Wouldn’t it be a shame if the website got DDOS’d, the email account ([email protected]) got spammed to shit and the morally bankrupt legal firm facilitating this also got something coming to their website (see email)
(in a hypothetical way) What if someone send to this JKR email a link to futa hentai with Harry Potter characters.
J.K. Rowling is using her wealth attained from the Harry Potter series to create an organization dedicated to removing transgender people’s rights "in the workplace, in public life, and in protected female spaces.”
I need some help with this topic.
I never got into Harry Potter; I watched some of the older films, but I’ve never read the books. I was born in ‘83, so it never hit me like the folks in my younger brother’s and little cousins’ generation. I only knew of Rowling’s statements about trans people over the years tangentially and largely dismissed it as background noise. I assumed that she considers herself a TERF (trans-exclusionary radical feminist), as opposed to a TIRF (trans-inclusive radical feminist).
On the assumption that I’m correct about her position, what is the true essence of the disagreement between TERFs and TIRFs?
Is it that the presence of the Y chromosome in male-to-female trans people inherently adds a fundamental “maleness” that “true feminists” must inherently oppose due to the overt and implied threats to women that “maleness” represents?
Is it simply a feminist version of a “No True Scotsman” fallacy or an “Appeal to Nature” fallacy?
Maybe both?
The opposite of a TERF is a Non Exclusive Radical Feminist, because it’s NERF or nothing
TERFs can also be called Feminism-Appropriating Radical Transphobes, or FART
terfs also love to collab with nazis too.
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TIRFs are not opposed to maleness. TERFism is a conservative psy-op that started when Mary Daly (who wrote magical divine goddess mother bullshit) and Janice Raymond (who accidentally kicked off trans studies by outing and harassing a trans woman named Sandy Stone - The Transexual Empire leading to Stone’s The Empire Strikes Back)
TIRFism recognizes that there is an axis of oppression that lies at the roots of imposed sex roles. The vast majority of women over history have been unarguably subject to men. Many women live in systems which are focused on controlling their sexuality, and are often barred and restricted from certain activities - due to both explicit and encultured messages.
The ideal TIRF society eliminates gender as a restriction. If anyone had actually read Andrea Dworkin, instead of taking Rush Limbaugh’s pastiche of her work at face value, they would find the TIRF society is one where gender is essentially just self expression. If we got rid of “man” or “woman” - maybe girls in Afghanistan would be able to go to school, or maybe sex wouldn’t be understood as a defilement of women (which I think is deeply connected to the problem of rape - rape is less an act of sexual desire and more a desire for subjugation that is tied to sexual power through this messaging that we desire to eliminate.)
The project of the TIRF is ultimately that the only way to truly end sexism would be to understand all humans as fundamentally ambiguous, to not hold anyone to any kind of sex role.
This is the fundamental irony behind the TERF movement. Rather than reject the gender and sex binary, they reify and enforce it. Daly was a wacky Catholic theologian who turned God into a mom, and decided that women were just special magical spiritual beings. This devotion to some kind of divine womanhood is common among the lesbian separatist types (it’s really disturbing seeing that space have the same deranged arguments of the 70’s…)
The problem is that TERFs are just not feminists. If Rowling cared about women, she wouldn’t be finding these women who realize that they can get their 15 minutes by intentionally throwing a boxing or fencing match. TERFs gleefully team up with the same groups that attack women’s reproductive health care - which I view as the most critical feminist issue at the moment (along the world wide surges in fascistic ideologies - which do tend to be expressions of a threatened male gender role, attempting to reassert those boundaries. The goddamn President is a serial rapist.)
That’s probably confusing and elaborate, there’s a lot of theory behind what I’m saying. I’m happy to answer or clarify, I think a critical part of countering this shit is to stop letting Rowling and the alt right redefine the term feminist.
I have to admit, I had to re-read your response several times to comprehend your points properly.
No slight intended to you; this subject has always been difficult for me to parse correctly and, in turn, respond with any thoughtful or logical relevance. My expression of thought tends to be more clumsy than I would like to admit.
After some consideration of your reply, I think the answer to my question is that TERF position suffers from both of the fallacies I listed in my original supposition, and probably many more that I’m not recalling or aware of.
Considering your two following statements:
TIRFs are not opposed to maleness.
and…
Daly was a wacky Catholic theologian who turned God into a mom, and decided that women were just special magical spiritual beings. This devotion to some kind of divine womanhood is common among the lesbian separatist types
…would it be safe to conclude that TERFs do (in a way) oppose the “maleness” of the Y chromosome as an affront to the purity of their “feminity”? I know I’m repeating my question, but their ethos reminded me of the “single-drop-of blood” policies on ethnic identity from the segregationists of the American South.
It’s certainly an absurdity, and many times a dark one at that, observing upon what proverbial hills people choose to die on publicly these days.
I wonder: does she admit to identifying with or publicly support the Tories, Nigel Farage and/or other “Brexiteers”, or other conservative personalities and politicians within the UK? Generally speaking, I refuse to use the “Alt-Right” label, as contend that there’s nothing “alternative” to naked authoritarian conservatism about it.
I suppose I should just look it up, but I thought I’d ask.
her books do allude thier her transphobia, and a little anti-semitism quite a bit, its low key.
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 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.
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.
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.
Edit, reordered my statements so my current position is clear at the start
As far as I know, if you’re a dude, you can already just walk into womens bathrooms. 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 women, who were born women and were always women, who don’t happen to look “feminine” enough (ETA: or the opposite, cis men who don’t look manly 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.
Yeah that one argument never felt particularly strong to me anyway, like men transitioning to win at sports or whatever.
i was going to say transphobia always relate to mysogyny and homophobia as well.
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.
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.
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.
Thank you for your openness and candor. I hope you find what you’re looking for.
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.
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.
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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
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.
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!
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.
How is Hagrid an angry person?
He’s super kind. A tad emotional at times, but not angry.
Also the Irish kid blowing up things is from the movies, not from the books.
anyone who pushes against the natural order is wrong
I mean I get where you’re coming from, I’ve always been bothered by the whole premise of “lol if the muggles knew we had magic they want us to help them so we can’t tell them” and just how unrealistic it would be to be able to keep such a thing a secret, especially when it’s canon and central to the story even that sometimes muggle families have a magical kid, and it can even be just one of siblings. Tweeners are so bad at keeping secrets. Imagine that you’re in a regular school and have regular friends until you’re 11 and then just vanish from their lives or somehow manage to still see them but… you won’t tell them you’re actually magic? Anything about what you’re studying, where your school is, etc etc? Right.
However we can’t deny that within that world the deatheaters are clearly even more racist and evil, and that the main characters fight against them.
Anyway Rowling is batshit nowadays I’m not defending her but I found your criticism factually inaccurate at those small parts so…
It is kinda silly how the wizarding society treats elves, but also it’s not as crazy diegetically, because the crazy author has written the story in the way that the house-elves actually do pretty much crave it. Which in itself is kinda… ew, but it’s not as offensive as it sounds, imo, as the starting concept, seeing as she was probably taking inspiration of mythical house elves, and those are sort of a more respectful concept, but clearly where JKR has drawn from.
The early house elves were by no means merely benevolent figures. The elf was believed to observe the life of the household very closely and judgementally. If the household members did not live in a well-behaved and diligent manner, the easily irritated elf could remind them of his existence, for example by causing a disturbance similar to haunting. At worst, the elf could leave the ill-mannered house altogether, taking happiness away from the house.
Christmas was an important celebration for house elves. On Christmas night, people would prepare a plate of porridge for the elf and put it where the elf was known to live, such as the sauna, barn, stable or attic. It was also customary to leave food for elves at the Christmas table for Christmas night.
https://www.kansallismuseo.fi/en/items-of-the-month/2022/tontut
That’s Finnish folklore, not JKR’s writings. I’ve left out food for tonttus as a kid.
She’s such a scumbag. Had it all and ruined her name and art for what? To be hateful? Shame on her and shame on HBO for handing her more money and fueling her hate.
FUCK OFF JK YOU FUCKING TWAT.
Thar is all
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Yes, women’s “rights” to be transphobic essentially. The J.K. Rowling Women’s Fund, the organization she is founding, uses TERF dogwishtles in their mission statement right on their page. “Overly inclusive policies”. Come on.
Hey the mods removed my reply. I wonder what perfectly reasonable reason they’ll cite.
I’m gonna take it at face value. You seem to be spinning a bit.
Sometimes you gotta look at the context. It’s like the US civil war. A good chunk of the country will swear up and down it was fought over states’ rights and leave it at that.
States’ rights to do what?
Slavery.
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!
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.
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.
she does profit from the IP being sold. and people were like defending the game and her transphobia.
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
They had a chance to remake and sanitize the series away from the grimy hands of JK
Did they really? My impression was that she used her copyright control
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”
Boycotts work! Don’t watch her show on HBO and cancel your subscription after The Last of Us season finale of course. If her brand becomes toxic nobody will fund projects around it and she will fade into obscurity.
To many people care more about their immediate shiny than any lasting harm their actions do in the world.
Just look at how quickly the Nintendo Switch 2 sold out preorders, despite explicitly telling customers they won’t even own the device, and thus nintendo can fucking brick the thing whenever they want.
Don’t watch anything of hers on anything, like she’ll still be getting royalties for films.
I didn’t subscribe to HBO when Game of Thrones was airing, I’m not about to start now.
Pirating Harry Potter stuff is now not only a moral thing to do, but almost a moral obligation.
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.
Even if you pirated, speaking about the movies will encourage other people to watch it, and they might not pirate it. It’s indirect, but it could still give that transphobic doll money
Maybe once they are dead, because history is history. But otherwise…
I have always hated Harry Potter. I hated Harry before it was cool to hate Harry.
I’m a mother fucking golden hipster God!
Just pirated the whole movie series lol
It’s this actually new? Wasn’t it already known that she did that?
I mean to be fair, if she’s going to make hating LGBT people her whole personality, we might as well make sure to keep mentioning how ACTIVE she is in her hate.
It would be one thing if she had just said some nasty shit a decade ago, but this goofy lady wakes up and chooses violence every god damned day.
Her twitter is mostly about trans people instead of HP too. She could have just kept quiet and kept having her PR team sweep all the transphobic tweets she was liking under the rug like they did early on before she went full mask off. But no, she wants to get rid of all the queer people and is actively working to try to make that happen.
Last time she talked about Harry Potter on Twitter, she told everyone that wizards just used to shit themselves until someone invented the toilet.
That’s the thing. I basically already assumed she more or less financed multiple terf organizations all by herself
What a miserable person. More money than God and all she can do is sit around hating people she’s never met.
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It amazes me how some people just refuse to put their money to anything actually useful.
If I had money, I promise I’d do something useful with it. Like putting up a shed in my garden.
In addition to the shed you already have? If so, I must ask: Are you, in fact, Arthur “Two Sheds” Jackson?
I am not, but can you lend me a bob until next Thursday to mend the shed? I am expecting a postal order and can pay you back as soon as it comes. Love, Ewan.
I’d love to, but unfortunately have recently committed all my available funds to a business venture in Nigeria, and I’m currently awaiting the results. Once that is resolved, I’m expecting to have significant financial flexibility, and at that point, I would be in a much better position to lend.
Take care, Ken Shabby (deceased)
The story so far: Rosamund’s father has become ensnared by Mr. Shabby’s extraordinary personal magnetism. Bob and Janet have eaten Mr. Farquar’s goldfish during an Oxfam lunch, and Mrs. Elsmore’s marriage is threatened by Doug’s insistence that he is on a different level of consciousness. Louise’s hernia has been confirmed, and Jim, Bob’s brother, has run over the editor of the ‘Lancet’ on his way to see Jenny, a freelance Pagoda designer. On the other side of the continent Napoleon still broods over the smoldering remains of a city he had crossed half the earth to conquer…
I heard a YouTuber refer to her as Jeepers Kreepers Rowling recently, and it makes me giggle. What an awful woman.
I’m partial to Joule Kelvin Rowling, myself.
I was one of those fanboys. Now I don’t think im even gonna pirate the show. I don’t want her to have THOSE numbers either. I also haven’t bothered past the second fantastic beasts even to just see how bad it is. I just…don’t fucking care after the second movie lol
Aside from hurting Trans people, these things hurt women both those afab or not, and given the numbers of each group they end up hurting way, way, way more cisgender women. So every opportunity, every interview with Rowling, every comment on a tweet to her should be “What happened that made you hate women this much?”.
I mean it’s sad that she can’t love the trans, but if that was just a prrsonal dislike, ok everyone has barely rational likes and dislikes, can’t be helped. But to make that public, and then to go to these lengths, to sacrifice the safety of all women on the altar of that hate and fear, that is truly sick and sickening.
So the question is “JO, WHY DO YOU HATE WOMEN???”
Because because of her hate mongering, women are getting in trouble and often beat up for going to the bathroom, get humiliated by having to “prove” they’re “real” women to pushy agressive bigots. I fully expect one day to lose my job and end up in jail for beating up some such asshole who thinks they should humiliate my wife or daughters that way.
The greatest achievement of gender critical ideology is getting women to voluntarily give men jurisdiction to police their bodies and presentation. To the Rowlings and Parkers, any number of cisgender women hurt by their ideology is worth it in their quest of erasing trans people out of public life.
