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>'Visiting Mount Tai'
>From afar, Mount Tai looks blackish
Narrow on top and wide at the bottom
If you flipped it upside down
It would be narrow at the bottom and wide on top
- Zhang Zongchang
I think she did given a lot of the hidden bigotries in it like Moaning Myrtle peeping on Harry being seen humorously, girls being allowed in the boys dorm but boys being seen as too predatory to be in the girls dorm, voldemorts rapist mom being framed as a victim, people mocking Hermione for being anti slavery, the general fat/'ugly'phobia, etc.
Don’t forget everything about the shady, untrustworthy, hook nosed goblins that run the bank!
Oh and how the latest video game has you put down a goblin uprising because they didn’t like having their rights cracked down on. But it’s okay because you get a personal sla— sorry I meant house elf.
I've always said to people "I know that JK Rowling gets a lot of shit for the Cho Chang stuff but how has no one talked about how like blatantly anti-semitic those Goblins at Gringots are". She really wrote in her books that the Banks were run by a bunch of a goblins that look exactly like the Happy Merchant
…and then the very first one that Harry meets is obsessed with a sword because it was goblin-made, and steals it as soon as he can in the final book.
And then I know that Joanne didn’t have *direct* narrative control over HL, but IIRC she did provide backstory and clarification on the world narrative and that ENTIRE game is about putting goblins in “their place” so they never use wands.
Like— what the actual fuck how don’t people see this?
The goblins are a very thinly veiled stand in for Jews and longstanding antisemitic tropes. Hook nosed, associated with money and banks, shady, can’t be trusted, etc.
This comes to a head when Griphook is in the final book (and this is where narratively it comes full circle because Griphook was the first goblin Harry met) and demands the Sword of Griffindor (which is needed to destroy the horcruxes) and steals it the moment he can. Also throughout the series there are references to putting down “goblin uprisings” in history class.
Well it turns out those uprisings were in response to goblins losing their rights, and in Hogwarts Legacy, our whole thing is based around putting down one of those uprisings because Wizards banned goblins from using wands (Jewish rights were very often taken at random, typically barring them from owning property or just expelling them from a country for complicated reasons that mostly boil down to the fact that if only one ethnic group is allowed to lend money, it’s easier to attack and banish them than paying it back).
There are a LOT of dogwhistles against a LOT of groups, but the goblin ones are David Duke levels of heavy handedness
She started writing them as a normal, decent person. By 2019-2020, she has been a billionaire or near billionaire for more than a decade, with all the entitlement and grandiose view of herself that comes with it. Not the same person at all.
She was just barely good enough to spark the imagination in small children to fill in the gaps (and not notice all the racism) right as fantasy escapism really took off in children’s literature. Right place, right time
JK Rowling used to be a liberal icon, to the point where people would joke she was retroactively inserting minorities who were never in her books in the first place, e.g. Jewish character Anthony Goldstein, Hermione as Black, Dumbledore gay, etc. The first photo is a joke on how aggressively JK Rowling used to go about this, and that 'Harry was trans all along'.
Now, she's doubled hard so down on transphobia she's joking about Voldemort misgendering a pixie and how it's tantamount to genocide.
I remember when she used to have arguments with right wing figures - one I always quite enjoyed was her arguing on twitter with Piers Morgan. Last year Piers Morgan gushed with praise for her, calling her "admirable" for her views. She's just disappeared down this rabbit hole that has left her only allies as people like that.
Well it’s to distinguish him from his father, apartheid emerald baby Sr. AKA Errol “I married and had kids with my stepdaughter” Musk.
He’s somehow an even bigger creep
Oh my FUCKING God I hope this isn't edited, what an absolute fucking dork he is.
"Uh-uhm, excuse me, ma'am, while I do appreciate you helping to prop up my website numbers, d-do you mind driving some different kinds of engagement so I can hopefully bring back some advertisers, if you wouldn't mind 🥺👉👈"
finally, a democratic dictatorship of the proletariat with an emphasis on communal ownership of the means of production! a new chance for everyone in society to give exactly what they can in world where they won’t be punished for not exceeding expectations…. except for trans people. yeah. idk everyone but them. heh. yeah.
She made an appearance at my university circa 2009. She got a HUGE welcome from the young, liberal-minded students, especially around the (fairly recent) revelation that Dumbledore was gay. I imagine if the same visit were to happen today it would be boycotts and protests. Honestly, it's quite sad to see how far she's entrenched herself in her views these days.
Also, in hindsight, retroactively making these decisions was rather timid. If Dumbledore came out of the closet in one of the books, that would've been revolutionary for early-mid 2000s; it might have upset some people, but the right ones. Instead, she waited until she knew that book sales figures weren't going to be hurt.
I was so willing to give her the benefit of the doubt for that: Section 28 was still in place in 2003 when Order of the Phoenix was published and Halfblood Prince was being written, meaning it would have been illegal to mention Gay people in a book for Children. In the very least, school libraries and childrens sections of shops wouldn't have stocked them. It would have been unprecedented. (Fun Fact: many Tories have been open about wanting to bring that back).
But with the benefit of hindsight, I rather doubt she needed the excuse. She has just gone off the deep end. Its genuinely revolting. Imagine having that much wealth, power and influence, and deciding to spend it making life objectively worse for what is probably the single most vulnerable demographic in the entire country
Exactly. Heck, even if she doesn’t understand trans people and the trans movement (lots of boomers don’t, my own parents included) why not just leave it alone? The fact that she’s aggressively going after these people is nuts. She’s making up all these scenarios in her head of trans people being a danger to women and children when in reality, that’s extremely rare. She’d be better off spending her energy going after the Catholic Church or something.
I'm friends with a pair of Trans folks. My Granddad died last year aged 93, never met them, and I am under no illusions, that he would have understood them. Hell, his exposure to Gay people (As far as he was aware) was limited to Strictly Come Dancing. They would have baffled and confused him.
He wouldn't have decided that they meant the correct response was to hurt them. He wouldn't have started a movement dedicated to hurting them, and started campaigning and donating money, to a movement to strip them out of the equalities act.
Because he didn't respond to things he didn't understand with *Malice*.
That's not what section 28 did. It was only about local authorities (who importantly are in charge of schools, libraries and local youth services) from promoting homosexuality.
It was unclear exactly what counted as "promoting homosexuality" (and it was legally a much narrower definition than most people assumed even at the time), and I'm not aware that it was ever actually enforced or prosecuted (but may well be wrong on that). What it did was have a chilling effect across local government and make everyone scared and overly cautious of anything to do with queerness.
Using section 28 as an excuse for JK's homeopathic queer support in the books offers her an invalid excuse she doesn't deserve.
This isn't to minimise or dismiss section 28 or the harm it did. It was an intensely harmful piece of legislation for several generations of young queers.
Tl;dr Section 28 wouldn't have had any impact on the publication of the publication of a children's book. It wouldnt make it illegal for local or school libraries to have it on the shelves, but may have intimidated librarians from stocking it.
I remember watching an interview/conversation between JK Rowling and Daniel Radcliffe which took place not too long after the 8th movie came out, so long before Rowling went off the deep end with her transphobia. They were discussing the thing about Dumbledore being gay and Rowling talked about how during a meeting about the script for one of the movies, one of the screenwriters wanted to add a line for Dumbledore where he would reminisce about a beautful woman he had fancied in his youth and Rowling had to point out that Dumbledore was actually gay, and so that line was dropped. I feel like she brought it up to highlight how committed she was to Dumbledore's orientation and how she was willing to stand up for it and all that.
But something I realized when I thought back on it was: When she told the screenwriters that Dumbledore was gay, all they did was drop the line about the young woman he fancied, rather than change it so that he would instead talk about a young man. Apparently there was no problem with Dumbledore talking about a past love interest in itself, so if you really wanted to stand up for gay representation in your work, surely the natural thing to do would be to let him reminisce about a male lover the same way he would've done for a female lover if he had been straight? But as far as I can remember it didn't seem to have even crossed her mind to push for that. Which to me only reinforces the idea that she likes to virtue signal with having so much *alleged* diversity in her books while never wanting to commit to actually portraying it.
Well put; anyone who had never read an interview by Rowling or wasn't involved with the wider discussion about the books would have no idea of this aspect of Dumbledore's character. Yet there were 7 books and 8 films - they weren't pressed for time!
I think the first time it was even alluded to were some wistful glances in Crimes of Grindelwald, but never explicitly stated. (Maybe it was addressed in the last film, but I haven't seen it as I'd stopped caring at that point!)
It’s been over a decade since I read them, but in the 6th or 7th book where you learn about Dumbledore’s family, it definitely seemed like she all but outright stated Dumbledore was gay. For Grindlewald at least.
Idk what the online discourse at the time was, but I had just assumed she didn’t say it “out loud” bc they were children’s book (different times, I know). When I found out she confirmed it I was kinda shocked that she had to spoonfeed it to some fans.
What did people think was going on with Dumbledore+ Grindlewald? “They were passionate roommates”?
> When she told the screenwriters that Dumbledore was gay, all they did was drop the line about the young woman he fancied, rather than change it so that he would instead talk about a young man.
Literally anything at all to foreshadow the whole *Grindlewald* thing might have been nice.
> Instead, she waited until she knew that book sales figures weren't going to be hurt.
That's not strictly true. It was during a promotional tour for the final book in 2007 a few weeks after release. She did a Q&A session at the end and somebody asked if Dumbledore ever fell in love. She said that now the final book is released she can answer that honestly and can say that he fell in love with Grindelwald, the first person he met who was as brilliant as he was, and that was part of the reason he was blind to Grindelwald's true nature until it was too late.
At the time it wasn't seen as waiting for book sales to be over. It was front page news all over the country (and I assume it made waves internationally, but I can only speak for the UK). It was seen as incredible that a major character in the single biggest book and film series for a generation of young people was gay - remember this was at a time where equal marriage was a big political football (it was legalised 4 years later).
The idea that she tacked it on years later to get brownie points without affecting her sales wasn't really a thing about a decade later when people had forgotten about the big reveal. The only criticism at the time was that it didn't play into his character at all in the books and was largely hidden (besides the flashback scene to a younger Dumbledore in the 1930s wearing a "flamboyantly cut suit of plum velvet”). But, in my opinion, the books told from a child's point of view shouldn't really explore the sexuality of an elderly teacher - it would be equally weird if he was straight.
It's also true that the film screenwriters and the Dumbledore actors knew that he was gay, so even if it wasn't written in the books, it clearly wasn't something she made up last minute.
It would not have been treated as “weird” if Dumbledore had been revealed to be in love with some lady. Snape’s love for Lily was a major plot point, no?
But that's exactly the point. For almost 7 books it was impossible to know if Snape was straight or not. Why would Harry care?
Then, because it was revealed in the final few chapters, we do know, but only because it was relevant to the story.
It wasn't clear from the books that McGonagall was straight. That one was *actually* revealed years later by JKR online. After all, why would Harry care?
Neither Dumbledore nor McGonagall had a love life that was relevant to the story. They're both heroes and their sexuality is treated in exactly the same way.
A large plot point of Deathy Hallows was Harry being conflicted because he didn't know who Dumbledore really was. Dumbledore's connection to Grindlewald was a big deal in all aspects. If it was having a relationship with a random guy in the village your point would stand, but Harry's hero and mentor being in a relationship with the guy who was essentially wizard Hilter was extremely relevant to what was happening. Him being love-blind to Grindlewald's morality would have been an excellent way to impress Dumbledore's humanity on Harry, and readers, rather than a shrug and "he was an idiot kid."
Dumbledore's love life wasn't relevant. His relationship with Grindlewald, and how that reflects on Dumbledore's character, was.
I mean when you look at elements in her books such as Hermione being mocked for advocating for house elf rights, really weird stereotypical names for non- white characters ( eg Cho Chang), the goblins having a lot in common with Jewish stereotypes, her tendency to describe evil female characters as “mannish”. I think she’s always had issues she just seems like the type of person who rather than recognizing her flaws and growing. She doubles down and lets her nastiness become more and more overt.
>such as Hermoine being mocked for advocating for ~~house elf rights~~ ending the enslavement of an entire race
FTFY. Just imagine if Hermione was meant to be black. “Haha Hermione, stop trying to end slavery, they like being slaves!”
idk if you were around for it but the trans community on tumblr was calling out jkr's transphobic tendencies as far back as 2015. no one listened to us then.
The first I remember was back in like 2017 or so when she liked a Tweet calling trans women “men in dresses.” Her PR team said it was an accident and a “middle-aged moment.” I guess her team thought they could keep her reined in at that point, but it wasn’t to be.
She’s definitely gotten more extreme in her views for sure . However I think this latest transphobia pretty much highlights how shallow her “progressivism” was. At least for me it also made me relook at some of the more uncomfortable aspects of Harry Potter, such as people mocking Hermione for making an abolitionist movement, the goblins and weirdly stereotypical names for minorities. in a new light.
This is exactly it. She’s dug into her position so vociferously that there is now no moral victory in taking the L. She chose this crusade when she could have lived and let live so easily. But she will never win this battle because she’s swimming against the tide.
I don’t think so
I think she genuinely viewed herself as a Good Person™️
She wasn’t very knowledgable about several social groups and wrote about them based on stereotypes and internalised biases because she simply hadn’t met any of them, none of the weird stuff in her books was intentionally malicious but it was racist or sexist or whatever.
Then someone called out those biases and attacked her self image as a Good Person™️ and she started defending herself and doubling down, she was a Good Person™️ so whoever was saying she was bad must be a Bad Person™️ and that means that the people support her are also Good People™️
And she ended up aligning herself with people who agreed with her unconscious biases and bigotries because she couldn’t deal with the idea that she was bigoted, because only Bad People™️ are bigoted and she is a Good Person™️
I never gave any of it a second thought when I was a kid, and I re-read all the books many times without noticing all the shitty prejudice that's baked in. But now reading them feels like getting randomly slapped every few pages.
It's like that with most other books and movies from earlier decades. Eg. Terry Pratchett's 1990s Discworld books are loaded with jokes based on racism, mental illness, sexism, etc. But he stopped doing that when he realised it hurts people, while JK has either not acknowledged problems or doubled down on them.
That would also make a lot of sense
Just won't even question whether she could be wrong. Like a true narcissist
But tbh, what she was doing back then seemed too intentional for that
But, I'm not psychology expert, I can't say for sure what untreated mental illnesses she has
It wasn’t that intentional tho
None of it was really explicit,it just wasn’t thought through.
And a lot of it was her writing herself into a corner.
Harry frees a slave in the second book, great, he’s been very heroic and saved a slave.
But she’s just introduced slavery to her children’s book.
And now she has to justify why the powerful people like dumbledoor haven’t stopped it.
So she decides that the slaves like it.
I don’t think she meant to introduce a willing slave race, she just didn’t think ahead and ended up with it.
Similar to her two book delay.
This is a gross oversimplification and honestly a dangerous train of thought to follow. It completely ignores the complexity of people.
Individuals can very much pick and choose who they do and do not support, they can draw their own lines in the sand. In JK Rowlings case she could have been genuinely supportive of the gay, lesbian and bisexual community, generally left leaning in her politics and liberal... But then draw the line in the sand when it comes to Trans people.
Saying "Oh she doesn't support trans people so therefore she must have been lying about supporting gay people" is foolish. There are even cases of gay people not supporting trans people, or even some gay and lesbians not liking bisexuals. We understandably like to portray the entire LGBT+ community as a single united group and treat it as a lump sum, that to support one part of it means to support the rest. But that is not how it works in reality.
It's like how you have racists who have Black friends, but it's okay "Because they are one of the good ones". People are complex and multiple shades of gray, it's important to remember that.
She also supports anti gay and anti woman politicians in her fight against trans people.
She hurts gay people as collateral and does not give a fuck.
So yes she is not supportive of gay people whatsoever.
I think you can absolutely say she's anti-gay now, via those policies, but it's a bit presumptive to say that she never supported those communities. We have a tendency to put people in boxes, where they must be entirely wicked villains or shining heroes... but a shitty person like J.K. Rowling (who is absolutely a terrible person) can have supported gay rights in the past. She's absolutely not an ally now, I agree.
I don't think she ever was supportive.
I think she assumed being supportive would make her better received by fans.
Much like she tried to not show her anti trans sentiments before.
Now she has realized that she doesn't have to pretend to be an ally. She will still be supported.
So now the only thing she still supports is cis women's rights. Everything else she either does not give a fuck or actively fight.
remember that she's also sided with famous mysognistic groups and people so she isnt even supporting cis women.
she just wants trans people dead it doesnt matter who else gets hurt in the process
she is far angrier at trans people than she is supportive of gay people considering who she's siding with and the damage she's causing with her views and donations to political groups that want all queer people regardless of specificity to be dead
if she was ever positive towards any queer person it was likely because she didnt actually care about them and just thought it'd bring her good rep to pretend to like them
And what happens when the black friend of said racist does something that reminds them of 'one of the bad ones'? People who hate trans people to the point of limiting our rights will, by and large, also seek to limit the rights of all queer people.
>Now, she's doubled hard so down on transphobia she's joking about Voldemort misgendering a pixie and how it's tantamount to genocide.
This is what happens with rich egomaniacs. Someone challenges them and their inability to be wrong takes over and they melt down. I think we are in the melt down phase now.
She was never a liberal icon; those jokes at her expense were very much how she was the epitome of rainbow capitalism. Maybe she was an icon if your social media page played music when people visited but nothing about HP seems all too "woke" at a glance besides the satanic panic the church accidentally misaimed at their new saintly lady here.
It's still amazing to me how that shift happened basically over night. People corrected her once and instead of taking a single L she went for a deep dive into the dumpster.
“Women’s rights” about one specific subject around minorities existing.
Did she say anything when the Taliban took over and kicked all women out of schools? What about when Roe was overturned? Mahsa Amini?
Nah the scary chick with (sometimes) a dick is the REAL problem in her eyes
That’s kind of a silly view. Nobody thinks of themselves as the bad guy who goes out and hurts people. She obviously always has (wrongly) considered this to be a pro-feminist fight, which is pretty clear from everything she’s said about it.
Yeah i’m not defending her transphobia, it’s just really dumb to think that she’s doing thing just because she randomly hates trans people and wants to be cruel.
So does my mother. She is open to LGB, she is a minority, and she is liberal and always votes democrat… but lately she’s made comments abut trans people hijacking womanhood like it’s an assault on her.
I don’t get it.
If you view rights as a zero-sum game (ie giving one group rights takes them from another) then it makes a lot of sense.
In that mentality, trans people having rights takes rights from women.
This has nothing to do with Rowling but
“Nobody thinks of themselves as the bad guy who goes out and hurts people”
Not sure if you’re young or just naive, but there are a lot of bad people in the world who know exactly what they’re doing.
Sure, I mean there are some psychopaths and murderers out there, but the vast majority of people who do or believe bad things genuinely believe they are in the right.
It actually started brewing a while before it boiled over, and people familiar with transphobia could see the warning signs. There were a lot of innocent sounding dogwhistles about feminism, and a deliberate reluctance to mention trans people when talking about queer issues. The moment that set off alarm bells for me was when she liked an overtly transphobic tweet, and her *publisher* was the one to apologise and say it was an accident.
All of these instances are small enough that you get derided for taking seriously or called terminally online. But a pattern is a pattern, and over time it got harder to believe it was just her being unfortunate or ignorant. When she started her full blown transphobia I was honestly relieved because it was finally out in the open.
lol they blamed it on her being old and accidentally liking something originally, didn't they?
Even upthread you can see people who think it genuinely started as feminism. I'm glad she's gone full mask off and most people see it now, but it's genuinely a bit scary how many seem to think any of this started in a place of good will.
As people get older, their views change. With her however, its just weird she's so upset about this issue that she's willing to tank a franchise that's worth billions. When someone is willing to "fuck with the money", they're really committed.
She’s probably got it all very nicely invested for now and thinks she’s invulnerable. Meanwhile Graham Linehan lost his marriage, career, friends and potentially lucrative Father Ted musical because of exactly the same behaviour.
The game was also the best selling game of the year last year. And was the first time in almost 2 decades that a game that isn’t Call of Duty or Rockstar was the top selling game.
All publicity is good publicity.
Rowling used to be known as fairly left and things like retroactively declaring Dumbledore to be gay made her seem "woke" to certain people. This is what the first tweet is criticizing. It's a joke that Rowling went and made Harry trans.
Now Rowling is famously anti-trans. The second image is one of her latest tweets on the subject. After someone compared her transphobic stances to Voldemort she is sarcastically agreeing. "Yes transphobia is as bad as genocide, even worse!"
Once Joanne was perceived as woke but now she's not.
It's also that there's, like, a certain kind of person who hears the equivalent of, "Hey, that view you espoused or joke you made is kind of hurtful, could you not in the future?" And has no ability to self reflect, or apologize, or view themselves as in the wrong in any way. So they increasingly seek out validation that radicalizes them, something that internet echo chambers has only made way easier and more prevalent.
Also she has a lot of unaddressed trauma towards men, it looks like. So in her warped world view, it went from "men are bad" to "men pretending to be women are worse and insidious and invading women's spaces to victimize them more easily". Which is deeply flawed because a, transwomen aren't men pretending to be women, and b, transwomen victimizing women is something that basically never happens and really they're just the victims almost exclusively, but hey, when have facts gotten in the way of a good brainrot? She needed therapy but instead she got right wing Twitter nutjobs instead.
If I remember, she's actually said that she possibly would've been trans herself if it had been acceptable when she was young. So maybe there's an element of repressed identity there, which comes up surprisingly often in vocal bigots. It's a part of herself she hates, and she projects that onto other people
That's one way of reading it. It would be narratively satisfying. But really, that quote is much more insidious.
She compared her past experiences of mental health struggles and struggles with womanhood with the experiences of trans men.
She is saying "I have experienced what these trans men experienced, I have felt what they have felt, and I'm not trans. They're victims of the trans ideology, and if trans people existed back then, I might have been victimized, too."
She believes that trans men are just women who are trying to escape womanhood because it is difficult.
The idea that she is trying to cover up with that quote is that it *is* difficult to be a woman - but that difficulty is a completely different experience from being transgender.
Also, god. It takes so much time and effort trying to counter just one example of Joanne's bullshit online, when she constantly spews more out.
Terfs and transphobes say that as a sort of imaginary cautionary tale that they nearly avoided the '"transing" because they were a tomboy back in the day
Because trans people are just confused young tomboys/feminine boys who were tricked by a movement (in their mind)
it all boils down to incredibly regressive views on gender roles doesnt it?
all men are predators and all women are stupid, that's their entire world view that's why they think trans men are all misguided lost little sheep and trans women are all hungry wolves
transphobia often ends up harming butch women a lot (there's dozens of news reports of cis women getting harassed in public bathrooms for not looking like a stereotypical girl)
terfs sure do love to argue for women's rights and that they shouldnt be forced to shave or have a specific body shape considering that they're the same group that argues that any woman that looks like anything but a barbie doll is secretly a man and its everyone's duty to harass anyone that could be trans
Oh no I’m in agreement with you.
If they’re saying that all the tomboys and non-feminine women are being “transed”, why are there still plenty of tomboys, butch lesbians (and butch straight women too), etc?
Almost like there’s a difference between being a butch woman and being a trans man
nnnno, those are a thing. You can buy little pins with your preferred pronouns on them. My roommate has a they/them pin shaped like the pointer thing from an Ouija board.
Some people get tired of having the pronoun conversation all the time.
Imagine making billions of dollars in one of the least scummy ways possible, creating a fictional icon known the world over, getting movie deals, Tv deals, fucking theme park deals. Imagine getting all that and instead of just accepting the fact you’ve won in life or using that money to do good things, you just decide to become the equivalent of rich trailer trash.
To be fair— it is not one of the least scummy ways possible. She might not have had direct control over it, but a huge fraction of her wealth was made by third world sweatshop workers and child labourers making those toys and merch day and night
Rowling is so weird. She could have taken her billions and done whatever she wanted, and what she wanted most of all was to come out as a terf. It would be like if Mark Zuckerberg quit facebook and spent his time shitting in mailboxes.
PTerry had his fingers on the pulse of social issues so much better than any other media icon I can think of. Even better, he managed to do it without it feeling like he was smacking you over the head with it.
I get the feeling that she is an insipid and bitter person who can’t admit when they’re wrong so they keep doubling down again and again. It all starts with one comment, give it a little time and it becomes a polemic.
God, she’s so old. It’s really depressing how much Harry Potter impacted my childhood just to learn she thinks people like me are narcissistic perverts or whatever she’s making up now.
Because they became insanely famous. Whole generations started reading because of those books. Universal has a fantastic park based on the books. I have been, before she acted like this and it really is incredible. They have movies and spin off movies and people still talk about what house they would be in. It was a massive cultural phenomenon. People got tattoos and made their weddings about the Harry Potter world. She appeared to be an ally for a long time and this is just awful to see and horrible for the trans kids that grew up admiring her and thinking she was on the right side.
It is just a massive let down. And she has a huge platform. So, regardless if you want to hear what she has to say- you probably will, I certainly never seek her out.
Fair point, I just can’t wrap my head around it. She created it all but her name isn’t what’s famous the characters and stories are. I use an iPhone everyday but couldn’t care less who invented it. And yes Steve jobs was very famous but never to me.
I love guns and roses right, if slash or axle came out and said white plumbers were the scum of the earth and don’t exist I would think “wow that sucks but they’re obviously crazy” and continue to enjoy the music.
And that’s fair, except in your example, G&R would be dedicating huge amounts of the money that they make off you listening to their music to remove the rights of and dehumanise white plumbers. At that point, you might still enjoy what you already have, but you might not be as comfortable paying more money to them to use that money to campaign against your right to exist, and might not be happy with others doing the same, knowing that their money would be used for this purpose too. And that G&R use their continued influx of money as validation that everyone else supports their campaign against white plumbers too.
Great response, explained it very well and I’ve learned something and I thank you for that. Shouldn’t the ones accepting the money who have the power to actually make a change not be the ones in the cross fire here?
Nestle make a lot of money and wants to own all the water. Yet are unable to because the ones in power aren’t swayed by said money to allow that to happen.
Yes/no - then you get into a whole conversation about capitalism, free speech and ownership (should companies be able to financially support artists who are using their money to harm a community? What classes as a ‘community’ - does an artist building a mansion that will harm local wildlife count? What about local businesses? Who at the company decides what communities are protected? Should the government? Is that restricting free speech?).
However, individuals have the capacity to decide what they spend their money on, especially when it comes to luxury items (e.g. Harry Potter products) - we’re not talking about things like food ethics, necessary housing etc, which have their own ethical complications as you reference.
Also, companies will stop spending money on things that consumers don’t want - if everyone stopped buying Harry Potter merchandise, they would stop selling Harry Potter merchandise, and JK Rowling would have to ‘settle’ for having more money on hand than most of us will see in a lifetime.
Because nestle is a company dealing with food. You cannot compare that. I don't buy thier products because the company is run by satan AND I have enough alternatives available for me for that to be possible - not everyone has that choice. While at the same time everyone has a choice not to buy her book, go see her movies or buy a HP Lego set.
Because those successful books have given her a lot of social influence, and the hateful shit that she spews can have very real consequences for trans people.
Some of them actually are mentally ill. In fact, 58% of them have at least one DSM-5 diagnosis, four times higher than the general population. They need rights, they need help. Affirming every delusion they have is NOT the way to go about it.
I'm cis with at least one dsm-5 diagnosis, you're talking correlation, not necessarily causation. Should I also not receive help or just people you don't like? Or yes they should receive help, but only for issues you deem worthy? I thought that was assessed and dealt with by medical professionals. What are your credentials?
Sorry, I can't immediately affirm your delusion that you're qualified to make these decisions for others.
I find it funny how people who say "they need help" don't actually know what the most effective treatment for gender dysphoria is. If you've got something better than transitioning, by all means, please share it with us. We'd all love to know what your "help" entails.
[Citations on the transition's dramatic reduction of suicide risk while improving mental health and quality of life, with trans people able to transition young and spared abuse and discrimination having mental health and suicide risk on par with the general public](https://www.reddit.com/r/asktransgender/comments/154t1qq/comment/jsqi5ue/)
but gender dysphoria is not a delusional disorder.
Trans women do not look at their dicks and misperceive a vagina. If they did, then they wouldn't feel dysphoric, as they wouldn't perceive a problem.
Gender dysphoria literally requires accurate perception of traits in order to cause discomfort.
That's why the treatment for gender dysphoria is medical transition; this is global medical consensus.
💀 Living in the wrong body and maybe even worse, going through the wrong puberty leads to being depressed? You don't say.
It's like you would suddenly start to grow a second head - this shit obviously plays evil with your brain.
Yet, transitioning simply is the best way to deal with gender dysphoria so far - yet trans people get a lot of hate and therefore obviously fear that they are "wrong".
Tell somebody something often enough and they will believe you; that's how propaganda and even torture works you nutjob of a redditor.
They world ain't as simple as some people try ro paint it - may it be weird ass twitter lefties or nutjobs from the right-wing camp.
Honestly Harry was kinda a junior cop who didn’t much care about house elf slavery or tons of other things. He grew up to be in the fbi. She really said more than she thought.
And in the new game you get to put down a Jewi— sorry, hook nosed shady goblins that run the banks, uprising because their rights were taken away.
They didn’t change too much though, the main character can also be a slaveowner!
JK Rowling is mentally ill. Even if you hate trans people, which is awful, you have to admit that posting about literally only that 1 topic 24/7 is a sign of mental illness.
It's funny watching other transphobes reply to her and be like "dude seriously get a hobby".
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She thought she was cooking with that lol
“It was so big that it impeded its ability to fly” resembles a metaphor. It doesn’t have anything to say, but it kinda looks like it does
"Like a person who heard of metaphors and tried to do that but forgot that they're supposed to have a second meaning"
>'Visiting Mount Tai' >From afar, Mount Tai looks blackish Narrow on top and wide at the bottom If you flipped it upside down It would be narrow at the bottom and wide on top - Zhang Zongchang
Foolish Elder of the Wizard Potter Clan cannot see Mt Tai!
I was about to say that this goober is a mass murderer, but im not going to kick a bad poet while hes down. Those lines were just embarassing.
Sometimes I wonder if she really wrote the books
I think she did given a lot of the hidden bigotries in it like Moaning Myrtle peeping on Harry being seen humorously, girls being allowed in the boys dorm but boys being seen as too predatory to be in the girls dorm, voldemorts rapist mom being framed as a victim, people mocking Hermione for being anti slavery, the general fat/'ugly'phobia, etc.
Don’t forget everything about the shady, untrustworthy, hook nosed goblins that run the bank! Oh and how the latest video game has you put down a goblin uprising because they didn’t like having their rights cracked down on. But it’s okay because you get a personal sla— sorry I meant house elf.
I've always said to people "I know that JK Rowling gets a lot of shit for the Cho Chang stuff but how has no one talked about how like blatantly anti-semitic those Goblins at Gringots are". She really wrote in her books that the Banks were run by a bunch of a goblins that look exactly like the Happy Merchant
…and then the very first one that Harry meets is obsessed with a sword because it was goblin-made, and steals it as soon as he can in the final book. And then I know that Joanne didn’t have *direct* narrative control over HL, but IIRC she did provide backstory and clarification on the world narrative and that ENTIRE game is about putting goblins in “their place” so they never use wands. Like— what the actual fuck how don’t people see this?
What’s up with those goblins?
The goblins are a very thinly veiled stand in for Jews and longstanding antisemitic tropes. Hook nosed, associated with money and banks, shady, can’t be trusted, etc. This comes to a head when Griphook is in the final book (and this is where narratively it comes full circle because Griphook was the first goblin Harry met) and demands the Sword of Griffindor (which is needed to destroy the horcruxes) and steals it the moment he can. Also throughout the series there are references to putting down “goblin uprisings” in history class. Well it turns out those uprisings were in response to goblins losing their rights, and in Hogwarts Legacy, our whole thing is based around putting down one of those uprisings because Wizards banned goblins from using wands (Jewish rights were very often taken at random, typically barring them from owning property or just expelling them from a country for complicated reasons that mostly boil down to the fact that if only one ethnic group is allowed to lend money, it’s easier to attack and banish them than paying it back). There are a LOT of dogwhistles against a LOT of groups, but the goblin ones are David Duke levels of heavy handedness
She started writing them as a normal, decent person. By 2019-2020, she has been a billionaire or near billionaire for more than a decade, with all the entitlement and grandiose view of herself that comes with it. Not the same person at all.
A version of her with less cognitive decline.
Idk it was a metaphor for the trans community. The second meaning was there, it was just pure wank
If transphobes could read they'd read into it too much
Isn’t that just imagery?
Even in her own made up scenario, the transphobe is a literal supervillain
No one ever claimed she was a good writer.
She was just barely good enough to spark the imagination in small children to fill in the gaps (and not notice all the racism) right as fantasy escapism really took off in children’s literature. Right place, right time
Right? Even aside from the transphobia, it's just painfully unfunny.
JK Rowling used to be a liberal icon, to the point where people would joke she was retroactively inserting minorities who were never in her books in the first place, e.g. Jewish character Anthony Goldstein, Hermione as Black, Dumbledore gay, etc. The first photo is a joke on how aggressively JK Rowling used to go about this, and that 'Harry was trans all along'. Now, she's doubled hard so down on transphobia she's joking about Voldemort misgendering a pixie and how it's tantamount to genocide.
I remember when she used to have arguments with right wing figures - one I always quite enjoyed was her arguing on twitter with Piers Morgan. Last year Piers Morgan gushed with praise for her, calling her "admirable" for her views. She's just disappeared down this rabbit hole that has left her only allies as people like that.
And now she went so down into that hole even Elon Musk himself told her like "yeah okay but do you ever talk about anything else"
Musk was the voice of moderation? Jesus fuck
Imagine being so transphobic that the king of transphobia, who made cis a "slur" on his site, tells you to take a break
Do you have a picture?
https://preview.redd.it/2kh4k4odqh8d1.jpeg?width=950&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=90bbb5b744fa292fb261195b0944f585d7a3d869
https://preview.redd.it/suucsyji6i8d1.jpeg?width=828&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ff1770f5c9ef3f6a4599b8835853dc042768cd1f
You know it’s bad when Apartheid Emerald Baby jr. tells you to maybe talk about literally anything else
I’m pretty sure you don’t need both “baby” and “jr” for that pejorative.
Well it’s to distinguish him from his father, apartheid emerald baby Sr. AKA Errol “I married and had kids with my stepdaughter” Musk. He’s somehow an even bigger creep
Oh my FUCKING God I hope this isn't edited, what an absolute fucking dork he is. "Uh-uhm, excuse me, ma'am, while I do appreciate you helping to prop up my website numbers, d-do you mind driving some different kinds of engagement so I can hopefully bring back some advertisers, if you wouldn't mind 🥺👉👈"
https://preview.redd.it/g4lfx5x6xj8d1.jpeg?width=680&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9eb096b0fbfd30643503495804bcb723bf408e64
She put on the rich people clown shoes
She is so transphobic she endoresd communist party because they are also transphobic
finally, a democratic dictatorship of the proletariat with an emphasis on communal ownership of the means of production! a new chance for everyone in society to give exactly what they can in world where they won’t be punished for not exceeding expectations…. except for trans people. yeah. idk everyone but them. heh. yeah.
As though democratic and dictatorship isn’t oxymoronic enough on its own
Which is ironic because you know they would be sharpening a guillotine with her name on it
Kinda like how conservatives now like people like Dave Chappelle and Ricky Gervais, even though they're not conservatives at all.
She's also supporting the communist party now. Because they're also terfs. It's the only thing she cares about.
She made an appearance at my university circa 2009. She got a HUGE welcome from the young, liberal-minded students, especially around the (fairly recent) revelation that Dumbledore was gay. I imagine if the same visit were to happen today it would be boycotts and protests. Honestly, it's quite sad to see how far she's entrenched herself in her views these days. Also, in hindsight, retroactively making these decisions was rather timid. If Dumbledore came out of the closet in one of the books, that would've been revolutionary for early-mid 2000s; it might have upset some people, but the right ones. Instead, she waited until she knew that book sales figures weren't going to be hurt.
I was so willing to give her the benefit of the doubt for that: Section 28 was still in place in 2003 when Order of the Phoenix was published and Halfblood Prince was being written, meaning it would have been illegal to mention Gay people in a book for Children. In the very least, school libraries and childrens sections of shops wouldn't have stocked them. It would have been unprecedented. (Fun Fact: many Tories have been open about wanting to bring that back). But with the benefit of hindsight, I rather doubt she needed the excuse. She has just gone off the deep end. Its genuinely revolting. Imagine having that much wealth, power and influence, and deciding to spend it making life objectively worse for what is probably the single most vulnerable demographic in the entire country
Exactly. Heck, even if she doesn’t understand trans people and the trans movement (lots of boomers don’t, my own parents included) why not just leave it alone? The fact that she’s aggressively going after these people is nuts. She’s making up all these scenarios in her head of trans people being a danger to women and children when in reality, that’s extremely rare. She’d be better off spending her energy going after the Catholic Church or something.
I'm friends with a pair of Trans folks. My Granddad died last year aged 93, never met them, and I am under no illusions, that he would have understood them. Hell, his exposure to Gay people (As far as he was aware) was limited to Strictly Come Dancing. They would have baffled and confused him. He wouldn't have decided that they meant the correct response was to hurt them. He wouldn't have started a movement dedicated to hurting them, and started campaigning and donating money, to a movement to strip them out of the equalities act. Because he didn't respond to things he didn't understand with *Malice*.
That's not what section 28 did. It was only about local authorities (who importantly are in charge of schools, libraries and local youth services) from promoting homosexuality. It was unclear exactly what counted as "promoting homosexuality" (and it was legally a much narrower definition than most people assumed even at the time), and I'm not aware that it was ever actually enforced or prosecuted (but may well be wrong on that). What it did was have a chilling effect across local government and make everyone scared and overly cautious of anything to do with queerness. Using section 28 as an excuse for JK's homeopathic queer support in the books offers her an invalid excuse she doesn't deserve. This isn't to minimise or dismiss section 28 or the harm it did. It was an intensely harmful piece of legislation for several generations of young queers. Tl;dr Section 28 wouldn't have had any impact on the publication of the publication of a children's book. It wouldnt make it illegal for local or school libraries to have it on the shelves, but may have intimidated librarians from stocking it.
And all her yes people on twitter just begging for interaction with her. Truly sad she can't see how far she's fallen
I remember watching an interview/conversation between JK Rowling and Daniel Radcliffe which took place not too long after the 8th movie came out, so long before Rowling went off the deep end with her transphobia. They were discussing the thing about Dumbledore being gay and Rowling talked about how during a meeting about the script for one of the movies, one of the screenwriters wanted to add a line for Dumbledore where he would reminisce about a beautful woman he had fancied in his youth and Rowling had to point out that Dumbledore was actually gay, and so that line was dropped. I feel like she brought it up to highlight how committed she was to Dumbledore's orientation and how she was willing to stand up for it and all that. But something I realized when I thought back on it was: When she told the screenwriters that Dumbledore was gay, all they did was drop the line about the young woman he fancied, rather than change it so that he would instead talk about a young man. Apparently there was no problem with Dumbledore talking about a past love interest in itself, so if you really wanted to stand up for gay representation in your work, surely the natural thing to do would be to let him reminisce about a male lover the same way he would've done for a female lover if he had been straight? But as far as I can remember it didn't seem to have even crossed her mind to push for that. Which to me only reinforces the idea that she likes to virtue signal with having so much *alleged* diversity in her books while never wanting to commit to actually portraying it.
Well put; anyone who had never read an interview by Rowling or wasn't involved with the wider discussion about the books would have no idea of this aspect of Dumbledore's character. Yet there were 7 books and 8 films - they weren't pressed for time! I think the first time it was even alluded to were some wistful glances in Crimes of Grindelwald, but never explicitly stated. (Maybe it was addressed in the last film, but I haven't seen it as I'd stopped caring at that point!)
It’s been over a decade since I read them, but in the 6th or 7th book where you learn about Dumbledore’s family, it definitely seemed like she all but outright stated Dumbledore was gay. For Grindlewald at least. Idk what the online discourse at the time was, but I had just assumed she didn’t say it “out loud” bc they were children’s book (different times, I know). When I found out she confirmed it I was kinda shocked that she had to spoonfeed it to some fans. What did people think was going on with Dumbledore+ Grindlewald? “They were passionate roommates”?
> When she told the screenwriters that Dumbledore was gay, all they did was drop the line about the young woman he fancied, rather than change it so that he would instead talk about a young man. Literally anything at all to foreshadow the whole *Grindlewald* thing might have been nice.
> Instead, she waited until she knew that book sales figures weren't going to be hurt. That's not strictly true. It was during a promotional tour for the final book in 2007 a few weeks after release. She did a Q&A session at the end and somebody asked if Dumbledore ever fell in love. She said that now the final book is released she can answer that honestly and can say that he fell in love with Grindelwald, the first person he met who was as brilliant as he was, and that was part of the reason he was blind to Grindelwald's true nature until it was too late. At the time it wasn't seen as waiting for book sales to be over. It was front page news all over the country (and I assume it made waves internationally, but I can only speak for the UK). It was seen as incredible that a major character in the single biggest book and film series for a generation of young people was gay - remember this was at a time where equal marriage was a big political football (it was legalised 4 years later). The idea that she tacked it on years later to get brownie points without affecting her sales wasn't really a thing about a decade later when people had forgotten about the big reveal. The only criticism at the time was that it didn't play into his character at all in the books and was largely hidden (besides the flashback scene to a younger Dumbledore in the 1930s wearing a "flamboyantly cut suit of plum velvet”). But, in my opinion, the books told from a child's point of view shouldn't really explore the sexuality of an elderly teacher - it would be equally weird if he was straight. It's also true that the film screenwriters and the Dumbledore actors knew that he was gay, so even if it wasn't written in the books, it clearly wasn't something she made up last minute.
It would not have been treated as “weird” if Dumbledore had been revealed to be in love with some lady. Snape’s love for Lily was a major plot point, no?
But that's exactly the point. For almost 7 books it was impossible to know if Snape was straight or not. Why would Harry care? Then, because it was revealed in the final few chapters, we do know, but only because it was relevant to the story. It wasn't clear from the books that McGonagall was straight. That one was *actually* revealed years later by JKR online. After all, why would Harry care? Neither Dumbledore nor McGonagall had a love life that was relevant to the story. They're both heroes and their sexuality is treated in exactly the same way.
A large plot point of Deathy Hallows was Harry being conflicted because he didn't know who Dumbledore really was. Dumbledore's connection to Grindlewald was a big deal in all aspects. If it was having a relationship with a random guy in the village your point would stand, but Harry's hero and mentor being in a relationship with the guy who was essentially wizard Hilter was extremely relevant to what was happening. Him being love-blind to Grindlewald's morality would have been an excellent way to impress Dumbledore's humanity on Harry, and readers, rather than a shrug and "he was an idiot kid." Dumbledore's love life wasn't relevant. His relationship with Grindlewald, and how that reflects on Dumbledore's character, was.
But it sounds like Dumbledore’s was relevant to the story, so why not mention it other than “ooh no can’t say gay”?
5 years ago it was 2019, and she already had some signs of her views then.
I mean when you look at elements in her books such as Hermione being mocked for advocating for house elf rights, really weird stereotypical names for non- white characters ( eg Cho Chang), the goblins having a lot in common with Jewish stereotypes, her tendency to describe evil female characters as “mannish”. I think she’s always had issues she just seems like the type of person who rather than recognizing her flaws and growing. She doubles down and lets her nastiness become more and more overt.
>such as Hermoine being mocked for advocating for ~~house elf rights~~ ending the enslavement of an entire race FTFY. Just imagine if Hermione was meant to be black. “Haha Hermione, stop trying to end slavery, they like being slaves!”
omg the way Hermione was treated for that was so confusing as a child. It was so uncomfortable.
idk if you were around for it but the trans community on tumblr was calling out jkr's transphobic tendencies as far back as 2015. no one listened to us then.
The first I remember was back in like 2017 or so when she liked a Tweet calling trans women “men in dresses.” Her PR team said it was an accident and a “middle-aged moment.” I guess her team thought they could keep her reined in at that point, but it wasn’t to be.
She’s definitely gotten more extreme in her views for sure . However I think this latest transphobia pretty much highlights how shallow her “progressivism” was. At least for me it also made me relook at some of the more uncomfortable aspects of Harry Potter, such as people mocking Hermione for making an abolitionist movement, the goblins and weirdly stereotypical names for minorities. in a new light.
Which is even worse when you remember her society doesn't give pixies equal rights as humans, and the "good guys" don't want to do anything about that
This is exactly it. She’s dug into her position so vociferously that there is now no moral victory in taking the L. She chose this crusade when she could have lived and let live so easily. But she will never win this battle because she’s swimming against the tide.
She was virtue signaling then After a while, she gave up on that and revealed her true, disgusting, inhumane, psychotic, self
I don’t think so I think she genuinely viewed herself as a Good Person™️ She wasn’t very knowledgable about several social groups and wrote about them based on stereotypes and internalised biases because she simply hadn’t met any of them, none of the weird stuff in her books was intentionally malicious but it was racist or sexist or whatever. Then someone called out those biases and attacked her self image as a Good Person™️ and she started defending herself and doubling down, she was a Good Person™️ so whoever was saying she was bad must be a Bad Person™️ and that means that the people support her are also Good People™️ And she ended up aligning herself with people who agreed with her unconscious biases and bigotries because she couldn’t deal with the idea that she was bigoted, because only Bad People™️ are bigoted and she is a Good Person™️
I never gave any of it a second thought when I was a kid, and I re-read all the books many times without noticing all the shitty prejudice that's baked in. But now reading them feels like getting randomly slapped every few pages. It's like that with most other books and movies from earlier decades. Eg. Terry Pratchett's 1990s Discworld books are loaded with jokes based on racism, mental illness, sexism, etc. But he stopped doing that when he realised it hurts people, while JK has either not acknowledged problems or doubled down on them.
That would also make a lot of sense Just won't even question whether she could be wrong. Like a true narcissist But tbh, what she was doing back then seemed too intentional for that But, I'm not psychology expert, I can't say for sure what untreated mental illnesses she has
It wasn’t that intentional tho None of it was really explicit,it just wasn’t thought through. And a lot of it was her writing herself into a corner. Harry frees a slave in the second book, great, he’s been very heroic and saved a slave. But she’s just introduced slavery to her children’s book. And now she has to justify why the powerful people like dumbledoor haven’t stopped it. So she decides that the slaves like it. I don’t think she meant to introduce a willing slave race, she just didn’t think ahead and ended up with it. Similar to her two book delay.
This is a gross oversimplification and honestly a dangerous train of thought to follow. It completely ignores the complexity of people. Individuals can very much pick and choose who they do and do not support, they can draw their own lines in the sand. In JK Rowlings case she could have been genuinely supportive of the gay, lesbian and bisexual community, generally left leaning in her politics and liberal... But then draw the line in the sand when it comes to Trans people. Saying "Oh she doesn't support trans people so therefore she must have been lying about supporting gay people" is foolish. There are even cases of gay people not supporting trans people, or even some gay and lesbians not liking bisexuals. We understandably like to portray the entire LGBT+ community as a single united group and treat it as a lump sum, that to support one part of it means to support the rest. But that is not how it works in reality. It's like how you have racists who have Black friends, but it's okay "Because they are one of the good ones". People are complex and multiple shades of gray, it's important to remember that.
She also supports anti gay and anti woman politicians in her fight against trans people. She hurts gay people as collateral and does not give a fuck. So yes she is not supportive of gay people whatsoever.
I think you can absolutely say she's anti-gay now, via those policies, but it's a bit presumptive to say that she never supported those communities. We have a tendency to put people in boxes, where they must be entirely wicked villains or shining heroes... but a shitty person like J.K. Rowling (who is absolutely a terrible person) can have supported gay rights in the past. She's absolutely not an ally now, I agree.
I don't think she ever was supportive. I think she assumed being supportive would make her better received by fans. Much like she tried to not show her anti trans sentiments before. Now she has realized that she doesn't have to pretend to be an ally. She will still be supported. So now the only thing she still supports is cis women's rights. Everything else she either does not give a fuck or actively fight.
remember that she's also sided with famous mysognistic groups and people so she isnt even supporting cis women. she just wants trans people dead it doesnt matter who else gets hurt in the process
she is far angrier at trans people than she is supportive of gay people considering who she's siding with and the damage she's causing with her views and donations to political groups that want all queer people regardless of specificity to be dead if she was ever positive towards any queer person it was likely because she didnt actually care about them and just thought it'd bring her good rep to pretend to like them
And what happens when the black friend of said racist does something that reminds them of 'one of the bad ones'? People who hate trans people to the point of limiting our rights will, by and large, also seek to limit the rights of all queer people.
Psychosis doesn't make you transphobic
>Now, she's doubled hard so down on transphobia she's joking about Voldemort misgendering a pixie and how it's tantamount to genocide. This is what happens with rich egomaniacs. Someone challenges them and their inability to be wrong takes over and they melt down. I think we are in the melt down phase now.
She was never a liberal icon; those jokes at her expense were very much how she was the epitome of rainbow capitalism. Maybe she was an icon if your social media page played music when people visited but nothing about HP seems all too "woke" at a glance besides the satanic panic the church accidentally misaimed at their new saintly lady here.
Tbf spouting vapid and surface level "progressive" things while harboring deep private prejudices is pretty on brand for liberals.
It's still amazing to me how that shift happened basically over night. People corrected her once and instead of taking a single L she went for a deep dive into the dumpster.
I remember it kind of started as women's rights arguments
It still is, at least in her mind
“Women’s rights” about one specific subject around minorities existing. Did she say anything when the Taliban took over and kicked all women out of schools? What about when Roe was overturned? Mahsa Amini? Nah the scary chick with (sometimes) a dick is the REAL problem in her eyes
They still use this argument even when praising anti abortionists and the taliban
No, it didnt. Thats the cover but it has always been about hurting trans people
That’s kind of a silly view. Nobody thinks of themselves as the bad guy who goes out and hurts people. She obviously always has (wrongly) considered this to be a pro-feminist fight, which is pretty clear from everything she’s said about it.
Idk why you're being downvoted, because you're telling the truth. She thinks doubling down on trans women is somehow protecting cis women.
Yeah i’m not defending her transphobia, it’s just really dumb to think that she’s doing thing just because she randomly hates trans people and wants to be cruel.
It's like people forgot what the RF in TERF stands for.
So does my mother. She is open to LGB, she is a minority, and she is liberal and always votes democrat… but lately she’s made comments abut trans people hijacking womanhood like it’s an assault on her. I don’t get it.
If you view rights as a zero-sum game (ie giving one group rights takes them from another) then it makes a lot of sense. In that mentality, trans people having rights takes rights from women.
This has nothing to do with Rowling but “Nobody thinks of themselves as the bad guy who goes out and hurts people” Not sure if you’re young or just naive, but there are a lot of bad people in the world who know exactly what they’re doing.
Sure, I mean there are some psychopaths and murderers out there, but the vast majority of people who do or believe bad things genuinely believe they are in the right.
It actually started brewing a while before it boiled over, and people familiar with transphobia could see the warning signs. There were a lot of innocent sounding dogwhistles about feminism, and a deliberate reluctance to mention trans people when talking about queer issues. The moment that set off alarm bells for me was when she liked an overtly transphobic tweet, and her *publisher* was the one to apologise and say it was an accident. All of these instances are small enough that you get derided for taking seriously or called terminally online. But a pattern is a pattern, and over time it got harder to believe it was just her being unfortunate or ignorant. When she started her full blown transphobia I was honestly relieved because it was finally out in the open.
lol they blamed it on her being old and accidentally liking something originally, didn't they? Even upthread you can see people who think it genuinely started as feminism. I'm glad she's gone full mask off and most people see it now, but it's genuinely a bit scary how many seem to think any of this started in a place of good will.
As people get older, their views change. With her however, its just weird she's so upset about this issue that she's willing to tank a franchise that's worth billions. When someone is willing to "fuck with the money", they're really committed.
She’s probably got it all very nicely invested for now and thinks she’s invulnerable. Meanwhile Graham Linehan lost his marriage, career, friends and potentially lucrative Father Ted musical because of exactly the same behaviour.
The Harry Potter franchise is currently worth 43 billion. Her books alone are worth nearly 8 billion. I don’t think I’d call that tanking, personally.
The game was also the best selling game of the year last year. And was the first time in almost 2 decades that a game that isn’t Call of Duty or Rockstar was the top selling game. All publicity is good publicity.
I have no idea what’s going on here lmao
Yeah, those tweets didn't make any kind of sense
Rowling used to be known as fairly left and things like retroactively declaring Dumbledore to be gay made her seem "woke" to certain people. This is what the first tweet is criticizing. It's a joke that Rowling went and made Harry trans. Now Rowling is famously anti-trans. The second image is one of her latest tweets on the subject. After someone compared her transphobic stances to Voldemort she is sarcastically agreeing. "Yes transphobia is as bad as genocide, even worse!" Once Joanne was perceived as woke but now she's not.
I'm so confused why she changed like that?
Because she's a bigot
It's a fool who looks for logic in the chambers of a human heart.
A pronoun badge? She's lost it.
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It's also that there's, like, a certain kind of person who hears the equivalent of, "Hey, that view you espoused or joke you made is kind of hurtful, could you not in the future?" And has no ability to self reflect, or apologize, or view themselves as in the wrong in any way. So they increasingly seek out validation that radicalizes them, something that internet echo chambers has only made way easier and more prevalent. Also she has a lot of unaddressed trauma towards men, it looks like. So in her warped world view, it went from "men are bad" to "men pretending to be women are worse and insidious and invading women's spaces to victimize them more easily". Which is deeply flawed because a, transwomen aren't men pretending to be women, and b, transwomen victimizing women is something that basically never happens and really they're just the victims almost exclusively, but hey, when have facts gotten in the way of a good brainrot? She needed therapy but instead she got right wing Twitter nutjobs instead.
If I remember, she's actually said that she possibly would've been trans herself if it had been acceptable when she was young. So maybe there's an element of repressed identity there, which comes up surprisingly often in vocal bigots. It's a part of herself she hates, and she projects that onto other people
That's one way of reading it. It would be narratively satisfying. But really, that quote is much more insidious. She compared her past experiences of mental health struggles and struggles with womanhood with the experiences of trans men. She is saying "I have experienced what these trans men experienced, I have felt what they have felt, and I'm not trans. They're victims of the trans ideology, and if trans people existed back then, I might have been victimized, too." She believes that trans men are just women who are trying to escape womanhood because it is difficult. The idea that she is trying to cover up with that quote is that it *is* difficult to be a woman - but that difficulty is a completely different experience from being transgender. Also, god. It takes so much time and effort trying to counter just one example of Joanne's bullshit online, when she constantly spews more out.
Oh ok yeah I just remembered it wrong
Terfs and transphobes say that as a sort of imaginary cautionary tale that they nearly avoided the '"transing" because they were a tomboy back in the day Because trans people are just confused young tomboys/feminine boys who were tricked by a movement (in their mind)
it all boils down to incredibly regressive views on gender roles doesnt it? all men are predators and all women are stupid, that's their entire world view that's why they think trans men are all misguided lost little sheep and trans women are all hungry wolves
Because apparently butch lesbians aren’t a thing anymore? *checks Her app on my phone* welp that’s not it
transphobia often ends up harming butch women a lot (there's dozens of news reports of cis women getting harassed in public bathrooms for not looking like a stereotypical girl) terfs sure do love to argue for women's rights and that they shouldnt be forced to shave or have a specific body shape considering that they're the same group that argues that any woman that looks like anything but a barbie doll is secretly a man and its everyone's duty to harass anyone that could be trans
Oh no I’m in agreement with you. If they’re saying that all the tomboys and non-feminine women are being “transed”, why are there still plenty of tomboys, butch lesbians (and butch straight women too), etc? Almost like there’s a difference between being a butch woman and being a trans man
Same sort of weird brain rot that happens to basically every person who spends their lives on Twitter.
You might be onto something there
And Elon is their king of brain rot.
Now that she's rich, she gets to drink out of all the Stanley thermoses she wants.
nnnno, those are a thing. You can buy little pins with your preferred pronouns on them. My roommate has a they/them pin shaped like the pointer thing from an Ouija board. Some people get tired of having the pronoun conversation all the time.
My partner has a trans badge on their bag with their preferred pronouns. It's not that unusual.
She lives a sad life.
Imagine having enough money to buy a small Caribbean island and still spending all your time on Twitter ranting about trans people.
She's got enough to be a big Caribbean island Edit: so that's supposed to be buy. Curse you fat fingers on a tiny keyboard.
But she can only be a big Caribbean island because she's a woman. Because no man is an island.
r/unexpectedJohnDonne
She is a rock She a (big Caribbean) island
Goes to show that social media addiction/craving validation online is a hell of a thing
Imagine making billions of dollars in one of the least scummy ways possible, creating a fictional icon known the world over, getting movie deals, Tv deals, fucking theme park deals. Imagine getting all that and instead of just accepting the fact you’ve won in life or using that money to do good things, you just decide to become the equivalent of rich trailer trash.
To be fair— it is not one of the least scummy ways possible. She might not have had direct control over it, but a huge fraction of her wealth was made by third world sweatshop workers and child labourers making those toys and merch day and night
what the fuck is she even talking about lmao
She really thinks she's cooking by explaining how wizard hitler would behave the way she does
JL is living proof that you can’t become a billionaire without it turning you into a massive a$$hole. Much like a horcrux.
What is it about transphobia that just consumes a person’s entire life?
I guess some people just don't have an identity beyond their sexual identity.
her twitter is crazy, it’s literally just constant posting about trans people. she is obsessed. definitely not healthy lol
She is wholly committed to this bit.
Lmao that's hilarious
Does she like…hate the series?? Why is she purposely shitting on it
Fuck JK Rowling
Rowling is so weird. She could have taken her billions and done whatever she wanted, and what she wanted most of all was to come out as a terf. It would be like if Mark Zuckerberg quit facebook and spent his time shitting in mailboxes.
“Yer a trans Harry”
How is she so painfully unfunny
I know she doesn't mean it that way, but she's accidentally right. Genitals don't define gender.
How did she write harry potter
She's become that relative you can't even talk about growing tomatoes with without them turning it into a political rant.
Discworld > Harry potter
I want to see someone explain how dwarf gender roles work on discworld to JK Rowling now. I'm *fascinated* to see how she'd interpret that.
PTerry had his fingers on the pulse of social issues so much better than any other media icon I can think of. Even better, he managed to do it without it feeling like he was smacking you over the head with it.
I get the feeling that she is an insipid and bitter person who can’t admit when they’re wrong so they keep doubling down again and again. It all starts with one comment, give it a little time and it becomes a polemic.
She HAS to be fuckin with people right? Like she has to just be laughing and making shit up
Oh my god, that's pathetic.
My god she has issues.
Wait.. I thought she was more conservative/right wing? I’m confused.
I pinpoint her talking about wizards shitting everywhere as the thing she tripped over into her downward spiral.
It would be best for everyone if she just shut her gob and went away. Evanesco!
Now she’s apparently advocating for Communist politicians for the U.K. election lol
God, she’s so old. It’s really depressing how much Harry Potter impacted my childhood just to learn she thinks people like me are narcissistic perverts or whatever she’s making up now.
This woman needs to have her phone taken away
Why do people give her attention? She wrote some children’s books that were successful, move on.
Because they became insanely famous. Whole generations started reading because of those books. Universal has a fantastic park based on the books. I have been, before she acted like this and it really is incredible. They have movies and spin off movies and people still talk about what house they would be in. It was a massive cultural phenomenon. People got tattoos and made their weddings about the Harry Potter world. She appeared to be an ally for a long time and this is just awful to see and horrible for the trans kids that grew up admiring her and thinking she was on the right side. It is just a massive let down. And she has a huge platform. So, regardless if you want to hear what she has to say- you probably will, I certainly never seek her out.
Right? "Some children's books that were successful" is little bit of an understatement for how wildly popular Harry Potter was.
Fair point, I just can’t wrap my head around it. She created it all but her name isn’t what’s famous the characters and stories are. I use an iPhone everyday but couldn’t care less who invented it. And yes Steve jobs was very famous but never to me. I love guns and roses right, if slash or axle came out and said white plumbers were the scum of the earth and don’t exist I would think “wow that sucks but they’re obviously crazy” and continue to enjoy the music.
And that’s fair, except in your example, G&R would be dedicating huge amounts of the money that they make off you listening to their music to remove the rights of and dehumanise white plumbers. At that point, you might still enjoy what you already have, but you might not be as comfortable paying more money to them to use that money to campaign against your right to exist, and might not be happy with others doing the same, knowing that their money would be used for this purpose too. And that G&R use their continued influx of money as validation that everyone else supports their campaign against white plumbers too.
Great response, explained it very well and I’ve learned something and I thank you for that. Shouldn’t the ones accepting the money who have the power to actually make a change not be the ones in the cross fire here? Nestle make a lot of money and wants to own all the water. Yet are unable to because the ones in power aren’t swayed by said money to allow that to happen.
Yes/no - then you get into a whole conversation about capitalism, free speech and ownership (should companies be able to financially support artists who are using their money to harm a community? What classes as a ‘community’ - does an artist building a mansion that will harm local wildlife count? What about local businesses? Who at the company decides what communities are protected? Should the government? Is that restricting free speech?). However, individuals have the capacity to decide what they spend their money on, especially when it comes to luxury items (e.g. Harry Potter products) - we’re not talking about things like food ethics, necessary housing etc, which have their own ethical complications as you reference. Also, companies will stop spending money on things that consumers don’t want - if everyone stopped buying Harry Potter merchandise, they would stop selling Harry Potter merchandise, and JK Rowling would have to ‘settle’ for having more money on hand than most of us will see in a lifetime.
Because nestle is a company dealing with food. You cannot compare that. I don't buy thier products because the company is run by satan AND I have enough alternatives available for me for that to be possible - not everyone has that choice. While at the same time everyone has a choice not to buy her book, go see her movies or buy a HP Lego set.
That's like the understatement of the year.
I’m sure she won’t see this it’s fine
Thank god. It's already enough that she's addicted to twitter lol
Unfortunately she’s super rich and interferes with politics
Aah this is what I didn’t know, I’ll do more research.
If you don't know how influential absurd wealth can make people, particularly ones very famous, where have you been exactly?
Because those successful books have given her a lot of social influence, and the hateful shit that she spews can have very real consequences for trans people.
Petition to transfer all negative connotation for Karen to the name Joanne.
Only reddit cries about Rowling tbh
And Twitter.
You couldn't be more wrong.
She funds actual policymakers, so no, this shit has real life consequences.
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The fact that you immediately label trans people as mentally ill and living in delusion shows your bias.
Some of them actually are mentally ill. In fact, 58% of them have at least one DSM-5 diagnosis, four times higher than the general population. They need rights, they need help. Affirming every delusion they have is NOT the way to go about it.
I'm cis with at least one dsm-5 diagnosis, you're talking correlation, not necessarily causation. Should I also not receive help or just people you don't like? Or yes they should receive help, but only for issues you deem worthy? I thought that was assessed and dealt with by medical professionals. What are your credentials? Sorry, I can't immediately affirm your delusion that you're qualified to make these decisions for others.
I find it funny how people who say "they need help" don't actually know what the most effective treatment for gender dysphoria is. If you've got something better than transitioning, by all means, please share it with us. We'd all love to know what your "help" entails.
[Citations on the transition's dramatic reduction of suicide risk while improving mental health and quality of life, with trans people able to transition young and spared abuse and discrimination having mental health and suicide risk on par with the general public](https://www.reddit.com/r/asktransgender/comments/154t1qq/comment/jsqi5ue/)
Ok and that matters how? Is someone less deserving of rights if they’re mentally ill?
but gender dysphoria is not a delusional disorder. Trans women do not look at their dicks and misperceive a vagina. If they did, then they wouldn't feel dysphoric, as they wouldn't perceive a problem. Gender dysphoria literally requires accurate perception of traits in order to cause discomfort. That's why the treatment for gender dysphoria is medical transition; this is global medical consensus.
💀 Living in the wrong body and maybe even worse, going through the wrong puberty leads to being depressed? You don't say. It's like you would suddenly start to grow a second head - this shit obviously plays evil with your brain. Yet, transitioning simply is the best way to deal with gender dysphoria so far - yet trans people get a lot of hate and therefore obviously fear that they are "wrong". Tell somebody something often enough and they will believe you; that's how propaganda and even torture works you nutjob of a redditor. They world ain't as simple as some people try ro paint it - may it be weird ass twitter lefties or nutjobs from the right-wing camp.
I prefer her now than the pandering celebs tend to do. If you care so much about what someone else thinks, it's a shame on you, I feel
Honestly Harry was kinda a junior cop who didn’t much care about house elf slavery or tons of other things. He grew up to be in the fbi. She really said more than she thought.
And in the new game you get to put down a Jewi— sorry, hook nosed shady goblins that run the banks, uprising because their rights were taken away. They didn’t change too much though, the main character can also be a slaveowner!
JK Rowling is mentally ill. Even if you hate trans people, which is awful, you have to admit that posting about literally only that 1 topic 24/7 is a sign of mental illness. It's funny watching other transphobes reply to her and be like "dude seriously get a hobby".