And for filler treatments apparently.
rowling also wants to retcon the og cast members of the films, because they dont like to be associated with her transphobia.
Which is ridiculous because we need 35 year old Daniel Radcliffe to play a 6th grader.
the thing i don’t get is why people are focused on the transgender community so much?
They want to hate on someone but it’s passé to hate on plain old gay people now.
Trans and brown people are trendy now.
IMO its always about scapegoating, you need to find a minority which is prevelant enough for people to have encountered, but not too many that they’re in everyone’s family or work or friend circle - and that won’t have significant civic or voting power.
Post-ww2, ethnic divisions are more taboo, gay rights are too broadly popular to pursue, but trans people are the conservatives best punching down opportunity, while trying to appeal to people on the fence by being ‘virtuous’ and ‘saving the kids’.
This is just sad. What could have made JKR use her wealth in such an unkind way?
she seems to have been harboring these feeling since she before she wrote harry potter, there are many people attributing her books to transphobia and antisemitism in a subltle way.
I know that this is of only tangential relevance to the OP but I think that it could be safely said that “transgenderism” is boring and irrelevant to everybody except for a tiny sliver of the population : Those who love it and those who hate it. And these people seem to talk a lot.
So many people are unique in different ways. Some people eat meat, some don’t, some can’t. Some people are tall, some short, some average. Some people are the life of the party, and some are quiet. Some people feel comfortable in their bodies, and some don’t… And sometimes they want the be different. I don’t fault people for wanting to be comfortable with who they are. They should be comfortable in their own bodies, and if that means changing it, then that should be okay too. Sometimes, there are people that pick on other people for not liking the same things they do, or for not looking the way they do, and this can hurt the people that they are picking on. You may think it’s okay for you to ignore it because it doesn’t affect you, but that’s selfish. What if people decided to pick on you for something that you couldn’t control? Would you want other people to ignore it and turn a blind eye? No, right? You wouldn’t think that that is okay. Sometimes you need to stand up to help people and support them, especially when someone else is being mean to them…because you never know when those mean people might to start picking on you. And if no one helps each other, then the mean people feel like they can get away with it…like they have power over everyone else. But when we speak up, when we say ‘that’s not okay,’ we take that power away. We show them that being cruel isn’t something we accept or ignore.
Standing up for others isn’t just about helping someone else, it’s about creating a world that’s kinder and safer for everyone, including yourself. When we support each other, we build trust, respect, and strength in our communities. We show each other that we matter, just as we are.
So when you see someone being treated unfairly, remember: your voice matters. Even one person standing up can make a huge difference. Be that person."
Just had this conversation with my young daughter about bullies, I adapted it a bit, but I thought maybe you could use it too.
An accusation of selfishness wrapped in a very large bun. Lol.
Beautifully put, thank you!
Okay, I’m sure I’ll get vote-bombed here, please don’t jump the gun, I’m pro lgbtq+. I don’t give a shit who or how someone loves, just hope they’re allowed to be happy with themselves (unless they’re hurting people, obviously).
I started looking further into this because a friend of mine, which is a total HP nerd, was trying to give me some context on where her anti-trans activism comes from. It SEEMS like she mostly wants to make sure women stay safe (paraphrasing her own words here). In Scotland apparently they’re changing things so that a dude can just say he’s not a dude, and be legally allowed in all women only spaces if they register with the government or whatever. I can absolutely see how that could be used in a predatory manor, and can see that side of the argument.
I just read her piece here: https://www.jkrowling.com/opinions/j-k-rowling-writes-about-her-reasons-for-speaking-out-on-sex-and-gender-issues/ To make sure I’m getting as complete of a look at the situation as I can.
And it confused the issue a little for me. All of her arguments seem to be coming from a place of reason, and some of them made sense (if the referenced stats were true). Most of her arguments seem to come from a “I don’t want to make it easier for male predators to prey on women” standpoint, which makes sense at the surface level.
I’m going to restate, I believe trans rights, and womens rights, are human rights. I don’t think anybody should be treated differently due to gender, sex, race, or orientation, and they shouldn’t be discriminated against in any way. I’m just trying to make sure I understand fully for when I defend the pro trans position that I believe to be correct.
is the current climate making it fashionable to transition? I find it hard to believe someone would go that far without truly thinking it’s the right thing to do, but some people are highly influenced by peer pressure. I can also see maybe some women wanting to change to escape the misogyny of our current world. I’m a straight cis-male, and I can’t personally resonate with the idea of changing that because it’s “popular” or whatever, so I don’t put a lot of credence into that argument, but I’m not everyone 🤷.
I also understand that sex and gender are separate, and Rowling seems to be on the train that conflates it, which might be the basis for her position.
Please help me learn and understand. Someone with more context or knowledge, please let me know. I’d love the opinion of some trans folks if you see this. Rowling says she’s getting support from trans women for her positions. And I’m sure that’s true, there’s bound to be some, like there’s women who support patriarchy.
My comment to her is that we need to enforce anti-harassment laws in all spaces. I don’t care if you’re a man harassing a man, a man harassing a woman, a woman harassing a man, or a woman harassing a woman, the cops should come take you away and … educate you why we don’t do that shit in a civilised society. And you don’t need to make a person presenting as a woman use the men’s washroom, or a person presenting as a man use a woman’s washroom, to make that happen! In short, you don’t need to be a dick to people.
Fun fact. I saw a recent news article where a trans-man (i.e., born female, presents as male) went into the woman’s washroom because the only free stalls were urinals, which he couldn’t use. So he went to the woman’s washroom to use a stall there, and got harassed by the police because…well, he was a man in the women’s room. Except he wasn’t. He was born a she, and in North Carolina, you USED to be demanded to go to the washroom of your birth gender, and they’re trying to force that back in again, after it was partially repealed and allowed to expire back in 2020.
It’s not about protecting women. If it was, they’d just enforce the laws on the books about harassment, sexual or otherwise, and be blind to the genders of the perpetrator and victim. But we can obviously see that this is about legally harassing transgender people, and it just uses women’s rights as cover for the hatred. Your only answer as a transgender person to peeing is hold it…or pee yourself. Or move to a state, city, or country that doesn’t treat you like shit because you would prefer to be the other gender…or not be restricted to the binary structure in general!
These are excellent points, thank you.
Your middle paragraph makes so much sense in today’s world, it’s not about what they say it’s about, they just like to demonize people who aren’t hurting anyone
I started looking further into this because a friend of mine, which is a total HP nerd, was trying to give me some context on where her anti-trans activism comes from.
You deliberately found someone with strong bias to get info from? Maybe you should think about that.
I also understand that sex and gender are separate, and Rowling seems to be on the train that conflates it, which might be the basis for her position.
I think you need to back up a little more on Rowling. If you start dissecting her works, you’ll see she has born/birth/blood nature being a reoccurring theme. Hagrid is naturally angry. Voldemort is evil because he was a rape baby. House Elves are natural
slavesservants. The Weasley family will always be poor(even when Harry should be paying rent or at least buying them a new car). Hell, the Irish character keeps blowing things up. Things are the way they are at birth and anyone who pushes against the natural order is wrong. Hermione Granger, the other outside to magical society took issue with the House Elves being treated as slaves and everyone, including the House Elves and Harry Potter, the first outsider and someone who should have no bias for slavery, treated her as being annoying and wrong for caring.(Also remember when JK implied that Hermione could be Black? Yeah, this isn’t a good look.)If you want a deep dive into Rowling’s writings that isn’t centered on the trans issue, check out Shaun’s review of her total body of work at the time.
Excellent response, thank you.
Also to your first point, I needed to know what her current stance was and the rational being used to do what I could at comparing.
All the points about the series are interesting, and they all ring pretty true. As I recall Tolkien had similar racial vibes in his works. Nothing I realized until someone pointed them out.
TBH the whole house elves thing always made me uncomfortable.
The thing about the House Elves is, she introduced the concept in one book without thinking too much about. Fans then asked her for details and instead of taking the easy route and saying that Slavery is Bad, she doubled down and said that it was perfectly fine. She tends to have petty responses to criticisms and questions. In one book, she introduces Time Travel and fans asked why the following book didn’t have time travel, so in the next book, the fat kid knocked over the table that had all the time travel on it, so no one could use it again. She also wrote a whole book about an author who was being bullied on social media.
Tolkien used his fantasy races as metaphors for real life races/ethnic groups, but was fairly kind to them, considering his time. IIRC, Dwarves were repressive of Jews and while it doesn’t look good that the Dwarves greed for gold was their downfall, a deeper read, it was specifically a certain king that lead them to their downfall and not a trait of the race itself. I’m not a Tolkien head, so I might be getting some wires crossed.
Yeah I’m not a huge Tolkien person either. Enjoyed the movies, struggled through the books.
idk if reading a billionaire author’s own statement (managed by a billionaire’s pr-team) on the billionaire’s own site is “the most complete picture you can get”.
I’ve read the text as well, and that isn’t too crazy. But it’s honestly just dog-whistling, as you can see from her going utterly BATSHIT crazy on social media.
Edit not to mention highly illogical. She literally wants a law saying this guy must use the women’s bathroom:
And you don’t think he will get harassed when he goes into the ladies’ because he was born with a vagina?
Or that this person won’t get harassed when they have to go the men’s:
You can prolly see why TERF views aren’t actually feminist at all
I tend to show pictures like that to people complaining about trans people (Not like OP. They seemed genuine.) And they ALWAYS shut down. Because their entire view is crafted by transphobic youtubers and twitter nazis that use ridiculous cartoon images of trans people.
And when they see that most of the time you can’t see if a person is trans or not, their brain just has a seizure.
I wish I looked like the dude pictured 🤣 super jealous
I totally get it, and I don’t have xitter or anything like that so don’t see the majority of the trash she’s reported to say and do, I just wanted to see what her “official” position was as a starting point to compare to what she’s actually doing and saying elsewhere.
As far as I know, if you’re a dude, you can already just walk into womens backthrooms. There aren’t police outside or anything checking peoples pants. There’s not some epidemic of people legally transitioning just so they can be predators.
These laws end up hurting actual real women, who were born women and were always women, who don’t happen to look “feminine” enough, and people start harassing them for using the bathroom they were meant to use.
If you want to go after predators, go after predators. It’s not that hard. You don’t need to go after trans people to do that.
i was going to say transphobia always relate to mysogyny and homophobia as well.
Yeah that one argument never felt particularly strong to me anyway, like men transitioning to win at sports or whatever.
As a cis man who is only tangentially acquainted with transgender issues, and as a person who isn’t particularly eloquent, I cannot do this topic justice myself. You’ll have to trust me when I say that the image of “just any bloke can call himself a woman and go into the bathroom and assault women” is language that is deeply colored by propaganda, and has no basis in reality. When you indulge in language and ideas like that, you are doing harm. Similarly, the “men doing women’s sports” idea is harmful to both cis and trans women, and has, again 0 basis in reality.
If you are truly interested, and not some right wing troll who’s “just asking questions” (we get a lot of those on .world, it’s like the instance attracts them), please, please give these YouTube videos a watch:
https://youtu.be/EmT0i0xG6zg https://youtu.be/qfUsuQ8rfu4
The shorter one is from a cis man, but it seems to me that he explains the idea very well, at least behind the sports thing. And I promise that the longer one is worth it. It will help you understand a deeply marginalized segment of the population much better, and you will be a better person for it. I think that’s worth 2 hours.
JK Rowling argument put simply is that women need a safe space, that there are opportunistic men that will abuse workarounds that let them access this safe space, therefore there needs to be tighter regulations on who can enter the safe space.
Does she address that argument in some part of the video?
Yes.
Sorry, at what time?
Why not just watch the video?
Its very long, and is mostly fluff.
It boils down to this for me: If some bad actor is going to pretend to be trans to access some naked lady area, why are we trying to punish actual trans people for that by taking away their access to bathrooms and healthcare?
It’s just stupid.
Such a good point
Thank you for this. I will absolutely go through both videos.
I appreciate the context you provided as well. In my mind it makes sense that someone willing to break the law to hurt people isn’t going to stop because the sign on the door says it’s not for them. That argument never felt particularly strong to me, and I’m glad that you’ve affirmed it basically doesn’t happen.
I’m no troll, and am truly trying to understand further.
Thanks again for your time, I hope to be able to watch those videos soon.
I don’t think you’re a bad person, i think you’re falling into the trap of trying to give bigots the benefit of the doubt.
Most bigoted opinions are manufactured by special interest groups, when you realize that you stop caring about what bigots think or empathizing with them.
Thank you for your openness and candor. I hope you find what you’re looking for.
People have decided she’s literally Hitler and so are you if you disagree with them. This isn’t a subject where discourse is allowed. The point is to make any dissent of any size unacceptable and to make sure no one is questioning anything, 100% unquestioning acceptance is the only option here, no questions allowed, accept it at face value. People can’t accept things they’re not allowed to think through and thinking issues around transness through means you’re a bigot, fully accept it or you’re a bigot… don’t bother talking to people about this here, there’s no point, shades of gray and nuisanced through is forbidden
You say this as if she doesn’t have a long and exceedingly public history of racism and transphobia.
I don’t think this is the right take.
I think perhaps people on the Internet get jaded towards questions and discourse because it’s often disingenuous or just trolling. Do they jump to a conclusion? Perhaps, but it also feels like you may have here.
My comment above is currently (and I expect forever) sitting in the negative, I think this is probably for the reason you stated. I’m going to leave it as is because it’s an honest starting point for me, and hopefully it’ll also help someone else come in, see a resonance with how they think, and also learn something. One commenter already provided videos for me to study and learn from, which I will do as soon as I can.
I’m hoping overall people understand that I’m coming from a place of honest curiosity and openness. I see all the bigotry around and it disgusts me. I just want to make sure I understand this topic as much as I can as a cis-male.
Having a few people born biological males in your change room or gym class isnt going to ruin your life, theres nothing they can see there that they cant see on the internet.
I mean unless a woman has posted her naked body publicly online then this isn’t really a true point. You actually cannot see anything of mine online and no women aren’t all the same person where if you know/see one you live known/seen them all… saying “you can see boobs online” doesn’t mean what you think it does because no, you cannot see mine online
Well, let’s just be happy that Rowling is jy low pretty old and that we’ll all likely outlive her.
Imagine what good things could be done with the money instead of using it for stuff that’s non of her business. The older they get, the more conservative they turn out to be - sad for someone who brought a wonderful world to life once…
Pirating Harry Potter stuff is now not only a moral thing to do, but almost a moral obligation.
Just pirated the whole movie series lol
I’d say just don’t engage with it at all.
If someone talks about it, pretend ignorance. Like total ignorance of any aspect of the stories.
Or, if someone mentions it, just say you don’t give bigots money.
Editing to expand: by pirating you are perpetuating the cultural impact. The majority of people pay for access to this media, and by engaging with it you make it more costly for other people to skip it.
Maybe once they are dead, because history is history. But otherwise…
She has fallen so far.
This is why the new tv series will be hated by all. They had a chance to remake and sanitize the series away from the grimy hands of JK and instead they doubled down. So if anything this remake might be even more offensive.
The wild thing is that growing up I had all the conservatives and bible people trying to stop us kids from reading the demonic Harry Potter novels. Now that they realize the author is one of them, they suddenly love the books about witchcraft!
They will cast Snape as black and the audience will wonder why Harry immediately hates him.
Are you not aware that Snape literally has been cast as black? Because if not that’s hilarious coincidence.
That’s the confusing thing to me, clearly the left audience is done with JK, but the show is also pissing off the right with “woke casting”
Just like the best selling game of the year, Hogwarts Legacy.
I don’t think Hogwarts: Legacy doubled down, though? It’s definitely sad that she made money off that game being sold, but she didn’t have any hand in the writing. The game has trans characters and allows the player to be trans as well.
she does profit from the IP being sold. and people were like defending the game and her transphobia.
My comment was only to point out that the mainstream does not care about JKR’s take on trans people and that anything Harry Potter will print money, which is the opposite of OP’s take on things.
Unfortunately, they won’t be hated. A lot of people don’t actually care all that much about trans people :(
Or anyone else for that matter
All the simps and useful idiots constantly shocked when their money is used against them.
Every dollar spent on these initiatives is another dollar that could’ve been taken off the price of what useful idiots paid her.
FUCK OFF JK YOU FUCKING TWAT.
Thar is all
