J.K. Rowling uses Harry Potter wealth to fund anti-transgender organization
https://www.advocate.com/news/jk-rowling-anti-trans-organizationOpen linkView original on mander.xyz1125
Comments311https://www.advocate.com/news/jk-rowling-anti-trans-organizationOpen linkView original on mander.xyz
Imagine getting all that wealth just to use it to hurt people
You are describing most of the billionaires.
There is a difference between abusing people to generate money and spending money to hurt people
Most of the Billionaires do both.
My intuition says you’re right, but I’ve learned to question it from time to time. I don’t know any billionaires myself, nor have I read much about them, so I don’t really have any facts either way. Got any sources I should look into?
The 1st thing always come to my mind is Nestlè. But there are many others, doing worse. Like Chevron, Elon Musk and others.
And this is why we boycott these cunts. Stop reading the books, stop watching the films, stop buying the merch, and stop playing the games. Every dollar you spend goes towards funding hate. All of these "separate the art from the artist" people can fuck off. If you actually believe that, YOU are the problem.
You can't with her. She will have infinite money until the day she dies and will keep spending it on hate. Some people are too far ahead to boycott successfully and unfortunately she is one. Hopefully she pays in the next life
Just because you've given up doesn't mean anyone else should. You don't have to be able to solve the problem to at least stop making the problem worse. Tiny incremental progress is better than perfection, because the latter doesn't exist, and if it did, it would be made out of lots of tiny incremental progress.
You also have to remember these people have a voice because we give it to them. She can be as rich as she wants, but we keep paying attention to her and she'll keep being a bad influence on humanity. There is this weird thing with humans where we tend to assume people with money are worth listening to, when 999 out of 1000 of them are fucking worthless pig fuckers.
In some ways, sure, but these people also have a voice because owning-class mass media gives it to them. You can literally buy a figurative microphone. Pay for a platform. We don't assume people with money are worth listening too, they're simply the ones talking on every channel.
And they only have power because we listen. Engagement drives profit. Fox News isn't profitable because they tell the truth.
Rowling doesn't get paid when you buy used. Got the entire set of movies or books? Sell them to a used book store or donate them to the library. Give them away on Craigslist. Make it easy for people not to buy them new. Also, boycott new media like the HBO series by cancelling your subscription or calling out the actors online for participating.
I turned my wife into a nerd and now we go to half price books.
You can't separate the art from the artist, but I can damn well ensure that none of my money goes to them.
Secondhand all the way baybee
reads this in Life Of Brian
"A nerd??"
"I got better"
Oh come on, that is "the quest for the holy Grail" and you know it!
derp. you're right.
I blame it on being turned into a newt
A newt!?
A witch! Witch!
I think im gonna give my old books to the library..
Not that I see any chance of it, but I'd love to see her get sued into oblivion (i.e. by the people directly harmed by her) as we've seen with the likes of Alex Jones.
Watching such a fall from grace would be enormously satisfying.
… you can consume without her profiting….
With brown butter and asparagus.
I fear the fungus in her house spoiled her meat. But it's worth a try.
Not only that, but he doubled down on it! I can't remember the exact quote but it was something along the lines of "that judge was jealous. Everyone wants to fuck a 13 year old." FFFFFUUUUCK. Goddamn these rich fucking cunts. I don't think there is anything that gets me more charged up than hearing about a fucking pedophile that got a lenient sentence. The only purpose they can serve this world is to be made an example of. A brutal, sadistic example.
Tom Cruise is another example I fucking love to give. His movies keep Scientology afloat (in the case of sea org, literally). His movie's profits fund slavery and abuse. STOP WATCHING HIS FUCKING MOVIES.
I hope everyone here is sane enough to understand that that is a lot worse than what JK Rowling is doing here.
Funding a hatred campaign with the sole purpose to dehumanize a certain part of the world's population isn't that much better, though. Her actions have a lot more victims.
Polansky is disgusting and so is Rowling, but in a different way.
Trolley problem nuance, and morons are downvoting you
My kid's school do a trip to Harry Potter World. I think it will be next year for him. I really don't want to give my money to that vile woman, but I also don't want him missing out. Looks like it's time to start petitioning the school to go somewhere else.
That's a phenomenal idea. If they push back, you could always involve your local paper. It kinda depends on where you live and the political leanings, though. If you are in the red, it may not do any good.
I would beg my kids not to eat at Chick Fil A, but inevitably hanging out with friends they would end up there on occasion well aware of their stance on various issues. Whenever they did eat there, I would make a $50 donation to GLAAD. I felt it was a small gesture to at least bring some balance to the Universe.
I just find this argument to be ridiculous. If you grew up with the bookes and movies and own them what harm are you doing by still enjoying those memories?
Enjoy the memories the books gave you, reread them if you still have the books if you want, but don't buy more new stuff from that author.
Don't buy tickets to the Harry Potter experience, don't watch the new series or get the new game.
Because you are going to talk about them. You are going to let others borrow them. They may decide they want a copy of their owm. Or they may talk to others about it, and those people may decide to get copies of their own. Do you see how this works?
Could always pirate them
"Seperate the art from the artist" is great... when they're dead. As always, you have to consider where the money goes. While she's alive it goes to her, and she uses it to do evil.
What would happen if some TG activists and/or allies set up a combined small publishing house and retail store that sold copies of her books without permission or royalties paid, perhaps even DVDs of her movies?
It doesn't matter. Keeping her in the cultural zeitgeist is the same as giving her money directly. We live in a connected world. Word of mouth is engagement, and engagement drives profit. Talking about her works to friends, family, or strangers on the internet keeps her relevant. The most gracious thing we can do is to force her into obscurity. Every other solution that benefits humanity involves cutlery and an iron will.
The activists and/or allies might get sued by Rowling and her publisher(s) (and whatever production company(/ies) that make her movies) would argue that the activists are stealing money from Rowling.
If they are right, Rowling suffers.
If they aren't, it might undermine their arguments about copyright.
Either way, the political left (and much of the libertarian movement—the non-richies, in this matter) wins.
What a miserable person. I can't imagine having her wealth and using it to try to hurt people.
I can think of quite a few people that I would go out of my way to destroy.
Starting with a few politicians.
But you’d possibly be making life better for people in general, depending on which politicians you chose to destroy (and in what way you destroyed them.)
I think this is the line her convoluted logic follows
#piratepotter don't let a dime go to Rowling or those trying to benefit from her.
Or just read other books, watch other movies, and so on. Like, Harry Potter is genuinely not even that good
What?? The only books that exist are:
Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy Trilogy ^*^
* All five of them. Six if you count Mostly Harmless.I think you mean six if you count 'And Another Thing .. '
'Mostly Harmless' was the 5th book.
This is according to The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide from 1996. I will certainly be checking out And Another Thing.
So I guess there are seven books to the trilogy.Edit: Ooooh, that explains it. And Another Thing wasn’t written by Adams. No wonder I never heard of it.
Young Zaphod Plays it Safe is just a short story.
Yeah, that's the one I wasn't counting as a book, but from that list I can see why some would count it.
'And Another Thing...' was fun, and I feel it belongs on the shelf right next to the others. I hope you give it a shot, and also enjoy it.
I'd recommend Dresden Files series if you want something with a wizard in it.
Ooh... +1 for this...
Read them some time back and would definitely read again.
I’ll add it to my reading list. Thanks!
While you're at it, if you haven't done so check out any of the Discworld books by Terry Pratchet. Very good reads.
There’s also atlas shrugged.
It’s like the sorting hat for terrible people.
Oh good one but that's a trick question, because nobody has actually read it in full.
Wait! You aren't supposed to finish Atlas Shrugged?
family guy made 2 cutscenes about her being problematic.
Read the A03 Harry Potter fanfics where Harry is a trans egg
The really good a/o I've been following hasn't been updated in almost two months 😭
Agreed.
Got kids? Percy Jackson (and the other Rick Riordan written) series are great. Older kids? Get them reading chuck wendig or Margaret Killjoy.
Introduce yourself to Kafka and Marquez and Butler and Morrison and so many other great great writers who make JK Rowling look like the utter hack she is.
Definitely seconding this recommendation. I've really liked Margarets Killjoy's more adult sci-fi/fantasy output, for a long time. The Free Orcs of Cascadia is a personal favorite.
But she recently wrote a YA fantasy novel called The Sapling Cage which is really wonderful.
THE GIRL FROM BEHIND THE BASTARDS?!
(Actually legit the only place I’ve ever heard of her. I will have to look into her writing!)
She's got a couple of different podcasts. Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff, which is a radical history podcast on the same podcast network as BTB, and Live Like The World is Dying which is a show about prepping.
My first exposure to her was actually by listening to an interview she did for the guerilla radio station operated out of The ZAD, which is in France, and is the largest Anarchist autonomous zone in Europe.
Honestly, just pick up any other book and give it a go, if that doesn't work drop it and pick up another one. Nothing depresses me more than those people - adults - who finish reading the last Harry Potter book and then pick up the first one and start over again. I've heard nothing but good things about Rick Riordan as far as getting kids into reading, that all happened a little after my time though (and I was already big into reading as a kid)
As someone who doesn't have the nostalgia goggles for HP, it's always insane to me how many adults still love that shit. They're YA novels... Like read a grown-up book, and maybe you'll realize how mediocre they were.
It's like Disney Adults...
Not even a grown-up book! Read a different magical fantasy book aimed at children or teenagers. And see how good those are, too. Many of them were written before Harry Potter.
I do think HP is good at the pacing and mystery aspect of it. The magical world isn't really that alluring, unless you are a 12 year old kid in 2001 who never read another book until now.
The pacing goes down the toilet in the last three books.
i used to read mtg books.
Yeah it’s wild looking at the books with adult eyes at the house elves and goblins and so on.
gently pushes Katalepsis by Hazel Young your way
YES!
The books are also good, but very different. The show creators made an excellent adaptation of the world and its energy and feeling, but changed characters and plot to something more suitable for a show. Both are great though.
I had someone recommend Rivers of London as an alternative magic learning protag series, and I’m enjoying it, but it’s more noir detective than Harry Potter. Which works in its favor IMO.
If anyone wants a suggestion may I suggest Yojou Senki/The Saga of Tanya the Evil, it's really good once you get past the fact that the English version devolves into technical documents at times. But the author apparently plays Hoi3, which honestly explains a lot about the books in general.
The world would be fine without Harry Potter, and better without JK Rowling.
Don't even pirate it. She doesn't deserve your mindshare.
There are many better authors out there who are also better humans.
Y'er a pirate, Harry
bitch, sit down.
literally tho
Family guy foreshadowed rowling in 2 cutscnes in the old seasons.
one of them was allegedly about peter, the sorting hat said" housing for registered sex offendors"
and the other 1 is peter saying: now its a problematic writing jk rowling, and then it goes to scene with the sorting hat saying to the girl, about how she is she is "trans" but the hat refutes that.
The difference between not being keen on trans people and making a few shitposts versus actively devoting time and money towards oppressing them is HUGE.
This isn’t just someone with an alternative opinion we’re talking about. It’s someone using more wealth than a lot of us will never touch, to fuck over an already marginalised group. She’s pure fucking evil.
It's loathsome because she has chosen to use her vast wealth to punch down.
Sadly I'm still going to hear "Oh she gives to LGBT Charities, she just doesn't agree with transpeople on EVERY little thing, doesn't mean she's a transphobe."
It's one thing to still support someone despite them having some problematic opinions on the side. I do it, you probably do it, it annoys the shit out of me to know that this thing that I like is made by someone who shares opinion with which I strongly disagree with, sometimes that are even against me, personally, as a trans person.
But not understanding something, being ignorant and being kind of an asshole about it, is very different than what this hateful bitch is doing. She has dedicated her entire life to make people like me fucking miserable. And it's working!
I'm having a very hard time reconciling the fact that lots of people love Harry Potter and some people in my entourage are the same and they will support and pay for stuff made by this horrendous person regardless because this universe means that much to them. My sister is like that. I'm having a very hard time with that. I don't want to be that person... but fuck this hurts.
The worst part is that most people don't know about it. Most people don't know how much of a hateful, awful person J.K. Rowling is. And I have to admit, those people in my life, I'm genuinely afraid of telling them. Because I know that there is a chance that I'll tell them everything, and that in the end, they won't change a thing. Because my rights as a human being matters less to them. And I don't want to find that out...
I hate everything about this.
I'm not trans, but I feel your pain. It sucks, a lot. Why do people have to be so hateful?
Low IQ and a lack of hobbies
I think that you shouldn’t tell people to stop enjoying what they love but to stop buying and funding her campaign.
It is hard to convince people to give up on their interests but it is reasonable to tell them where the money goes.
I myself I am mostly pirating all stuff. I could even help someone pirate it and do it for them. I think they would understand and agree to it. I would add that If they buy something from hp we are not friends/family anymore but if you ask me to pirate it then we could watch it together.
That’s my advice on how to approach this in a reasonable manner and if you need help pirating any hp stuff PM me and I will explain how to set everything up
First, let me start with saying I am sorry. Currently, the world seems very preoccupied with cocks and vagina's and who should have what. (Kinda weird, but yeah).
I love Harry Potter. It was the first series of books that really resonated with me. It is really sad to see that someone, who came from nothing and gained it all. Could live the dream, have all the money and affection, is such a massive cunt.
Yet somehow, it doesn't make me stop loving Harry Potter. When reading the books again, it reminds me of my childhood. Me reading at 2:00 in the morning underneath the blankets with a pocket light in me mouth to not let anyone know I am not sleeping. Daydreaming about such a world where magic exist.
The solution, I am afraid, is something I cannot provide. Money buys news, news poisons the minds. I stand for humanity, and all humans. No matter which configuration. And if someone wants to have a nice pair of tits and cunt instead of a dick, go on and have your merry life.
...
I don't know if this is helpful or not. What is your solution?
I don't know, there's a lot of racism and anti-Semitism in those books as well. I mean the money obsessed long nose goblins? Cho Chang?
They're good stories, but they do reflect the work of a fundamentally biggoted author.
In general the entire series is mean-spirited. You can see the roots of Rowling's hate in how she describes any of the series antagonists.
It is important to separate art and artist.
People get a lot of comfort out of religious text knowing next to nothing about the author(s).
This also means you can hate on JK Rowling without making any connection to HP.
You can separate the art from the artist for sure but when people are buying HP branded stuff, they are directly contributing to this.
Totally agree. Although in today's digital world there is no need to spend any money on HP.
I'll admit this is easier for me because I was never a huge HP fan. But I don't even pirate it because I don't want to increase its cultural impact. I don't even want to seed the torrent, and leeches suck. I want Harry Potter to disappear because even after Rowling dies, the profits will go towards a transphobic foundation.
In some cases piracy increases total revenue by getting more people interested in the product.
The product itself isn't bad. But you do have a point.
Let's compare Orsen Scott Card and Rowling. I'm never going to be pressured into taking kids to an Enders Game theme park, but piracy will make Univeral theme parks (and therefore Rowling) lots more money. Disney made more money from selling Churros than streaming.
No. I'm so tired of this. You can like the IP but you can't spend a single dime on it without funding transphobia. That's what we are talking about here.
Edit: The IP also should just die. Its popularity fuels hateful policies and attitudes against my existence.
Edit: This comment on it says it succinctly: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/26719393/14648789
And this is why I pirated Hogwarts legacy...
Understandable
If you are going down that road then there are much big targets to aim at. Are you also applying the same anger (and logic) to organised religion?
The same arguments apply and they are multiple times more powerful than Rowling.
Yup, fuck organized religion
Yeah okay, you are not being genuine. That much is clear now. This is a post about J. K. Rowling using profits from her IP to fund transphobia. People run in to defend the franchise, we try to explain how giving her money means more policies against us is bad, and then you object to that?
Ofc we are talking about HP in the HP post. Why would I talk about religion here? She gave a significant meaningful amount of money to fund hate against me, and she continues to be influential and use her and her IPs popularity to make peoples lives harder.
Why do you think I don't speak up against any church or organization funding hate and bigotry? You are not being genuine.
No, you went further and are hating on people liking HP. You are attacking the art not the artist. I am defending art in general. I am not defending Rowling at all or encouraging funding for her. Everyone should pirate anything HP related.
Because you are confusing the art and the artist. That precedent should not be allowed no matter the topic. (By equating religion to art I can make my point quicker. Note I'm not choosing any religion in particular)
Do you also try to stop people from believing in that religion? From reading those religious books? No. The art is separate.
I'm highlighting how art and artist are separate. No-one should feel guilty about enjoying a fictional book.
Where did that happen?
I completely disagree, both on a subjective selfish aesthetic level, and on a moral level.
On the aesthetic side, you're doing yourself a huge disservice by making this separation. You're missing out on this whole other dimension a piece of art has to offer you; namely the context that the author operates in. Star Wars gains this whole other rich level of interpretation if you consider the fact that George Lucas lived through the invasion of Vietnam and other forms of US imperialism and completely opposes it, for example. You're missing out by ignoring the author.
On the moral side, the argument is more obvious, I think. By ignoring the author you're denying yourself the opportunity to spend your money and support folks in a way that aligns with your own morals. In my case, I consider trans people people, and think they deserve to be treated with respect and dignity. Since I know J K Rowling completely disagrees, I know that if I spend money on her, I will be putting money in the pocket of someone, and platforming them, who actively works against my morals. And I'm thankful for being able to know that spending money on her goes counter to my own morality.
Obviously if the authors views are reflected in the work then there isn’t a separation. HP is badly written with many failings, but it is enjoyable and not anti-trans itself. The art does not reflect the beliefs of the author.
On the moral side, no money needs to be given directly or indirectly to Rowling.
It really does though. The moral universe of Harry Potter says a lot about J K Rowling as a person, and there are many parallels with her own life. Morality in the Harry Potter universe is not inherent to an action, but to an actor. Is bullying bad? Depends on who does it. If a bad guy does it (for example the Dursleys), then it's bad. If a good guy does it (Hagrid), then it's good! There's a parallel with the abolition of slavery about half way through the series, and it's only one character doing it, and they're the butt of the joke. And of course there's Cho Chang and Blackie Shackleslave or whatever she called the one black character. The work speaks volumes about her, and vice versa. And you're depriving yourself of this deeper level of analysis. You're missing out.
There's a YouTuber called Shaun who's done a thorough analysis of her work and its parallels with her dealings with nazis and fellow transphobes. It's worth a watch.
J K Rowling can go suck a fuck.
It would have been so easy for her to shut her mouth and keep supporting the feminist causes she did support, and instead she’s spent so much time and political capital attacking the ideas she doesn’t support.
It’s fucking asinine. Her mother clearly never taught her to shut the fuck up if she has nothing of value to say.
Pirating Harry Potter stuff is now not only a moral thing to do, but almost a moral obligation.
I’d say just don’t engage with it at all.
If someone talks about it, pretend ignorance. Like total ignorance of any aspect of the stories.
Or, if someone mentions it, just say you don’t give bigots money.
Editing to expand: by pirating you are perpetuating the cultural impact. The majority of people pay for access to this media, and by engaging with it you make it more costly for other people to skip it.
Maybe once they are dead, because history is history. But otherwise...
Even if you pirated, speaking about the movies will encourage other people to watch it, and they might not pirate it. It's indirect, but it could still give that transphobic doll money
Just pirated the whole movie series lol
I have always hated Harry Potter. I hated Harry before it was cool to hate Harry.
I'm a mother fucking golden hipster God!
Setting aside the question of the cause itself, I'm not sure that taunting people is a good way to effect social change.
kagis for image
https://metro.co.uk/2025/04/17/jk-rowling-says-i-love-a-plan-comes-together-supreme-court-result-22927389/
Yeah, that seems likely to antagonize people.
I am glad she smokes
I was gonna say that some people who smoke cigars use them on a very occasional basis, but it sounds like she's had a very long-running nicotine habit:
https://blog.lucy.co/10-people-who-smoked/
I suppose she un-quit at some point.
EDIT:
http://www.accio-quote.org/articles/2000/0600-times-treneman.html
https://thefriendlyeditor.com/2015/06/16/rowling-writing-harry-potter/
2024:
https://x.com/jk_rowling/status/1797759158688854150?lang=en
Even her drug choices are deplorable!
I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it becomes a three pack a day hobby for her and a number of higher ups who are currently screwing everything up. Menthols, too. Gotta speed run this shit.
Honestly, that photo is what sets me over the edge. Don't get me wrong, I already hated the bitch and hoped she died horribly and soon, but that picture makes me want to take the timeline into my own hands. I'm not a violent person, but sometimes exceptions must be made.
Yeah, that's just dumb.
Roughly a similar move was made by the far right finance minister in Finland. When she was faced with the challenge of communicating the need for austerity, did she use empathy? No, she went for twitter posts where she laughed aloud with scissors in hand.
Let
Harry
Potter
Die
Just let it go.
They won't and its crazy. I know people that just CAN'T because they made it part of their personality.
The amount of people with Deathly Hallows tattoos is crazy. My partner is among them
I know a trans person who still consumes HP media. I didn't respect them before they came out and transitioned and I sure as hell not going to start now. They've always been a selfish Adult Child and they'll never stop being one.
The artist is not the same as the work.
The world of Harry Potter, the books, the movies, future shows or whatever involve a lot more people than just this fucking idiot shit writer. And a shitty person can anyway create a good thing that helps people.
Now in this case where the author is still alive, let people enjoy harry Potter stuff, while asking people to not send money her way. Help people pirate her books if they really want to read them, pirate the shows and movies. Better yet, make those involved in the shows and movies voice their opinion against her, make the money going to those works support trans people to counter JK. Make her see her works support the causes she hates.
Alienating people for liking some book series, movie or show that was made, paid, produced, written or whatever by some asshole won't help the situation. In other words, in this case, harry Potter is not the problem, it's the author.
Harry Potter is part of the problem. I am totally onboard with the idea of 'The Death of the Author', which is the concept that something like Harry Potter is much more than just intellectual property owned by a person. It's a shared cultural experience which is so much bigger than one person it becomes impossible to say the author owns it.
However, J.K. is using the profits from her intellectual property to hurt people. Harry Potter is being used as a tool to hurt people. As much as I hate to say it, Harry Potter is part of the problem. At least for now. So pirate it, consume her IP without ever paying her a penny.
Also she's not Trans rights are human rights but she wrote pollyjuice potion into her world...
Read them with a little media literacy. Birth/Blood nature keeps coming up and was one the reasons I was getting uncomfortable with the story and dropped half way though. Hagrid is naturally angry. Voldemort is evil because he was a rape baby. House Elves are natural
slavesservants. The Weasley family will always be poor(even when Harry should be paying rent or at least buying them a new car). Hell, the Irish character keeps blowing things up. This mind set in her writing reflects to JK's views on trans. You are the way you are at birth.This. Not only is JKR a sorry excuse for a human being, she didn't even write good stories. Ursula K LeGuin wasn't keen on them either:
"I have no great opinion of it. When so many adult critics were carrying on about the 'incredible originality' of the first Harry Potter book, I read it to find out what the fuss was about, and remained somewhat puzzled; it seemed a lively kid's fantasy crossed with a 'school novel,' good fare for its age group, but stylistically ordinary, imaginatively derivative, and ethically rather mean-spirited."
Shaun pointed out how mean spirited the books were as well. I remember back when there was a mini satanic panic targeting the HP books and Philip Pullman came out and said that his books were way more anti-religion and that he should have been getting that attention.
The first book was... fine I guess. Nothing ground breaking and the weirdness was still shallow and hadn't created a pattern yet. I was really surprised that Voldemort became the reoccurring villain. He's just a boring villain.
Let it go, let it goooo
Harry Potter defenders: “JK Rowling just said mean words online she hasn’t actually harmed trans people!”
What JK Rowling is doing with the money:
Someone dear to me is heartbroken and perennially conflicted because she absolutely loved Harry Potter growing up, and is also keenly aware of how shitty JK Rowling is. Now as an adult the Harry Potter franchise is one of the things that gives her joy in an otherwise very hard life she has had.
I'm not giving any more details about her. All I'm asking is, give these people a break, please. Not everyone is in a position in life to be an activist on everything, and while it might sound silly, things like HP are a big part of some people's childhoods and taking those away from them can be devastating.
Ok but harry potter "defenders" and jk Rowling defenders are not the same. You can appreciate the world of HP while not agreeing or supporting their shit creator.
Even the original cast don't support hp anymore because they aren't a bunch of assholes and don't have rocks for brains.
But by consuming Harry Potter IP, you're actively putting money in her pocket, which she uses for her anti trans cause. Unless you pirate the content
I pirate all content, I see no reason to discriminate.
Anecdote: As a member of the generation that grew up with HP, no one I know is supporting the IP financially. We grew up with the books and movies and that's it. This is just one of many cultural issues that's dividing the left. Cool I guess?
Edit: typos
We're pretty united against bigotry. Get with the program or stop dividing the left.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
There hasn't been a new Harry Potter book in decades, and Fantastic Beasts basically took cyanide when Crimes of Grindelwald came out, only thing keeping this franchise alive is fanfics
The game was pretty successful financially, although it luckily wasn't at all able to stay culturally relevant and there is a new hbo show coming out soon that was even promoted by german state media.
Lots of people still watch the movies on streaming. As little as a few weeks ago, my wife suggested we should watch one of the movies. She has no particular contact with the LGBTQ+ society, and didn't know anything about JK Rowlings behaviour. I've had a few colleagues that are gay, but I never had meaningful exposure to the queer community either, until I stumbled into roller derby a decade ago.
So I assume a lot of people watch HP, not of malice, but unknowingly or with indifference to who JK Rowling is as a person
I still have people swearing to me that she "Supports the trans community" and "Donates money to pro-trans causes" and that people are "targetting her unfairly"
Sad thing is, they're being serious and arguing in what they believe is good faith. They legitimately don't realize who she is, they're too smitten by the debunked story of a homeless woman who wrote Harry Potter on old napkins.
Honestly, having to listen to people babble about Harry Potter just feels like a slap in the face. Like, I know people who have the best intentions in regard to supporting trans people, but they'll still happily make endless references to this garbage in front of me as though it wouldn't immediately bring to mind someone who is actively engaged in trying to get others to agree that I shouldn't exist. Some of them also buy merch that I guarantee puts money directly in her pocket.
It bothers the shit out of me.
I understand why this is so painful, and I really appreciate you sharing how you feel. I grew up with HP, and while it was part of my childhood, I don’t support the author’s views at all. I get why seeing people casually reference the series or buy merchandise can be upsetting when it feels like it’s indirectly supporting someone who actively harms the trans community. That said, I think it's important for people to be able to talk about the series and its impact on them without automatically being labeled a bigot. Acknowledging the harm the author has caused doesn’t mean we can’t still discuss the cultural impact of the books. People should be more mindful, but I don’t think we should shut down conversations about it entirely. Thanks for sharing your perspective—I’ll keep this in mind moving forward.
The very first comment is all about actively supporting J K Rowling with money, so this is not just about people talking about HP, but funding someone who is actively using their money and influence to harm us.
As others have mentioned publicity and support in general for HP is also bad, as it makes people more likely to buy HP merchandise. New shows, merch, and games are still being produced and sold. We aren't shitting on HP for fun. We are telling people that this actually really and truly hurts us.
I would never call someone a bigot for talking about Harry Potter. It does absolutely reduce my opinion of them, though. I keep it to myself, but I see it as pretty thoughtless.
I grew up watching The Cosby Show. Big part of my childhood etc. I’ll leave you to join the dots.
No one is. This is an article about how she uses profits from the HP franchise to fund transphobia with people running in to the defend liking the franchise while completely ignoring the context of the post.
Edit: For reference, liking or not liking the franchise isn't what the post is about, so running in to defend it is gonna be read as supporting funding the franchise.
I disagree. Sometimes you can’t separate the art from the artist when they are actively using their wealth and influence to oppress an already marginalized group. Just take a look at what recently happened and is happening to Tesla.
yes you can but i will still judge you because it's a terribly written series
I found it very fun, interesting and captivating when I read those books (that is, when I was maybe 13-16?). If it was "terribly written" it wouldn't have made the success it did, and also the target audience is generally not made of literary critics.
So I don't think there is much to judge, especially since many people's good opinion on the story is based on their lived experience with it, from when they were younger etc. And you can't erase that from your life because the author turned out to be an asshole 15 years later.
"If it was "terribly written" it wouldn't have made the success it did"
Dan Brown's millions beg to differ.
If people like HP stuff they might want to try Dianna Wynne Jones' stuff: earlier, better, and didn't have the same fortunate exposure.
The DaVinci code sold 80 millions copies. The first HP book alone sold 120 millions, and the whole series 600 millions, being the most sold series of books.
Not only they are one order of magnitude apart, but I think they sold for different reasons.
I haven't read Dan Brown's stuff, but I also doubt it's terribly written by the way. Books that capture the interest of a population more and more unused to read can be shallow, banal, inconsistent, whatever, but not terribly written. Casual readers can hardly finish a terribly written book. In any case, HP books are children's books. Children or teenagers are not literary critics, it's not about reading "great literature", however you define that.
I also can't help to notice the coincidence that all the HP critiques started appearing in the last years, when the author went bananas. A series this popular, which ended in 2007, and suddenly 15 years later people notice that it's "terribly written"? This smells more to me of a damnatio memoriae than genuine critique.
You haven't read it, but that's what you reckon? Okay.
As to the other point: JKR's stuff is trite and derivative, but I do think that some of its "problematic" aspects are likely just because it's regurgitating European fantasy tropes, which themselves may (originally or later on) encode antisemitism and so on.
And when it comes to it, subjecting any popular series to close reading with an eye for affront is likely to show up its flaws. Just think of all the janitors who blew up with the death star.
But Brown's stuff is utter garbage (not to mention just ripping off "the Holy Blood and the Holy Grail", which was pretty awful to begin with) - if you have the chance to pick it up second-hand I'd encourage you to see if you can finish it.
I actually disagree that a book is "problematic" because it touches, presents, includes etc. any topic that morally we disagree with. Not every book has to be a manifesto or a depiction for a moral and just society, which is why I find most of the arguments against HP to be weak (some points were listed in a sibling comment thread).
I am quite sure this is true for any book (especially fiction), in fact. Which is why I think it's an activity that makes sense only to justify the pre-existing opinion about the book, rather than having a value in itself.
To be clear, I know that Dan Brown stuff is garbage. I just have seen people who I think never read a book in the previous 10 years read that one (in translation though, so who knows...). So the book must at least be interesting and intriguing to keep the attention of people who are not used to read. For me this means not fitting in the "terrible writing" category, but maybe we mean different things by that.
she was an asshole back then and you can see it all over her books. i think i was probably lucky enough to be a bit older than the target demo to find HP even remotely interesting but kids at the time were super generous and kind with the books and interpreted them in good ways that jowling kowling rowling clearly never intended. which is why she retconned diversity into her books for example.
i completely believe in the death of the author, but also won't stand for praising a shitty author's shitty books just because people headcanoned a lot of good things into it to make them suck less.
Honestly, I read the books translated + I could not and still cannot relate with the issues that I often see raised against the book (like the way diversity is represented). Especially when I was a kid, those issues were so not in my mind that I would never ever flag as issues.
To make an example: for me as a kid, slavery was something that mostly had to do with the roman empire. The whole debacle about house elves etc. is completely disconnected from real societal probelsm, recent history etc. I have always rooted for the elves because that's what I was pushed to do emotionally, but without really ever reflecting on slavery as a whole. I am picking this example because it's one of the most used ones to critique the book.
In general I also believe that authors can build worlds that do not represent their views, I find a lot of the critique I have read a stretch and I am especially suspicious that most of these critiques started appearing recently. I believe people started with the thesis (she is an asshole) and then backtracked the analysis trying to find anything at all in the books that could support the conclusion (rather than viceversa).
Either way, all of this is relatively irrelevant. People can like or dislike books - especially fiction - freely. For me the book is mostly associated with a vibe of being young, thinking about those stories, relating with the characters etc., not with the actual books content. So it's more about thinking back of childhood/past than appreciating the literary value.
well the critique is not about the world building. i mean the world building is bad too but that's not about the morality of the world. the critique is about what the books present as good or bad.
there are many examples of this.
body shaming and misogyny/transphobia: bad people are fat, good people are at most "plump". bad women have mannish features, like big physiques, square jaws and mustaches.
slavery is good, actually: the problem with slavery in the books isn't that it's portrayed at all, it's that it's portrayed as good for the house elves except for one weirdo freak who wants to be free for some reason. also house elves even as a term is yikes imo.
zero concern for diversity: it's not that the book just lacks it but the fact that the very few token characters who were put in are just cardboard cutouts with downright disrespectful names. the Asian girl is cho chang because i think the editor may have vetoed the first ch-ch name she came up with. the black guy is called kingsley shacklebolt because "tyrone escapedslave" was too on the nose i guess. the british wizarding school is for some reason more populous than schools that represent much larger populations, and it has a proper name while all others are called "wizard school" or "magic place" very badly translated because she couldn't be fucked to engage with another culture even on a surface level. she also disrespectfully dismissed some regional beliefs about magic because why not.
good people vs bad people, not good deeds vs bad deeds: you can see throughout the book "good" and "bad" people doing the exact same things but represented as good and bad depending on who's doing them, not what they're doing.
status quo above all: challenging systemic problems is never a solution, even slavery, and any change must only involve individuals. whatever you may gather as "challenging authority" for example is always about the people using the authority, and not whether the authority itself should exist at all. the main protagonist becomes a fucking cop at the end. and the books end in literally everything being the same as it started, sans the threat of voldy, and "all is well" despite the same abusive systems, castes and slavery still existing. because status quo is good and systemic change is bad.
it keeps going, and it gets worse if you go beyond the HP books. it's not what's in the world, it's how she presents them.
And I can acknowledge that while also having nostalgia for books that I grew up with as a literal child. Judge away.
boo former child
Transgenders are living rent-free in her head.
What a sad, hateful person who has squandered an opportunity to actually do something good with her considerable wealth and previous social capital.
This is why the new tv series will be hated by all. They had a chance to remake and sanitize the series away from the grimy hands of JK and instead they doubled down. So if anything this remake might be even more offensive.
The wild thing is that growing up I had all the conservatives and bible people trying to stop us kids from reading the demonic Harry Potter novels. Now that they realize the author is one of them, they suddenly love the books about witchcraft!
Unfortunately, they won't be hated. A lot of people don't actually care all that much about trans people :(
They will cast Snape as black and the audience will wonder why Harry immediately hates him.
That’s the confusing thing to me, clearly the left audience is done with JK, but the show is also pissing off the right with “woke casting”
Are you not aware that Snape literally has been cast as black? Because if not that's hilarious coincidence.
The potters being violently racist is cannon.
Just like the best selling game of the year, Hogwarts Legacy.
I don’t think Hogwarts: Legacy doubled down, though? It’s definitely sad that she made money off that game being sold, but she didn’t have any hand in the writing. The game has trans characters and allows the player to be trans as well.
My comment was only to point out that the mainstream does not care about JKR's take on trans people and that anything Harry Potter will print money, which is the opposite of OP's take on things.
she does profit from the IP being sold. and people were like defending the game and her transphobia.
Did they really? My impression was that she used her copyright control
What a miserable person. More money than God and all she can do is sit around hating people she’s never met.
FUCK OFF JK YOU FUCKING TWAT.
Thar is all
Boycotts work! Don’t watch her show on HBO and cancel your subscription after The Last of Us season finale of course. If her brand becomes toxic nobody will fund projects around it and she will fade into obscurity.
To many people care more about their immediate shiny than any lasting harm their actions do in the world.
Just look at how quickly the Nintendo Switch 2 sold out preorders, despite explicitly telling customers they won't even own the device, and thus nintendo can fucking brick the thing whenever they want.
Don’t watch anything of hers on anything, like she’ll still be getting royalties for films.
I didn't subscribe to HBO when Game of Thrones was airing, I'm not about to start now.
Can’t she just take up knitting or photography or racing driving?
I'd prefer she take up parachuteless BASE diving, personally.
Is that Titanic sub company still in business?
Appreciated, I just don’t get why people choose hate as a hobby when there are much better options.
No, because she's still traumatized by the thought that Corbyn could have won, and could have raised her taxes.
"You hurt a community the most by going after their most vulnerable."
Piece of shit author continues being a piece of shit. More news at 11.
It's good to publicly remember every now and then. Plenty of people don't know that she's a raging transphobe, and if even one of them recently joined lemmy and sees this post and is convinced to no longer buy her work, then that makes this post worth it, imo.
Yeah, good point
Trauma via a cis man if I remember correctly. She fears men in general and fervently believes, despite the statistics, that trans women will put cis women at risk.
Edit: Probably also attention and money if other right wing grifters are anything to go by.
That and hatred fed to her by people she aligns with.
What an ugly human being
It amazes me how some people just refuse to put their money to anything actually useful.
If I had money, I promise I'd do something useful with it. Like putting up a shed in my garden.
In addition to the shed you already have? If so, I must ask: Are you, in fact, Arthur "Two Sheds" Jackson?
I am not, but can you lend me a bob until next Thursday to mend the shed? I am expecting a postal order and can pay you back as soon as it comes. Love, Ewan.
I'd love to, but unfortunately have recently committed all my available funds to a business venture in Nigeria, and I'm currently awaiting the results. Once that is resolved, I'm expecting to have significant financial flexibility, and at that point, I would be in a much better position to lend.
Take care, Ken Shabby (deceased)
The story so far: Rosamund's father has become ensnared by Mr. Shabby's extraordinary personal magnetism. Bob and Janet have eaten Mr. Farquar's goldfish during an Oxfam lunch, and Mrs. Elsmore's marriage is threatened by Doug's insistence that he is on a different level of consciousness. Louise's hernia has been confirmed, and Jim, Bob's brother, has run over the editor of the 'Lancet' on his way to see Jenny, a freelance Pagoda designer. On the other side of the continent Napoleon still broods over the smoldering remains of a city he had crossed half the earth to conquer...
Harry Potter defined so much of my young life. I’m confused as to if Rowling has always been this way, or if something changed. I first found out about this kind of behavior around 10 years ago
My experience reading the Sinfest comic taught me that people start out as feminists (believe in the equality of the sexes) then turn to radical feminists (believe that women are superior to men), which causes them to see Trans women as men realizing the truth and trying to stay in the superior sex, and trans men as women being tricked by doctors (terfs).
This leads to both demonization of sex work (swerfs) and distrust in doctors in general (anti-vax), and finally leading to the distrust in all science and fact and full blown narcissim.
You have wildly misunderstood what TERFs are. They're buddies with anti-abortion activists. Politically they are aligned in interests with misogynists. They believe that gender is innate and unchangeable, which is the same thing that misogynists think. They believe that women are and will always be subjugated by men because men are biologically inclined towards rape and are categorically stronger than every single woman. They dont actually seek to change this in any material way. They just dont want to have to be around people they consider disgusting. They want to be upheld by white men the way they were in the 40s. There's a reason TERFs skew middle class and white.
Fun fact that during the build up to world war 2 a mass exodus of former suffragettes to the side of fascism took place in Britain. Even though fascists wanted to take their right to vote away again. The fascists upheld white British women as the pinnacle of femininity, and upheld them as an ideal in their state of subjugation. This presented a position of privilege over other women. It afforded them status and protection that being a political radical did not.
Not necessarily directly related to TERFs, just wanted to point out that if incentives exist to become a misogynist then some women will take the incentive.
Setting aside the content, the art style on Sinfest changed so much. I read some of the early stuff, and every time I glance at it, it seems like the art style's significantly different. Not like, say, Peanuts or some other long-running comic strips.
Here's a Sinfest comic strip from 2000:
From 2005:
Here's from 2010:
From 2015:
From 2020:
From 2025:
Twokinds is like this. The artist cheated and redid a bunch of his first pages, but even the redone ones are a bit crunchy. The originals are very...early art. The new stuff is insanely detailed. One time he spent 8+ hours drawing a house. The story also evolved a lot too, from his teenage years experiencing racism to his adult life over 20 years or so.
https://twokinds.keenspot.com/
I have to ask because someone posted actual comics below and the topic seems unrelated:
Is it a change in the comic author or the content of the comics that taught you this?
People tend to get more conservative the wealthier they get.
So money happened to her.
Yeah, I never understood that one. I am not obscenely wealthy, but I've gone the opposite direction. I make combined over 200k between myself and my wife, and im more left leaning than I think I've ever been at any point in my life.
Well, to put it bluntly, 200k is nice, but it's not the wealth they are taking about.
It's a vibe, not an actual analysis of political economy.
People don't magically change their worldview because they have more money, but a person's economic relationship (e.g. owning a business, or being an employee) will guide their class interests - someone like Rowling who primarily makes money from ownership rather than work will materially benefit from conservative economic interests. And since capitalism rewards profit over social contribution, those of the business owners who don't care about other people enough to sacrifice profitability are (generally) more able to build wealth, so there are more right-wing types in mega-wealthy circles, not simply because they have wealth (this also includes those feigning left-wing ideals, like rainbow capitalism and philanthrocapitalism, to exploit real social movements for reputation and profit).
This Wikipedia page gives a quick rundown of how a person's politics and their role in the economy intertwine, although it's probably more useful to learn the concept through pamphlets or books which provide historical evidence, examples and related concepts. My recommendation - Not pointlessly academic or dated, relatively general, has nice and neat chapters for specific questions.
She was already very conservative during her upbringing. Her 'feminism' amounted to performative success for affluent women under capitalism. She has never been a progressive. She retconned her characters to minorities while doing literally no work to write the characters as minorities with the experiences of minorities. Feminism to her is an aesthetic.
Wait what? When did she retcon races? I feel like that would have thrown up red flags if I had read the those inconsistencies
She did later on, claiming that Hermione "could have been black" and that "she never specified her race". As though being black was so inconsequential that it would go entirely unmentioned through 7 books (when other black characters absolutely did have their race mentioned).
No, people who were already selfish get more conservative the wealthier they get. When they have nothing, they want everyone to share and help each other. As they get more of their own wealth, their true beliefs come out and they expect everyone to get their own.
Real Notch hours too
It’s always the people you most expect.
Fucking god, she’s still doing this shit? She’s going to turn her franchise into another Tesla.
I saw this getting upvotes in a conservative comm. Makes me sick.
In this comm it feels like actual news, being notified of things that happen in the world. Upvoting it feels like a "more people should know that this is happening" kinda thing.
But in a comm dedicated to the GQP? There it feels like an upvote is a sign of approval or agreement.
the thing i don't get is why people are focused on the transgender community so much?
I heard a YouTuber refer to her as Jeepers Kreepers Rowling recently, and it makes me giggle. What an awful woman.
I'm partial to Joule Kelvin Rowling, myself.
It's this actually new? Wasn't it already known that she did that?
I mean to be fair, if she's going to make hating LGBT people her whole personality, we might as well make sure to keep mentioning how ACTIVE she is in her hate.
It would be one thing if she had just said some nasty shit a decade ago, but this goofy lady wakes up and chooses violence every god damned day.
Her twitter is mostly about trans people instead of HP too. She could have just kept quiet and kept having her PR team sweep all the transphobic tweets she was liking under the rug like they did early on before she went full mask off. But no, she wants to get rid of all the queer people and is actively working to try to make that happen.
Last time she talked about Harry Potter on Twitter, she told everyone that wizards just used to shit themselves until someone invented the toilet.
That's the thing. I basically already assumed she more or less financed multiple terf organizations all by herself
Imagine what good things could be done with the money instead of using it for stuff that's non of her business. The older they get, the more conservative they turn out to be - sad for someone who brought a wonderful world to life once...
Aside from hurting Trans people, these things hurt women both those afab or not, and given the numbers of each group they end up hurting way, way, way more cisgender women. So every opportunity, every interview with Rowling, every comment on a tweet to her should be "What happened that made you hate women this much?".
I mean it's sad that she can't love the trans, but if that was just a prrsonal dislike, ok everyone has barely rational likes and dislikes, can't be helped. But to make that public, and then to go to these lengths, to sacrifice the safety of all women on the altar of that hate and fear, that is truly sick and sickening.
So the question is "JO, WHY DO YOU HATE WOMEN???"
Because because of her hate mongering, women are getting in trouble and often beat up for going to the bathroom, get humiliated by having to "prove" they're "real" women to pushy agressive bigots. I fully expect one day to lose my job and end up in jail for beating up some such asshole who thinks they should humiliate my wife or daughters that way.
The greatest achievement of gender critical ideology is getting women to voluntarily give men jurisdiction to police their bodies and presentation. To the Rowlings and Parkers, any number of cisgender women hurt by their ideology is worth it in their quest of erasing trans people out of public life.
rowling also wants to retcon the og cast members of the films, because they dont like to be associated with her transphobia.
Wouldn't it be a shame if the website got DDOS'd, the email account ([email protected]) got spammed to shit and the morally bankrupt legal firm facilitating this also got something coming to their website (see email)
(in a hypothetical way) What if someone send to this JKR email a link to futa hentai with Harry Potter characters.
I don't know what happened to her, but all this bs began after she finished the books. For years she was desperate to not fade into obscurity and first tried to cater to the pc crowd and then it slowly turned to hate and harassment against people who weren't pc enough. Then the trans bs started and while I have not kept up with her since she called pewdiepie a fascist, I can tell that she's sticking to her MO of doubling down on something even when people try and tell her to let it go. I don't think she started out as a bad person, but I think all the wealth and attention kinda fucked her up. It's almost like witnessing an addict going from recreational usage of drugs, to becoming a meth addict on a street corner who is willing to do anything to remain relevant in any way.
But wtf do I know. All I can say is that it's kinda nice to finally be able to say that the writing in the Harry Potter books was mid af. Ten years ago ppl told me to kill myself, lol. I still think it's a fun world and the worldbuilding is great as long as you don't start asking questions, but the actual writing and storytelling? Pretty amateur in my humble opinion. I have felt this way since I lost interest in the series around 2006 and I still feel this way. Still haven't managed to finish the books because I hate the fifth one with a passion. The editor was on vacation when she wrote that drivel.
There's no need to play apologist for a cunty billionaire. More likely, this is who she's always been, and now she just has enough money that she no longer needs to hide it.
I don't think you read my comment.
I certainly did. Your first paragraph was very much giving her the benefit of the doubt that she wasn't always a piece of shit. I disagree. I think she just no longer needs to hide it.
Giving someone the benefit of the doubt isn't the same as being an apologist.
I think that there are aspects of her personality that sadly lends itself to her ending up in situations like this, but I see the trans stuff more so as a symptom and not a belief she's held strongly and evily her whole life.
The things I have noticed about Rowling's character is that she seems to love being praised like a hero or an icon. I think she wants to be a role model because she kinda became one when she wrote her books. I think it gave her a high she hasn't been able to feel since.
I have also noticed that Rowling tends to double down on things she say. When she started retconing Harry Potter and making everyone retroactively black and gay, she became very aggressive toward anyone who disagreed or questioned this depiction of hers. Back then, people didn't care as much because she was PC so while she was obnoxious, she was still perceived to be somewhat well-meaning, if in a performative way.
I think she is a massive perfectionist who's terrified of being wrong or less perfect. I think she retconed her characters because she wanted the credit of being ahead of her time. It wasn't enough to have written the most popular book series for kids and teens, that changed the landscape of children's literature. No. She also needed the credit of being PC before it was cool. Even if that wasn't the case.
She also started calling people fascist on Twitter, pewdiepie being one of them and she never backed down from that statement despite being entirely misinformed and ignorant about the situation with him. I vaguely remember similar instances where she would barge in to discussions on Twitter and make statements that were foolish and uninformed and never apologizing for anything or taking the L.
When the trans stuff happened, it just makes sense to me that she would double down on that too because she cannot be wrong. Personally I don't think her initial comments on the subject were all that wild, but the things I have heard her say and do since sounds pretty extreme and to me is in line with her pattern of doubling down and going to the extremes to be right before ever admitting fault or backing down.
In that sense, I agree that the pattern of behavior probably was a reoccurring thing for many years, but I don't believe she hated trans people always. I also don't believe she cared about PC stuff until it became popular. All those things are mere symptoms of a deeper character flaw of someone who yearns for validation and to be right. But this is just me armchair diagnosing here and I don't know enough about her past nor about how she is as a person, but based on the things I have casually observed her do for almost two decades, I do believe that this current behavior of hers was cultivated and nurtured rather than being how she was day one. I think she gave in to her negative traits and the fact that she ended up clinging to trans issues, to me, is more down to chance than the core motivation for her. It could have been anything else, honestly, but it became trans stuff.
And no, I am not apologizing for her because I have always found her behavior fucking cringe and misguided. I just don't believe she has always been a trans hater. At the end of the day, I do kind of feel sorry for her in the same way I feel sorry for Musk and Trump and all his lickspittles.
What hole must you have inside to feel such an urge to self-destruct and actively hurt other people when you feel the smallest bit of pushback or rejection? That must be a very sad existence.
Very well said and I do agree with most of it. My point was more so that just being a transphobe is not the only thing making her a terrible person. There were very troublesome depictions even in her books before we knew she had gone off the deep end. I would argue that those indicate she has always held vile beliefs, she just didn't flaunt them so brazenly. The fact that she is unable to admit her errors and correct her ways is also an indication that she holds these beliefs deeply.
Yeah, I see what you mean! In that sense, I don't think we disagree all that much, actually :D
What things in the books have you noticed? I only read the first 4 and got stuck in the 5th - twice. My latest read was ten to twelve years ago, so I'm a bit fuzzy on the details. I just remember being incredibly unimpressed with the writing and story during my last read while still enjoying the world and atmosphere. Didn't pick up on any weird views and beliefs back then, I think.
Reminds me of JD Vance.
Some people first glom onto left-leaning causes and opinions. They advocate for open-mindedness and human rights for all. They might even get really into the righteous purity of it all, where they get to criticize others for not being progressive enough.
But then maybe they don't get satisfaction out of that for long. Maybe they find that another leftist is criticizing them for their wrong-headed views. Maybe they aren't getting enough cookies for being a feminist.
So they switch over the right-leaning side of things. Maybe that allows them to be more openly hateful.
Or maybe they just changed their minds.
Honestly, I don't know much about Rowling's beliefs other than being a TERF. Maybe she supports all other "feminist" and anti-racist and left-leaning progressive causes. Perhaps she didn't go all-in on the likes of Trump, the way Vance did.
But you'd never know, since all she talks about is being anti-trans.
Oh, Vance was like that? Haha explains a lot, lol. How sad for him. That man was never on my radar until he start insulting my country and passing on Zelenskyj on international TV. The vibe I got from him is that he's the type of guy who will suck up to everyone and stab everyone in the back the minute he sees the benefit to himself. Makes sense if he used to be super liberal.
As for Rowling, I honestly think most of her strange behavior has less to do about personal beliefs and more to do with wanting admiration and being incapable of admitting fault. I wrote a longer comment to someone else about how I see Rowling and while it's all speculation, I wouldn't be surprised if it turned out to be how she functions.
With people who behave like that, it is rarely about the cause itself and more about something deeper. I believe Rowling is addicted to attention and is terrified of being wrong. Those two are a very bad combo. Especially when you have spent 20 years being praised as the queen of children's literature and has been beloved and idolized like a god where people take everything you say and turn them into inspirational quotes on their social medias and tell you how you ARE their childhoods etc. Suddenly being confronted with pushback when you have been riding a high for years must be kind of startling. Especially when all you have in your tool box is doubling down and making strong statements on social issues, lol.
If I had infinite time, I would genuinely love to dissect what the hell her psychology is, why she is the way that she is and how we got here because I only have the cliffnotes version and my vantage point and I just see a pattern of behavior that goes way, way deeper than political issues and activism.
Nothing will meaningfully improve until the rich fear for their lives
Soon as people get rich and can avoid the consequences of being an asshole, the filter comes off and they become assholes.
I was one of those fanboys. Now I don't think im even gonna pirate the show. I don't want her to have THOSE numbers either. I also haven't bothered past the second fantastic beasts even to just see how bad it is. I just......don't fucking care after the second movie lol
I’m glad I never have her a cent. Pirated the moves the only time I’ve watched them. Pirated the books too, but only got through one.
Okay, I'm sure I'll get vote-bombed here, please don't jump the gun, I'm pro lgbtq+. I don't give a shit who or how someone loves, just hope they're allowed to be happy with themselves (unless they're hurting people, obviously).
I believe trans rights, and womens rights, are human rights. I don't think anybody should be treated differently due to gender, sex, race, or orientation, and they shouldn't be discriminated against in any way. I'm just trying to make sure I understand fully for when I defend the pro trans position that I believe to be correct.
I started looking further into this because a friend of mine, which is a total HP nerd, was trying to give me some context on where her anti-trans activism comes from. It SEEMS like she mostly wants to make sure women stay safe (paraphrasing her own words here). In Scotland apparently they're changing things so that a dude can just say he's not a dude, and be legally allowed in all women only spaces if they register with the government or whatever. I can absolutely see how that could be used in a predatory manor, and can see that side of the argument.
I just read her piece here: https://www.jkrowling.com/opinions/j-k-rowling-writes-about-her-reasons-for-speaking-out-on-sex-and-gender-issues/ To make sure I'm getting as complete of a look at the situation as I can.
And it confused the issue a little for me. All of her arguments seem to be coming from a place of reason, and some of them made sense (if the referenced stats were true). Most of her arguments seem to come from a "I don't want to make it easier for male predators to prey on women" standpoint, which makes sense at the surface level.
is the current climate making it fashionable to transition? I find it hard to believe someone would go that far without truly thinking it's the right thing to do, but some people are highly influenced by peer pressure. I can also see maybe some women wanting to change to escape the misogyny of our current world. I'm a straight cis-male, and I can't personally resonate with the idea of changing that because it's "popular" or whatever, so I don't put a lot of credence into that argument, but I'm not everyone 🤷.
I also understand that sex and gender are separate, and Rowling seems to be on the train that conflates it, which might be the basis for her position.
Please help me learn and understand. Someone with more context or knowledge, please let me know. I'd love the opinion of some trans folks if you see this. Rowling says she's getting support from trans women for her positions. And I'm sure that's true, there's bound to be some, like there's women who support patriarchy.
Edit, reordered my statements so my current position is clear at the start
As a cis man who is only tangentially acquainted with transgender issues, and as a person who isn't particularly eloquent, I cannot do this topic justice myself. You'll have to trust me when I say that the image of "just any bloke can call himself a woman and go into the bathroom and assault women" is language that is deeply colored by propaganda, and has no basis in reality. When you indulge in language and ideas like that, you are doing harm. Similarly, the "men doing women's sports" idea is harmful to both cis and trans women, and has, again 0 basis in reality.
If you are truly interested, and not some right wing troll who's "just asking questions" (we get a lot of those on .world, it's like the instance attracts them), please, please give these YouTube videos a watch:
https://youtu.be/EmT0i0xG6zg https://youtu.be/qfUsuQ8rfu4
The shorter one is from a cis man, but it seems to me that he explains the idea very well, at least behind the sports thing. And I promise that the longer one is worth it. It will help you understand a deeply marginalized segment of the population much better, and you will be a better person for it. I think that's worth 2 hours.
Avada kedavra!
Oh well, it was worth a try...
Crucio!
Someone needs to
Again??
Time to use the new magic “begoneith cunty cunt!”
"Harry Potter wealth". That is hilarious.
This is just sad. What could have made JKR use her wealth in such an unkind way?
She's such a scumbag. Had it all and ruined her name and art for what? To be hateful? Shame on her and shame on HBO for handing her more money and fueling her hate.
but we are still not ok with bashing the fans/consumer that gave her the money despite the stories being flatter than brothers grim wiping their ass? i really think harry potter fans are the problem.
And for filler treatments apparently.
I need some help with this topic.
I never got into Harry Potter; I watched some of the older films, but I've never read the books. I was born in '83, so it never hit me like the folks in my younger brother's and little cousins' generation. I only knew of Rowling's statements about trans people over the years tangentially and largely dismissed it as background noise. I assumed that she considers herself a TERF (trans-exclusionary radical feminist), as opposed to a TIRF (trans-inclusive radical feminist).
On the assumption that I'm correct about her position, what is the true essence of the disagreement between TERFs and TIRFs?
Is it that the presence of the Y chromosome in male-to-female trans people inherently adds a fundamental "maleness" that "true feminists" must inherently oppose due to the overt and implied threats to women that "maleness" represents?
Is it simply a feminist version of a "No True Scotsman" fallacy or an "Appeal to Nature" fallacy?
Maybe both?
TIRFs are not opposed to maleness. TERFism is a conservative psy-op that started when Mary Daly (who wrote magical divine goddess mother bullshit) and Janice Raymond (who accidentally kicked off trans studies by outing and harassing a trans woman named Sandy Stone - The Transexual Empire leading to Stone’s The Empire Strikes Back)
TIRFism recognizes that there is an axis of oppression that lies at the roots of imposed sex roles. The vast majority of women over history have been unarguably subject to men. Many women live in systems which are focused on controlling their sexuality, and are often barred and restricted from certain activities - due to both explicit and encultured messages.
The ideal TIRF society eliminates gender as a restriction. If anyone had actually read Andrea Dworkin, instead of taking Rush Limbaugh’s pastiche of her work at face value, they would find the TIRF society is one where gender is essentially just self expression. If we got rid of “man” or “woman” - maybe girls in Afghanistan would be able to go to school, or maybe sex wouldn’t be understood as a defilement of women (which I think is deeply connected to the problem of rape - rape is less an act of sexual desire and more a desire for subjugation that is tied to sexual power through this messaging that we desire to eliminate.)
The project of the TIRF is ultimately that the only way to truly end sexism would be to understand all humans as fundamentally ambiguous, to not hold anyone to any kind of sex role.
This is the fundamental irony behind the TERF movement. Rather than reject the gender and sex binary, they reify and enforce it. Daly was a wacky Catholic theologian who turned God into a mom, and decided that women were just special magical spiritual beings. This devotion to some kind of divine womanhood is common among the lesbian separatist types (it’s really disturbing seeing that space have the same deranged arguments of the 70’s…)
The problem is that TERFs are just not feminists. If Rowling cared about women, she wouldn’t be finding these women who realize that they can get their 15 minutes by intentionally throwing a boxing or fencing match. TERFs gleefully team up with the same groups that attack women’s reproductive health care - which I view as the most critical feminist issue at the moment (along the world wide surges in fascistic ideologies - which do tend to be expressions of a threatened male gender role, attempting to reassert those boundaries. The goddamn President is a serial rapist.)
That’s probably confusing and elaborate, there’s a lot of theory behind what I’m saying. I’m happy to answer or clarify, I think a critical part of countering this shit is to stop letting Rowling and the alt right redefine the term feminist.
I have to admit, I had to re-read your response several times to comprehend your points properly.
No slight intended to you; this subject has always been difficult for me to parse correctly and, in turn, respond with any thoughtful or logical relevance. My expression of thought tends to be more clumsy than I would like to admit.
After some consideration of your reply, I think the answer to my question is that TERF position suffers from both of the fallacies I listed in my original supposition, and probably many more that I'm not recalling or aware of.
Considering your two following statements:
and...
...would it be safe to conclude that TERFs do (in a way) oppose the "maleness" of the Y chromosome as an affront to the purity of their "feminity"? I know I'm repeating my question, but their ethos reminded me of the "single-drop-of blood" policies on ethnic identity from the segregationists of the American South.
It's certainly an absurdity, and many times a dark one at that, observing upon what proverbial hills people choose to die on publicly these days.
I wonder: does she admit to identifying with or publicly support the Tories, Nigel Farage and/or other "Brexiteers", or other conservative personalities and politicians within the UK? Generally speaking, I refuse to use the "Alt-Right" label, as contend that there's nothing "alternative" to naked authoritarian conservatism about it.
I suppose I should just look it up, but I thought I'd ask.
The opposite of a TERF is a Non Exclusive Radical Feminist, because it's NERF or nothing
TERFs can also be called Feminism-Appropriating Radical Transphobes, or FART
terfs also love to collab with nazis too.
her books do allude thier her transphobia, and a little anti-semitism quite a bit, its low key.
Well, let's just be happy that Rowling is jy low pretty old and that we'll all likely outlive her.
She has fallen so far.
she was like this way before the pandemic. fg parodied her transphobia quite a bit in one of thier seasons, and the people were up in arms in the comments on the videos.
Yes, women's "rights" to be transphobic essentially. The J.K. Rowling Women's Fund, the organization she is founding, uses TERF dogwishtles in their mission statement right on their page. "Overly inclusive policies". Come on.
I'm gonna take it at face value. You seem to be spinning a bit.
Sometimes you gotta look at the context. It's like the US civil war. A good chunk of the country will swear up and down it was fought over states' rights and leave it at that.
States' rights to do what?
Slavery.
Hey the mods removed my reply. I wonder what perfectly reasonable reason they'll cite.
I know that this is of only tangential relevance to the OP but I think that it could be safely said that "transgenderism" is boring and irrelevant to everybody except for a tiny sliver of the population : Those who love it and those who hate it. And these people seem to talk a lot.
Having a few people born biological males in your change room or gym class isnt going to ruin your life, theres nothing they can see there that they cant see on the internet.
I mean unless a woman has posted her naked body publicly online then this isn’t really a true point. You actually cannot see anything of mine online and no women aren’t all the same person where if you know/see one you live known/seen them all… saying “you can see boobs online” doesn’t mean what you think it does because no, you cannot see mine online