For a gender that less than 0.5% of the population identifies as (Wiki numbers, 355 people out of 100,000), we sure do argue about this a lot, don’t we?
Never underestimate the will of bigots to obsess over other people’s genitalia.
Edit: I said the above to be facetious and poke fun at these wall-eyed transphobic lunatics. I realise that trans / NB issues encompass SO much more than that, and I was being deliberately reductive in order to make a point. I hope that comes through ❤️
I hope that comes through ❤️
Clear as a bell. Anyone shitting on you is as tone-deaf as JK.
Digs at people’s physical appearance are unwarranted here.
It’s just one of the culture war angles propagated by the rich to keep everyone angry with each other while they reap up as much of the world’s wealth as possible before any of the forthcoming disasters- whether that is climate crisis migration, the next financial crisis, AI unemployment crisis, further war, food and water shortages worldwide, etc…
The writing is on the wall, a majority of people can see it too if you ask them, but unfortunately people can’t help but get sucked in anyway. Probably because it’s a distraction from facing the uncertain future we all have.
OR, this is just a tinfoil hat getting the better of me. It feels like a logical conclusion, so maybe that’s the fallacy I’ve fallen for.
No, you’re right. Between 2009 and 2011, both the left and the right had their popular class movements with Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party. The risk of both sides coming together to attack the rich was too dangerous. Shortly after that we had Obama and other business and political leaders talking about “systemic racial discrimination.” Boy has that divided us. An incredibly effective tool to convince us idiots that race has ANYTHING to do with our differences. Poor people have far more in common with each other than they do with the rich. The trans issue has been injected to stoke the fires more, and everyone has been quick to jump on board.
You know what? If we’re too stupid to see through this obvious charade, maybe this is what we deserve.
Holy fuck you are so dense. Bringing up the tea party as a way of class solidarity? You are either lying or ignorant.
Please, learn about the shit you spew if you actually care, but I assume you don’t since here you are spewing nonsense.
Not OP, but I don’t think they mean that the Tea Party was part of class solidarity, but more that it was a movement that was unorchestrated by the powers that be and could, if left unanswered, lead to threatening the status quo, aka super wealthy.
This is probably the most hilarious overreaction I’ve seen in a while.
I don’t know what you mean by “class solidarity,” but it was born in the fires of the 2008/2009 bank bailouts in which millions of ordinary people were wiped out financially while the financial institutions were given trillions of dollars. There was a lot of anger at the perception of crony capitalism and elites. The movement itself was grassroots and clearly feared by the powerful. You might not like the goals of the movement, but their anger was palpable, and at one point, something like 10% of the country identified with the movement. There was no way the rich and powerful could let ordinary citizens form such a powerful voting bloc.
The tea party movement wasn’t grassroots at that point as it was being funded almost entirely by billionaires and groups like Americans for Prosperity. What you’re saying here is almost the exact opposite of reality.
Better that than throwing off the shackles of the oppressor and rising up against the oligarch class.
Those brown lads area after your crumbs! That man wants to be called “they”! Ooh look, Israel/Gaza, pick a side! Look at this jobless woman with her fancy flat screen television! Does eating Wotsits cure cancer? Distract yourselves with yourselves.
Can I interest you in everything, all of the time?
Apathy’s a tragedy and boredom is a crime.
Anything and everything, all of the time.
a little bit
Even if they were only 1 in a billion. They still deserve to exist and live their lives how they like if it doesn’t negatively affect others.
They do, and they should get on with that, and start ignoring people who don’t agree with them, their lifestyle, or use of language. You cannot enforce your own ideas about your identity on anyone else, because they are also entitled to have their own ideas. All a person can do is just live. Celebrity opinions are not law, and should not be paid such attention as if they matter.
Fuck JK Rowling. What a bigot.
Always has been…
It’s just the kids reading her books 20 years ago didn’t recognize all the problematic shit she wrote till they grew up.
It’s just the kids reading her books 20 years ago didn’t recognize all the problematic shit she wrote till they grew up.
Adult here who was an adult when the books came out and recognized all the awful racist and sexist imagery. I have nothing new to add to the conversation, I’m just gonna vent. There were quite a few of us here and there who spoke up when the books were published, but we were significantly outnumbered and immediately drowned out by the “shut up and stop complaining” crowd. Yes, all this talk of “problematic” issues in the Potter books are old observations we’ve been rehashing for two decades…the goblins who run the banks are a horrifyingly obvious Jewish caricature, Chinese character Cho Chang’s first name is actually a Korean last name, the one black guy in the whole fuckin series is named “Shacklebolt” (seriously wtf), the one Irish character goes by “Seamus Finnegan,” the main female character Hermione is constantly referred to as “bossy”…just to name a few. JFC, what a shitshow.
Ok, one more example that got a lot of attention years back but sort of faded away from public consciousness: in the first movie there’s a bigass six-pointed star on the fuckin floor of Gringotts, of all places. You know, Gringotts. The bank…where the undeniably Jew-like goblins work. No fuckin shit, it’s right there, plain as day. That one still boggles my mind. I mean, what the fuck, man. https://i.postimg.cc/Jzx2hr31/happry-potter-1-star-of-david-gringotts.png
EDIT: Hey everyone, it’s been abuot an hour now and I just want to apologize for all this negativity. I’ve given this a lot of thought, and I’ve come to realize all the anti-this and anti-that complaints are really unfair and show only one side of JK Rowling. So I feel compelled to balance this out and remind everyone that she is also pro-slavery. Especially the kind of slavery that forces its slaves to work completely naked, and no one in the book has a problem with it except for the bossy lib girl that everyone hates.
Me as a 13yo reading the first book: Holy shit, Dumbledore is so badass he just magics up a feast for everyone!
Me reading the later books: Oh, the feast is cooked by elves. Slave elves. Elves that are slaves… Cool cool cool…Holy. Shit. That Star of David is blowing my mind.
As someone who devoured the books as a kid, I’ve been very disappointed in finding out JK Rowlings is a a TERF. Your post sent me down a bit of a rabbit hole and I’ve read up on some of the issues that people pointed out in the books. To me, some are valid, some seem to be a bit far-fetched…? For example, I’m not sure why she is labeled pro-slavery? Just because she writes that people in her fantasy world don’t seem to have a problem with it?
Not defending Rowling btw, just trying to understand some of the points better.
Because it’s brushed off by the good guys and the narrative. I wouldn’t say she’s pro slavery, but what I will say is that the way she wrote house elves does ring some bells to shit that people who support the American confederacy say about black people.
She’s the one that chose to make the fantasy world she made up the way it is. And she chose to make it one where a literal slave class of people enjoy being slaves and thinks slavery is great, so long as their slave masters treat them well. And the one person trying to free them is treated as a hyperbolic hippie type for even making such an attempt.
That is the made up world Rowling chose to make.
From this argument you could derive that every author, who builds a world with anything negative in it which is not opposed by the inhabitors of said world, automatically supports this in real life. As a bit of a crude example, in Warhammer 40k, criminal humans are lobotomized and are used as “Servitors”. Almost no other human in this fantasy universe bats an eye at this. Nobody is accusing the authors of supporting slavery?
I can see where people take issue with the topic and how Rowling chose to write about it. But to accuse her of being pro-slavery because of that…?
Because the theme and overall storyline of 40k is meant to showcase how evil that is. In a way, the evilness is parody in how over the top it is, particularly with the use of Nazi-esque imagery.
Where in the setting of Harry Potter does it present house elves and their enslavement as a parody, joke, or otherwise not meant to be a serious take on the subject?
For me, it is not relevant for the argument if it is presented as a parody or not.
Believe me, I get the gist of your point and I understand that even if you look at it in good faith, problems arise with her writing of the house elves slavery.
However, I have a problem with the statement that just because an author implements something in their world building and does not immediately make it very obvious, in whatever way, that this is a bad bad thing, makes them a supporter of said thing. Of course we never know the true intentions of the author but just assuming they wrote it so they support it is a bit of a stretch.
I think the biggest issue is that Rowling depicts the wizarding world and the proragonists as more or less unambiguously good, while brushing off a lot of the actually problematic things with it. They’re literally the saviours of the universe and are never seriously questioned in-universe to the point of being labeled as a Mary Sue by many critics, so from that perspective it does tend to give the impression that she endorses all the aspects of it based on the fact that she frames all of it in an extremely positive light, whether or not she actually thinks that to be the case. She even explicitly wrote a passage in to shut down notions of elf slavery being bad in the story itself, which suggests intent in her depictions. In universes like 40k, the factions being depicted are quite a bit more morally grey, and the story actively goes into and confronts the problematic parts. She could have taken a more balanced approach and depicted the wizarding world as still having a lot of problems, and actually delved into the ethical and social implications of the various aspects of her worldbuilding, but she didn’t. Even just depicting a small part of the wizarding world being against elf slaves instead of the one person speaking out for them and getting ostracised would have at least been a lot better from story and worldbuilding perspective IMO.
Wait until you hear about X-Men.
It’s all bullshit mate.
Harry Potter reached the height of its popularity in the 2000s/early 2010s, in a time when gay was still an extremely popular insult, feminists were the punching bags of the internet, holocaust jokes were a dime a dozen and anyone saying it wasn’t funny was an enemy to comedy itself, the biggest internet creators took literal pride in their content specifically being offensive (Smosh was the biggest example of this IMO), and saying you should respect people’s gender identities on the mainstream internet will get you labeled as an SJW and actual death threats thrown your way, so I’d also argue that Harry Potter not being seen as problematic was in part because mainstream society (not you obviously, but the broader internet/pop culture in general at the time) genuinely did not view those things as problematic. Like if JK Rowling said all the things she said about transgender rights in 2003, she would probably still end up in controversy but way more people would actually support her, would have probably split the fandom roughly down the middle as opposed to the overwhelmingly negative response she’s receiving in the 2020s. Or look at it this way: Harry Potter was most popular in the same time period when Family Guy was most popular.
I gotta say as someone who grew up with the books, I’m glad y’all noticed it because as a kid I sure didn’t.
A lot of fantasy from that era has a lot of issues, but when I compare something like Harry Potter to say Wheel of Time, Robert Jordan may have been getting off on his depiction of magic slavery but he at least wasn’t excusing it.
Depictions she made weren’t ok in the 90s. Her politics aren’t ok now. And there’s better stuff too now. Fantasy has gotten so much better in recent decades.
Wow, I’m just realizing the deeper meaning behind gringotts being run by specifically goblins. I kinda knew the big-nosed people running a bank was rather stereotypical, and not in the just lazy way, but it made sense to me that fantasy goblins would hoard treasure, and never connected the two facts.
I was aware of the high amounts of tokenism, with that one irish character, that one black character, that one vaguely asian character, but that’s easier to rationalize away as using stereotypes to communicate things quickly. It’s all over fantasy; Lando is the one black guy, Gimli is the one Dwarf, Hagrid is the one (half-)giant. Looking back on it now, these tokens are pretty shallow, but at the time it was fairly standard. It’s when you get into the lore of these peoples that things get ugly. Often fantasy races are there for splashes of colour, or a simple analoge for some kind of politics, but the reasoning here is heinous, and everyone is just ok with it.
By the time these flaws surfaced, we were already invested in the decent storytelling, and the deep connections never got made. Then the author detonated and it’s only with that context can we see the signs that were right there.
It’s too bad that these stories were built on a bed of such horrible ideas. Some of them were nice.
Hey now, there were at least 2 black characters!
And Dean Thomas is the only example in the book of a child whose dad left his mum to raise him alone.
Smashed it JK.
I think she’s since tried to walk that back by saying he left to protect them and was eventually murdered by death eaters.
Maybe put that bit in the book eh?
That monologue (from one of the unambiguously “good” characters) about how it would be cruel to set the elves free, because of the joy they get from servitude? Even as a teenager, I recognised that as a messed-up sentiment, but my peers just said I was being too sensitive. Glad that you couldn’t let something like that slide nowadays.
Love your comment and especially your Edit. You really had me there at first, heh.
It’s just the kids reading
herits books 20 years ago didn’t recognize all the problematic shitsheit wrote till they grew up.Surely it can’t have a problem with that wording, which doesn’t refer to gender at all.
To be honest, there’s not that much problematic shit in her books. Some VERY light commentary on slavery and its place in a civilized society, maybe some questionable themes of segregation, but largely the books are about good triumphing over evil and learning to work as a team including with people that don’t look like you. They’re just not overly well written books. She herself is the problematic person.
Just ignore the racist names and stereotypesnand everything is fine!
/s
Sucks that’s she’s heavily involved in the new reboot, which means the stereotypes and troublesome characters are going to be even worse this time around
Has anyone in any country ever been incarcerated for misgendering a trans person? Is there even a significant number of people who seriously believe that would be an appropriate response?
Nope.
Just come out and tell us about your victimhood complex, Joanne.
Exactly! It’s like going to jail for having someone presenting themselves as Joanne and you always call them Joanna. How will it ever be so much of a concern to throw someone in jail and destroy their future over it, Joanna? HOW??
It’s about the influential power. She’s presenting a potentially dangerous rhetoric. She really does have the power to create a new wave of hate if she really wanted to.
In fact it’s the other way around. Plenty of people have been incarcerated and worse for simply being trans
Using the correct pronouns is an issue of respecting others, and seeing Rowling doubling down on her smug and bigoted views in public is a revelation, because during a re-read, you start seeing these views reflecting everywhere in her writing. It’s a deeply prejudiced and irrational world, and it stayed that way all the way to the ending with nothing in that world really changed.
I think being an adult is realizing that I don’t love Harry Potter as much as I used to, because (I can’t believe I’m saying this) I’ve finally outgrown it. It’s time to move on.
Being a grown-up is painful.
A big part of that is context, I think. When we were children, we didn’t have the knowledge or developed brains to recognize these things. And the lossy nature of our memory leads us to skew towards remembering things in more idealized manners, probably because it is easier to recall things as “concentrates” of reality. The parts that we, as adults, recognize as problematic don’t tend to be remembered as significant because, when making the initial memories as children, we lacked the context to flag them as such.
I think being an adult is realizing that I don’t love Harry Potter as much as I used to, because (I can’t believe I’m saying this) I’ve finally outgrown it. It’s time to move on.
On other hand, this realization frees you in a way and may potentially inspire you seek out or create another piece of art to love (and potentially share with others). While I disagree with a significant section of the population and believe that art is inseparably and indelibly linked to the artist, it is important still to be kind to our past selves and not judge them for what they didn’t know. That still doesn’t entirely soften the blow of “breaking up” with a piece of art that one has loved but, it can help with accepting it.
Being a grown-up is painful.
It’s also joyful, terrible, wonderful, enraging, sorrowful, and countless other feelings and possibilities. I think it’s beautiful, even if not always comfortable. And the uncomfortable bits provide contrast to the positive, letting them seem to shine a bit more brilliantly. Though, that could also be the near-pathological optimism that I adopted to cope with depression in my younger years.
inspire you seek out or create another piece of art to love (and potentially share with others)
I think we did a pretty good job on that recently. :)
If you’re referring to the recent film, I think that you did indeed and hope your colleagues and yourself are proud of it. Nice to have a film that’s a bit more light-hearted (without being too saccharine) and, especially considering the thread topic, that embraces a diverse set of people in the cast and supports universal agency.
The world is fine (if flawed and sometimes generic). The real issue is there isn’t a single good character in them. Hermione is alright, with her desire to free the elves and generally no accepting of the status quo. Even she seems to stop caring about this after they’re free and capable of doing something about it. There’s not a single progressive person in those worlds. There are only not totally evil (but accepting of banal evils) people. Being against Hitler doesn’t make you a good person, it only makes you not a literal Nazi.
Neville is the only somewhat progressive character. It’s just a transformation from loser to hero, but at least he never tossed his core values.
All adults in the HP universe are terrible people, the only adult with a lick of integrity is McGonagall.
A broken clock is right sometimes. I don’t believe never being good it says anything about the author, the author just forgot to fuck him up…
The first few HP movies around the holidays don’t hurt nobody!
Unless a certain someone you know never stops reminding you that he was in thoses movies…
Does Daniel keep pestering you about it too? God he’s such a drama queen.
If someone doesn’t want to respect others who cares?
Well, as others in this thread have said, misgender him back. Give him a taste of his own medicine.
The prosecution complex is real. No one’s suing you for using the wrong pronouns you bigot.
In fact, I’m almost entirely sure that no one’s ever asked Rowling to use specific pronouns because no queer person could stand being around her for longer than a minute.
*Persecution
Prosecution is a noun referring to the party bringing charges in a criminal case.
Resulting in sentencing, for example, to two years in jail…
Maybe prosecution was right this time!
Meanwhile she threatens to sue everyone within legal reach who calls her a transphobe.
Does she realize what a complete arsehole that makes her look? She’d rather go to jail than treat people like human beings?
He doesn’t.
assuming you didn’t make a typo, this ain’t cute. The signal you’re sending is that respecting pronouns is a privilege you reserve for people you agree with.
It’s more that I’m giving her a taste of her own medicine. She doesn’t extend this basic courtesy to people she disagrees with, so why should anyone give it to her?
Because it isn’t just hurting she/her, it is also hurting the people who want to be called a different pronouns.
So better to keep referring to her cis pronouns every time she/her is mentioned.
How so?
Because the signal you’re sending to trans people is that you don’t think respecting our pronouns is a human right.
She is so vile and toxic in such obvious ways - why not attack her for her wrongs instead?
Personally I think pronouns should be abolished altogether - think of the cumulative time you could save by trimming the language like that. Trim the fat. After all, why use many word when few word do trick?
Said same thing to friend, earlier. Said to was a stupid idea and need functional words to build meaningful sentences. Don’t agree with.
Yet here I am, reading your sentence twice to understand it.
Why read twice when once do trick?
Completely agreed.
Pronouns stem from a time when it mattered whether or not a sentence was about a man or a woman. Sentences about men were given a higher status.
Once we accepted women are equal to men, it really doesn’t matter what the gender is of the person the sentence is about. They are human, that should be enough.
I’ve been replacing all pronouns with they/them for a while, even in my daily life.
Pronouns are double plus ungood.
It’s hyperbole and she is referring to being forced to think a particular thing. She’s not wrong on the premise. But no one wants to analyze this because thinking and discord are hard.
She can still think whatever she wants, she just isn’t allowed to call people names they don’t want.
It is like me calling you “asshole” the whole time, and then proudly announcing that I would rather go to jail than stop calling you asshole.
She can call people whatever she wants that’s the point. You don’t go to jail for calling me an asshole. Being forced to use speech that counters her actual thoughts is the part she’s willing to go to jail for. You would likely do the same for your own beliefs.
[x] Doubt
Even if you disagree, using a pronoun is just polite. She’d have to go out of her way to do this.
He’d have to go out of his way to do this.
Start misgendering him and see how frustrated he gets.
You can’t not use pronouns. It’s about using the correct ones. Why do some people think pronouns are new? “You” is a pronoun, for example. It has nothing to do with gender.
Not sure why you assume this? I never made the claim
Even if you disagree, using a pronoun is just polite.
It may have just been a typo, but I’m seen far too many people who think pronouns are a modern invention that has to do with gender identity. Sorry if it was just a mistake.
It’s not a typo, I just lazily wrote the comment like I’d speak.
He really does know how to keep yall pushing their SEO score higher
Some people are just ugly on the inside, deep down where it counts.
To be fair, she’s ugly on the outside too…
Wait… is that really on the table? If so, then I grudgingly have to take her side insofar as objecting to prior restraint or compelled speech. Being an asshole is a fundamental human right.
No. It isn’t on the table. This is another in the long line of scenarios that only exist in TERF imaginations.
It was not on the table.
Some rando posted on her Shitter account “vote for Labour, get two years” and Rowling responded with the quote in the headline.
If you read the article, they clarify that the Labour party wants to crack down on LGBTQ hate crimes, and nowhere is it said that they would make it illegal to use improper pronouns for others.
As fundamental as not having to put up with assholes.
You wanna do it? Go do it over there where no one else has to put up with your shit
There is no right to not have to put up with assholes.
You wanna do it? Go do it over there where no one else has to put up with your shit
Exercising your rights, I see.
There is as much right to be an asshole as there is to not put up with assholes
There is no right to not have to put up with assholes.
Sure there is. It’s called freedom of association
That’s neither here nor there. There is no right to punish or censor someone just because in your opinion they’re an asshole.
Depends on what you mean by punish or censor.
If you’re being an asshole on social media, I absolutely have the right to “punish” you by downvoting your post and calling you an idiot. If I’m the owner or moderator of the platform you’re being an asshole on, then I absolutely have the right to censor you by banning you - or just blocking you if I’m an individual user.
I do agree that the government doesn’t have a right to intervene however, unless you take it far enough that it constitutes targeted harassment - but in my experience, when most people complain about being “censored” for being asshole, they really mean that privately owned platforms are deciding to not host their BS
There is no right to not have to put up with assholes.
EDIT: Because @charonn0@startrek.website keeps making comments then immediately deleting them, I’ll just answer here for when he finally finds a version of his response he’s satisfied with - since they’ve all been basically the same.
If you say “Of course I meant purely the legal aspect, that’s what I was saying the whole time”, then I’d point you to the comment of yours I actually responded to, which was
There is no right to not have to put up with assholes.
This is the remark that I’ve been talking about, and you don’t need to government to intervene in order to not have to put up with assholes. If you said “There is no right to have people you think are assholes put in jail”, then obviously I’d agree with you, but that’s not what you said. What you said is that we all have to just put up with assholes because we don’t have the right to stop them from being assholes, which is factually untrue for all the reasons that I’ve already stated
My comments keep disappearing or not going through. startrek.website has been having problems all day.
That makes her the second gigantic prominent shithead in as many days expressing that they’re willing to go to prison for their beliefs. And also the second whom I wouldn’t believe for even a millisecond that they’re telling the truth.
Enjoy jail then I guess. It’s a pretty stupid hill to die on, especially when you’re filthy rich and the conservatives already hate you over the whole witchcraft nonsense. I cannot fathom conservative doublethink.
what a weirdo lol
Deal.
Was my exact reaction when I read this this morning before moving on.
She’s just jealous Glinner’s got a book out and she thinks she needs to raise her TERF game.
