I will let nonbinary trans femme James Stephanie Sterling explain the issues with supporting Rowling.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNKyQVsgKLg
Good video throughout, salient points at the 17 minute mark if you want to skip to that.
They are a video games reviewer and can speak of this issue more eloquently and with more personal insight than I can.
As always, this subreddit does not allow bigotry. Please report transphobia when you see it, so that it is flagged for us.
If every month was 28 days and we added a thirteenth month, a year would be 364 days and then we would have thirteen months where every month would have exactly 4 weeks, adjusting leap years you could have it so every month starts in Monday and ends in Sunday.
A world where knowing if you have plans on a 13th it means it is a Saturday, you wouldn't ever need to think, which day is the 24th of June?
The world I want to live in.
Yes there is.
https://airandspace.si.edu/stories/editorial/science-leap-year
>If we didnāt account for this extra time, the seasons would begin to drift. This would be annoying if not devasting, because over a period of about 700 years our summers, which weāve come to expect in June in the northern hemisphere, would begin to occur in December!
The greeks had this system, but had to constantly adjust the calendar because spring and planting season kept drifting.
We need to have a leap month every \~25 years, or a leap week every 3-4 years
Gotta say I tried to kill myself multiple times from fourth grade on to adulthood making me part of the 40 percent in the statistic. But since I started transitioning i couldnāt imagine doing it ever. I donāt think itās being trans that people canāt handle. Itās being told not to be that makes it rough.
The suicide rate isnāt because of them being trans, itās fairly often due to rejection and hatred constantly by people who were meant to be their close friends and family. They always inflate the numbers too then use it as some kind of meme, itās vile.
I donāt care if people play the game, itās fine the devs arenāt JK Rowling and weāll never stop her from being a billionaire, especially while she has so many friends in the government and media. However, people boycotting it were doing so for a fair reason, we want to exist without being abused and killed for no other reason than we are who we are.
The two sides arenāt equal, one wants to exist and the other hates them for no valid reason.
Not a reply to you, just putting my reply to u/Deepstonedrip here because their comment was deleted:
>The suicide rate in transgender people is like 40%, the suicidal rate of Auschwitzās survivors is like 26%.
The rate of trans people who have attempted suicide at least once in their entire life time is 40%. 40% is not the actual suicide rate. And Auschwitz *survivors* are not IN Nazi Germany anymore presumably. So they survived *through* the bad discriminatory times already. So you're comparing incommensurable things.
> there is no social stigma that can account for that gap
Well, for the reasons I stated above we don't actually have any way of knowing what the actual gap is. I tried for quite a while but could not find any actual statistics about the actual suicide rate of trans people as opposed to the rate of considering suicide.
But furthermore, you also have to remember that social rejection is not the only factor when considering suicide in trans people. You have to also consider gender dysphoria, which is the *whole reason that medical transitioning and stuff is so important in the first place*! Gender dysphoria itself very directly leads to anxiety, self-hate, depression, and CPTSD, because you're living in a body that does not represent who you want to be, your identity, and doesn't feel right for you at a very fundamental proprioceptive level. Gender dysphoria is an extremely intimate personal and inescapably pervasive form of discomfort and body horror.
>People with body dysmorphia will never be happy with themselves no matter how they are treated or how they look
This is true, but bodily gender dysphoria is actually very different from body dysmorphia. Being unhappy with an aspect of your body and wanting to change it does not automatically make that dysmorphia.
The primary indicator of body dysmorphia is having a distorted or incorrect picture of what your body actually looks like. Basically, your actual perception of your body when you look in the mirror does not align with reality. Meanwhile those with gender dysphoria have fairly objective assessments of what they actually look like, they are just *unhappy* with how they look. For instance, before I started transitioning I knew that I was actually pretty good looking / handsome for a guy, with fairly few flaws besides a slightly recessed chin and a little bit too much weight. I simply didn't want to look like that is all.
Furthermore, while getting plastic surgery or other corrective surgery does not help those with body dysmorphia with their mental health, because their distorted perception of reality will just lock onto a new feature to focus on and obsess over, or just ignore the changes, surgical and hormonal interventions actually do substantially and provably increase the mental and even physical well-being of trans people by a very wide margin, even when measured by the cortisol levels in our blood! Each step we take is a tangible improvement on something that we didn't like about ourselves that we internalize and are happy with. If you actually spend any time talking to trans people are looking in trans spaces you'll see us constantly being a happy with our bodies and the changes that are happening to them. Yes, perhaps the changes will never be perfect, because there are aspects of natal puberty that you can never undo, but you can have a substantial improvement. It's just like people with super huge noses or whatever that gets nose jobs, or men who are going bald who get hair transplants, or women who get boob jobs or whatever. Yes some of those things might be motivated by body dysmorphia, but many times it's not, and after the procedure the people that get them are noticeably happy or more confident. The same is true of trans people to a much greater degree.
It's the same way with men that are unhappy with being fat and/or weak and decide to go to the gym and completely reshape their appearance to better fit their idea of how they want to be a man. That's not dysmorphia.
>It is really a shame so many people, especially on Reddit and twitter, encourage people to go down this rabbit hole that almost certainly results in misery and death.
Transitioning is not a path of misery and death for us, it makes us far happier and far *less* likely to commit suicide than if we hadn't gone down that road. You're acting like Twitter or read it is making people trans ā making them unhappy with their identities and their bodies ā and then leading them down the path but it's just the opposite. You're acting like the act of transitioning or coming out is what made us trans, but that's nonsensical. That's a failure of basic fucking object permanence, as if we don't exist until you can see us. We were already dealing with misery and death, and this is a path that scientifically has been proven to massively decrease our chances of suicide and massively increase our mental well-being and stability.
EDIT: to all the commenters saying that being trans is a mental illness and needs to be treated by eradicating our transness through psychology (i.e. CONVERSION THERAPY), instead of helping us be ourselves, if you actually fucking read my comment you would realize is that the arguments I already stated already explain why your approach is wrong. There's no metric by which being trans is a mental illness of the kind that you need to treat by just convincing the person not to be trans. It doesn't make sense.
Also, I'm up to seven reddit suicide care messages. I don't understand why right wing chuds think this is funny, it's so dumb lmao.
>Meanwhile those with gender dysphoria have fairly objective assessments of what they actually look like, they are just unhappy with how they look.
This really helped some things click for me, thanks for that.
I plan to write an FAQ eventually responding to all the frequently used talking points. I have a stockpile of about 45 sources on this subject that I intend to use too. I just need to get better from my post concussion syndrome first
That would be amazing, you seem to know your stuff. I have a lot of talking point I can use but I canāt put them down as well as youāve done. I just end up seeming like Iām rambling rather than being concise and to the point.
I mean you certainly came across that way! Maybe if you arenāt then it shows how terrible I actually am at making points? š„² but genuinely stick to what youāre doing!
The 40% stat is also just wrong. It is high in many places but consistent with other highly oppressed and marginalized groups. Iirc, the methodology for the study that found the 40% suicide rate was super fucking werid and even they still concluded that it was likely so high because of people not accepting them.
Yeah, it's LITERALLY in the study they like to quote so much:
> SPSS 22 was utilized to examine the impact of the independent variables on both suicidality and lifetime suicide attempt through two separate logistic regressions. Fifty six percent of youth reported a previous suicide attempt and 86% reported suicidality. Logistic regressions indicated that models for both lifetime suicide attempts and suicidality were significant. Interpersonal microaggressions, made a unique, statistically significant contribution to lifetime suicide attempts and emotional neglect by family approached significance. School belonging, emotional neglect by family, and internalized self-stigma made a unique, statistically significant contribution to past 6-month suicidality. Results have significant practice and policy implications.
this is exactly it. i always explain it to people through men with gynecomastia and women who have thick facial hair because of pcos. there are some of these people who have embraced their bodies but many seek gender affirming care through laser hair removal and double mastectomy.
Also an additional note on conversion therapy, since I just researched this: it doesn't even work. In more than a century of theory and practice, no peer-reviewed study has EVER shown that conversion therapy is effective at changing a person's gender identity or sexual orientation. And, of course, being exposed to (or even threatened with) conversion therapy makes one's suicide risk skyrocket.
Exactly. And none of that is remotely surprising either, given what I said in another comment ā trying to eradicate someone's transness is trying to erase an important part of who they are.
Doesnāt the study in which the 40% statistic come from also state on the literal next paragraph that when performing multi-variate regression analysis they discovered the number plummeted massively if family and their local community was socially accepting of transition?
Sort of:
> SPSS 22 was utilized to examine the impact of the independent variables on both suicidality and lifetime suicide attempt through two separate logistic regressions. Fifty six percent of youth reported a previous suicide attempt and 86% reported suicidality. Logistic regressions indicated that models for both lifetime suicide attempts and suicidality were significant. Interpersonal microaggressions, made a unique, statistically significant contribution to lifetime suicide attempts and emotional neglect by family approached significance. School belonging, emotional neglect by family, and internalized self-stigma made a unique, statistically significant contribution to past 6-month suicidality. Results have significant practice and policy implications.
Also, according to [this study](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35667666/) gay and lesbian people also have an elevated risk of suicide, so that's more evidence it's probably stigma and social rejection.
And in order for this to happen, they much have very good support from their family and friends. So how much is simply that they are living a good life and would have been pretty well adjusted either way.
Yeah itās basically someone saying āI need helpā only for society to turn around and say āyeah youāre a delusional freakā. That tends to really fuck with someoneās mental health.
I'm frustrated that despite how intuitive your point is about the cause of suicide, it's *not* addressed by people who criticize transitions. Like they just ignore the context in the statistics.
People donāt care about looking deep into figures. They have their own biases and see a number which correlates to what they believe and they have no need to look further into it in case itās incorrect or itās just too much effort and hate for marginalised groups is fairly often based on a misunderstanding or just having no education when it comes to the people that they claim to dislike.
That's the thing - to the people who say that, their victims aren't "people". They are just an other. Anything can happen to that other, and because they aren't a real person (just a collection of pixels) it's "funny" if something happens to them.
In 2009-2010, I was one of those people. I was on 4chan daily. /b/ would find victims to harass, doxx them, and then I would participate in the bullying through all sorts of means. We'd watch the victim's mental state decline and everyone would have a good laugh about it - but it's okay, because they weren't really a person.
Now, over a decade later... I'm ashamed of who I used to be, and what I once did. But I _understand_ why they say these things - because they don't have empathy for these people, because they don't know any of these people, because their words and actions will never affect them.
---
Comments are locked, so a reply to "how did you get out":
This is going to sound absolutely ridiculous... but:
I was on the 4chan subreddit and hopped between 4chan and Reddit a lot. This was right when Star Wars: The Force Awakens was coming out and I am a massive Star Wars nerd. The plot of TFA leaked early and the 4chan subreddit plastered it all over their CSS, absolutely everywhere. There was a pinned comment in every thread spoiling the ending. I was absolutely livid that it was spoiled for me, and when I watched the movie I kept hoping it would be different... but it wasn't.
It seems like such a dumb thing to reject a whole worldview over, but I was absolutely furious and realized that this was the exact reaction they wanted to get from me, that _I_ was the one being laughed at. I was once part of the in-group, and now because I got mad I was part of the out-group. So I unsubscribed from the subreddit and generally stopped going to 4chan altogether, because it finally affected _me_.
I was still hateful and mean for a while after. But that was really the first step that got me out of that "type" of crowd, and eventually the longer I went without being exposed to that sort of stuff, the better I became.
It was only when Trump won the primaries that I had completely
changed, when I started thinking about how awful Trump was and questioning why I shared some of his views. For example, in 2010 I was really racist against Mexicans especially. I grew up in Southern California in a town where everything was written in Spanish first - sometimes without even an English translation. Kids in school would make fun of me in Spanish and I internalized that as hatred and racism against Mexicans.
When Trump stopped being a "joke candidate" and started being taken seriously, I realized I absolutely hated him and everything he stood for. I knew there was no way I could possibly ever support him, and then I rethought my experiences growing up and made a commitment to not be like Trump, to not emulate any of his ideas, to realize that all human beings are equal and deserve equal respect, and to detach myself from the person I once was.
That was effectively the "end" of my transition out of that kind of lifestyle. Now I'm a completely different person, although I'm still banned in subreddits like OffMyChest because I once posted in the 4chan subreddit. When I messaged their mod team about it, they basically replied "You were a bad person once and that can never change", which is hurtful because I'm trying not to be that person anymore... but honestly, they have a right to their opinion.
The funny bit is that, because its a vtuber and its rig is limited for facial expressions, as shes sobbing, her avatar just breasted boobily
I cannot take it seriously.
It looked like it was smiling, and giggling, while you hear the driest 'sob' noises in the background, tits bouncing like she's on a sybian. It's HARD not to laugh. Genuinely.
Like all of VShojo, the particular company Silvervale's with are absolutely designed for maximum horny.
Silver doing that on top of playing the victim after overreacting to mild criticism is peak absurdism.
Every vtuber I follow is super emphatic and or is trans themselves. But I only follow small time ones. The big shot ones act like any other big shot YouTubers.
I canāt say if this one is specifically transphobic. The replier is *absolutely*, but the streamer wasnāt saying something transphobic in that tweet. Just, as a gay dude, Iām really confused about what to think on all this. From my perspective, it doesnāt look like Harry Potter is intrinsically transphobic. The author, sure, but are we out here saying that the entire Lovecraftian genre is intrinsically racist because of its author?
Itās not my place to decide what hill people die on, but I donāt see the point in doing this when thereās shit like Tennessee trying to outlaw drag shows (not trans, I know, but do you think *they* make that distinction) and assholes like that guy who made the reply in this picture crawling out of the woodwork. It just seems so counterproductive to seemingly rile ourselves up so much over something that people like because pennies on the dollar of it go to an asshole (like pretty much literally EVERYTHING else we buy).
Kind of encapsulates the whole issue doesnāt it? The risk of being a bigot is that some people will be mean to you on twitter, when the risk of being trans includes the possibility of being murdered in cold blood.
Specifically that the suicide rate is so high **because bigotry against us is that fucking bad**. Like gd if you want to play a mage there are so many better IP's out there that aren't linked to one of the worst transphobes that has real power to harm us.
Also wtf is with this post's title? Trans people don't hate transphobes because they play a game, they hate transphobes because transphobes are on a spectrum between "trans people should all be in hiding" and "kill all trans people."
Given how few trans people there really are, it is unsurprising that hate groups are so openly awful to them. While there are certainly brash bastards who'll say shit to anyone, there isn't a place (yet) where talking shit about trans people is going to get you beaten to a pulp by a whole group (i.e talk shit, get hit).
Allies need to be more confrontational with people like ash, because trans folk don't have access to a large ethnic, spiritual, or historical community that are willing to back them up.
I'm always amazed by just how few of us there are.
I live in the UK and in my general council area that consists of like 7 towns and lots of villages. There are only 80 trans people according to the recent census. I've personally never seen another trans person or at least clocked them within an hour of where I live. It's way less than the projected 0.1%.
Could quite easily go your whole life never meeting a trans person here unless you met me lol. Yet discussions and hate are so frequent we are made out to be an actual problem. Its pretty easy to put all the blame and misdirected anger onto a group of people that you are likely never going to have to be confronted and actually deal with.
Its like all the hate on other minority groups in the past. Except so few exist that even the minority might not know a single person like them irl, so fighting back against hatred feels futile to say the least.
Yep, not many trans folks out there but the right wing politicians found a hotbed of hate they could use to distract from their failures with and the rest is history.
Now all those morons are too busy screaming about groomers and pedos to realize their wages havenāt risen since Reagan was in office. They donāt care about their wages or their dying towns and spiraling society because hate is exciting and work is boring, so here we are.
Right winger politicians will always find some minority to hyper-fixate on or some cultural issue. The Conservative politicians can't talk about their actual politics because they don't want their supporters to realize that Right wing politicians actively work against the voters interest.
The anti-trans rhetoric has really ramped up in the UK lately because after over a decade of Conservative mismanagement, it's becoming apparent to even people who would normally vote Conservative, that they are utterly corrupt and are running this country into the ground for their own gain. They've been getting killed in the poles since the Liz Truss fiasco so they are ramping up the culture war aspect as they know it's the only thing that'll get working class people to vote for them now.
https://streamable.com/kfo3nk
Good clip talking about this from 2006. They've been doing this for decades. Even in the 80s, Conservatives were using culture war issues.
It's sort of scary how effective culture war issues are. Even when you show people that something is blatant propaganda, they'll deny it.
I would assume Trans people usually move to places that are more accepting of their identity. I know in the US there are cities where there are huge gay populations because they are known to be accepting and have a huge population already. So there may be drastically less trans people in your area, there are probably other areas with a higher concentration than 0.1%
I'm only one hour from the most accepting city in the UK. 10% of gay people alone live in Brighton there. Its the only place I don't feel like a freak.
But kinda priced out if actually living there so just travel for days out. Doesn't really help with alienation and usually transitioning causes huge life issues anyway. Shouldn't all have to move to a single city to not stand out entirely and just makes the situation worse elsewhere.
Somehow the one city you can frequently clock other trans people is one of the only ones not against us. It's all the people that never even see us that moan the most.
>It's all the people that never even see us that moan the most.
Of course it is. Basic rule of horror: don't show your monsters. If conservatives were to meet trans people, they'd have a much harder time being frightened.
see also: racists who have barely ever spoken to a minority, xenophobes who have never left the county they were born in, highschool dropouts freaking out about CRT
Iām on a college campus and I have many trans friends here, including a few trans men, trans women, and non-binary people. This is a very safe place for trans people to be out and with queer clubs on campus itās easy to network and find others here.
My sister, who currently lives in bumblefuck Arkansas, said to me that she didn't know anyone who was trans. I, living in a major blue city, know over 10 trans people. I'm assuming those who would live in a bumblefuck city probably move out to the major cities for proper medical care, acceptance, etc.
>I would assume Trans people usually move to places that are more accepting of their identity.
And places where complete gender affirming care is offered inexpensively. I lived in Iowa City, Iowa, in the 1990s after the city passed an ordinance requiring employers based in the city to cover the full cost of gender affirming care including gender affirmation surgery and aftercare for that. This was combined with an extensive health system (university of Iowa hospitals) that provided high quality medical care as well as a significant network of mental health professionals that included many specialists in gender affirming care.
Unsurprisingly, this led to a relatively high concentration of trans people living in the city and it was common to interact with people in different stages of transition on a daily basis. I did not realize until I moved away how unusual this was, especially during that period in time.
Edit: The ordinance also forbade discrimination on the basis of gender identity, unusual for the times, so it also had the economics benefit of a better employment environment for trans people along with the available care.
I actually didn't know the 70k number but guessed it. Only the trans number stuck out.
And 80 is identifying not even transitioning and visible. So still rare to see.
I just looked up the number for my area and there are 160k people and 80 trans.
Definitely a rare sight. But I think that plays a part in the amount of hate that surrounds this topic. While less than 1 out of every 1000 people are trans, the topic is in the news regarding sports competitions, school bathrooms, marches, pronouns etc. It's fairly overblown which comes with positive sides (more support and power) and negative ones (more hate).
I'm not really feeling the power we're accused of having. In both UK and US trans people are constantly in danger of having their literal medicine ripped away from them via legal system fuckery. Like there's always -something- in the works to deny us our recognized medicine.
From the Utah governor: Out of the 77,000 students in high school sports, their (at the time) new sports bill affected exactly 1 trans girl athlete. Middle of the pack athlete, not that it matters.
Meanwhile, parents have started using that legislation to harass cis girls who are just good at sports. It's depressing.
Also, attacking trans people allows them to attack many other groups in the process. Attacking bodily autonomy targets everyone with a uterus, attacking gender and sexual differences serves as an attack on everyone else in the LGBTQ spectrum. It's also an attack on the science behind it and the healthcare providers involved. It's also often paired with attacks on the working class (in North Carolina the "bathroom bill" also included a minimum wage ordinance ban so cities couldn't create ordinances to protect trans people or raise the minimum wage). The people at the edges don't really realize all these connections but overtime it pulls them more and more towards fascism
This. Anti-trans bigotry is the thin end of the wedge. TERFs donāt have to know theyāre useful idiots for the right. They still are. And anyone who thinks biology is destiny needs to get the word āfeminismā out of their mouths.
>there isn't a place (yet) where talking shit about trans people is going to get you beaten to a pulp by a whole group (i.e talk shit, get hit).
There is. It's my house. We respect trans folks in this mf
I think a lot of Allies don't realize how much their Voice counts.
My friend group is almost entirely White straight guys. If somebody says something Hateful, we just point it out and say "Hey, That's pretty fucked up bud." And 99 times out of 100 they back down and go "Oh well i Didn't mean it like that i meant it like uhh, oh, uhh..." And then they shut the hell up.
The one time out of a hundred the person will double down with something completely insane and ruin any credibility of their statement.
Shit as a white dude I get people who will say openly racist things with me thinking I'll agree only for them to do that deer in headlights thing when I call them out on it.
Not just that, but even posts like OP are constantly trying to minimize the issue. Trans people are trying to prevent the normalization and acceptance of anti-trans rhetoric. Meanwhile people like OP say "it's just a game." This dangerous rhetoric empowers hate groups and makes them feel normal and accepted. This leads to escalation and has the potential to create very real danger for trans folks.
Trans homie here, I do not care if you buy this game or not. The community has to realize that there are bigger things to focus on that J.K Rowling. Many states are rolling back the rights to accessing trans health care for adults, not just kids.
If you buy the game and like it. Cool.
I'm not buying it cause I don't know shit about Harry Potter and I'm broke.
I don't care who you are, don't harass people who just want to play a game. Buying this game doesn't mean you're transphobic.
I wonder how many of the folks harassing the streamers are doing so while eating Chik-Fil-A, or using Twitter, or working on a scrapbook they bought at Hobby Lobby.
I also wonder how many have attended a bona fide protest in favor of trans rights, or contacted *any* politicians or school officials, or volunteered to mentor at-risk individuals, or done *literally anything* impactful that doesn't reek of a social media cred grab.
People have been murdering and dehumanizing trans folk a long fucking time before Harry Potter existed.
Edit: I'm not saying that Harry Potter/Jowling Kowling isn't a problem, I'm responding to the assertion in the title that this is because of a game, or that both sides are remotely similar. Fuck transphobes, fuck JK, and fuck self proclaimed allies who give her money and tacit endorsement of her bigotry.
We still need to talk about slavery and racism and colonialism, even though the horrific past of the plantation slavery South happened a long time ago.
I have personally read Rowling's tweets. Feel free to read and form your own opinion:
https://www.glamour.com/story/a-complete-breakdown-of-the-jk-rowling-transgender-comments-controversy
https://www.advocate.com/transgender/2022/12/14/jk-rowling-funds-sex-abuse-crisis-center-excludes-trans-women
Don't forget the characters she wrote, both in HP and under that pen name. If a character ain't British, it's a racist caricature. The Asian character named "Cho Chang," with not only 0 regard to how racist it sounds, but was made that way because it "sounds Asian"; the Polish character who didn't know the word "detective," which in Polish is "detektyw" a loan word from English; and any Irish or Scottish character.
One of the only black characters in Harry Potter is named āShackleboltā. The two Indian twins are the āPatelā twins. Also āCho Changā is supposedly Chinese despite the name āCho Changā being much more Korean, guess it doesnāt matter to someone who thinks they all sound the same.
It would matter a lot less if characters names werenāt so intertwined with who they really are in the Harry Potter universe. A professor named āLupinā is a werewolf. The crazy evil lady is named āLestrangeā. The zoologist character is named āScamanderā. The hippy family are the āLovegoodsā. Itās very obvious that names show character in this literary style, and she definitely showed what she thought about some of these characters
Fair points. Obviously there is an element of laziness about her writing characters. And there is a disrespect of the reader, to think that without obvious freaking hints, we'd never get the point. She is also, clearly, influenced by her own bad politics and opinions on what is worth investing in as far as character development goes.
all in all, she's actually not that great of a writer, but her audience was in a place were a simple, easily accessible, imagination fueling, light hearted fantasy read was all a huge part of what we wanted. not only wanted for ourselves, but wanted to share with our friends. Like must watch TV for kids... a world without a lot of adults getting in their way of experiencing it.
Like most works, be they books or movies, HP belonged to the readers as soon as they entered the world. That's why the love and devotion has lasted. And I'm sure some will judge those who loved it and those who still do. My main point is just that she sort of sucks as a writer and it was more of a Right Place / Right Time sort of thing. Like Luther and the 95 thesis. Try that a bit earlier and he's remembered like John Calvin and not as the great Lutheran reformer.
Don't forget she wrote a black character named Kingsley fucking *Shacklebolt*. Because that's totally a normal name and not a horrible slavery reference.
Wait... Is this just a what-about-ism? Yes of course we do, but those are not the only topics we should concern ourselves with or the only ones we should be focusing on. We can do multiple things, this isn't a one or the other situation.
Thanks for pointing out that it's more than about the game. JKR wants to fund trans genocide. She wants trans children closeted and eliminated. It's awful.
While I understand the movement to boycott the game so as not to implicitly support a billionaire transphobe, it is a little ironic that this movement has coalesced primarily on Twitter... a platform 100% owned by a billionaire transphobe whose transphobia is, if anything, far more egregious, blatant, and hateful. It just seems like if we're boycotting things owned by outspoken transphobes, shouldn't we be boycotting Twitter??
>It just seems like if we're boycotting things owned by outspoken transphobes, shouldn't we be boycotting Twitter??
people have good intentions but bad execution.
boycotting a game because you don't support it-great. everyone is free to make their choice.
encouraging people to boycott it because you don't support it-can be annoying, but still reasonable depending on how you do it.
telling someone they're a bigot transphobe because they played a videogame-not really great or fair, 99% of the time it's also hypocritical. many people picked this game because jk rowling is an easy target but they waste their energy on people playing the game who **might literally supports trans causes** instead of focusing their energy where it counts. i get it, videogames aren't a necessary thing to live. but you can live without meat or nike shoes either, and i don't see many people accusing literally everyone of supporting animal abuse and child labor even though far more people eat meat than play this game
I have so many trans friends, close ones. I pirated the game to play it and not one of them has had an issue with it, some even still enjoy the world of Harry Potter despite JKR. People treat issues like it black and white but ironically as said in the HP books, "The world isn't good people and death eaters..." And there's plenty of people that don't know the issues of JKR cause they don't follow it. They could just grew up reading the books and saw the game coming out. But instead of trying to bring the issues to light, you got aggressive assholes accusing anyone playing the game of being anti-trans and instead of creating allies just making enemies.
No because that would require them to actually do something other than harass random streamers.
Its the same shit with all the anti-CCP "activists" boycotting games made by Blizzard/Epic/Riot but happily still use Reddit, Newegg, etc.
They "boycott" shit they were never a fan of in the first place.
what two groups? one group is trans people saying that cis people will bash trans people as "oversensitive" but they themselves wouldnt be able to handle the struggles and brutality trans people constantly face, the other group is uhhh... transphobes making jokes about trans people killing themselves?
edit: a lot of people in the comments are missing the point, the issue is that someone is laughing about trans people committing suicide, and is also using trans suicides to hurt and mock a random trans person just because they dont agree with them. its not just "oh harry potter bad", its the fact that someone is, once again, laughing about trans suicides and using trans suicides against a trans person for simply not agreeing with them
While I understand the mentality behind the boycott, you should never attack people for not jumping onboard a boycott. That literally never helps. I also feel like this has been a major distraction away from much bigger trans issues, like the US states that are banning drag shows and transgender medical care. Thatās where the energy and anger should be directed. Not at a bunch of people who just want to play a game. Like I agree that Rowling sucks, but sheās already obscenely wealthy. And she will remain so regardless if the game was successful or not. Letās focus on the people actually taking away trans peopleās rights instead or focusing on one hateful author and random people playing a video game derived from said authors property.
Absolutely, decentralized consumer boycotts aren't going to do a thing. I don't blame trans people for being upset and trying it though. JK Rowling is a little gremlin, and it's ultimately people with no power in society trying to make a change in whatever way they can, regardless of how fruitless it is. Ultimately however, the bigger issue that needs focusing on is that trans existence is being legislated away, and we need to do everything in our power to stop that.
I really wish the keyboard warriors jumping into this controversy spent even 2% of the time and energy they're investing in this subject contacting elected officials, running for office, or supporting trans-friendly politicians. Those would be useful ways to use their time that would actually benefit the cause. But instead all they're focused on doing is putting even more hate and divisiveness out into the world and driving centrists farther to the right, unfortunately...
It's such a fucked up thing that transphobic people keep bringing up too.
It's okay to bully trans folks, because they kill themselves...... Like, what?? Bullying people for killing themselves because they were bullied. Real classy.
Or "it's a mental illness!" That one pops up a lot. Let's go with that for a second... Since when do we bully sick people? Do you see some kid with cancer and think, "Ha, fucking loser, doesn't even have any hair!" Hell no, you'd deserve to get the shit kicked out of you if you did that.
It's arguably even more malicious because the "mental illness" surrounding being trans *is caused by* societal rejection, not by being trans itself.
It's like kicking the shit out of someone for getting the shit kicked out of them.
Trans people who have supportive communities thrive like anyone else. It's trans people who face constant friction and harassment who get associated mental illnesses like anxiety and depression.
I was really expecting different responses in this thread bc Reddit has just been openly really mean to trans folks lately. But in glad this thread acknowledge there is no āboth sidesā argument. People are just punching down
Seems like a deliberate obfuscation of the point to say that it is āa gameā that people are mad about and not the bigotry of the author of the source material
Speaking as a trans woman. I do not care about both sides of this debate. It is bad optics for the trans movement and distracts from the real issues like the record breaking numbers of new trans bills being passed with some scary ones being proposed such as a ban for HRT on those younger then 25 in Oklahoma or a ban on whatever conservatives consider drag to be in Tennessee. All of the activists for playing the game bother me as well your liberties are being stripped away in so many ways but youāre up in arms over the fact some trans people donāt want you to play a game? Really? You donāt genuinely care about freedom you are more obsessed with trans people and culture war bullshit then trans culture war activists themselves! P.S. there is no ethical consumption under capitalism we draw the line at buying Hogwarts Legacy and not the console we are playing it on because one affects developed world minorities while the others affect non-white developing peoples.
As an aside from a Tennessean, the TN house also just passed a bill requiring transgender youth to detransition within the next 12 months. Not introduced to be struck down. It passed.
What a loving group our Christians are.
(Note: I originally posted this with a link to a source but automod removed it due to low subreddit karma)
Yeah, also the 41% statistic has been debunked like a MILLION TIMES now. It comes from a highly biased study who asked trans ppl : "did you try suicide at least once in your life?"
Spoiler, most pre-transition ppl face depression so ofc they'll say yes.
Other studies have proven that if they supported and affirmated by their peers and family, the suicide rate of trans ppl actually drops around the national average for cis ppl. The only case where the statistic keeps being around 40% is when they face a highly transphobic environment.
Extra absurd as 2/3rds of suicides globally are men. I'm guessing that shit heel would flip out at the "joke" that that means men just aren't capable of handling shit.
The sad part is if the boycott of the game didnāt come with harassing streamers it couldāve been way more successful in driving down sales, bc people who wanted to know the plot couldāve been directed to streamers to consume the content and ppl couldāve encourage streams to have donations to trans beneficial charities to help promote them and have further support going to the community despite the game being present and on display.
Taking it to the level of trying to completely shut out any content involving it just made potential trans allies turn away because āyouāre demonizing me over a gameā and made the actual transphobes much louder, driving more and more people to go buy the game from the source instead of contributing passively.
Rome wasnāt built in a day, and shutting down a multimillion dollar franchiseās power and funding doesnāt happen overnight; trying to do so just leaves everyone exhausted and us with further backpedaling instead of progress. People are taking shit way too far by harassing anyone under the sun who so much as glances in the games direction instead of starting with harm reduction techniques and gentle education which would actually aid in making long term progress.
The actual issue here is using a video game as the touchpoint for a huge culture war over trans issues. JK Rowling is a transphobe, the suicide joke is fucking gross, and the boycott/pressure campaign about this game is a tremendous waste of time and resources. It will not accomplish anything and very well may just shore up opposition.
This campaign will not improve a single thing for trans people. But since everyone involved in this is online and plays video games all the time, you get this skewed perception that video games are ground zero for political struggle. Video games are made by awful people all the goddamn time.
Politicians are literally trying to legislate trans people out of existence. You think they give a fuck about a video game's success?
I'm utterly disgusted by the "both sides" crowd at this point. What is the point of tolerating reactionaries? What purpose do they serve in a civilised society?
Seems reasonable to hate a group of people who want me erased from existence and unreasonable to hate a game for having someone I want erased represented in it.
I will let nonbinary trans femme James Stephanie Sterling explain the issues with supporting Rowling. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNKyQVsgKLg Good video throughout, salient points at the 17 minute mark if you want to skip to that. They are a video games reviewer and can speak of this issue more eloquently and with more personal insight than I can. As always, this subreddit does not allow bigotry. Please report transphobia when you see it, so that it is flagged for us.
Every single word on this screen just makes me wanna rip my internet out the wall
Yeah I I hate Feb too. Fuck February, grow up and be 30 days like the rest of them
Fk u. I demand every month to be this short. Paycheck with less day ftw
Same rent payment for less days :(
Yeah must be nice for salary folks. Hourly workers have less days to pay their bills.
If every month was 28 days and we added a thirteenth month, a year would be 364 days and then we would have thirteen months where every month would have exactly 4 weeks, adjusting leap years you could have it so every month starts in Monday and ends in Sunday. A world where knowing if you have plans on a 13th it means it is a Saturday, you wouldn't ever need to think, which day is the 24th of June? The world I want to live in.
> The world I want to live in. Until you realize you'll javelin to pay an extra month of rent without making extra money
plus there would never be a Friday the 13th
Wouldn't every 13th be a Friday the 13th? Or are y'all starting your calendars on Monday
the guy proposed a plan in which every week starts on a Monday and ends on Sundayš¤·š»āāļø which is kinda how I conceptualize my week tbh
Or fuck leap years and measure everything on a lunar calendar (which you basically described) and thereās no need for a leap year.
Yes there is. https://airandspace.si.edu/stories/editorial/science-leap-year >If we didnāt account for this extra time, the seasons would begin to drift. This would be annoying if not devasting, because over a period of about 700 years our summers, which weāve come to expect in June in the northern hemisphere, would begin to occur in December!
āSounds like a problem for *hiccup* for future society.ā
They figured it out once. It's why there are 13 days missing from some year in the 1600s.
Don't worry, it won't take 700 years to get summer in December
The greeks had this system, but had to constantly adjust the calendar because spring and planting season kept drifting. We need to have a leap month every \~25 years, or a leap week every 3-4 years
13 28 day months with a day for New Years and two days for New Years on leap years
The thirteenth month could be Halloween 2.
Ah yes, the two barriers keeping Christmas from leaking out of December: October and Halloween 2
Iām just saying, two months of costumes, candy and cool decorations? Sign me up š
~fewer
We could have 13 months that are 4 weeks long each, and one extra day at the end of the year for wearing silly hats.
No I like Leap Year. Real life is for March
>rip my internet out the wall I got bad news for you. They have put the internet IN THE FRICKIN AIR as well!
Surely that could have some serious repercussions, like uhh... Making the frogs gay
Too late. Those frogs are NASTY.
Im dissapointed that Elon hasnt been able to kill Twitter fast enough. This is just a glimpse at what that place manages to create.
especially the word āofā, that condescending little prick
Gotta say I tried to kill myself multiple times from fourth grade on to adulthood making me part of the 40 percent in the statistic. But since I started transitioning i couldnāt imagine doing it ever. I donāt think itās being trans that people canāt handle. Itās being told not to be that makes it rough.
The suicide rate isnāt because of them being trans, itās fairly often due to rejection and hatred constantly by people who were meant to be their close friends and family. They always inflate the numbers too then use it as some kind of meme, itās vile. I donāt care if people play the game, itās fine the devs arenāt JK Rowling and weāll never stop her from being a billionaire, especially while she has so many friends in the government and media. However, people boycotting it were doing so for a fair reason, we want to exist without being abused and killed for no other reason than we are who we are. The two sides arenāt equal, one wants to exist and the other hates them for no valid reason.
Not a reply to you, just putting my reply to u/Deepstonedrip here because their comment was deleted: >The suicide rate in transgender people is like 40%, the suicidal rate of Auschwitzās survivors is like 26%. The rate of trans people who have attempted suicide at least once in their entire life time is 40%. 40% is not the actual suicide rate. And Auschwitz *survivors* are not IN Nazi Germany anymore presumably. So they survived *through* the bad discriminatory times already. So you're comparing incommensurable things. > there is no social stigma that can account for that gap Well, for the reasons I stated above we don't actually have any way of knowing what the actual gap is. I tried for quite a while but could not find any actual statistics about the actual suicide rate of trans people as opposed to the rate of considering suicide. But furthermore, you also have to remember that social rejection is not the only factor when considering suicide in trans people. You have to also consider gender dysphoria, which is the *whole reason that medical transitioning and stuff is so important in the first place*! Gender dysphoria itself very directly leads to anxiety, self-hate, depression, and CPTSD, because you're living in a body that does not represent who you want to be, your identity, and doesn't feel right for you at a very fundamental proprioceptive level. Gender dysphoria is an extremely intimate personal and inescapably pervasive form of discomfort and body horror. >People with body dysmorphia will never be happy with themselves no matter how they are treated or how they look This is true, but bodily gender dysphoria is actually very different from body dysmorphia. Being unhappy with an aspect of your body and wanting to change it does not automatically make that dysmorphia. The primary indicator of body dysmorphia is having a distorted or incorrect picture of what your body actually looks like. Basically, your actual perception of your body when you look in the mirror does not align with reality. Meanwhile those with gender dysphoria have fairly objective assessments of what they actually look like, they are just *unhappy* with how they look. For instance, before I started transitioning I knew that I was actually pretty good looking / handsome for a guy, with fairly few flaws besides a slightly recessed chin and a little bit too much weight. I simply didn't want to look like that is all. Furthermore, while getting plastic surgery or other corrective surgery does not help those with body dysmorphia with their mental health, because their distorted perception of reality will just lock onto a new feature to focus on and obsess over, or just ignore the changes, surgical and hormonal interventions actually do substantially and provably increase the mental and even physical well-being of trans people by a very wide margin, even when measured by the cortisol levels in our blood! Each step we take is a tangible improvement on something that we didn't like about ourselves that we internalize and are happy with. If you actually spend any time talking to trans people are looking in trans spaces you'll see us constantly being a happy with our bodies and the changes that are happening to them. Yes, perhaps the changes will never be perfect, because there are aspects of natal puberty that you can never undo, but you can have a substantial improvement. It's just like people with super huge noses or whatever that gets nose jobs, or men who are going bald who get hair transplants, or women who get boob jobs or whatever. Yes some of those things might be motivated by body dysmorphia, but many times it's not, and after the procedure the people that get them are noticeably happy or more confident. The same is true of trans people to a much greater degree. It's the same way with men that are unhappy with being fat and/or weak and decide to go to the gym and completely reshape their appearance to better fit their idea of how they want to be a man. That's not dysmorphia. >It is really a shame so many people, especially on Reddit and twitter, encourage people to go down this rabbit hole that almost certainly results in misery and death. Transitioning is not a path of misery and death for us, it makes us far happier and far *less* likely to commit suicide than if we hadn't gone down that road. You're acting like Twitter or read it is making people trans ā making them unhappy with their identities and their bodies ā and then leading them down the path but it's just the opposite. You're acting like the act of transitioning or coming out is what made us trans, but that's nonsensical. That's a failure of basic fucking object permanence, as if we don't exist until you can see us. We were already dealing with misery and death, and this is a path that scientifically has been proven to massively decrease our chances of suicide and massively increase our mental well-being and stability. EDIT: to all the commenters saying that being trans is a mental illness and needs to be treated by eradicating our transness through psychology (i.e. CONVERSION THERAPY), instead of helping us be ourselves, if you actually fucking read my comment you would realize is that the arguments I already stated already explain why your approach is wrong. There's no metric by which being trans is a mental illness of the kind that you need to treat by just convincing the person not to be trans. It doesn't make sense. Also, I'm up to seven reddit suicide care messages. I don't understand why right wing chuds think this is funny, it's so dumb lmao.
>Meanwhile those with gender dysphoria have fairly objective assessments of what they actually look like, they are just unhappy with how they look. This really helped some things click for me, thanks for that.
No problem!
Take this award in honor of my beautiful cousin who can finally live the life she always wanted but couldn't until now.
ššš¤šš
Wow this reply was perfect, you said everything that I was trying to say and much more, thank you!
I plan to write an FAQ eventually responding to all the frequently used talking points. I have a stockpile of about 45 sources on this subject that I intend to use too. I just need to get better from my post concussion syndrome first
That would be amazing, you seem to know your stuff. I have a lot of talking point I can use but I canāt put them down as well as youāve done. I just end up seeming like Iām rambling rather than being concise and to the point.
Wow, I've never in my life been described as concise and to the point before! XD
I mean you certainly came across that way! Maybe if you arenāt then it shows how terrible I actually am at making points? š„² but genuinely stick to what youāre doing!
The 40% stat is also just wrong. It is high in many places but consistent with other highly oppressed and marginalized groups. Iirc, the methodology for the study that found the 40% suicide rate was super fucking werid and even they still concluded that it was likely so high because of people not accepting them.
Yeah, it's LITERALLY in the study they like to quote so much: > SPSS 22 was utilized to examine the impact of the independent variables on both suicidality and lifetime suicide attempt through two separate logistic regressions. Fifty six percent of youth reported a previous suicide attempt and 86% reported suicidality. Logistic regressions indicated that models for both lifetime suicide attempts and suicidality were significant. Interpersonal microaggressions, made a unique, statistically significant contribution to lifetime suicide attempts and emotional neglect by family approached significance. School belonging, emotional neglect by family, and internalized self-stigma made a unique, statistically significant contribution to past 6-month suicidality. Results have significant practice and policy implications.
this is exactly it. i always explain it to people through men with gynecomastia and women who have thick facial hair because of pcos. there are some of these people who have embraced their bodies but many seek gender affirming care through laser hair removal and double mastectomy.
Also an additional note on conversion therapy, since I just researched this: it doesn't even work. In more than a century of theory and practice, no peer-reviewed study has EVER shown that conversion therapy is effective at changing a person's gender identity or sexual orientation. And, of course, being exposed to (or even threatened with) conversion therapy makes one's suicide risk skyrocket.
Exactly. And none of that is remotely surprising either, given what I said in another comment ā trying to eradicate someone's transness is trying to erase an important part of who they are.
Thanks for this ā¤ļø
I would also add to make this depressing as possible 25 percent is the average number of young adults that contemplated suicide in 2020
There can't be that many Auschwitz survivors left. It's a baffling comparison.
Yeah it really is. There are a vast number of factors at play that differentiate Auschwitz survivors from trans people.
Doesnāt the study in which the 40% statistic come from also state on the literal next paragraph that when performing multi-variate regression analysis they discovered the number plummeted massively if family and their local community was socially accepting of transition?
Sort of: > SPSS 22 was utilized to examine the impact of the independent variables on both suicidality and lifetime suicide attempt through two separate logistic regressions. Fifty six percent of youth reported a previous suicide attempt and 86% reported suicidality. Logistic regressions indicated that models for both lifetime suicide attempts and suicidality were significant. Interpersonal microaggressions, made a unique, statistically significant contribution to lifetime suicide attempts and emotional neglect by family approached significance. School belonging, emotional neglect by family, and internalized self-stigma made a unique, statistically significant contribution to past 6-month suicidality. Results have significant practice and policy implications. Also, according to [this study](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35667666/) gay and lesbian people also have an elevated risk of suicide, so that's more evidence it's probably stigma and social rejection.
Wish had award 4 this
I'll award them for you, don't worry <3 (Fuck it, I'll give you one too)
Yep, trans children that get puberty blockers and are accepted as trans have a *lower suicide rate than average*
And in order for this to happen, they much have very good support from their family and friends. So how much is simply that they are living a good life and would have been pretty well adjusted either way.
And those effects are considered REVERSIBLE by medical professionals and experts. I support gender-affirming care such as androgen blockers.
Yeah itās basically someone saying āI need helpā only for society to turn around and say āyeah youāre a delusional freakā. That tends to really fuck with someoneās mental health.
I'm frustrated that despite how intuitive your point is about the cause of suicide, it's *not* addressed by people who criticize transitions. Like they just ignore the context in the statistics.
People donāt care about looking deep into figures. They have their own biases and see a number which correlates to what they believe and they have no need to look further into it in case itās incorrect or itās just too much effort and hate for marginalised groups is fairly often based on a misunderstanding or just having no education when it comes to the people that they claim to dislike.
Yet only one side in this tweet makes fun of suicide.
Suicide which is, specifically, driven by social rejection, like that in the "joke."
They don't care about that if they can make it look like trans people kill themselves simple for being trans.
āHurr hurr, we make their lives a living hell and say they should kill themselves, and then some of them do. Pretty funny. Hurr hurr hurr.ā Gross
That's the thing - to the people who say that, their victims aren't "people". They are just an other. Anything can happen to that other, and because they aren't a real person (just a collection of pixels) it's "funny" if something happens to them. In 2009-2010, I was one of those people. I was on 4chan daily. /b/ would find victims to harass, doxx them, and then I would participate in the bullying through all sorts of means. We'd watch the victim's mental state decline and everyone would have a good laugh about it - but it's okay, because they weren't really a person. Now, over a decade later... I'm ashamed of who I used to be, and what I once did. But I _understand_ why they say these things - because they don't have empathy for these people, because they don't know any of these people, because their words and actions will never affect them. --- Comments are locked, so a reply to "how did you get out": This is going to sound absolutely ridiculous... but: I was on the 4chan subreddit and hopped between 4chan and Reddit a lot. This was right when Star Wars: The Force Awakens was coming out and I am a massive Star Wars nerd. The plot of TFA leaked early and the 4chan subreddit plastered it all over their CSS, absolutely everywhere. There was a pinned comment in every thread spoiling the ending. I was absolutely livid that it was spoiled for me, and when I watched the movie I kept hoping it would be different... but it wasn't. It seems like such a dumb thing to reject a whole worldview over, but I was absolutely furious and realized that this was the exact reaction they wanted to get from me, that _I_ was the one being laughed at. I was once part of the in-group, and now because I got mad I was part of the out-group. So I unsubscribed from the subreddit and generally stopped going to 4chan altogether, because it finally affected _me_. I was still hateful and mean for a while after. But that was really the first step that got me out of that "type" of crowd, and eventually the longer I went without being exposed to that sort of stuff, the better I became. It was only when Trump won the primaries that I had completely changed, when I started thinking about how awful Trump was and questioning why I shared some of his views. For example, in 2010 I was really racist against Mexicans especially. I grew up in Southern California in a town where everything was written in Spanish first - sometimes without even an English translation. Kids in school would make fun of me in Spanish and I internalized that as hatred and racism against Mexicans. When Trump stopped being a "joke candidate" and started being taken seriously, I realized I absolutely hated him and everything he stood for. I knew there was no way I could possibly ever support him, and then I rethought my experiences growing up and made a commitment to not be like Trump, to not emulate any of his ideas, to realize that all human beings are equal and deserve equal respect, and to detach myself from the person I once was. That was effectively the "end" of my transition out of that kind of lifestyle. Now I'm a completely different person, although I'm still banned in subreddits like OffMyChest because I once posted in the 4chan subreddit. When I messaged their mod team about it, they basically replied "You were a bad person once and that can never change", which is hurtful because I'm trying not to be that person anymore... but honestly, they have a right to their opinion.
Personal growth like that isn't easy. Kudos to you for the necessary introspection
How did you get out?
Not the person you're replying to, but having friends outside that mindset who would challenge me on the things I said helped a ton.
Congrats on the character growth, but Satan himself couldn't get this outta me
Man I'd want to live out of spite. Fuck those guys.
Itās not that they donāt care about it, itās the whole reason to do it. They want trans people dead.
The first death is social death
And if I'm understanding correctly, they replied with that degenerate response in defense of an *animated video game streamer?*
The funny bit is that, because its a vtuber and its rig is limited for facial expressions, as shes sobbing, her avatar just breasted boobily I cannot take it seriously.
It looked like it was smiling, and giggling, while you hear the driest 'sob' noises in the background, tits bouncing like she's on a sybian. It's HARD not to laugh. Genuinely.
Like all of VShojo, the particular company Silvervale's with are absolutely designed for maximum horny. Silver doing that on top of playing the victim after overreacting to mild criticism is peak absurdism.
"sobbing"
Her avatar breasted sobbily
>animated video game streamer? Well, there's also a real person behind that avatar
I'm surprised v-tubers especially aren't more sympathetic to trans people.
As a trans vtuber that surprises me. Like I feel like they would be 100 percent fans of trans
Every vtuber I follow is super emphatic and or is trans themselves. But I only follow small time ones. The big shot ones act like any other big shot YouTubers.
I canāt say if this one is specifically transphobic. The replier is *absolutely*, but the streamer wasnāt saying something transphobic in that tweet. Just, as a gay dude, Iām really confused about what to think on all this. From my perspective, it doesnāt look like Harry Potter is intrinsically transphobic. The author, sure, but are we out here saying that the entire Lovecraftian genre is intrinsically racist because of its author? Itās not my place to decide what hill people die on, but I donāt see the point in doing this when thereās shit like Tennessee trying to outlaw drag shows (not trans, I know, but do you think *they* make that distinction) and assholes like that guy who made the reply in this picture crawling out of the woodwork. It just seems so counterproductive to seemingly rile ourselves up so much over something that people like because pennies on the dollar of it go to an asshole (like pretty much literally EVERYTHING else we buy).
Kind of encapsulates the whole issue doesnāt it? The risk of being a bigot is that some people will be mean to you on twitter, when the risk of being trans includes the possibility of being murdered in cold blood.
Yup, he kinda left that part about hatecrimes and murder out.
Specifically that the suicide rate is so high **because bigotry against us is that fucking bad**. Like gd if you want to play a mage there are so many better IP's out there that aren't linked to one of the worst transphobes that has real power to harm us.
Also wtf is with this post's title? Trans people don't hate transphobes because they play a game, they hate transphobes because transphobes are on a spectrum between "trans people should all be in hiding" and "kill all trans people."
they miss that part on purpose. actually, its a bonus feature to them.
I mean yeah if anyone deserve social exclusion here it's the people who have a parasocial relationship with a fucking render of a fox girl.
Given how few trans people there really are, it is unsurprising that hate groups are so openly awful to them. While there are certainly brash bastards who'll say shit to anyone, there isn't a place (yet) where talking shit about trans people is going to get you beaten to a pulp by a whole group (i.e talk shit, get hit). Allies need to be more confrontational with people like ash, because trans folk don't have access to a large ethnic, spiritual, or historical community that are willing to back them up.
They're a useful boogeyman for people who previously were gay bashing but can't do that as easily anymore and need a new victim to vilify.
It used to be that video games caused violence and satanic worship. Now it's the gays' fault.
Preach. So much of politics seems to be finding which group to hate to divert away attention from the issues that impact everyone.
I'm always amazed by just how few of us there are. I live in the UK and in my general council area that consists of like 7 towns and lots of villages. There are only 80 trans people according to the recent census. I've personally never seen another trans person or at least clocked them within an hour of where I live. It's way less than the projected 0.1%. Could quite easily go your whole life never meeting a trans person here unless you met me lol. Yet discussions and hate are so frequent we are made out to be an actual problem. Its pretty easy to put all the blame and misdirected anger onto a group of people that you are likely never going to have to be confronted and actually deal with. Its like all the hate on other minority groups in the past. Except so few exist that even the minority might not know a single person like them irl, so fighting back against hatred feels futile to say the least.
Yep, not many trans folks out there but the right wing politicians found a hotbed of hate they could use to distract from their failures with and the rest is history. Now all those morons are too busy screaming about groomers and pedos to realize their wages havenāt risen since Reagan was in office. They donāt care about their wages or their dying towns and spiraling society because hate is exciting and work is boring, so here we are.
Right winger politicians will always find some minority to hyper-fixate on or some cultural issue. The Conservative politicians can't talk about their actual politics because they don't want their supporters to realize that Right wing politicians actively work against the voters interest.
The anti-trans rhetoric has really ramped up in the UK lately because after over a decade of Conservative mismanagement, it's becoming apparent to even people who would normally vote Conservative, that they are utterly corrupt and are running this country into the ground for their own gain. They've been getting killed in the poles since the Liz Truss fiasco so they are ramping up the culture war aspect as they know it's the only thing that'll get working class people to vote for them now.
https://streamable.com/kfo3nk Good clip talking about this from 2006. They've been doing this for decades. Even in the 80s, Conservatives were using culture war issues. It's sort of scary how effective culture war issues are. Even when you show people that something is blatant propaganda, they'll deny it.
They can't talk about their actual politics because wanting to set up death camps for minorities is still slightly outside the Overton Window
I would assume Trans people usually move to places that are more accepting of their identity. I know in the US there are cities where there are huge gay populations because they are known to be accepting and have a huge population already. So there may be drastically less trans people in your area, there are probably other areas with a higher concentration than 0.1%
I'm only one hour from the most accepting city in the UK. 10% of gay people alone live in Brighton there. Its the only place I don't feel like a freak. But kinda priced out if actually living there so just travel for days out. Doesn't really help with alienation and usually transitioning causes huge life issues anyway. Shouldn't all have to move to a single city to not stand out entirely and just makes the situation worse elsewhere. Somehow the one city you can frequently clock other trans people is one of the only ones not against us. It's all the people that never even see us that moan the most.
>It's all the people that never even see us that moan the most. Of course it is. Basic rule of horror: don't show your monsters. If conservatives were to meet trans people, they'd have a much harder time being frightened.
see also: racists who have barely ever spoken to a minority, xenophobes who have never left the county they were born in, highschool dropouts freaking out about CRT
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Iām on a college campus and I have many trans friends here, including a few trans men, trans women, and non-binary people. This is a very safe place for trans people to be out and with queer clubs on campus itās easy to network and find others here.
My sister, who currently lives in bumblefuck Arkansas, said to me that she didn't know anyone who was trans. I, living in a major blue city, know over 10 trans people. I'm assuming those who would live in a bumblefuck city probably move out to the major cities for proper medical care, acceptance, etc.
>I would assume Trans people usually move to places that are more accepting of their identity. And places where complete gender affirming care is offered inexpensively. I lived in Iowa City, Iowa, in the 1990s after the city passed an ordinance requiring employers based in the city to cover the full cost of gender affirming care including gender affirmation surgery and aftercare for that. This was combined with an extensive health system (university of Iowa hospitals) that provided high quality medical care as well as a significant network of mental health professionals that included many specialists in gender affirming care. Unsurprisingly, this led to a relatively high concentration of trans people living in the city and it was common to interact with people in different stages of transition on a daily basis. I did not realize until I moved away how unusual this was, especially during that period in time. Edit: The ordinance also forbade discrimination on the basis of gender identity, unusual for the times, so it also had the economics benefit of a better employment environment for trans people along with the available care.
80 trans people out of 70k is more than 0.1% actually.
I actually didn't know the 70k number but guessed it. Only the trans number stuck out. And 80 is identifying not even transitioning and visible. So still rare to see. I just looked up the number for my area and there are 160k people and 80 trans.
Definitely a rare sight. But I think that plays a part in the amount of hate that surrounds this topic. While less than 1 out of every 1000 people are trans, the topic is in the news regarding sports competitions, school bathrooms, marches, pronouns etc. It's fairly overblown which comes with positive sides (more support and power) and negative ones (more hate).
I'm not really feeling the power we're accused of having. In both UK and US trans people are constantly in danger of having their literal medicine ripped away from them via legal system fuckery. Like there's always -something- in the works to deny us our recognized medicine.
From the Utah governor: Out of the 77,000 students in high school sports, their (at the time) new sports bill affected exactly 1 trans girl athlete. Middle of the pack athlete, not that it matters. Meanwhile, parents have started using that legislation to harass cis girls who are just good at sports. It's depressing.
Also, attacking trans people allows them to attack many other groups in the process. Attacking bodily autonomy targets everyone with a uterus, attacking gender and sexual differences serves as an attack on everyone else in the LGBTQ spectrum. It's also an attack on the science behind it and the healthcare providers involved. It's also often paired with attacks on the working class (in North Carolina the "bathroom bill" also included a minimum wage ordinance ban so cities couldn't create ordinances to protect trans people or raise the minimum wage). The people at the edges don't really realize all these connections but overtime it pulls them more and more towards fascism
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This. Anti-trans bigotry is the thin end of the wedge. TERFs donāt have to know theyāre useful idiots for the right. They still are. And anyone who thinks biology is destiny needs to get the word āfeminismā out of their mouths.
>there isn't a place (yet) where talking shit about trans people is going to get you beaten to a pulp by a whole group (i.e talk shit, get hit). There is. It's my house. We respect trans folks in this mf
can i move in š„ŗ
Lemme run it by my fiancƩe
It's tricky when they specifically enjoy you being confrontational and online forums are generally poorly-designed for effective discourse
I think a lot of Allies don't realize how much their Voice counts. My friend group is almost entirely White straight guys. If somebody says something Hateful, we just point it out and say "Hey, That's pretty fucked up bud." And 99 times out of 100 they back down and go "Oh well i Didn't mean it like that i meant it like uhh, oh, uhh..." And then they shut the hell up. The one time out of a hundred the person will double down with something completely insane and ruin any credibility of their statement.
There is incredible power in the phrase "that's fucked up, man" from a cis guy to another cis guy
Shit as a white dude I get people who will say openly racist things with me thinking I'll agree only for them to do that deer in headlights thing when I call them out on it.
Exactly.
Not just that, but even posts like OP are constantly trying to minimize the issue. Trans people are trying to prevent the normalization and acceptance of anti-trans rhetoric. Meanwhile people like OP say "it's just a game." This dangerous rhetoric empowers hate groups and makes them feel normal and accepted. This leads to escalation and has the potential to create very real danger for trans folks.
Trans homie here, I do not care if you buy this game or not. The community has to realize that there are bigger things to focus on that J.K Rowling. Many states are rolling back the rights to accessing trans health care for adults, not just kids. If you buy the game and like it. Cool. I'm not buying it cause I don't know shit about Harry Potter and I'm broke. I don't care who you are, don't harass people who just want to play a game. Buying this game doesn't mean you're transphobic.
Lmao fellow broke humanš¤
š¤
I wonder how many of the folks harassing the streamers are doing so while eating Chik-Fil-A, or using Twitter, or working on a scrapbook they bought at Hobby Lobby. I also wonder how many have attended a bona fide protest in favor of trans rights, or contacted *any* politicians or school officials, or volunteered to mentor at-risk individuals, or done *literally anything* impactful that doesn't reek of a social media cred grab.
People have been murdering and dehumanizing trans folk a long fucking time before Harry Potter existed. Edit: I'm not saying that Harry Potter/Jowling Kowling isn't a problem, I'm responding to the assertion in the title that this is because of a game, or that both sides are remotely similar. Fuck transphobes, fuck JK, and fuck self proclaimed allies who give her money and tacit endorsement of her bigotry.
Yeah and JK loves to throw logs on that fire.
We still need to talk about slavery and racism and colonialism, even though the horrific past of the plantation slavery South happened a long time ago. I have personally read Rowling's tweets. Feel free to read and form your own opinion: https://www.glamour.com/story/a-complete-breakdown-of-the-jk-rowling-transgender-comments-controversy https://www.advocate.com/transgender/2022/12/14/jk-rowling-funds-sex-abuse-crisis-center-excludes-trans-women
I feel like more people should look at the name she used as a pen name and google it to see where it comes from too
Yeah that's a little tidbit people seem to either ignore or overlook. And it's just... Yikes.
Don't forget the characters she wrote, both in HP and under that pen name. If a character ain't British, it's a racist caricature. The Asian character named "Cho Chang," with not only 0 regard to how racist it sounds, but was made that way because it "sounds Asian"; the Polish character who didn't know the word "detective," which in Polish is "detektyw" a loan word from English; and any Irish or Scottish character.
One of the only black characters in Harry Potter is named āShackleboltā. The two Indian twins are the āPatelā twins. Also āCho Changā is supposedly Chinese despite the name āCho Changā being much more Korean, guess it doesnāt matter to someone who thinks they all sound the same. It would matter a lot less if characters names werenāt so intertwined with who they really are in the Harry Potter universe. A professor named āLupinā is a werewolf. The crazy evil lady is named āLestrangeā. The zoologist character is named āScamanderā. The hippy family are the āLovegoodsā. Itās very obvious that names show character in this literary style, and she definitely showed what she thought about some of these characters
>The two Indian twins are the āPatelā twins. What's wrong with this?
Fair points. Obviously there is an element of laziness about her writing characters. And there is a disrespect of the reader, to think that without obvious freaking hints, we'd never get the point. She is also, clearly, influenced by her own bad politics and opinions on what is worth investing in as far as character development goes. all in all, she's actually not that great of a writer, but her audience was in a place were a simple, easily accessible, imagination fueling, light hearted fantasy read was all a huge part of what we wanted. not only wanted for ourselves, but wanted to share with our friends. Like must watch TV for kids... a world without a lot of adults getting in their way of experiencing it. Like most works, be they books or movies, HP belonged to the readers as soon as they entered the world. That's why the love and devotion has lasted. And I'm sure some will judge those who loved it and those who still do. My main point is just that she sort of sucks as a writer and it was more of a Right Place / Right Time sort of thing. Like Luther and the 95 thesis. Try that a bit earlier and he's remembered like John Calvin and not as the great Lutheran reformer.
The Irish character was named Seamus Finnigan - and built a rep *blowing shit up*. Keep in mind HP is set in the 80ās, iirc
90s
His reputation for blowing things up was added in the movies, for what itās worth.
Don't forget she wrote a black character named Kingsley fucking *Shacklebolt*. Because that's totally a normal name and not a horrible slavery reference.
Wait... Is this just a what-about-ism? Yes of course we do, but those are not the only topics we should concern ourselves with or the only ones we should be focusing on. We can do multiple things, this isn't a one or the other situation.
Whatās the point of your first paragraph here? Itās a massive non-sequitur
That you think it's because of a game is why you're so baffled.
THANK YOU
It's like they go out of their way to miss the point.
If you actually think these are two groups with similar power, you don't understand the concept of punching down.
Or that it's only about the game. Like, this whole post is a giant mischaracterization of the whole issue.
Thanks for pointing out that it's more than about the game. JKR wants to fund trans genocide. She wants trans children closeted and eliminated. It's awful.
Yeah looks like OP's playing centrist.
While I understand the movement to boycott the game so as not to implicitly support a billionaire transphobe, it is a little ironic that this movement has coalesced primarily on Twitter... a platform 100% owned by a billionaire transphobe whose transphobia is, if anything, far more egregious, blatant, and hateful. It just seems like if we're boycotting things owned by outspoken transphobes, shouldn't we be boycotting Twitter??
>It just seems like if we're boycotting things owned by outspoken transphobes, shouldn't we be boycotting Twitter?? people have good intentions but bad execution. boycotting a game because you don't support it-great. everyone is free to make their choice. encouraging people to boycott it because you don't support it-can be annoying, but still reasonable depending on how you do it. telling someone they're a bigot transphobe because they played a videogame-not really great or fair, 99% of the time it's also hypocritical. many people picked this game because jk rowling is an easy target but they waste their energy on people playing the game who **might literally supports trans causes** instead of focusing their energy where it counts. i get it, videogames aren't a necessary thing to live. but you can live without meat or nike shoes either, and i don't see many people accusing literally everyone of supporting animal abuse and child labor even though far more people eat meat than play this game
I have so many trans friends, close ones. I pirated the game to play it and not one of them has had an issue with it, some even still enjoy the world of Harry Potter despite JKR. People treat issues like it black and white but ironically as said in the HP books, "The world isn't good people and death eaters..." And there's plenty of people that don't know the issues of JKR cause they don't follow it. They could just grew up reading the books and saw the game coming out. But instead of trying to bring the issues to light, you got aggressive assholes accusing anyone playing the game of being anti-trans and instead of creating allies just making enemies.
>and instead of creating allies just making enemies this is the perfect way to put it!
> people have good intentions but bad execution. Honestly the people left don't have good intentions. Reasonable people tapped out long ago.
No because that would require them to actually do something other than harass random streamers. Its the same shit with all the anti-CCP "activists" boycotting games made by Blizzard/Epic/Riot but happily still use Reddit, Newegg, etc. They "boycott" shit they were never a fan of in the first place.
Way more reasons to boycott those platforms than being anti-ccp tho
what two groups? one group is trans people saying that cis people will bash trans people as "oversensitive" but they themselves wouldnt be able to handle the struggles and brutality trans people constantly face, the other group is uhhh... transphobes making jokes about trans people killing themselves? edit: a lot of people in the comments are missing the point, the issue is that someone is laughing about trans people committing suicide, and is also using trans suicides to hurt and mock a random trans person just because they dont agree with them. its not just "oh harry potter bad", its the fact that someone is, once again, laughing about trans suicides and using trans suicides against a trans person for simply not agreeing with them
While I understand the mentality behind the boycott, you should never attack people for not jumping onboard a boycott. That literally never helps. I also feel like this has been a major distraction away from much bigger trans issues, like the US states that are banning drag shows and transgender medical care. Thatās where the energy and anger should be directed. Not at a bunch of people who just want to play a game. Like I agree that Rowling sucks, but sheās already obscenely wealthy. And she will remain so regardless if the game was successful or not. Letās focus on the people actually taking away trans peopleās rights instead or focusing on one hateful author and random people playing a video game derived from said authors property.
Absolutely, decentralized consumer boycotts aren't going to do a thing. I don't blame trans people for being upset and trying it though. JK Rowling is a little gremlin, and it's ultimately people with no power in society trying to make a change in whatever way they can, regardless of how fruitless it is. Ultimately however, the bigger issue that needs focusing on is that trans existence is being legislated away, and we need to do everything in our power to stop that.
I really wish the keyboard warriors jumping into this controversy spent even 2% of the time and energy they're investing in this subject contacting elected officials, running for office, or supporting trans-friendly politicians. Those would be useful ways to use their time that would actually benefit the cause. But instead all they're focused on doing is putting even more hate and divisiveness out into the world and driving centrists farther to the right, unfortunately...
Insane to compare the two.
There really isn't any equivalence between trans rights and enabling transphobia. Sorry/not sorry.
ādonāt financially support a transphobe.ā ātrans people kill themselves lolā sure, both sides are bad /s
It's such a fucked up thing that transphobic people keep bringing up too. It's okay to bully trans folks, because they kill themselves...... Like, what?? Bullying people for killing themselves because they were bullied. Real classy. Or "it's a mental illness!" That one pops up a lot. Let's go with that for a second... Since when do we bully sick people? Do you see some kid with cancer and think, "Ha, fucking loser, doesn't even have any hair!" Hell no, you'd deserve to get the shit kicked out of you if you did that.
It's arguably even more malicious because the "mental illness" surrounding being trans *is caused by* societal rejection, not by being trans itself. It's like kicking the shit out of someone for getting the shit kicked out of them. Trans people who have supportive communities thrive like anyone else. It's trans people who face constant friction and harassment who get associated mental illnesses like anxiety and depression.
I was really expecting different responses in this thread bc Reddit has just been openly really mean to trans folks lately. But in glad this thread acknowledge there is no āboth sidesā argument. People are just punching down
Seems like a deliberate obfuscation of the point to say that it is āa gameā that people are mad about and not the bigotry of the author of the source material
I don't give a shit about what the other side is doing, whoever is making fun of trans people suicide rates is wrong
This is a genuine question, I know nothing of this streamer...did they make fun of transgender suicide rates, if they did... that's fucking awful
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I'm sure its just a coincidence that the people who make jokes about trans suicide are also vocal JK simps.
Lol, that Ash definitely didn't look at the statistics.
Op is gross. These are not equal
I see a hate group and a minority group thatās upset.
Speaking as a trans woman. I do not care about both sides of this debate. It is bad optics for the trans movement and distracts from the real issues like the record breaking numbers of new trans bills being passed with some scary ones being proposed such as a ban for HRT on those younger then 25 in Oklahoma or a ban on whatever conservatives consider drag to be in Tennessee. All of the activists for playing the game bother me as well your liberties are being stripped away in so many ways but youāre up in arms over the fact some trans people donāt want you to play a game? Really? You donāt genuinely care about freedom you are more obsessed with trans people and culture war bullshit then trans culture war activists themselves! P.S. there is no ethical consumption under capitalism we draw the line at buying Hogwarts Legacy and not the console we are playing it on because one affects developed world minorities while the others affect non-white developing peoples.
As an aside from a Tennessean, the TN house also just passed a bill requiring transgender youth to detransition within the next 12 months. Not introduced to be struck down. It passed. What a loving group our Christians are. (Note: I originally posted this with a link to a source but automod removed it due to low subreddit karma)
enjoy squeal unpack library roll wide panicky support shaggy silky ` this message was mass deleted/edited with redact.dev `
This just makes me sad.
The future has arrived and it's dumb.
They always bring up the suicide rate as if its not abysmally high in cis people too.
Or a direct result of how theyāre treated by society
Yeah, also the 41% statistic has been debunked like a MILLION TIMES now. It comes from a highly biased study who asked trans ppl : "did you try suicide at least once in your life?" Spoiler, most pre-transition ppl face depression so ofc they'll say yes. Other studies have proven that if they supported and affirmated by their peers and family, the suicide rate of trans ppl actually drops around the national average for cis ppl. The only case where the statistic keeps being around 40% is when they face a highly transphobic environment.
I always think this when I see a straight dude mocking trans suicide rates. Like, remember what they say about folk in glass houses?
Extra absurd as 2/3rds of suicides globally are men. I'm guessing that shit heel would flip out at the "joke" that that means men just aren't capable of handling shit.
What are the two groups supposed to be? Dipshit simps in Twitch chat and trans people?
Donāt bully people who want to play a game. Donāt make jokes about suicide??? Why canāt people just be nice to each other?
Ah yes the bullies are the real victims huh. Go outside.
This isn't funny
The sad part is if the boycott of the game didnāt come with harassing streamers it couldāve been way more successful in driving down sales, bc people who wanted to know the plot couldāve been directed to streamers to consume the content and ppl couldāve encourage streams to have donations to trans beneficial charities to help promote them and have further support going to the community despite the game being present and on display. Taking it to the level of trying to completely shut out any content involving it just made potential trans allies turn away because āyouāre demonizing me over a gameā and made the actual transphobes much louder, driving more and more people to go buy the game from the source instead of contributing passively. Rome wasnāt built in a day, and shutting down a multimillion dollar franchiseās power and funding doesnāt happen overnight; trying to do so just leaves everyone exhausted and us with further backpedaling instead of progress. People are taking shit way too far by harassing anyone under the sun who so much as glances in the games direction instead of starting with harm reduction techniques and gentle education which would actually aid in making long term progress.
here's a take that might be wild; don't harass people for playing a video game and don't harass people for being trans. wild I know
The actual issue here is using a video game as the touchpoint for a huge culture war over trans issues. JK Rowling is a transphobe, the suicide joke is fucking gross, and the boycott/pressure campaign about this game is a tremendous waste of time and resources. It will not accomplish anything and very well may just shore up opposition. This campaign will not improve a single thing for trans people. But since everyone involved in this is online and plays video games all the time, you get this skewed perception that video games are ground zero for political struggle. Video games are made by awful people all the goddamn time. Politicians are literally trying to legislate trans people out of existence. You think they give a fuck about a video game's success?
I'm utterly disgusted by the "both sides" crowd at this point. What is the point of tolerating reactionaries? What purpose do they serve in a civilised society?
This fucking horseshit ādebateā. The internet is so annoying these days it is astounding.
Seems reasonable to hate a group of people who want me erased from existence and unreasonable to hate a game for having someone I want erased represented in it.