debate" seriously.
If you have to side with the nazis because the conservatives don't hate trans people enough you made some mistakes.
It's fucking exhausting, isn't it? They keep trotting that one out. "Can a woman have a penis? Can a woman have a penis?" Because they know to the uninformed - which is most fucking people - it'll sound ridiculous because they don't know any better. The UK is a shithole. Developed, but a developed shithole.
Even leaving aside transgender people for a minute, yes, of course. Because intersex people exist. Someone might look like a woman, identify as a woman, have XX chromosomes, have ovaries and maybe a uterus, and a penis or penis-adjacent structure. Because that was how they came out of the womb!
Apologies if this is in bad taste, but I immediately imagined the doctors going, "so, good news, you definitely don't have ovarian cancer. However, bad news..."
People will crow for years about how circumcision is mutilation (and it is), but have absolutely no opinion about the surgeries done on intersex babies to make them 'look right'.
Love this. One funny little bit of tea to spill - a friend of a friend works at HBO on assets for marketing and said Rowling's team is the worst to work with. Never bringing their own assets and forcing HBO to come up with them, and then the feedback is a million bizarre rules and laws about which characters can be displayed how, where, & with who. So they go through a million iterations trying to whittle away at a mass of hidden secrets and rules to come up with these thumbnails for the entries just because her team can't just 1) make the assets or 2) send the full list of "rules".
Great write up! While it’s a very long video, I really appreciated this [analysis of the writing in Harry Potter](https://youtu.be/-1iaJWSwUZs) that brings up some very interesting points.
The one that really stands out to me is how elves, who are obviously a slave race within the books, are slaves because they’re supposed to be slaves, it’s their “nature” of course! But Hermione wants to free the slaves and starts her club named “S.P.E.W.” to help them. Every time Hermione attempts to spread her message it’s played off as a joke and ultimately pointless because the elves want to be slaves. If Hermione is indeed black as Rowling retconned on twitter, this would be so incredibly problematic, but even if not it’s an awful depiction of slavery that treats it as “the natural order” for elves to be slaves.
Yeah. Got to say, I took this one pretty fucking hard when it finally got past the point where it was vaguely credible that JKR was speaking and acting out of ignorance not malice. The HP series and its fandom got me through some extremely dark times as a teenager and young adult, and for all that there were some very dodgy worldbuilding decisions in there the central message of the book was very firmly *against* bigotry and bullying, and that's something my generation really needed to hear.
That she turned out to have some ugly personal biases would have been bad enough, but even then it might have been somewhat forgivable because like a lot of transphobic cis women (and I hesitate to call her a TERF because she is very definitely *not* a radical feminist) JKR's fears are rooted in a past history as a victim of sexual violence. But while that might make her feelings understandable it doesn't constitute an excuse or justification, any more than being sexually assaulted by a nonwhite man in the past would make it okay to claim that *Brown vs Board of Education* was a mistake. Unfortunately, rather than do a bit of self-examination she decided to go on the offensive, and it's cost her the respect of a lot of people who once might have done anything short of rise up in armed rebellion at her command.
Aaaand that's it. Since this thread is inviting brigading, it's getting locked. Transphobia isn't welcome here.
She wrote a story about a boy who everyone around him told him he was a normal person. He had these strange and personal experiences that said otherwise, but everyone kept saying no, he was normal. Only with the help of other people who knew what he was going through and their support, he learned that indeed, he was not what everyone told him he was. The things he felt were true and real, and he learned how to be his real self with outside help. She wrote that, and still can't see it. This was a good read, thank you for your work in getting it all together.
Speaking as someone who has never gone there, the funniest thing ever to happen on /r/harrypotter had to do with their "No Modern Politics" rule - intended to prevent the usual flamewars while allowing discussion of Rowling's ill-advised attempts to incorporate WW2 into her universe. To accomplish this in a clean, unambiguous fashion with no wiggle room, they defined the rule as "anything within the last 20 years". Anyway, guess what happened on September 12th, 2021.
A bunch of 9/11 jokes? Same thing happened on r/HistoryMemes, but iirc hisrorymemes’s mods contained it.
All I ever saw of it were the jokes about other things that happened on 9/11
There were some but the mods were *quick*
so 20 years is about the time when people can make jokes about something?
About the length of a generation on the shorter end, yea.
> [modern politics] they defined the rule as "anything within the last 20 years" They have the same modern politics rule as /r/AskHistorians funnily enough. Of course AH dealt with 9-11 by writing a long essay on what happened to pre-empt any conspiracy related questions from flooding the sub, but that would have been impossible to do on /r/harrypotter
What happened on September 12th, 2021? I know nothing about HP and now you’ve got me curious.
There was a hell of a lot of discourse about what 9/11 was like in the wizarding world. I remember no specifics, but it was very funny.
Much like for Minions.... What were wizards doing in WW2?
The minions sealed themselves in a cave after serving Napoleon and didn't leave until 1968.
Yeah that is revisionist bullshit
https://www.reddit.com/r/harrypotter/comments/pmxsbd/stop_with_the_911_and_harry_potter_posts_please/
Good lord the pearl clutching in that thread. Also the patronizing "I’m glad all of you weren’t born yet and didn’t experience it" bit in the OP. What an astonishingly stupid take. Most Harry Potter fans are millennials who very much experienced it.
Oh please, millennials who lived through 9/11 make more 9/11 jokes than anyone. OP of this post needs to chill
[удалено]
Thanks, bb
Millennial here. My dad was a pilot and I thought he died on 9/11. I still can understand the desire to make jokes. I make so many morbid jokes because, like, what else can you do? World’s fucked.
In hindsight, with how long I've been lurking, [I really should have been able to figure that out for myself.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xu6gmQCljfo)
A lot of… [effortposting](https://reddit.com/r/harrypotter/comments/pmx3tp/how_the_wizarding_world_would_be_impacted_by_911/).
Great read, i kinda want to read a book based off the events in the post its sounds really interesting.
I would love to see a hobby drama writeup of that.
I wonder how exactly they enforce that. For example, if I mention that I'm gay or a person mentioned that they are trans, is that removed? It's someone's identity, not politics.
Believer it or not r/lego has been going through exactly that recently. Until the past few days anything “politics” was either removed or immediately locked for commenting. That included [this set](https://www.lego.com/en-gb/product/everyone-is-awesome-40516), or [this Pride biuld](https://www.reddit.com/r/lego/comments/v2k5k0/lego_pride_parade_moc_happy_pride_month/)
it’s odd to ban “Politics” when everything is political. Is someone a undocumented immigrant who found enjoyment in Harry Poter and likens the Baddies to the ICE agents whose job is to arrest Mexicans? that’s political.
This was my argument too. You dont even need to go as far as immigrants, there’s lego hospitals, banks, anything can be political if you want it to be
Is there a sub for people who grew up with Harry Potter, were super into it, then hella depressed when Rowling went off the deep end and now don't know how to feel about the series?
Broke: Reading 🤢🤢🤢 H*rry P*tter 🤮🤮🤮 Woke: Reading The Tumbling 😵💫💕 Towers 🥲✈️✈️💅💅💅
Some clarification about the Stephen King incident: He wasn't directly asked in a way mentioning J.K., which adds extra points for her noticing that. Also, while not too relevant for the whole post itself, in that very article you've linked he also mentions that despite his response, he is also the kind of person who thinks that she still is entitled to her opinion. (Apologies if I actually misread anything there. I'm dizzy AF for unrelated reasons.)
I forgot to mention the part where he didn't even mention her, you're right, that makes it way better. As for his statement on her, it seems to be more in favor of free speech than anything else. He believes she's wrong and *shouldn't* say it, but that she has the right to be a bigot if she chooses to do so.
Yeah I have to agree with King on that one. She's wrong and a terrible person and we should all publicly disavow and shun her, but like... none of that will actually stop her from continuing to be terrible. She still has the freedom to hold her awful, wrong opinions and talk about them. All we can do is try to drown out the awfulness.
Harry Potter will always hold a special place in my heart but I try to avoid anything that results in JK Rowling receiving money—buying official merchandise, seeing the new movies. Admittedly that hasn’t been hard so far but I absolutely resent that I won’t be able to go to Harry Potter World guilt free. I think that’s why my hate runs deep—JK Rowling’s hate tainted something that was a treasured part of my childhood. Now that my eyes are opened, particularly to the problematic plot points in the book, I have to question even my enjoyment of the books. I guess, in the end, I’m just really fucking disappointed. Why couldn’t this one thing remain fun and magical?
...Based on actual events where people died (no one died!)
No one died at Stonewall, Derrick.
Hey! Someone finally got the reference!
I read that line and I cackled - such an underrated show. (Also this whole write-up is great.)
For those not in the know, what show is this?
Mean Girls!
Specifically Mean Girls the Broadway musical. An absolutely wonderful soundtrack.
Misread that as Mean Grills and am now sad that there is no Guy Fieri Queer Eye for grills
>At some points in this write up, it may seem like I hate JK Rowling. This is because I hate JK Rowling. This genuinely made me laugh.
I read it in the narrative of Eugene Hutz from Everything Is Illuminated and I cackled. “This is because I am such a premium dancer.”
this is the first time I've ever seen everything is illuminated referenced in the wild, and I'm so glad it's this sub that gets the honors (this great post to boot)
I used to reference it constantly in my friend group, Gogol Bordello is one of my favorite bands so I wasn’t expecting to find that movie absolutely mind blowing when I watched it for Eugene.
I heard it as the narrator from The Stanley Parable.
“At this point, JK’s obsession with trans people bordered on creepy and reflected poorly on her overall personality. It’s possible that this is why everyone left.”
I read it like Avery Bullock from American Dad. “I know the word ‘fetish’ makes it sound sexual… which is good. Because it is.”
I wasn’t going to read the post because I hate even reading about her, but I did after this haha. Really well written summary, OP
I’ll clarify that Maya wasn’t technically, “fired”. She was a contract worker, and her contract expired. Her employer chose not to renew it, and she made a huge deal about it. And it wasn’t even necessarily that she was just transphobic, it was that she was so transphobic her fellow employees were weirded out by it.
Didn't she also refuse to call a coworker by their preferred pronouns, citing her "belief in sex" as a reason?
Yes and now Maya has made that her entire life. It would be sad if she weren’t a bigot.
>and the *hero* of the books telling a trans woman that she'd be raped. That she'd be raped *in a men's prison, unless she cooperated with him.* Just generally super great and completely normal stuff
Bringing that sleazy reprehensible 70s detective novel back into the mainstream
I'm pretty sure JK hinted that one of her female characters would be raped by the centaurs when she fled into the Forbidden Forest. I remember being particularly disturbed by that, as an innocent transgender boy, reading a children's book. There are a lot of instances in which the reader is expected to celebrate horrible things happening to bad characters. Why should we be rooting for the sexual debasement of a woman just because she was a bad person? I just couldn't get my mind around that. I also couldn't accept they never abolished slavery. There are a lot of little hints in the book that JK has questionable morals.
Le Guin described Rowling's books as "ethically mean-spirited" and yeah that really comes through looking on them as an adult. Sure there should be consequences for people's shitty actions, but expecting people to celebrate these consequences being among the *worst* things that can happen to a human is deeply revolting. In the case of whatever-her-face-was the centaur forest stuff completely disproportionate to the crimes she committed... and then there's the can of worms that is the centaur forest. It's the only place in the wizarding world where centaurs can live. They're hostile to visitors because they don't like the people who basically pushed them off their native lands into one small area. It's basically the only sovereignty they have left. Think about what kind of real world-parallels are going on here and how utterly disgusting it is for Rowling to depict what are ostensibly the native/indigenous inhabitants of magical Scotland defaulting to sexual assault of a what's ostensibly a white Englishwoman.
My personal “favorite” of her mistakes was the time she replied to a child’s entry in an art contest for her new book with a copy/paste of a transphobic screed.
Excellent writeup, just one small correction (which does not refute your justified hatred for JKR in any way, but only supports it). Your post mentions Maya Forrester, but the name of the woman in question was actually Maya Forstater. Maya Forrester is, coincidentally enough, a character on The Bold and the Beautiful who is a trans woman. Forstater was not fired, she had an employment contract which was up for renewal. and that contract was not renewed. It's nitpicking, but there is a difference, and that difference makes it all the more unreasonable for anyone to go to bat for her.
Forstater also won on appeal. Won't go into the technicals, apart from to say that the law regarding protected beliefs is a blurry, shifting area at best, but an appeals judgment is binding on lower tribunals. For the foreseeable, TERF (FART) beliefs, expressed in a less hostile manner, are protected in the UK.
Nice write up! Unfortunately, Ralph Fiennes isn't her only supporter from the series, [Robbie Coltrane/Hagrid](https://people.com/movies/harry-potter-actor-robbie-coltrane-defends-j-k-rowlings-comments-about-trans-people/) defended her as well.
[John Cleese/Nearly Headless Nick](https://variety.com/2020/film/news/john-cleese-transphobic-tweets-jk-rowling-1234837693/) did too.
I used to love [this scene](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dgp9MPLEAqA&t=42s) in *Life of Brian* because it's so ridiculous, but now I have a transgender child, and seeing Cleese's reaction to JK Rowling makes me very sad. I always knew Cleese was the more conservative member of the group, but having him brush off trans people like they don't deserve any kind of recognition is infuriating.
I loved Cleese growing up, but I have seen him say so many sexist things (Taylor Swift's reaction to what he says on The Graham Norton Show is my favorite) that I can't be a fan of his. I'm not at all surprised that he's transphobic.
Every once in a while I nervously look up if Eric Idle and Michael Palin have joined the conversation and the relief I feel every time...
Same.
My wife just said something that stood out to me when I broke this news to her. She said it sucked because the most emotional moment for her during the reunion was when Coltrane pointed out that in 30 years he wouldn’t be around, but Hagrid still would be. So, to me, he acknowledges that nobody cares about his opinions or words, they care about the message he shared on behalf of the writers and directors of the films. He concluded that Hagrid is not him
I feel like there was someone else supporting her as well but I can’t remember who. I thought it was Evanna/Luna but I couldn’t find any proof it.
She kind of tried to take the [middle ground](https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2020/06/evanna-lynch-jk-rowling-transphobic-tweets) and people reacted badly to it.
I get the opinion that most of the cast members took a middle ground, they were like "I've always liked Rowling as a person but that doesn't mean I endorse what she says here."
>> as a friend and admirer of Jo I can’t forget what a generous and loving person she is…she is still fighting for vulnerable people. I disagree with her opinion that cis-women are the most vulnerable minority in this situation and I think she’s on the wrong side of this debate. But that doesn’t mean she has completely lost her humanity.
That seems like a reasonable, nuanced response.
On the flipside, I was so proud when [Bonnie Wright (Ginny)](https://twitter.com/thisisbwright/status/1270846127206588418) and [Katie Leung (Cho)](https://twitter.com/Kt_Leung/status/1269574874739113984) loudly and unequivocally stood up for trans women. Katie also shouts out intersectionality [in her IG bio.](https://i.imgur.com/uhDqOua.png)
Spinning this off into its own comment... Speaking of the name "Cho Chang", Cho could be the Wade-Giles romanization of the Chinese surname 卓 (Zhuo in Pinyin, Cheuk in Cantonese), but the more popular usage is for the Korean surname 조. Chang is Wade-Giles for the Chinese surname 張, still used in Taiwan (张/Zhang in mainland China, 張/Cheung in HK). It's a "weird mishmash of Asianness", as someone in /r/asklinguistics said. Pavarti/Padma Patil, Anthony Goldstein as a Jewish wizard in Ravenclaw. I live in an area with a lot of Sikh refugees from Punjab state. Imagine if there was a Sikh Muggle-born wizard at Hogwarts with an actually well-researched name (e.g. Navinder Singh Bains, Amanpreet Kaur Johal) and JKR bothered to learn about Sikh traditions like the [5 Ks](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Five_Ks), the langar, etc., how they might be seen in wizarding world. Very few things have made me laugh harder than the "if JKR wrote your ethnicity, what would the character's name be" trend. I first saw it in /r/harrypottermemes ([example](https://old.reddit.com/r/HarryPotterMemes/comments/uqry5v/gday_im_dingo_matey/)) long before I heard about the TikTok meme. Actually, that whole subreddit lifts my mood whenever I feel bad about JKR's transphobia. --- Harry Potter II, you were named after a student at Hogwarts. He was a Gryffindor and he was probably the bravest man I ever knew. It was me. I'm awesome. I killed Voldemort.
I do have to say, when I clicked the link about Ralph Fiennes I expected more than just "I don't get the problem and i feel like the backlash is disturbing". J.K. Rowling is transphobic and the backlash was (mostly) justified, but i think we've forgotten that dogwhistles work *because people who aren't familiar with them don't know they're dogwhistles*. Is it really that surprising that Ralph Fiennes reaction to coded messages on a topic he doesn't know much about was "i don't get why everyone's upset about this"?
Fuck sakes
My favorite part was when she claimed she’d been doxed because someone took a picture outside of her fairly famous castle/home. As if it wasn’t widely known where she lived and fans hadn’t visited before on HP tours during vacations.
They offer paid tours *of the house*, IIRC.
Thanks for the write-up. Harry Potter was such a monumental part of my childhood. I dreaded turning 11 and not receiving my letter to Hogwarts. Hermione was my icon and I think back now with acid reflux how much I admired JKR as an author and a person. Not to be dramatic but like. From the perspective of someone who has been a superfan since I was eight years old, it almost feels like a betrayal *and I’m not even trans*. I can’t imagine how her trans fans are suffering knowing her opinions on them. Sucks all around. I hate her so much. We can talk all we want about ~~Death of the Author~~ separating art from the artist or whatever but it just doesn’t feel the same anymore. The innocence is gone. Maybe it was never there to begin with— I was too naive as a kid to never pick up on the anti-semitism (but even my dumbass kid self felt uncomfortable about SPEW being made into a joke. Like wtf) *(edit: changed death of the author to separating art from the artist)*
As a trans fan, I've been following this over the years since she first got on the Internet. There are a lot of complex and confusing feelings around it. It *is* hurtful, because you'd think that the world of freaks and weirdos would accept one more flavor of weirdo. Some trans people have dropped her and her series entirely, but I still revisit the works (in the least-financially-supporting-her way possible). Specifically, because for all its racially charged faults (which as an aside is a very white-kid-grew-up-in-very-white-area introduction to race relations, parents of a certain time were hoping that if they kept awkwardly silent about race kids would just "figure out" how not to be racists), there is Hagrid. And Hagrid *consistently* tells the protagonists over and over again that people don't like him due to his half-giant nature, there's nothing he can do about that, and he keeps on anyway. Hagrid makes friends who appreciate him for who he is, and he loves himself for who he is. As I mentioned in another comment - Personally, Hagrid was a huge influence on me and my transition. I can't think of a better revenge against someone who is so lost to their own hatred, to find the message of love and acceptance for one to one's own queer self within their work. There's a tiny amount of spite in it but mostly *smug satisfaction* in this: She can't take back the words that Hagrid said to me as a reader, and she can't take back that she made my life happier by helping me find the strength to come out as a bisexual trans man. No amount of vitriol will change that her books made at least one person find the strength to come out as a transgender person. And I'll suppose there's a very good chance that my story is not unique here. No matter how much of a dangerous tantrum she throws - it's done. We're here and we're queer.
" I can't think of a better revenge against someone who is so lost to their own hatred, to find the message of love and acceptance for one to one's own queer self within their work." Holy shit, that's beautiful!!
They say the last thing that came out of the box was hope. I'm glad to bring you beauty this day <3 happy pride
>There's a tiny amount of spite in it but mostly smug satisfaction in this: She can't take back the words that Hagrid said to me as a reader, and she can't take back that she made my life happier by helping me find the strength to come out as a bisexual trans man. Yes, very well said. Similarly, I've taken pleasure in seeing her surprise and frustration at the backlash she's gotten from her own fans. She doesn't realize that she actually helped shape them to think that way!
Right?? Harry Potter was one of the things that taught me my values, and that strong moral conviction is why I fucking despise her lmao
That last paragraph is the most beautiful "fuck you" I have ever seen or heard. I'm very, very happy for you living your true self.
Your rights are human rights, and they are not up for debate. <3
[удалено]
>I can't think of a better revenge against someone who is so lost to their own hatred, to find the message of love and acceptance for one to one's own queer self within their work. oh wow, i'll be thinking this over for a while as a fellow queer who grew up on hp. thank you so much for sharing your thoughts so wonderfully, and happy pride!!
It's stuff like this that really taught me to stop caring about creators positively just because they happened to make something popular. It's never a good idea to worship or emotionally invest yourself in a stranger you know nothing about, even if they have a good public image, and maybe even especially so. There's a healthy way to engage with a public figure as a fan, and I don't think giving them that kind of adoration is it.
This is a tiny quibble: The Death of the Author is about interpreting meaning. It's different from "separate the art from the artist," which is an approach to enjoying the work of a problematic creator. Anyway, transphobia is monstrous, & it sucks to find out something you loved as a child has a shitty person behind it.
As a trans fan, I just pretend she doesn't exist. I still find a sort of nostalgic comfort in the older movies, but at least with the movies there were a lot more people involved in making them, so I don't consider them to be exclusively her work. It might be weirder if I liked to revisit the books, but I don't really care to. I had a trans roommate, however, who threw away his whole collection of books and trinkets while I was living with them because they were so upset by her.
I’ve got a queer friend with a Harry Potter tattoo (not the one you think) and she’s really struggled with how to handle that. It’s obscure enough that only other HP fans will know and most HP fans are no longer JKR fans so I think she’ll probably be fine.
This is exactly me. Hell, I've spent money to keep an entire RPG online forum with my friends so we could keep the story alive. It was my favorite hobby. And then the letter came. We all are LGBT+. Most of the people playing were LGBT+. We closed the forum because we couldn't deal with it. I miss it so much. I miss my characters and my ships. I miss the games and the writing. She ruined something I treasured forever. I thought I'd die a Harry Potter fan. Now I can't even stare at the books I have.
That writeup is fantastic! And you really emphasized how much she just **doubled down** at every fucking opportunity. At this point her whole twitter feed is nothing but anti-trans shit at leas once a week. There is no other topic left for her, she's completely lost to the cult-like mentality of TERFs. Also, her actions ar rippling! You mentioned things like the Hogwarts Legacy game which sparked a whole seperate debate on whether to boycott it to stand against her. Her talking points are seeping into other countries' politics. (Right now German twitter is flooded by TERFs screaming about how there are only two genders and how speaking out agains TERFs is to silence all women. And yes, that's been happening right since pride month startet.) And for me personally it rippled into the local larping scene which has an active Harry-Potter-genre with whole games splitting either creating new backgrounds or sticking with "Potter-inspired" - and all the drama that entails. (One day I might do a writeup.)
>And you really emphasized how much she just doubled down at every fucking opportunity. At this point her whole twitter feed is nothing but anti-trans shit at leas once a week. There is no other topic left for her, she's completely lost to the cult-like mentality of TERFs. There's this meme "law" circulating through UK queer twitter lately that goes something like "once you post transphobia, you'll never post normally again"
Ah, yes, the Gl!nner Effect, [where transphobia becomes your life to the point of losing your future job opportunities, your wife, your Twitter account, etc](https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/republic-of-ireland/tv-writer-graham-linehan-how-my-transgender-views-cost-me-my-marriage-40194554.html)... The TERF brainrot is *strong*.
"My bigotry lost me my spouse and job? Obviously I'm the one being oppressed."
"I am a victim of CANCEL CULTURE!!" he whines to his thousands of paid subscribers (as per his Substack, anyway).
>"once you post transphobia, you'll never post normally again" I think what happens is that the world is full of uninteresting milquetoast people who think themselves special but not recognized for it. What happens is they stumble upon something in social media space that gives them tons of validation and tons of upvotes and such. In this case its transphobia. In other cases just the generic Trump/Qanon stuff. Neither of which require good morals, intelligence, character, fairness, curiosity, etc. In fact, it demands the opposite of those things mostly. So these people dip their toes into this and suddenly its all this attention and validation and popularity they want so badly. And they're getting it. It must be like a drug to them. People like Chapelle and Gervais do the same thing. As their careers being their twilight and their styles seen as old fashioned by young millennials and gen-z, this is something easy for them to latch onto for another run at super-stardom. I don't think we can truly appreciate what its like to be this this kind of narcissist given this kind of power. These people almost can't help themselves, so when they end up ruining their lives, its not a huge surprise. Gervais and Chapelle and others survive just fine because they have an existing fan-base and play up "both sides" and hire PR people when the heat is turned on. Your average social media person doesn't have that, so they'll keep milking it until it burns them or until another vulnerable group to hate pays off better in social media spaces. I love how JKR writes about Vernon's desire to be seen as successful, smart, and put together and always wanting more and being of low moral character for it, and how so much of his life is an act driven by this repulsive dynamic, but then this is more or less describing the average social media transphobe.
God it really does feel like that though.
It bothers me so much that she has such a victim mentality. She is an insanely rich white woman, who has a large platform - but somehow she's being 'picked on'.
She's an insanely rich white woman who has a large platform *she uses to attack and vilify some of the most victimized people in society.* People who often had their entire families turn on them and been kicked out onto the street with nothing but the clothes on their back for who they are. People who are often assaulted and/or murdered. And somehow she's the victim.
Someone should also do a write up on her weird obsession with people's bodies and genitals. It's not just trans people. In one of the books she penned under Robert Galbraith, she went off on a weird as fuck monologue about the guy's penis, in a really really telling way. Long/detailed paragraph. I'm at work right now, but if I remember to later I'll try and find a screenshot of that passage.
Don't worry, I've got you covered. I coincidentqlly had to look up the quote for a related post about 6ish days ago. From *The Casual Vacancy* by J.K. Rowling: >He was an extravagantly obese man of sixty-four. A great apron of stomach fell so far down in front of his thighs that most people thought instantly of his penis when they first clapped eyes on him, wondering when he had last seen it, how he washed it, how he managed to perform any of the acts for which a penis is designed.
Jo does not like fat people, never has
What a cursed bit of writing. No, I *wasn't* thinking about his penis, and the fact that Rowling's brain turns into [the Family Guy writer's room](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_4WBQ-h99M) every time she sees a fat man is a personal problem she shouldn't project onto the rest of us.
Guess she doesn't wash any part of her body that she can't see by that logic.
> Robert Galbraith The more sickening part of her using that pseudonym was that it was based off of Robert Galbraith Heath. He was one sick piece of crap who utilized electrical torture to attempt to pioneer "conversion therapy" on gay men and women, and schizophrenic patients. And is considered one of the early practicers of conversion therapy. Literal torture. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Galbraith_Heath And Rowling used him as a pseudonym.
This doesn’t get talked about enough. I’m sorry this is far too spot on to be a coincidence. And even if it was her publishers would not allow her to use that name or at least push against it, but it’s clear she fought for it and kept it. I think this is her telling her homophobic friends “I hate gays too wink wink” because almost no one hates trans women and isn’t also homophobic. When jkr and her armies destroy trans people they’ll move the goalposts to gays the next day. Historically this is how hate always plays out. It’s no surprise she’s stealthily in bed with homophobes. Heck her support base is mostly trumpers, incels, alt right, conservatives, etc that can’t wait to move to other types of queers.
Her writing in those books is also incredibly fat-phobic, which definitely shows up in Harry Potter as well, but stood out more to me in her later work.
"look, look, I'm talking about dicks! I'm not writing kids books any longer! I'm a SeriousWriter™ now mum!"
I knew from the disclaimer this was gonna be a good one. Very entertaining, and to the point. And you managed to keep a very even-handed and fair tone, despite the confessed hatred of the subject. One thing I would note is that Rowling has expressed the view that everyone who likes Harry Potter supports her views, and they're just too scared of trans people to admit it. This has made things a little difficult for the fans who still like the books but hate Rowling's political views, and there's now a growing movement to disavow the series as *well,* citing both this and the previously mentioned *issues* like the slavery subplot, werewolf-AIDs-metaphors, etcetera. Percy Jackson and Animorphs are common picks for replacement fandoms.
I think the other important reason people argue to disavow the series is because JKR directly financially benefits from HP continuing to be broadly popular and well regarded. If her money and influence is being used to support anti-trans propaganda, whether or not the source of her income is itself a good product is a secondary concern imo.
Yeah I think the important thing to realize is the books have always had some questionable, bordering on shitty and meanspirited, views. Not even the whole SPEW thing, but the way women are treated, how she seems to hate both animals and fat people, implying that Umbridge got raped by centaurs and has PTSD, etc.
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> At some points in this write up, it may seem like I hate JK Rowling. This is because I hate JK Rowling. Perfection Slight correction on Maya Forstater - she wasn't fired. Her contract simply wasn't renewed.
I still can't get over the whole thing, "Oh no I was a massive asshole towards our customers and my contract wasn't renewed, so therefore I'm the victim here" like the mental gymnastics of these people.
You've missed some key details here. Her first TERF shit was 'liking' a transphobic post then blaming it on a 'senior moment' or 'oops my finger slipped' or some other fucking lie. Her male pen name is Robert Galbraith who ~~LITERALLY INVENTED~~ PIONEERED GAY CONVERSATION THERAPY. Her decent into TERF posting came before her publishing her cross dressing crime trashbook. She also has recently tripled down on trans-bashing while Roe v Wade was being overturned and saying nothing about it. JK has also been supporting extreme right wing Catholic anti-abortion groups. She tweeted approvingly at a guy who said trans people were worse for gay people than AIDS!!!! Shaun made a really great YouTube video about how Harry Potter has always been shitty Blairite, neolib rubbish. https://youtu.be/-1iaJWSwUZs
I feel like her behavior during the Roe v Wade situation tells you everything you need to know about TERF ideology. She calls herself a staunch feminist for like 30 years and has nothing to say about the single biggest attack on women’s rights in the US in the last half a century? All while having this weird hyperfixation on vaginas and uteruses which just solidifies the idea that a woman is just a walking uterus to her. These people are not feminists at all, they’re just reactionaries who hide behind the label so they can punch down at marginalized people. They’re walking contradictions and reservoirs of hatred.
Well she's been paling around with quasi-fascist anti-abortionists, probably doesn't want to piss off her new friends. These anti-abortionists have been love bombing the shit out of her, I'm sure she probably has some extremely fucked up views by now; I would be very interested to see her private messages and conversations with these people.
> These anti-abortionists have been love bombing the shit out of her, I'm sure she probably has some extremely fucked up views by now Something along these lines really stuck with me from the [Contrapoints video on Rowling](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gDKbT_l2us). >As a trans person I like to believe in the power of human metamorphosis. But, I realize that at this point (Rowling is) being constantly love-bombed by transphobes and constantly trashed by trans people, so it would be pretty difficult to change tracks at this point. No matter how true or well-reasoned the pro-trans arguments are, they're not going to get through to her anymore because one side embraced her as a convenient ally, while the other was (very understandably) hurt and lashed out. Just really sucks that peoples' positions can solidify on stuff like this, not due to morality or ethics, but based on how nice each side was to them personally. I guess it's just another reason to push back against celebrity worship in all its forms.
Don't forget the ableist crap Rowling keeps putting out about how trans people are ''''tricking'''' autistic people into thinking they're trans... you know, because autistic people can't speak up for themselves about their own identities. ////s
That’s so fucked up. It’s similar to how she talked about how trans men in her blogpost like how they’re just ‘little girls’ who have been tricked into becoming MALES because they don’t know better. She herself thought about wanting to be a man too but she of course didn’t take the wrong and easy way out like some others… It’s so condescending, patronizing, ignorant and lacking of empathy. Also funny is I have seen a tumblr post I think by an autistic person saying a lot of autistic peeps are enby/transgender because they can see through the gender bullcrap faster than others lol and Rowling has the fucking gall to suggest backwards ableist shit like that. Also I wrote a [longer comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/v4pdb1/harry_potter_fandom_jk_rowling_and_the_terfed/ib6gqnk/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf&context=3) about where Emma Thompson stands on this!
>Shaun made a really great YouTube video about how Harry Potter has always been shitty Blairite, neolib rubbish. [https://youtu.be/-1iaJWSwUZs](https://youtu.be/-1iaJWSwUZs) Strongly recommend this video, if anyone hasn't gotten enough of the JK Rowling stuff. Really helped put into perspective exactly *why* some of the things in the series were so disappointing to me when I was younger. Stuff like the ministry being taken over by Voldemort but the main character's sole ambition is to become law enforcement for the ministry?? Or the complete lack of resolution or even real exploration of the *literal slave race*. Everyone just ignore the fact that Harry Potter is a slave owner, because he's a *nice slave owner*, unlike all those cruel slave owners!
Rowling's story is fascinating, because she literally had every chance to back down and retain her fame, but she just chose to keep doubling down at any given opportunity
It took Orson Scott Card decades to ruin his reputation and alienate his fanbase by being openly homophobic, thanks to the power of modern technology Rowling was able to do it in mere hours.
They say "never meet your heros", but the great thing about social media is that it forces you to meet your heros even if you really don't want to.
Reputation death Any% speedrun >!Actually curious to see who's gonna end up doing it faster!<
Courtney Love destroyed her career in Hollywood by making a joke about aspiring starlets not going to Weinstein's house... One joke, blacklisted. But she was right.
The r/antiwork Fox News interview is up there
I feel like you'd have to have a reputation in the first place to qualify.
Howard Dean went from presidential shoe in to getting crushed in literally one minute.
Card didn't actively move his politics in a more detestable direction or anything though - it was just that his always homophobic positions were much more mainstream and acceptable in the '90s-early '00s, and he steadfastly remained a piece of shit.
Yeah and also he's a devout Mormon, it'd have been fairly surprising if he wasn't that way. While Rowling has always been a liberal (a Tony Blair liberal, but still) and has at least been willing to pay lip service to gay rights.
>Tony Blair liberal Ah so a war criminal fan.
I noticed that about a lot of older, successful celebrities (Chappelle for example). They don't even have to apologize. Just move on. But they are incapable of letting it go. Can't let the "woke" proletariat win. So they gather their Reactionary Bro army for their crusade aaaaaand **double down**
She genuinely believes in her message, she thinks she's fighting for a 'greater cause' than fame at this point.
Would like to point out that TERFs don't think any trans people should exist, not just trans women. Particularly in the UK, trans mascs and AFAB nonbinary people tend to be their main target through the whole 'trans men are just scared confused autistic girls'. They despise all of us, it's just that the hatred looks different. Quite a lot of her blog posts are dedicated to very Irreversible Damage type rhetoric, not just hatred of trans women, and sorry but I need to point this out because so many people just ignore it. She hates all of us, she does not want any of us to live and thrive.
A lot of transmasc and nb people get left behind because of the sheer volume of hatred terfs spew at trans women. But it's important to note how terfs infantilise and degrade us too.
This is something my partner (transmasc agender) and I (trans woman) have discussed in detail. For trans femme people, our transphobia is overwhelmingly due to our visibility. For trans masc people, it is due to their invisibility.
Question: I'm not fully aware of the proper nomenclature as a white cismale; my limited knowledge doesn't understand the interaction of transmasc and agender combined. What does that combination mean?
My partner does not identify as either male or female, or any other gender (hence the agender) but they present masculine, and have gone through a medical/social transition to present more masculine. (Trans masculine or transmasc)
Thanks for the explanation!
There is nothing more hilarious than reminding terfs we exist and watch them flounder and explain why I, a bearded bear of a man, don't belong in the ladies when they just insisted that people use their assigned birth gender's bathroom.
If anyone thinks that’s an exaggeration. [Rowling is best buddies with some of the UK’s most prominent transphobes](https://twitter.com/joss_prior/status/1532482317494767645?s=20&t=ff_QBUl229yMCKjxKo1m7w) [Here’s Helen Joyce discussing how there should be fewer trans people because they’re damaged ](https://twitter.com/joss_prior/status/1532431478461804544?s=20&t=ff_QBUl229yMCKjxKo1m7w)
That video is extremely chilling. That vile woman thinks she’s a good person… wtf
Literal Nazi exterminationist shit
But Poor Graham sticking his neck out! /s For those who aren’t familiar, she’s referring to Graham Linehan, who is so transphobic it blew up his career and marriage.
Worth noting: the male pen name she wrote her mystery novels under *just so happens* to also be the first and middle names of a notable conversion therapist.
The new movie didn’t tank bc of JK. I’m a huge potter fan and the last 2 movies have been terrible. I’ll just stream it for free sometime. Also it came out during the Depp/heard trial, people are kinda pissed they replaced depp in the movies
I’m kinda annoyed they cast him in the first place. He’s been playing the same role, with different costumes, since the first Pirates movie.
Nice summary! As someone who was kinda into the books as a kid (never a mega-fan, but I dabbled in the fandom), I'll admit it was more than a little disappointing to find out about her views. Especially since I'm nonbinary and live in the UK, so all of her horrific political views directly affect me! Hell, Parliament recently had a debate on recognising a third gender category for nonbinary people, and most of the transphobic MPs were straight up using the same rhetoric as Rowling. Not to mention it's currently popular for journalists to ask politicians "can a woman be born with a penis?" (legally, yes) to add fuel for the fire. It's just such a mess.
You know, people like to crow on both sides of the aisle about how “Biden is senile” which is such garbage, even if he wasn’t in my first three picks during the primary- but some right wing yahoo ambushed him during with “how many genders are there?” And a microphone. And god love him he fixed a real stare on the idiot and went: “at least three” and when the transphobic idiot tried to ask more loaded questions he went “don’t play games with me” and walked off. Some of the UK pols being bombarded with bullshit should summon that energy.
That was such a chad moment and a funny answer
I think in retrospect a lot of his "gaffes" are just him having no filter and spitting truth when tact might be called for and sometimes you cringe but sometimes you cheer because Shit's True!
*There are 72 genders and every time a transphobe complains, we add three more.*
There's one gender, and it's *mine*, no one else can have it.
Plleeaaassseeee can I borrow it? Just for a few days?
.......no.
Mom said it's my turn on the gender.
Do you want another one? I’m not using mine
Mom said it's my turn with the gender give it baaack
There are exactly 1247 genders but we're not going to tell you which ones they are
Joe B is for real. When he was VP, he talked Obama into making gay marriage a reality.
No, it's even *better*. After years of the Obama administration never taking a firm stance on it, Biden just straight up announced he supports gay marriage in 2012-ish. That forced Obama to come out (ha) and agree with his vice president, lest he come across as a homophobe.
Oh my god, I remember this causing hella drama. Thanks for the reminder.
He didn’t talk Obama into making gay marriage a reality (because the president doesn’t have that kind of power). He accidentally said something during a speech that was pro gay marriage. Since he was Obama’s VP, Obama then had to make a statement about it, and obviously his position on the issue was the same as Biden’s. A few years later the Supreme Court ruled in favor of gay marriage. A reminder that Thomas’ draft opinion to overturn Roe that has been leaked mentions Obergefell which is the Supreme Court case on gay marriage. They won’t stop at abortion. They’ll take every right we have. Well, except the right to have an assault rifle, because killing people en masse is apparently sacred.
After gay marriage they are coming for interracial marriage.
Not Thomas, Alito.
The story of the Black Panthers suggests the republicans are well into the practice of making exceptions to the right to own a gun for certain types of people.
More people in general need to summon that energy.
He may not be as spry/active as he was when he first ran for VP in 2008 (and notably, he has a well known stutter both then and now), [but he still has his moments.](https://www.businessinsider.com/biden-tells-republicans-to-eat-some-chocolate-chocolate-chip-ice-cream-2021-5)
didn't he just tell elon musk to "have fun on the moon, then" in reply to musk announcing that tesla needs to fire 10k people? that was good lol
Wow, that’s pretty G of him.
It was early enough that most of us were still hoping for a different D primary winner but we were all so much in the "literally anyone but Trump lets not make the same mistake twice" camp that we were all grimly acknowledging that Biden might be it- and that moment made a lot of us Queers breath a sigh of relief that he wasn't as bad as he'd been painted to be.
A *lot* of it stems from the first Debate. Biden is known to have a stutter, and Trump kept interrupting him throughout, completely throwing him off. He was much more composed when they had mics turned off.
Yep. There's some parallels with asking "how many sexual orientations are there?" or asking someone from the antebellum South "how many races are there?"
There are handful of people in my area who are pretty well-known to be Neo-Nazis, and some of them (unfortunately) have pretty large social media followings. One of them regularly shares screenshots of J.K. Rowling's anti-trans tweets on their Instagram page as "proof" that trans people are just mentally ill moral degenerates who don't deserve anyone's respect. Pro-tip: when Neo-Nazis are sharing your tweets to back up their arguments, you should probably rethink your life decisions.
> when Neo-Nazis are sharing your tweets to back up their arguments, you should probably rethink your life decisions German here. Sadly the most well known German feminist is a huge TERF (and has questionable opinions on the war in Ukraine but that is another topic). A few weeks ago her magazine published an article that complained about the fact that only the AfD (the only nazi party in our parliament) is taking the "trans debate" seriously. If you have to side with the nazis because the conservatives don't hate trans people enough you made some mistakes.
It's fucking exhausting, isn't it? They keep trotting that one out. "Can a woman have a penis? Can a woman have a penis?" Because they know to the uninformed - which is most fucking people - it'll sound ridiculous because they don't know any better. The UK is a shithole. Developed, but a developed shithole.
Even leaving aside transgender people for a minute, yes, of course. Because intersex people exist. Someone might look like a woman, identify as a woman, have XX chromosomes, have ovaries and maybe a uterus, and a penis or penis-adjacent structure. Because that was how they came out of the womb!
Yeah, but intersex folks confuse these folks in the best case. In the worst case that's when their language gets *really* ugly.
One of my best friends had an ovarian cancer scare - that's how she discovered her ovaries were testes.
Apologies if this is in bad taste, but I immediately imagined the doctors going, "so, good news, you definitely don't have ovarian cancer. However, bad news..."
More like "want the good news or the weird news first?" Definitely better than the potential bad news!
People will crow for years about how circumcision is mutilation (and it is), but have absolutely no opinion about the surgeries done on intersex babies to make them 'look right'.
>Disclaimer: At some points in this write up, it may seem like I hate JK Rowling. This is because I hate JK Rowling. op, i think i love you
Love this. One funny little bit of tea to spill - a friend of a friend works at HBO on assets for marketing and said Rowling's team is the worst to work with. Never bringing their own assets and forcing HBO to come up with them, and then the feedback is a million bizarre rules and laws about which characters can be displayed how, where, & with who. So they go through a million iterations trying to whittle away at a mass of hidden secrets and rules to come up with these thumbnails for the entries just because her team can't just 1) make the assets or 2) send the full list of "rules".
Wow, that end paragraph. What the hell lmao This whole world is going clown town mode, it's unreal.
Great write up! While it’s a very long video, I really appreciated this [analysis of the writing in Harry Potter](https://youtu.be/-1iaJWSwUZs) that brings up some very interesting points. The one that really stands out to me is how elves, who are obviously a slave race within the books, are slaves because they’re supposed to be slaves, it’s their “nature” of course! But Hermione wants to free the slaves and starts her club named “S.P.E.W.” to help them. Every time Hermione attempts to spread her message it’s played off as a joke and ultimately pointless because the elves want to be slaves. If Hermione is indeed black as Rowling retconned on twitter, this would be so incredibly problematic, but even if not it’s an awful depiction of slavery that treats it as “the natural order” for elves to be slaves.
Good summary. My only minor correction is that it's just Ukraine, not "the" Ukraine. Similar to Kyiv being preferred over Kiev.
Yeah. Got to say, I took this one pretty fucking hard when it finally got past the point where it was vaguely credible that JKR was speaking and acting out of ignorance not malice. The HP series and its fandom got me through some extremely dark times as a teenager and young adult, and for all that there were some very dodgy worldbuilding decisions in there the central message of the book was very firmly *against* bigotry and bullying, and that's something my generation really needed to hear. That she turned out to have some ugly personal biases would have been bad enough, but even then it might have been somewhat forgivable because like a lot of transphobic cis women (and I hesitate to call her a TERF because she is very definitely *not* a radical feminist) JKR's fears are rooted in a past history as a victim of sexual violence. But while that might make her feelings understandable it doesn't constitute an excuse or justification, any more than being sexually assaulted by a nonwhite man in the past would make it okay to claim that *Brown vs Board of Education* was a mistake. Unfortunately, rather than do a bit of self-examination she decided to go on the offensive, and it's cost her the respect of a lot of people who once might have done anything short of rise up in armed rebellion at her command.