The most famous forms of Holocaust denial and revisionism tend to focus on Jews, casting doubt, for example, on how many were exterminated in the camps. But denying the impact the Nazis had on the other groups they targeted, including queer and trans people, disabled people and Romani people, is still Holocaust denial. Maybe someone should tell J.K. Rowling.
She knows she is doing it and doesnt care.
Like every conservative, they just want queer people dead, unless its their own children.
She’s not a conservative, she’s a liberal (in the political science sense of the word, not the USian synonym for leftist).
It’s not 100% clear where Rowling’s transphobia comes from. She certainly fits into the group of transphobic cis women who have been abused by cis men and concluded that all men are evil, including the ones that want to be women.
But there’s also a dynamic which I think you can see with Graham Linehan and Dave Chappelle as well. Born into comfortable middle-class families, well-educated, never really thought about their bog-standard liberalism. Became extremely successful, became accustomed to near universal adoration, made a thoughtless transphobic comment/skit, received criticism and reacted with absolute fury at the idea they could possibly be prejudiced about anything. Because they’re liberals, you see.
All three just keep digging that hole deeper rather than face up to the idea that maybe they got something wrong. Linehan’s career is over (as is his marriage), Dave Chappelle is hanging on by a thread and flirting with the right, and Rowling doesn’t give a shit because she’s a billionaire and does not have to give a shit about anything at all.
She’s a blairist, and blairists are only slightly less morally bankrupt thatcherites.
For all their sins, a true European style liberal wouldn’t want the state to tell you which restroom you use or what medical treatment they have access to - of course they also believe that trans people that were born into poor families don’t deserve access to any medical treatment at all but that’s another story.
She’s not a conservative, she’s a liberal…
You are mixing definitions.
In fiscal policy, “conservatism” is opposite “liberalism”.
In social policy, “conservatism” is opposite “progressivism”.
No one here is accusing this homophobic bridge troll of having conservative fiscal policy.
She is socially conservative. And as such, she is a bigot. There can be no defense of her from anyone who is not a bigot.
No. We’re talking political categorisations, not the dictionary definition.
Conservatives are socially conservative and economically liberal.
Liberals are socially liberal and economically liberal.
Liberals have never had a problem abandoning their high-minded ideals when there were savages to civilise. Because liberalism has no analysis of power, and an absolute belief in the fundamental impossibility that they could be wrong about anything.
There’s no doubt that she is shifting to the right, because they are fawning over her and she has no politics. See also Linehan and Chappelle. They were all bog-standard liberals before being criticised.
Chappelle was only liberal where racism was concerned. Otherwise he has been squarely neo-liberal when pushed into any political discussion. I believe Rowling has also always been neo-liberal.
Neo-liberals are conservatives. They toy with progressivism only when it benefits them. But, neo-liberals are otherwise conservatives with a bit more tact than typical conservatives.
You’re not wrong, except in believing that classical liberalism was ever any different.
I no longer confuse classical liberalism with progressivism. I was corrected on that topic a few years ago and learned my lesson.
I hate that conservatives in the U.S. worked so hard to use these terms interchangably. They’ve gleefully created chaos with their misuse of words as pejoratives and it makes having adult conversations so much more complicated. Which I suppose was their goal all along.
I believe that’s why “centrist” has become a popular substitute word, to sidestep the confusion.
Her world views are absolutely conservative by today’s standard. Especially her views on gender roles. I mean have you read Harry Potter when you were younger? All important characters that actually shape the plot are male. She went out of her way to give Harry different father figures, believing that‘s what a boy needs when he grows up. But it‘s enough when his mother just loved him. Her female characters are far less layered than the male ones and more often than not reduced to mere tropes. The most prominent one being the pedantically strict auntie, a template which wich gets pasted a lot. There’s also the crazy auntie character and the tomboy. But that‘s pretty much it, really. Hermione herself ranges between overly strict and tomboy throughout the books and the only way she managed to escape this pattern is by… magic plastic surgery to shrink her front teeth. Rowling has clearly defined genders to be a black or white kind of thing for herself and she clearly outlined which gender has to fill what role.
Totally agree with all of that. But I think the disagreement is based on what you think a liberal is. She is a New Labourite through and through.
British transphobia is as prevalent amongst middle-class, white liberals (centrists) as it is on the right; I’d say that they started it here.
Writers for The Guardian (US) wrote a letter protesting that bastion of liberalism’s transphobic stance: Why we take issue with the Guardian’s stance on trans rights in the UK.
The political dividing line here is very, very different to that in the US.
The reason traditional gender roles are called than and are that is because most people act in accordance with them.
And I disagree that all female characters have less depth intentionally.
These are still books about a boy, told from his point of view. Most of the depth is in his head.
She’s not a conservative, she’s a liberal (in the political science sense of the word, not the USian synonym for leftist).
No leftist self-identifies as a liberal in the US.
Liberal and leftist are synonyms to the US right such that everyone left of them is considered a “liberal”, and the term is usually used pejoratively.
It’s usually used perjoratively by the left, tbf.
In the established party-political sense, Liberal is now clear enough. But liberal as a term of political discourse is complex. It has been under regular and heavy attack from conservative positions, where the senses of lack of restraint and lack of discipline have been brought to bear, and also the sense of a (weak and sentimental) generosity. The sense of a lack of rigour has also been drawn on in intellectual disputes. Against this kind of attack, liberal has often been a group term for PROGRESSIVE or RADICAL (qq.v.) opinions, and is still clear in this sense, notably in USA. But liberal as a pejorative term has also been widely used by socialists and especially Marxists. This use shares the conservative sense of lack of rigour and of weak and sentimental beliefs. Thus far it is interpreted by liberals as a familiar complaint, and there is a special edge in their reply to socialists, that they are concerned with political freedom and that socialists are not. But this masks the most serious sense of the socialist use, which is the historically accurate observation that liberalism is a doctrine based on INDIVIDUALIST (q.v.) theories of man and society and is thus in fundamental conflict not only with SOCIALIST (q.v.) but with most strictly SOCIAL (q.v.) theories. The further observation, that liberalism is the highest form of thought developed within BOURGEOIS (q.v.) society and in terms of CAPITALISM (q.v.), is also relevant, for when liberal is not being used as a loose swear-word, it is to this mixture of liberating and limiting ideas that it is intended to refer. Liberalism is then a doctrine of certain necessary kinds of freedom but also, and essentially, a doctrine of possessive individualism.
Good point that is also true and it’s the reason no leftist self-identifies as a liberal. However, my comment was in response to this statement:
She’s not a conservative, she’s a liberal (in the political science sense of the word, not the USian synonym for leftist).
My point (which you are supporting) is that leftist and liberal are not synonyms in the US except to people in the US who apply the term liberal wrongly.
I think the trans thing started as a sincerely held conviction very much a long the lines as you’re describing, and while this is and can only be utter speculation, I have a feeling a lot of what comes after as in Chappelle, probably with Linehan (but I don’t really know anything about his case) and also other examples like the vaccines cause autism guy, I think these people are seeing an opportunity in their ostracism to keeping their profiles high and business opportunities as well.
I think it’s a sort of a ‘hung for a sheep as for a lamb’ kind of logic where you mightn’t really have had any particular common cause with a lot of conservative views, or fringe elements before, but their willingness to embrace and lionize you for this one particular stance creates a new audience and market for you just as others are shrinking. From there it makes sense to gradually dole out hints and allusions to more conservative talking points and just keep ratcheting it up piecemeal to keep that profile up. For this to work you have to eventually be less hinting and more direct and the positions have to be more extreme and on more and more diverse matters, even ones you probably never had any opinion on because this is a pathway to becoming a kind professional provocateur and shock jock.
For some feminists, especially older ones, the transphobia comes from the long fight against the patriarchy and the feeling that men are trying to encroach on everything they fought for by becoming women. I had that explained to me by multiple (three) feminists in the last few years.
Yes, that’s the divide within ‘radical feminism’. The trans-exclusionary TERFs and the trans-inclusionary TIRFs. They both start with “gender is a social construct” but the TERFs have somehow got from there to biological essentialism. They’re a minority of a minority. But they tend to be middle-class so they make a lot of noise.
They sound like pleasant people to be around
Graham Linehan
Wow, Linehan really dug in hard according to his Wiki.
A really tragic trajectory. His work was genuinely great. And there isn’t going to be any more of it (unless his new fascist pals persuade him to do a Leni Riefenstahl for them).
HBomberGuy’s Donkey Kong 64 “Fuck You Graham” nightmare stream for trans rights was absolutely marvelous
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Are you advocating for violence? I don’t understand your machine gun comment.
Just for having the right tools if the crowd doesn’t stop with verbal demands
So you are advocating for shooting people who disagree with you. Got it. Thank you for showing the caliber of person you are.
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Maybe she just has her own views and your tribalistic mind can’t comprehend that?
I know what I’d put my money on.
And her views are fucking hateful and stupid.
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Adults with empathy do their best to make the world better for the people around them instead of just telling everyone to deal with it.
Children do what others tell them to even if they disagree with it.
So you’re saying we should just turn the children of all conservatives queer? Alright, bring in the cat girls, 196 memes and let’s pounce!
Joking aside, there’s two archetypes of conservative:
- The Xenofobe, who is afraid of a changing world and that fear is strengthened by anything they experience as threatening to their image of how the world works. These people are more likely to warm to LGBTQIA+ people if they learn they’re not so different, and everyone is just trying to exist, be themselves and love who they love. There is no agenda for taking over the world.
- The Cultist. These people are beyond saving and generally consist of the hardcore christofascist bible belt inbred morons that are generally dumb as fuck, but loud as hell. They are indoctrinated by their own bubble of conspiracy theorists to the point where they are firmly dug into their own story and nothing will change their views.
It is not worth fighting either group with animosity, condemnation or attacks, as they are more than capable of spinning the story their side and reinforcing their ideas that queers are somehow threatening.
But at least we should be capable of showing the xenofobes that there is no monster in that closet (pun intended), or under their beds.
As for Rowling, she is likely part of the cultist group, which means we’re going to have issues. Her status as a celebrity and her wealth further isolates her from the rest of society, which is a real problem because that makes you able to opt out of confrontation with reality. She can just stategically isolate herself from ever coming into contact and having a real human interaction with the people she’s having all these misguided ideas about.
I think everyone should be made more aware of the damage that social bubbles cause to society. Whether it’s conservative communities, religious indoctrination, closed internet discussion groups or just the wealthy and famous distancing themselves from society (which is usually not by choice but because we treat them to a permanent dose of spotlights).
I wonder if you have read/heard the things Rowling has actually said about trans issues.
I also find it ironic that you liken her to a chrisofachist, when in the early 00s she was basically crucified by those people.
I certainly don’t agree with everything she has said. But some of her points are genuine “maybe this is something that deserves conversation and contemplating”, which are immediately construed as transphobic or hateful by many people who haven’t personally read/heard what she said. People jump to screaming online instead of trying to refute her points.
Again, I do NOT agree with her on many, many things!
The amount of people defending her statements in this thread is absolutely disgusting. I wonder why she feels so emboldened as to say such horrific things in public?
Because people can’t tell the difference between the Israeli government and a random jewish person in North America that has nothing to do with anything
It’s honestly upsetting to see.
I think it’s great. My block-list is filling out nicely. Hope the trolls keep exposing themselves in such brazen careless fashion :)
When they’re financially or socially insulated from the consequences of their actions or words it’s pretty awful what people reveal about themselves.
Maybe I’m missing a federation because I’m not seeing the agreement comments.
I was wrong. So so wrong. Phone wouldn’t scroll.
I thought it was pretty well known that the Nazi party destroyed the first thing we would consider a Trans hospital?
She should have done a tiny bit of googling.
Third result on Google was the right wiki page https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institut_für_Sexualwissenschaft
Iirc, one of the most famous pictures of a book burning was right outside that hospital, and the books came from inside it.
Non gender conforming people were the first group they came after.
The vast majority of people dont know this. Its an obscure fact that people share regularly in forums like Lemmy, but are not part of any mainstream discussion of the holocaust.
It was news to me and I feel I have a fairly decent understanding of nazi atrocities, but I also wouldn’t be confident in denying it without first researching.
Trade unions and lgbt clubs were attacked within the first three months after Hitler became the Chancellor. Already in the first month trade union offices and lgbt clubs were destroyed by the SA and people were sent to camps.
Yes. And also it should be known that this isnt part of the Holocaust. The Holocaust is the genocide against Jews. But the Nazis persecuted lots of groups of people, and committed all kinds of crimes against humanity.
Not every heinous Nazi crime is “the Holocaust”. But it’s just as awful and denying it should lead to a social ban against the denier.
Which brings to question, why the genocides of the concentration camps are quite deliberately reduced to the holocaust in many perceptions.
The German government denied adequate compensation to LGBT concentration camps survivors to this day and only in 2017 they opened for legal rehabilitation. So until 2017 someone that was convicted for homosexuality by the Nazis and put into a concentration camp was considered a convict.
Equally political activists, Sint and Roma and disakled people (or people ascribes as being so) faced similiar issues of non recognition and non compensation.
And it is no surprise that the option for homosexuals was only opened when almost all the surviving victims have died of old age. Focusing the spotlight on the Holocaust was done to deflect from the continued discrimination and subjugation of other victim groups.
I was going to argue that that was a slightly reductive statement because of all the other groups that the Nazis genocided, but I looked it up and you are correct.
Ok, fellas: the intention of the author is inaccessible, the intention of the work can be interpreted, her public persona is that of a transphobe who always finds new lows to fall to in her brigade. You can still read HP and recognize that she is a shitty person.
Pro tip: used book sales do not generate royalties. I bought the full set of HP from a local used bookstore with no guilt.
Acquiring a copy on the open ocean also provides no royalties.
Sure but used book stores are great, you can find some weird shit sometimes. Serisously I once found an old ass copy of dianetics in the sci-fi section, old lady running the place found it great that I got her little joke.
That’s a great point. I’ve found treasures I’d never have found otherwise in used bookstores.
What’s the joke ?
That she put it into sci-fi and not religion. According to her it made atleast one pissant angry.
Ok, I also looked it up and it’s clearer now, thanks
This is good advice
I will wait until she dies so she can’t profit from it. I know it’s a drop in the bucket but it’s my drop.
She had a choice. Her Twatter account could have just been happy stuff about Harry Potter. She repeatedly choose to create this situation. So fuck her she isn’t getting a cent from me.
🏴☠️
Same. As a cys person I stand in solidarity with You … Feck that Bitch… Feck her and Dave Chappelle, Joe Rogan ETC
Is Joe Rogan transphobic? It would be entirely unsurprising, I already hated him because he was constantly putting air into the Alt Right.
If he isn’t already, I think he would be within five minutes if anyone talked him into it
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My kids are trans/have trans friends and they square this circle by believing that “J.K. Rowling” is Danny Devito’s pen name
Damn, the kids ARE alright. That’s awesome.
I would pay oodles to read Doanne Dathleen Rowling’s version of events.
It’s also possible for someone to be a shitty person and a shitty author. There are tons of discussions on just how badly written HP is and that would be true even if she suddenly stopped being a horrible person.
Yeah, 1-4 are fun “monster of the week” kids book with worldbuilding that falls apart if you look at it too much. 5-7 have “George Lucas” syndrome - editors couldn’t say “no” anymore. The Horcruxes and the Deathly Hallows were clearly last minute ass pulls.
Idk I read a lot of similar quality YA when I was a child. I don’t get the obsession.
I hate her much as the next guy but the books are really good don’t act like they are not there is a reason why they are famous. If you don’t like her but still likes her work just pirate it .
That’s kind of an individual thing. Like, I get it, I get what you’re saying, but, when I think about the books (which I used to love), I just didn’t think of them fondly anymore; I can’t think of any of those characters without that irritation and disappointment coming up.
I was super excited about having my kids read those books – and my oldest started the series, but then needed a break to mature a little before hitting book…3 I think? Idr. And now I just don’t really care whether they read them. (If they do choose to read them on their own, I won’t tell them about JKR until after they’ve finished them.)
However I have no problem setting aside the shittiness of Knut Hamsun or Henry Miller; I still really enjoy their books. Heidegger? Too shitty for me. Picasso: meh, he’s fine.
That’s My Hot Take: if it bothers you, acknowledge that, and don’t force yourself to be uncomfortable. But also don’t shame people for whom her toxicity is something they can set aside.
(As long as they are setting it aside and not enjoying the work because of her toxicity.)
That said: pirate her shit, you don’t need to give her money.
I can’t listen to many bands I used to listen because their members turned out to be really shitty people.
I mean, if I have to hone my skills at slap.bass in a rock context, Flea is my go-to choice, but Anthony Kiedis boasted about having sex with an underage girl and regularly dates girls 40 years younger than him, that soured the whole RHCP thing for me.
In short, my ethical and moral principles are worth more than aesthetic enjoyment.
Ethics are interesting because you can ignore them. It’s like, ethics exist within you regardless of whether you agree to them; if you don’t listen to that little voice, it gets easier and easier to ignore it. To put that in practical terms: murdering someone is pretty ethically difficult. Murdering a second time is less ethically difficult. It’s like we build a climate around ourselves; the more you listen to your ethical beliefs, the more repugnant the idea of ignoring them becomes.
That said, I’m not sure I’m on board with you on RHCP – but that’s maybe just me. I used to listen to them a lot in jr high (I’m old) when blood sugar sex magic had just come out. And while your opinion is totally valid, for me, like, I never thought he was much of an ethical role model. His lyrics are pretty misogynistic. (And, not great regardless, from a “objective artistic/poetic” perspective.) So like yeah he’s not a great person, but he never pretended to be, so to find out he isn’t doesn’t change much.
(As opposed to, say, Jowling Kowling Rowling, who used to talk about hating bigotry, but then turned out to be a super terrible bigot.)
Flea, on the other hand – I’ve never looked into him. I’m also a bassist and his influence on my bass education is so deep that I’m afraid to find out if he’s toxic lol. But he’s been in a band with Anthony Keidis for like 40 years, so, he’s probably not perfect.
(I’m not a slap or funk bassist, but what I learned from Flea was how to feel it. You can’t play Flea’s bass lines mechanically, they literally don’t sound correct; you have to feel the vibe, the groove has to move your fingers, not the time signature. That dude, ffs I hope he’s not an asshole, because he’s fucking incredible.)
Though IDK – after long careers together, from what I understand, people tend to see each other less.
For example, after the whole Me Too thing started, I heard an interview with Bob Weinstein, Harvey’s brother, the two of them started Miramax together and were basically partners. But he knew his brother was a piece of shit, and, at that time a few years ago, hadn’t actually spoken to him in “many years.” He didn’t dwell on the topic, he just said that, basically, and his tone was like, obviously disgusted, but he didn’t want to spend the time talking about that, so he didn’t.
He wasn’t exactly going to snitch his own brother into prison, and that’s asking a bit too much imo, but it shows ethical strength to not slip into that same kind of toxicity, especially when it’s so close to you, and probably so easy.
I gotta say, I’m dealing with cognitive dissonance right now. I remember having bookmarked her Harvard commencement speech and listening to it from time to time, admiring the principles and standing up for the good of all people. I felt someone who wrote those books would HAVE to have a keen understanding of right from wrong and fighting the good fight.
So these recent years with her position on this have been confusing and sad for me. I hope she grows and learns from this.
Also unpopular opinion but I stumbled across this article from OP’s source which I largely agree with: https://forward.com/culture/480388/please-shut-up-about-the-harry-potter-jew-goblins-antisemitism-jk-rowling/
In her mind she IS fighting for “right vs wrong”. She’s just REALLY fucking wrong about which side is “right”. One of the biggest things I’ve learned in life is that EVERYONE thinks that they’re the hero. That they’re doing good and the “others” are the bad guys. Rowling is a piece of a shit but she THINKS she’s the good guy and that’s the most dangerous part of all.
I disagree. I have felt like crap many times when I did what I consider the wrong thing. She knows what she is doing which pretty much only leaves sociopath or sadistic. Either way time to stop apologizing for her.
No one is apologizing for her. You felt like crap when you did something wrong because you realized it was wrong. Good people make mistakes and learn from them. People should be like you. She thinks she’s doing right and is a pig headed bigot. People should not be like her.
She thinks she’s doing right
How did you determine that? Not trying to be snarky and I think it is important to give everyone the assumption of good faith (once) but I really don’t see any effort on her part that confirms this.
She hasnt even done the fake non-apology celebrity thing where she pays a charity and says she has to learn more. she has repeatedly doubled down.
I’m heavily confused by this. If she thought she was doing wrong she’d do the whole apology tour. Which she hasn’t, as you said. Your two paragraphs don’t play well with each other. She has exactly doubled down, which means she thinks she’s right so I have no idea what point you’re trying to argue.
I do something wrong, I know it’s wrong. Someone calls me out on it.
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Yeah you are right = lose face admit that I wasnt being a good person.
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No, I am right = don’t lose face and say it enough no longer feel guilty. Because now you get to feel like you are the real victim here. And a victim can never be wrong.
This is why you keep getting these well liked rich fucks bitch about how much harm has been done to them by being cancelled. That woman quite literally has a net worth equal to what I will earn if I worked for over 10,000 years. And yet she is the victim in this? Hell I bet every single trans person combined net worth in the UK isn’t equal to her own.
She knows she is wrong but she thinks if she keeps saying 2 + 2 = 5 she will win.
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It’s weird to me because I don’t view her in the same way I do, say, Republicans or Trump or Bannon or Miller or Putin, etc. For all intents she is a bleeding-heart leftist who vehemently opposes the narrative of the right’s fearmongering in respect to most other issues. If she was just another greedy sociopathic republican-type then I wouldn’t be the least-bit surprised.
So I’m not convinced she’s a psychopath sociopath on par with the aforementioned; from what I can tell I do think she’s deeply confused and has some personal trauma that feeds a puritannical belief in feminism.
If she was a leftist, Harry wouldn’t have become a cop. Hermione wouldn’t have been ridiculed about SPEW until she gave up. And so on.
Unless she is the most pessimistic leftist who can’t even dream of a world where things change for the better when she creates that world all by her own.
What gate-keeping philosophy suggests all leftists must oppose cops – did I not get the memo? I didn’t realize she’s a Thatcher plant because Harry went to work for the Ministry and overhaul it for a place of good lol.
In a capitalist society, cops are mostly busy with protecting rich people. I don’t think a material analysis of what cops are and do will result in anything that redeems the institution as it is now.
Hot take but I think that probably over-generalizes the role of police and is particularly centered specifically around American cop culture and not, say, European or Scandinavian ones.
Thus I remain unconvinced that this is what they are destined to do. If good cops exist, then it’s a matter of altering the system and model to promote good instead of bad seeds no differently than paying teachers better, or giving nurses more training.
Trans-exclusionary radical feminists (TERFs) are a thing. I’m not sure why but it is. There are many. From what I’ve seen it’s mainly women who are SO heavily misandrist and hateful of men they think any trans woman is still a man and therefore out to rape and kill them by design, but I haven’t looked that deep into the bigotry.
On your link there, I’m sorry to say the author is making a very silly argument. It boils down to ‘if you see a specific race in this racist caricature then you’re the real racist’. This would only be true if racist caricatures were a new thing never seen before. It’s akin to saying ‘oh i didn’t mean black people when i screamed the n- word. You’re the racist for thinking the n- word refers to black people’.
That’s an extreme example but you see my point that there’s a history that’s being ignored.
I disagree. The Potter goblins are diminutive, hooknosed, saurian creatures, with creepy long fingers and crafty natures. They have exceptional financial skills and stop at nothing to acquire or protect money and precious objects. It is antisemitic that anyone would encounter such a character and think: “Aha, a Jew!”
No,
JohnJon Stewart looked at the Harry Potter goblins and saw an offensive Jewish caricature. As an ethnically Jewish trans woman I agree with him. Rowling’s goblins and her Holocaust denial are harmful. I’m a huge Harry Potter fan too, so I don’t begrudge anyone for enjoying her content or even paying for content. I of course appreciate when people avoid those things. Profits from her games, books and movies go to funding anti-trans causes which make her content harmful. All I ask is that when Rowling does something harmful, like Holocaust denial or fund anti-trans causes people agree that what she is doing and her content is harmful.The author once again attracted attention after donating $97,000 to For Women Scotland. The funds are earmarked for a legal challenge set to be heard in the UK Supreme Court. The objective of the lawsuit is to redefine the word “woman” such that it applies exclusively to cisgender women. The proposed redefinition stands to harm transgender women who have undergone gender-affirming procedures. Rowling publicly supported her donation, stating: “You know how proud I am to know you. Thank you for all your hard work and tenacity. This truly is a historic case.”
LGBTQ+ activists are warning that redefining the word “woman” paves the way for discrimination and prejudice against transgender or non-binary individuals.
edit: Jon not John
To be clear, Jon Stewart later clarified:
I do not think J.K. Rowling is anti-Semitic. I did not accuse her of being anti-Semitic. I do not think that the Harry Potter movies are anti-Semitic.
To be clear, Jon Stewart later clarified:
I do not think J.K. Rowling is anti-Semitic. I did not accuse her of being anti-Semitic. I do not think that the Harry Potter movies are anti-Semitic.
JohnJon Stewart said the goblins are an offensive Jewish caricature. None of these statements contradict each other. The point is, no one looked at the goblins and thought they were Jews as the author of Please shut up about the Harry Potter Jew-goblins suggests. It is not antisemitic to point out that the goblins are collectively an offensive Jewish caricature. edit: typo, https://www.adl.org/spelling-antisemitism-vs-anti-semitism, typo, Jon not JohnNone of these statements contradict each other.
I didn’t say they were, but I do think it’s an important distinction because the entire purpose of highlighting this in context of J.K. Rowling is to accuse her of explicit antisemitism. Whereas Jon (not John) continued to write:
“tropes [like the goblins bankers] are so embedded in society that they’re basically invisible.”
This means, indeed, that two things can be true at the same time: Rowling subconsciously used a Jewish caricature (as did Tolkien before her), and (2) Rowling is not Antisemitic.
Many people – not you, necessarily – equate the two.
Nowhere in my argument did I say Rowling was antisemitic. I said her goblins are harmful.
Rowling’s goblins and her Holocaust denial are harmful.
It really doesn’t matter if she did it intentionally or not, it’s harmful regardless.
Perhaps; though that’s not a reflection of her – but as Stewart points out society as a whole and the power we give to racist stereotypical tropes in the first place – it’s a convenient target for those who are already looking to hate on her for other more substantive reasons.
On a separate note, do you not think it’s a stretch to lump her in with holocaust deniers this quickly? Isn’t it a little too soon to categorize her lack of understanding that the concept of trans or books being burned occurred under nazis versus those who deny millions were murdered in general? If anything, doesn’t that water-down the category of Holocaust Deniers?
Reading the article after playing Hogwarts Legacy gives me a slightly different feeling about that last paragraph…
Still a good article though.
But HP is a shitty story with questionable moral lessons.
It’s almost like conservatives are vile, grotesque garbage-based life forms who thrive on the misery and death of others.
Conservatism is a plague long overdue for a cure.
It’s almost like you were posting this in a space full of people who will agree with you just cause you are of the same bunch.
Absolutely.
The person above apparently posts here specifically because they don’t agree with us based on their responses in this thread. So I guess they don’t understand why people would want to be around those they are in agreement with.
Once I found out that Harry Potter glorified the British class system by having it take place at an elite private school where people less privileged than them are looked down upon and even called names I was already turned off… but once I got to the obviously antisemitic goblins, I was done.
I wish it wasn’t so damn popular.
Edit: I realize this article isn’t about antisemitism. This is just another example of Rowling’s bigotry.
I don’t care about HP, but it’s just a standard fairy tale. I read the books to my kids. Stories about knights, kings, princesses, super heroes…pretty much any story in which a normal person can fantasize about being someone who has much more power than they do, have been the stock-in-trade for story-tellers forever. Harry Potter lives a terrible life with his abusive relatives until he gets whisked off to a fancy private school where, it turns out, he is pretty special. Does it glorify the British class system? Sure, in some ways. But, it also undermines it insofar as Harry’s friends are mostly from the lower classes, and the villains are mostly “old money” and those who are obsessed with genetic purity. Also, the entrenched authorities like the Ministry of Magic are shown in a rather poor light, with their dementors, cruel bureaucrats, and insanity-inducing prisons. Hermione is meant to symbolize someone who got to Hogwart’s based on ability, not birth or connections. So, the story is at least partially about the transformation of the old structures of power from being based on money and birth to being based on ability. It shows British power structures in transition, I would say. What do you think?
That may very well be so. I did not get that impression from the first book, but, as I said, it was the only book I read and maybe it was clarified in the sequels.
By the way, my father was a similarly privileged to go to a prestigious British school on scholarship despite coming from a poor background and had nothing but bad things to say about it, so that does color my judgment a little.
That explains it. Each book gets progressively darker. The first book was written for 11 year olds, if I recall correctly. It doesn’t really get into politics. The subsequent books expose the corruption of the class system and the horrifying complicity of the bureaucracy.
And at the end the main characters shut up and perpetuate the system
I love liberals
I don’t understand why you are criticizing liberals here. Would you prefer illiberalism? Or are you an armchair revolutionary?
End of history looking ass thinking the only two political positions are lukewarm defense of the current system and nazis
What? That isn’t even a sentence.
Once I found out that Harry Potter glorified the British class system by having it take place at an elite private school where people less privileged than them are looked down upon and even called names I was already turned off
Do the books glorify that, though? I seem to remember that only the blatantly evil characters thought like that.
Granted, the last 3 Harry Potter books I read were all Methods of Rationality, so perhaps my understanding of canon is too good.
I admit it’s been a long time and I only read the first book, but I seem to remember everyone used the term “muggles.”
Like @mellowwheat said, the main character is a “half-blood” and the chosen one; one of the friends is “muggle-born” yet one of the most powerful magic users in recent memory; and the other friend is a “full blood” wizard who still kinda sucks.
Even the core three characters are supposed to be allegorical for “racism doesn’t mean shit.” I honestly don’t know how JK went from writing fiction that could be interpreted as pro-trans (at least from the standpoint of the movies), into doubling down on bigotry. I guess it was Twitter after all.
I guess, but the impression I got from the book I read was that those terms weren’t considered offensive enough for even the good characters to stop using them. Maybe I’m misremembering or maybe that gets addressed in a future book?
Tbh I’ve only watched the movies so I can’t say for the books, but the movies definitely gave me that vibe. Well, any of them after the first one. And from what I remember, the main “good guys” only use the “no-no human words” a few times at the beginning of the series, whereas they’re mostly used by the bad guys throughout the whole thing.
In that case, it’s hard to know whether that is Rowling and I have a poor memory about this or that the movie’s screenwriter made revisions on that front. I think either is a possibility at this point. I’d love someone else to chime in who is more familiar with the books.
I think thats the script writers, if memory serves right muggle is pretty inoffensive in the books partly cause the bad guys have their own term “mud blood” for those who are born to non magical parents. Honestly I think at worst its comparable to how people said “negro” in a non racist way back during and before the civil rights era here in the US. But I legit dont know if Rowling meant for those undertones, im not familiar enough with British civil rights history.
Also Rowling may have been aluding to that for all I know cause the wizarding world is pretty explicitly backwards, serisouly they cut themselves off from the rest of the world sometime in the 1800. One of the secondary protagonists dad is a magical ATF agent who tracks down enchanted mundane artifacts that re-enter the non magical world.
Muggle isn’t considered offensive within the world, it’s just the British term for a non-magical person. Wizard/witch for those with magic, muggle for those without (in America we call them No-Maj, which is fucking awful)
Some of the bad characters will say it in a sneering or mean-spirited way, but they often don’t use it at all and go instead for subtler terms like “those lesser than us” or “the filth” and similar
The only term in the series that’s considered “offensive” is mudblood, which is basically a mixed race slur (it’s a wizard/witch born to one or both muggle parents), and it’s very much addressed as not OK to be said and why it shouldn’t be said and how much it can hurt people (from Rowlings fave character, no less!)
It’s insane to me that the person who wrote that into book 2 went on to be a fucking TERF
It’s “the British term” because Rowling made it up.
The main character is “half-blood” and his main sidekick is “muggle” herself, so I’d wager not so glorified. Of course, there’s an undercurrent of racism there, because the bloodlines really really matter. But this is fantasy fiction so I don’t how much of a sin it is. Bloodlines mattered in Tolkien too.
I’m not sure if that last sentence is against or for my argument.
Hogwarts is not elite. Anyone can enrol if they have magical ability. It’s addressed in a later book that attendance is not mandatory but nearly every witch and wizard in Britain is educated there. It’s just a school that doesn’t even have an admittance exam.
if they have magical ability
That’s exactly what makes it elite. There’s automatically a class system.
A genetics-based one, no less
I’m sorry I don’t understand what you mean, do you want non magical people to attend a magical school?
The fact that magic is only for some, that’s the elitist part. There are some people that are inherently better than others
They could just fail every class for 8 years and be passed to the next anyway.
No different then public school system st the end of the day.
I’m sorry I don’t understand what you mean, do you want non magical people to attend a magical school?
That’s the thing that makes everyone defending this shit so sus. Harry Potter has so. many. layers. of terrible shit in it. Maybe people didn’t realize it when they were reading the books as a child because they were young and naive, but as an adult you should be able to recognize shit like the only Asian character being named “Cho Chang” and realize you’re reading an awful book written by an awful person. The fact that people know about Rowlings bigotry and still read HP to their kids blows my mind. If we all just agreed she was a shitty person and stopped passing her garbage writing along, she’d be forgotten in a generation.
There’s a city in China called Chongqing, I’m guessing that’s racist too?
If you’re grasping at straws trying to defend a well known bigot who is publicly proud of her bigotry, it’s time to re-evaluate your life.
I think it’ll be alright.
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Why did you decide to insult me? Did I insult you? Did I make a personal attack?
And I guess I’m not part of “all you guys” because I always thought that about the Ferengi.
Also, what did I want to remove and from where? Please show where I said I wanted to remove something.
As far as the goblins not being antisemitic-
https://www.popdust.com/gringotts-warner-bros-2627451691.html
Not just her books, even the games based on them-
https://www.dailydot.com/unclick/hogwarts-legacy-antisemitism-goblins-horn/
Did she do it intending to be antisemitic? I don’t know, but it hardly matters.
Maybe I have the intelligence of a brick, but at least I don’t tell lies about people like you did about me.
You’ve made a personal attack against the author of one book I consider not terribly bad.
As far as the goblins not being antisemitic-
Somebody wrote an article and I’m supposed to assume that person is right and I’m wrong?
I’ll quote the title seen even in the link you provided - “HP goblins echo Jewish caricatures”. Have you considered even once that Jewish caricatures too did echo something aesthetically familiar? Or that the folklore I’m talking about grew intertwined with antisemitic beliefs?
Medieval-style fairy-tales always touch this subject.
And then this
Did she do it intending to be antisemitic? I don’t know, but it hardly matters.
and this
Maybe I have the intelligence of a brick,
form a syllogism.
Yes, it definitely matters, because to get rid of each and every antisemitic or similar (“middleman minority” etc) stereotype manifesting itself unintentionally you’d simply have to burn European-cultured countries with nukes and start from scratch.
Also I’m Jewish.
Sorry… you’re insulting me because I besmirched J. K. Rowling’s honor? Are you her great protector?
And I don’t care if you’re Jewish.
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Now you’re lying about not insulting me:
You seem as intelligent as people who’d want to remove Nazis from movies about WWII (actually I’m not sure if I’ve met such specimen).
If you are not a brick or just as intelligent, you’d see that.
Stating a fact is not an insult
my opinion weighs more than yours.
No it doesn’t. Anyone can claim to be anything they want on the Internet.
Including my opinion weighing more.
Why does your opinion weigh more?
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Imagine going this far out on a limb over a series of children’s books.
Nah, that’s not the reason. I just really don’t like people partaking in collective condemnation. They are worthless cowards.
There’s a Star of David in the middle of the floor of the “Goblin Bank”
illuminati confirmed
It was filmed in a real building built when the association between this symbol and Judaism wasn’t yet a thing. So it’s not a Star of David.
I hope (not really) you are aware that it’s not historically a Jewish symbol, it’s been used as widely as, eh, a few other famous ornaments, and relatively recently became a symbol of secular Jewish identity and Zionism, and then Judaism too.
Nope
It’s sad that she’s likely repressing a LOT of gender dysphoria, but just doubles down on the bigotry and hate. Fuck JK Umbridge.
All direct quotes:
I believe I could have been persuaded to turn myself into the son my father had openly said he’d have preferred.
As I didn’t have a realistic possibility of becoming a man back in the 1980s, it had to be books and music that got me through.
I remember how mentally sexless I felt in youth.
Fortunately for me, I found my own sense of otherness, and my ambivalence about being a woman…
Oh yikes. Yikes yikes yikes. I would feel bad for her* if she* wasn’t such a petty evil person.
Is it normal to feel mentally sexful? Asking for a friend.
Yeah, mentally I feel my assigned gender at birth which ironically is why I can see how people maybe wouldn’t.
Weird. I feel kind of ambivalent, but not dysphoric or anything. Like I could just as easily have been born into a different body and felt no worse off.
Same, its like such a nonpart of my identity?
I went through a bi panic in college and did a bunch of thought experiments with myself, mainly because I want getting action from either gender to try and test that out.
Anything your brains do that do not cause harm to you or others is just fine.
JK Rowling is one of the many people who never should’ve gone to Twitter.
No one should have ever used algorithm based “social media”.
It is an interesting question, is she denying this because she hates jews or because she hates trans
Why not both?
Because we have substantially more evidence for one than the other.
Didn’t she name the only black character Shacklebolt? Also, Cho Chang is the only Asian?
The Irish character kept blowing things up…
Ah yes, Seamus
Wait a minute, that’s right !! haha
Kingsley Shacklebolt…
What’s with the name Shacklebolt ?
Maybe she just likes Nazis?
She is transphobic, ableist, handiphobic, etc.
The saddest is that we will always find a fan boy taking her defense. Seriously, stop! She is garbage.
The type of Holocaust denial they’re suggesting she’s doing wouldn’t make her antisemitic, because she’s not denying its impact on the Jewish people. It just makes her more transphobic, which we already knew.
A piece of shit said a shitty thing. No need to dwell on it.
I think it’s important she’s called out. Her works are deep in the hearts of 3 generations and her shitty takes need to be addressed so those fans don’t make the same choices.
Just like Bill Cosby, its important for everyone to know how much a skeezebag he is because he shaped the lives of so many people
I just saw a teacher dunk on a kid in a tiktok video because he couldn’t explain why/how JK Rowling is a terf. Only for it to end with “I guess I was wrong, maybe she isn’t bad for the Trans community” in no part of that video did the teacher let his own beliefs be challenged or allow the kid to research to support his own position.
So yeah… this stuff can be important.
Tiktok ‘debates’ are usually scripted propaganda or just recorded harassment.
I mean I guess that’s everywhere on the internet now. Everyone thinks in soundbites and consider thought terminating cliches as legitimate discourse.
I’m not sure how the teacher could hold their position considering the knee high stack of rancid terf tweets she has put out THAT ARE STILL UP.
Lotta dipshits in the comments here, block button is working extra today.
Naturally when people called her out for being wrong she quickly set up a strawman to keep herself from having to admit any ignorance or fault. What a stupid hill she has chosen to die on, she could have been universally beloved if she just kept her shitty views to herself.
Fuck J.K. Rowling. Femcel. Lol
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