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Post by twigz on Sept 24, 2020 9:20:47 GMT -5
I don't know if this has been touched upon on 667, but I was wondering what your thoughts are on JK Rowling as she currently stands, especially with her new book concerning a “transvestite serial killer” which has been heavily criticised in the media.
some sources to read:
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Post by Reba on Sept 24, 2020 9:48:02 GMT -5
often i see, that if a celeb is active on twitter, they will eventually develop an obsession about one thing or another.... that's what social media does to your mind... harry potter good books tho, i like the man ones too
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Post by Christmas Chief on Sept 24, 2020 11:03:03 GMT -5
I'm going to shimmy this over to Disturbing Discussion.
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Post by Poe's Coats Host Toast on Sept 24, 2020 11:32:19 GMT -5
I had to look up the definition of TERF, as I usually avoid such neologisms due to the toxic culture I often see associated with them. Case in point: the overly aggressive way such self-styled activists have reacted to some of Rowling's statements, and how the word TERF seems to be used as an insult (maybe I'm wrong about the latter, though). As for her stance, I had to look that up, too; Until now I've only vaguely heard about her opinions on trans issues having caused scandal. Having read up on it, incl. her essay on the matter, I think that the core of the issue people take with her is that she thinks biological women have "unifying realities that make them a cohesive political class". Such as it is, I don't really see the problem with that; it's a valid political stance, as is her issue with gender confirmation certificates being granted without any need for surgery or hormones. I would even call her brave for making her nonconformist stance public despite the inevitable backlash. I myself haven't made up my mind on these issues and whether to agree or disagree with Rowling (especially since I am neither natal woman nor trans person, so what do I know). Her upcoming book doesn't bode well, since trans people have often been unfairly associated with serial killers, but I guess I have no way of knowing how she handles it until I read the book (or at least someone's analysis of the book in that regard); Have no interest in it, though.
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Post by twigz on Sept 25, 2020 21:17:00 GMT -5
Some more readings here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/lgbt/comments/gytrdi/reharry_potter_and_everyone_wondering_if_they_can/ qr.ae/pNoQbywww.distractify.com/p/robert-galbraith-conversion-therapywww.distractify.com/p/jk-rowling-anti-trans-threadMost notably that her Pen name for her non HP series is ~Robert Galbraith~."Robert Galbraith Heath was an anti-LGBTQ+ therapist who actually developed harmful practices that are now known as 'conversion therapy' ". One of my closest friends is trans, and i've talked to him extensively about this, where JK's statements align with the transphobes that he has experiences in his everyday life, despite interpretation. It's a complex topic because of course she only shares a small portion of her beliefs online, but I do think that her words are of detriment to marginalised communities.
Similar issues with intolerance occur in the HP series, with examples of the only south-east Asian character being named Cho Chang, which is likened to "ching chong", and a lack of POC inclusion throughout the series. Werewolves being allegorical to HIV/AIDs etc... Dumbledore has been canonically deemed as homosexual, but this was communicated by JK on Twitter several years after the books, and not in her writing. This may be showed in the Fantastic Beasts franchise, although this will be in the 10th book within the series,,, so clearly she's in no rush for inclusion.
Now I love the HP books, and I have won trivia trophies because I was so passionate about the universe, but I can also acknowledge the faults and see how her work has been written through a prejudiced lens.
Wouldn't you want to see your cultures and communities represented?
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Post by Poe's Coats Host Toast on Sept 26, 2020 0:02:19 GMT -5
Yeah, but nobody ever picked up HP to read it for its diversity. They're good books for what they are (as children's books and escapist fantasy), but never meant to have been more than that. Other popular media were no more 'inclusive' than the HP books at the time of their publication.
As for Cho Chang and werewolves/HIV, I think that's quite a stretch.
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Post by twigz on Sept 26, 2020 6:39:38 GMT -5
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Post by Reba on Sept 26, 2020 8:47:27 GMT -5
ok now this is some conspiracy theory salsa LMAO
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Post by Dante on Oct 1, 2020 7:24:34 GMT -5
Disclaimer that I am not familiar with any of JKR's works beyond the original seven books, Cursed Child, and the first Fantastic Beasts movie. ok now this is some conspiracy theory salsa LMAO Which part, exactly? Almost every major statement in this thread is straight from JKR's pen. The only element that's particularly dubious is the origin of her Cormoran Strike pseudonym in Robert Galbraith Heath, a gay conversion therapist, which I happen to agree is a coincidence; she appears keen to be seen to sympathise with gay people and it's not clear that Heath's middle name was widely used. It's a very on-brand coincidence for the modern J.K. Rowling who splits her time between writing and ranting about transgender people on Twitter, but in this one instance I'm inclined to give her the benefit of the doubt. The werewolf/HIV connection is confirmed by JKR personally, as linked above. I'm inclined to think it's a clumsy but well-meaning allegory, not uncharacteristic of much in the books in their sociohistorical period; the article linked above might have benefited from mentioning the wolfsbane potion used to alleviate the symptoms of lycanthropy in the books, but then again it also omits mention of the evil werewolf who goes around deliberately infecting people, which is an extraordinarily tasteless choice in the context of a deliberate metaphor, so if anything it's nonetheless going too easy on her. I'm dubious of the claim that Lupin was deliberately gay-coded; but then again I didn't think the gay coding between Dumbledore and Grindelwald in Deathly Hallows was deliberate, and that turned out to be very canon (some say you couldn't determine their relationship from the books, but I remember mentioning it as a seemingly unintended reading long before JKR's pronouncement on the subject). I find it hard to hold the lack of overtly gay characters in the books against her for the simple reason that society has progressed a lot in the past decade alone, and featuring openly gay characters in a children's book back in the 90s or early 2000s was largely unthinkable; I recall that on this very forum, in 2005, some of us feared a potential backlash for Snicket for having obliquely hinted at Sir and Charles being gay. Fast-forward to 2019, and things have progressed so much that the adaptation of the same book feels comfortable deciding that Sir isn't even good enough a partner for Charles and gives him a better one. Perhaps we over-reacted in 2005, but such was the influence wielded by the Religious Right at the time that it seemed plausible. Continuing the subject of "clumsy but well-meaning for the sociohistorical period", Hogwarts is actually pretty ethnically diverse, perhaps unsurprisingly given the race metaphor running throughout the series, although it's a fair point that JKR doesn't appear particularly interested in many of the non-white characters. Cho Chang is a pretty weak name, but in context I find it unlikely it was consciously based on a slur and would say that the bigger problem is that JKR's non-English naming game hasn't improved since (hence the debacle over the names of various international wizarding schools). A lot boils down to JKR's intentions with the books being unprovable but unexceptionable at the time; and while prejudice may fit her later patterns, I'm not convinced it fits her earlier patterns. All of which is something of a secondary issue to what this thread is actually about, mind. So, my thoughts on JKR as she currently stands - and it is the "current" that's the problem. In the context of their publication period, the Harry Potter books were in a position to be praised for their tolerant, anti-prejudice narrative. It's easy to look back on them as insufficient or even suspicious, but I find it hard to say that the books did any harm in their moment, and if the only problem was that Harry Potter had aged poorly, that would be something that could be fixed with new material. Instead, J.K. Rowling appears to be devoting her time to a bizarre obsession with trans people, and specifically the bogeyman of trans women as a danger to other women. I sympathise with her concern for women's welfare in a misogynist landscape, but it is deeply unfortunate that she has so misdirected her ire. From what I recall of some of her earlier statements, she neither understands trans people nor is particularly interested in trying to better understand, having apparently declined overtures from a trans children's charity. As somebody who enjoyed the original books, it is difficult to watch as JKR goes through the motions of her own bigoted villains, regurgitating the transphobic stereotypes doubtless instilled in her youth and decrying and marshalling against a statistically tiny group of people who it would be frank understatement to say are more sinned against than sinning. I recommend this breakdown of JKR's more infamous essay on her position.
In short: I wouldn't describe myself as a fan anymore.
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Post by Reba on Oct 1, 2020 9:03:06 GMT -5
the idea that, because of rowling's transphobia, her past work can now be dissected to reveal cleverly coded anti-lgbt and even racist references (that Robert Galbraith is an homage to an obscure psychologist, or that Cho Chang is meant to sound like Ching Chong) is pure conspiracy theory.
but at the same time, it is bizarre how she is being criticized for a lack of 'inclusion' -- rowling is the queen of tokenistic diversity. from Seamus, the token irish kid, to the Patils, the token indian kids, to Dean the token black kid -- hell, the Weasleys are token gingers, the Malfoys are token blonds. and in the last decade, she has made up any number of other 'inclusionary' details after the fact, both to appease the fans who like that sort of thing, and because that's how her worldbuilding works: whether Dumbledore's sexuality, or lycanthropy being 'like' HIV (which hardly counts anyway, as she just said she wanted to show a social stigma in the wizarding world). this facile neoliberal sense of diversity for the sake of diversity is what she has always striven for, so it's a bit funny that as soon as she reveals one prejudice, the same fans who largely share her political views are now turning her efforts against her, saying that she didn't do it well enough or that her inclusions were just stereotypes (no salsa, that's what happens when a sheltered white english lady tries to write arbitrary diversity)
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Post by twigz on Oct 1, 2020 9:12:45 GMT -5
I just want to add that my thread didn't come from a place of hatred, just curiosity. As JK is an influential woman (who once had more money than the Queen of England), the utilisation of her platform for controversy is interesting to observe. I am not a fan of "cancel-culture" and I believe everybody has the ability to redeem themselves, I hope her future storytelling (and subsequent hefty charity donations) will prove us wrong.
“People aren't either wicked or noble. They're like chef's salads, with good things and bad things chopped and mixed together in a vinaigrette of confusion and conflict.”
I agree with Dante, where currently she is not representative of the acceptance she once wrote about, so hopefully discussions like this will encourage introspection.
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Post by Poe's Coats Host Toast on Oct 1, 2020 18:26:55 GMT -5
I think Rowling's main deal with trans rights is that she expects the worst out of biological men who are put in a situation that could potentially enable sexual predators. But this attitude would not be limited to trans people, nor does it imply that trans people are more inclined to rape than cis people, which is an implication Rowling is being accused of. As such, I don't find Rowling's "obsession" with this issue "bizarre" - considering she's a survivor of sexual abuse - rather than possibly misguided. Whether she's right or wrong in her assumptions, as far as I can see, really can only be gauged after the fact; i.e. by future crime statistics once the currently-developed laws regarding trans rights (see: gender certification) are put into action (as they have started to be). As of now, we don't seem to have enough data to statistically support or argue against her slippery slope argument, or else her detractors would have brought up such data.
AJ Carter, whose rebuttal Dante has linked to (and I've now spent the whole evening reading and writing this paragraph about), actually does go briefly into the issue, but his proof is lacking, to say the least. It's a complex issue (which I believe Carter exploits), so brace yourself for a longish paragraph or skip to the TLDR. Carter provides a link to a research article, when he (Carter) states that "trans women are no more a threat to cis women than other cis women", but the article does not back that statement up. First of all, that study's subject focus was a different one, namely the comparative mortality rate of 324 sex-reassigned people, i.e. those who did undergo "hormonal treatment and surgery" (and of which only 191 were male-to-female). Secondly, Carter cherry-picked his own statement on the basis of a paragraph that actually undermines his position (emphasis added): Carter then provides a link to (and a vague quote from) an interview with the conductor of the research (Cecilia Dhejne), that addresses the uncomfortable above paragraph of the study. In said interview, Dhejne merely clarifies that the criminality rate ("rates of convictions") was not exclusive to rape, and basically that the study "didn't control for that", i.e. "that" being more nuanced factors (since, as mentioned before, this was not the focus of the study). TLDR: These findings do not support the claim that trans women are not a threat (as cis men are) to cis women in certain compromising situations that could indeed be facilitated by handed-out gender certification without hormonal treatment and/or surgery. Thus, Rowling's slippery slope argument is not proven to be fallacious. A separate point Rowling brings up to a lesser degree is that allowing life-altering transsexual procedures for underage teenagers is not a good idea, which is an issue I do think she is out of her depth to be speaking about (and I am too uninformed to comment on). I can see how this, paired with other implications she makes, adds up to what might be described as a transphobic agenda, but it doesn't invalidate some of her points, nor where she is coming from as a female advocate of women's rights. While I didn't know the HIV/lycanthropy thing was confirmed by the author (which I'd say is problematic, not necessarily homophobic), I still agree with bear that people are just reading things into the HP books, in order to further label the author as x-phobic. I've even seen some ridiculous claim that the Gringotts goblins in HP are a conscious antisemitic caricature, for God's sake. twigz , I don't think that is what you meant to do by starting this interesting discussion topic, but a lot of the discussion elsewhere is just kids jumping on the hate-bandwagon going "oh, she's not just against trans rights, but is also racist, antisemitic, homophobic, ablist (etc)".
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