#i don’t like discourse under any circumstances like if I get myself involved I’m real irritated

[katnissmellarkkk]

I just re-read my old comment on someone else’s post and now I’m thinking about the epilogue again 🥹.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, we’ve all heard and seen the posts saying “Peeta forced her to have babies!” Which, okay, if you’ve read the book and connect with his character, you already realize that isn’t true. But I’m just saying, if you eradicate away that bad take, Peeta actively wanting children is such a good step for his character. It indicates so much healing on his part? In those fifteen years before they had their children, Peeta didn’t just grow back to loving Katniss but also himself. The boy who was hijacked, who didn’t know who he even was during the war, would never have wanted to have a baby. Even the boy on the beach, who was preparing to die in a matter of hours, would never have chosen to have a child. The fact that Peeta wanted the toastbabies strongly indicates how he feels about himself. He no longer thinks himself a monster or a mutt or even a bad person. He sees himself for who he is, good and bad and scars and all.

And this also goes hand in hand with another implication. We already know Katniss and Peeta end up back together again but the fact that Peeta wants the kids means he not only believes himself to be a good parent but he sees Katniss as one. No one — especially not someone who’s seen the dark side of the world as much as Peeta has — is ever going to try for kids with someone they don’t think highly of. If you want children with a person, you’re pretty convinced they’re going to be a good parent. The fact that Peeta, who was brainwashed into thinking Katniss is a mutt, who tried to kill her for what he thought was his own protection, who saw only the worst in her amplified — and then some — and who had to struggle within himself to even be in the same vicinity as her, actually convinced her she’d be a good parent, that she would give their children an amazing, happy life, full of hope and understanding and love above all else, tells you everything you need to know about how he sees her in the end.

[shihalyfie]

Hi :) If it's not too much trouble, could you please share your take on why they'd continue the Adventure brand after tri. was such a flop? (and a tangent: what does "dark history" even mean?). We got Kizuna, the reboot, and a 02 movie. Logically, it doesn't really make sense they'd keep investing in it.

This is a thorny topic, and I'd like to reiterate that although I've ended up making more posts related to this series and the discourse surrounding it recently (probably because it's even more on the mind now that another movie is on the horizon and a lot of people are apprehensive for various reasons), I do not want this blog to be making a brand out of being critical of this series. I’m writing this here and in public because I figured that there is a certain degree I need to clarify what I mean about audience reception/climate and how it might impact current or future works, and I’m admittedly also more than a little upset that I occasionally see Western fanbase criticisms of the series getting dismissed by people claiming that the only people mad about it are dramamongering or ignorant Westerners (which could not be further from the truth). However, this is mainly to address this and to answer your question, and is not intended to try and change anyone's existing opinion or impression of the series as much as it's me trying to explain (from my own personal reading of the situation) what practically went down with critical reception in real life; no more, no less.

The short summary of the matter is:

The series was a moderate financial success (albeit with some caveats; see the long version for details) and definitely outstripped a lot of prior attempts to revive the franchise;

However, the overall Japanese fanbase-side critical backlash from tri. was extremely and viciously negative to the point where even acknowledging the series too much could easily result in controversy;

Kizuna’s production and the PR surrounding it very obviously have this in mind with a lot of apparent “damage control” elements.

The long version is below.

Note that while I try to be diligent about citing my sources so people understand that I’m not just making things up wholesale, I’m deliberately refraining from linking certain things here this time, both because some of the things mentioned have some pretty crude things written there -- it’s not something I feel comfortable directing people to regardless of what language it’s in -- and because I don’t want to recklessly link things on social media and cause anyone to go after or harass the people involved. For the links that have been provided, please still be warned that some of them don’t really link to particularly pleasant things.

I am not writing the following information to suggest that anyone should agree or disagree with the sentiments being described. I know people tend to take "a lot of people like/hate this" as a signal of implication "it is correct to like/hate this" when it's not (and I especially dislike the idea of implying that Japanese fanbase opinions are the only correct ones). There's a reason I focus on "critical reception being this way" (because it influences marketing decisions and future direction) rather than how much this should impact one's personal feelings; this is coming from myself as someone who is shamelessly proud of liking many things that had bad critical reception, were financial failures, or are disliked by many. As I point out near the end, the situation also does seem to be changing for the better in more recent years as well.

Also, to be clear, I'm a single person who's observing everything best I can from my end, I have no affiliations with staff nor do I claim to, and as much as I'm capable of reading Japanese and thus reading a lot of people's impressions, I'm ultimately still another “outsider” looking in. These are my impressions from my observation of fan communal spaces, following artists and reading comments on social media and art posting websites, and results from social media searches. In the end, I know as much as anyone else about what happened, so this is just my two cents based on all of my personal observations.

A fanbase is a fanbase regardless of what part of the world you're from. There are people who love it and are shameless about saying so. There are people who have mixed feelings or at least aren't on extreme ends of the spectrum (as always, the loudest ones are always the most visible, but it's not always easy to claim they're the predominant percentage of the fanbase). That happens everywhere, and I still find that on every end I've seen. However, if I'm talking about my impressions and everything I’ve encountered, I will say that the overall Japanese reaction to tri. comes off as significantly more violently negative on average than the Western one, which is unusual because often it's the other way around. (I personally feel less so because the opinions are that fundamentally different and more so because we're honestly kind of loud and in-your-face people; otherwise, humans are mostly the same everywhere, and more often than not people feel roughly the same about everything if they’re given the same information to work with.)

This is not something I can say lightly, and thus would not say if I didn’t really get this impression, but...we're talking "casually looking up movie reviews for Kizuna have an overwhelming amount of people casually citing any acknowledgment of tri. elements as a negative element", or the fact that even communal wikis for "general" fandoms like Pixiv and Aniwota don't tend to hold back in being vicious about it (as of this writing, Pixiv's wiki refuses to consider it in the same timeline as Adventure, accusing it of being "a series that claims to be a sequel set three years after 02 but is in fact something different"). Again, there are people who openly enjoy it and actively advocate for it (and Pixiv even warns people to not lord over others about it condescendingly because of the fact that such people do exist), and this is also more of a reflection of “the hardcore fanbase on the Internet” and not necessarily the mainstream (after all, there are quite a few other Digimon works where the critical reception varies very heavily between the two). Nevertheless, the take-home is that the reputation is overall negative among the Internet fanbase to the point that this is the kind of sentiment you run into without trying all that hard.

I think, generally speaking, if we're just talking about why a lot of people resent the series, the reasons aren't that different from those on the Western side. However, that issue of "dark history" (黒歴史): there's a certain degree of demand from the more violently negative side of the fanbase that's, in a sense, asking official to treat it as a disgrace and never acknowledge it ever again, hence why Kizuna doing so much as borrowing things from it rather than rejecting it outright is still sometimes treated like it’s committing a sin. So it's somewhat close in spirit to a retcon movement, which is unusual because no other Digimon series gets this (not even 02; that was definitely a thing on the Western end, but while I'm sure there are people who hate it that much on their end too, I've never really seen it gain enough momentum for anyone to take it seriously). If anyone ever tells you that Japanese fanbases are nice to everything, either they don't know Japanese, are being willfully ignorant, or are lying to you, because there is such thing as drama in those areas, and in my experience, I've seen things get really nasty when things are sufficiently pushed over the edge, and if a fanbase wants to have drama, it will have drama. This happens to be one of those times.

(If you think this is extreme, please know that I also think so too, so I hope you really understand that me describing this sentiment does not mean I am personally endorsing it. Also, let me reiterate that the loudest section of the fanbase is not necessarily the predominant one; after all, as someone who’s been watching reactions to 02 over the years, I myself can attest that its hatedom has historically made it sound more despised than it actually is in practice.)

My impression is that the primary core sentiment behind why the series so much as existing and being validated is considered such an offense (rather than, say, just saying "wow, that writing was bad" and moving on) is heavily tied to the release circumstances the series came out in during 2015-2018, and the idea that "this series disrespected Adventure, and also disrespected the fanbase.” (I mean, really, regardless of what part of the world you’re from, sequels and adaptations tend to be held to a higher bar of expectation than standalone works, because they’re expected to do them justice.) A list of complaints I’ve come across a lot while reading through the above:

The Japanese fanbase is pretty good at recordkeeping when it comes to Adventure universe lore, partially because they got a lot of extra materials that weren’t localized, but also partially because adherence to it seems to generally be more Serious Business to them than it is elsewhere. For instance, “according to Adventure episode 45, ‘the one who wishes for stability’ (Homeostasis) only started choosing children in 1995, and therefore there can be no Chosen Children before 1995” is taken with such gravity that this, not anything to do with evolutions or timeline issues, is the main reason Hurricane Touchdown’s canonicity was disputed in that arena (because Wallace implies that he met his partners before 1995). It’s a huge reason the question of Kizuna also potentially not complying to lore came to the forefront, because tri. so flagrantly contradicts it so much that this issue became very high on the evaluation checklist. In practice, Kizuna actually goes against Adventure/02 very little, so the reason tri. in particular comes under fire for this is that it does it so blatantly there were theories as early as Part 1 that this series must take place in a parallel universe or something, and as soon as it became clear it didn’t, the resulting sentiment was “wow, you seriously thought nobody would notice?” (thus “disrespecting the audience”).

A lot of the characterization incongruity is extremely obvious when you’re following only the Japanese version, partially because it didn’t have certain localization-induced characterization changes (you are significantly less likely to notice a disparity with Mimi if you’re working off the American English dub where they actually did make her likely to step on others’ toes and be condescending, whereas in Japanese the disparity is jarring and hard to miss) and partially due to some things lost in translation (Mimi improperly using rough language on elders is much easier to spot as incongruity if you’re familiar with the language). Because it’s so difficult to miss, and honestly feels like a lot of strange writing decisions you’d make only if you really had no concept of what on earth happened in the original series, it only contributes to the idea that they were handling Adventure carelessly and disrespectfully without paying attention to what the series was even about (that, or worse, they didn’t care).

02 is generally well-liked there! It’s controversial no matter where you go, but as I said earlier, there was no way a retcon movement would have ever been taken seriously, and the predominant sentiment is that, even if you’re not a huge fan of it, its place in canon (even the epilogue) should be respected. So not only flagrantly going against 02-introduced lore but also doing that to a certain quartet is seen as malicious, and you don’t have as much of the converse discourse celebrating murdering the 02 quartet (yeah, that’s a thing that happened here) or accusing people with complaints of “just being salty because they like 02″ as nearly as much of a factor; I did see it happen, or at least dismissals akin to “well it’s Adventure targeted anyway,” but they were much less frequent. The issue with the 02 quartet is usually the first major one brought up, and there’s a lot of complaints even among those who don’t care for 02 as much that the way they went about it was inhumane and hypocritical, especially when killing Imperialdramon is fine but killing Meicoomon is a sin. Also, again, “you seriously think nobody will see a problem with how this doesn’t make sense?”

I think even those who are fans of the series generally agree with this, but part of the reason the actual real-life time this series went on is an important factor is that the PR campaign for this series was godawful. Nine months of clicking on an egg on a website pretending like audience participation meant something when in actuality it was blatantly obvious it was just a smokescreen to reveal info whenever they were ready? This resulted in a chain effect where even more innocuous/defensible things were viewed in a suspicious or negative light (for instance, "the scam of selling the fake Kaiser's goggles knowing Ken fans would buy it only to reveal that it's not him anyway"), and a bunch of progressively out-of-touch-with-the-fanbase statements and poor choices led to more sentiment “yeah, you’re just insulting the fanbase at this point,” and a general erosion of trust in official overall.

On top of that, the choice of release format to have it spread out as six movies over three years seems to have exacerbated the backlash to get much worse than it would have been otherwise, especially since one of the major grievances with the series is that how it basically strung people along, building up more and more unanswered questions before it became apparent it was never going to answer them anyway. So when you’re getting that frustrated feeling over three whole years, it feels like three years of prolonged torture, and it becomes much harder to forgive for the fallout than if you’d just marathoned the entire thing at once.

For those who are really into the Digimon (i.e. species) lore and null canon, while I’m not particularly well-versed in that side of the fanbase, it seems tri. fell afoul of them too for having inaccurately portrayed (at one point, mislabeled) special attacks and poorly done battle choreography, along with the treatment of Digimon in general (infantilized Digimon characterization, general lack of Digimon characters in general, very flippant treatment of the Digital World in Parts 3-5). If you say you’re going to “reboot” the Digital World and not address the entire can of worms that comes with basically damaging an entire civilization of Digimon, as you can imagine, a lot of people who actually really care about that are going to be pissed, and the emerging sentiment is “you’re billing this as a Digimon work, but you don’t even care about the monsters that make up this franchise.”

The director does not have a very positive reputation among those who know his work (beyond just Digimon), and in general there was a lot of suspicion around the fact they decided to get a guy whose career has primarily been built on harem and fanservice anime to direct a sequel to a children’s series. Add to that a ton of increasingly unnerving statements about how he intended to make the series “mature” in comparison to its predecessor (basically, an implication that Adventure and 02 were happy happy joy series where nothing bad ever happened) and descriptions of Adventure that implied a very, very poor grasp of anything that happened in it: inaccurate descriptions of their characters, poor awareness of 02′s place in the narrative, outright saying in Febri that he saw the Digimon as like perpetual kindergartners even after evolving, and generally such a flippant attitude that it drove home the idea that the director of an Adventure sequel had no respect for Adventure, made this series just to maliciously dunk on it for supposedly being immature, and has such a poor grasp of what it even was that it’s possible he may not have seen it in the first place (or if he did, clearly skimmed it to the extent he understood it poorly to pretty disturbing levels). As of this writing, Aniwota Wiki directly cites him as a major reason for the backlash.

In general, consensus seems to be that the most positively received aspect of the series (story-wise) was Part 3 (mostly its ending, but some are more amenable to the Takeru and Patamon drama), and the worst vitriol goes towards Parts 2 (for the blatantly contradictory portrayal of Mimi and Jou and the hypocritical killing of Imperialdramon) and 4 (basically the “point of no return” where even more optimistic people started getting really turned off). This is also what I suspect is behind the numbers on the infamous DigiPoll (although the percentage difference is admittedly low enough to fall within margin of error). However, there was suspicion about the series even from Part 1, with one prominent fanartist openly stating that it felt more like meeting a ton of new people than it did reuniting with anyone they knew.

So with all of that on the table: how did this affect official? The thing is that when I say “violently negative”, I mean that also entailed spamming official with said violently negative social media comments. While this is speculation, I am fairly certain that official must have realized how bad this was getting as early as between Parts 4 and 5, because that’s where a lot of really suspicious things started happening behind the scenes; while I imagine the anime series itself was now too far in to really do anything about it, one of the most visible producers suddenly vanished from the producer lineup and was replaced by Kinoshita Yousuke, who ended up being the only member of tri. staff shared with Kizuna (and, in general, the fact that not a single member of staff otherwise was retained kind of says a lot). Once the series ended in 2018 and the franchise slowly moved into Kizuna-related things, you might notice that tri.-branded merch production almost entirely screeched to a halt and official has been very touchy about acknowledging it too deeply; it’s not that they don’t, but it’s kind of an awfully low amount for what you’d think would be warranted for a series that’s supposed to be a full entry in the big-name Adventure brand.

The reason is, simply, that if they do acknowledge it too much, people will get pissed at them. That’s presumably why the tri. stage play (made during that interim period between Parts 4 and 5 and even branded with the title itself) and Kizuna are really hesitant to be too aggressive about tri. references; it’s not necessarily that official wants to blot it out of history like the most extreme opinions would like them to, but even being too enthusiastic about affirming it will also get them backlash, especially if the things they affirm are contradictory to Adventure or 02. And considering even the small references they did put in still got them criticism for “affirming” tri. too much, you can easily see that the backlash would have been much harder if they’d attempted more than that; staying as close as possible to Adventure and 02 and trying to deal with tri. elements only when they’re comparatively inoffensive was pretty much the “safe” thing to do in this scenario (especially since fully denying tri. would most certainly upset the people who did like the series, and if you have to ask me, I personally think this would have been a pretty crude thing to have done right after the series had just finished). Even interviews taken after the fact often involve quickly disclaiming involvement with the series, or, if they have to bring up something about it, discussing the less controversial aspects like the art (while the character designs were still controversial, it’s at least at the point where some fanartists will still be willing to make use of them even if they dislike the series, albeit often with prominent disclaimers) or the more well-received parts of Part 3; Kizuna was very conspicuously marketed as a standalone movie, even if it shared the point of “the Adventure kids, but older” that tri. had.

(Incidentally, the tri. stage play has generally been met with a good reputation and was received well even among people who were upset with the anime, so it was well-understood that they had no relation. In fact, said stage play is probably even better received than Kizuna, although that’s not too surprising given the controversial territory Kizuna goes into, making the stage play feel very play-it-safe in comparison.)

So, if we’re going to talk about Kizuna in particular: tri. was, to some degree, a moderate financial success, in the sense that it made quite a bit of money and did a lot to raise awareness of the Digimon brand still continuing...however, if you actually look at the sales figures for tri., they go down every movie; part of it was probably because of the progressively higher “hurdle” to get into a series midway, but consider that Gundam Unicorn (a movie series which tri.’s format was often compared to) had its sales go up per movie thanks to word of mouth and hype. So while tri. does seem to have gotten enough money to help sustain the franchise at first, the trade-off was an extremely livid fanbase that had shattered faith in the brand and in official, and so while continuing the Adventure brand might still be profitable, there was no way they were going to get away with continuing to do this lest everything eventually crash and burn.

Hence, if you look at the way Kizuna was produced and advertised, you can see a lot of it is blatantly geared at addressing a lot of the woes aimed at tri.: instead of the staff that had virtually no affiliation with Toei, the main members of staff announced were either from the original series (Seki and Yamatoya) or openly childhood fans, the 02 quartet was made into a huge advertising point as a dramatic DigiFes reveal (and character profies that tie into the 02 epilogue careers prominently part of the advertising from day one), and they even seemed to acknowledge the burnout on the original Adventure group by advertising it so heavily as “the last adventure of Taichi and his friends”, so you can see that there’s a huge sentiment of “damage control” with it. How successful that was...is debatable, since opinions have been all over the board; quite a few people were naturally so livid at what happened with tri. that Kizuna was just opening more of the wound, but there were also people who liked it much better and were willing to acknowledge it (with varying levels of enthusiasm, some simply saying “it was thankfully okay,” and some outright loving it), and there was a general sentiment even among those who disliked both that they at least understood what Kizuna was going for and that it didn’t feel as inherently disrespectful. (Of course, there are people who loved tri. and hated Kizuna, and there are people who loved both, too.)

Moreover, Kizuna actually has a slightly different target audience from tri.; there’s a pretty big difference between an OVA and a theatrical movie, and, quite simply, Kizuna was made under the assumption that a lot of people watching it may not have even seen tri. in the first place. An average of 11% of the country watched Adventure and 02, but the number of people who watched tri. is much smaller, in part due to the fact that its “theater” screenings were only very limited screenings compared to Kizuna being shown in theaters in Japan and worldwide, and in part due to the fact that watching six parts over three years is a pretty huge commitment for someone who may barely remember Digimon as anything beyond a show they watched as a kid, and may be liable to just fall off partway through because they simply just forgot. (Which also probably wasn’t helped by the infamously negative reputation, something that definitely wouldn’t encourage someone already on the fence.) And that’s yet another reason Kizuna couldn’t make too many concrete tri. references; being a theatrical movie, it needs to have as wide appeal as possible, and couldn’t risk locking out an audience that had a very high likelihood of not having seen it, much less to the end -- it may have somewhat been informed by tri.’s moderate financial success and precedent, but it ultimately was made for the original Adventure and 02 audience more than anything else.

I would say that, generally, while Kizuna is “controversial” for sure, reception towards the movie seems to be more positive than negative, it won over a large chunk of people who were burned out by tri., and it clearly seems to have been received well enough that it’s still being cashed in on a year after its release. The sheer existence of the upcoming 02-based movie is also probably a sign of Kizuna’s financial and critical success; Kinoshita confirmed at DigiFes 2020 that nothing was in production at the time, and stated shortly after the movie’s announcement that work on it had just started. So the decision to make it seems to have been made after eyeing Kizuna’s reception, and, moreover, the movie was initially advertised from the get-go with Kizuna’s director and writer (Taguchi and Yamatoya), meaning those two have curried enough goodwill from the fanbase that this can be used to promote the movie. (If not, you would think that having and advertising Seki would be the bigger priority.) While this is my own sentiment, I am personally doubtful official would have even considered 02 something remotely profitable enough on its own to cash in on if it weren’t for this entire sequence of events of 02′s snubbing in tri. revealing how much of a fanbase it had (especially with the sheer degree of “suspicious overcompensation” Kizuna had with its copious use of the 02 quartet and it tagging a remix of the first 02 ED on the Hanareteitemo single, followed by the drama CD and character songs), followed by Kizuna having success in advertising with them so heavily. Given all of the events between 2015 and now, it’s a bit ironic to see that 02 has now become basically the last resort to be able to continue anything in the original Adventure universe without getting too many people upset at them about it.

The bright side coming out of all of this is that, while it’s still a bit early to tell, now that we’re three years out from tri. finishing up and with Kizuna in the game, it seems there’s a possibility for things improving around tri.’s reception as well. Since a lot of the worst heated points of backlash against it have a very “you had to have been there” element (related to the PR, release schedule, and staff comments), those coming in “late” don’t have as much reason to be as pissed at it; I’ve seen at least one case of a fanartist getting back into the franchise because of Kizuna hype, watching tri. to catch up, casually criticizing it on Twitter, and moving on with their life, presumably because marathoning the whole thing being generally aware of what’ll happen in it and knowing Kizuna is coming after anyway gives you a lot less reason to be angry to the point of holding an outright grudge. Basically, even if you don’t like it, it’s much easier to actually go “yeah, didn’t like that,” not worry too much about it, and move on. Likewise, I personally get the impression that official has been starting to get a little more confident about digging up elements related to it. Unfortunately, a fairly recent tweet promoting the series getting put on streaming services still got quite a few angry comments implying that they should be deleting the scourge from the Internet instead, so there’s still a long way to go, but hopefully the following years will see things improve further...

In regards to the reboot, I -- and I think a lot of people will agree with me -- have a bit of a hard time reading what exact audience it’s trying to appeal to; we have a few hints from official that they want parents to watch it with their children, and that it may have been a necessary ploy in order to secure their original timeslot. So basically, the Adventure branding gets parents who grew up with the original series to be interested in it and to show it to their kids, and convinces Fuji TV that it might be profitable. But as most people have figured by now, the series has a completely different philosophy and writing style -- I mean, the interview itself functionally admits it’s here to be more action-oriented and to have its own identity -- and the target audience is more the kids than anything else. As for the Internet fanbase of veterans, most people have been critical of its character writing and pacing, but other than a few stragglers who are still really pissed, it hasn’t attracted all that much vitriol, probably because in the end it’s an alternate universe, it doesn’t have any obligation to adhere to anything from the original even if it uses the branding, and it’s clearly still doing its job of being a kids’ show for kids who never saw the original series nor 02, so an attempt to call it “disrespectful” to the original doesn’t have much to stand on. A good number of people who are bored of it decided it wasn’t interesting to them and dropped it without incident, while other people are generally just enjoying it for being fun, and the huge amount of Digimon franchise fanservice with underrepresented Digimon and high fidelity to null canon lore is really pleasing the side of the fanbase that’s into that (I mean, Digimon World Golemon is really deep in), so at the very least, there’s not a lot to be super-upset about.

[dogsliampaynedoesntinstagram]

Hi Ralph! I’ve been thinking a lot lately about Harry, and the way he interacts with the world. There was the guardian interview and his weird statement about dilution (which I agree with your thoughts on so I won’t harp on about here). In the vein of weird interview comments Harry has made in interviews, one I also think about a lot came out in 2017-ish after Miley Cyrus came out. I can’t remember the exact quote, but I do remember the interviewer asked him, basically, what he thought of Miley’s coming out, and if he felt like he as a person in the public eye had any duty to publicly declare his sexuality too, knowing what it would mean to a lot of his fans who are struggling with their own sexualities, and Harry said “I think that’s a weird thing to expect of someone else, and everyone should just be who they want to be.” I don’t necessarily disagree with the content of his comment - you don’t owe anything to anybody when it comes to your sexuality - but I feel a little weird about the message behind the comment which I took to be “just let me sing and make music and stop asking me for anything else.” I think a large part of the reason I extrapolated that from his comment (and I do realize I was reading into it) has been his general reluctance over the years to get involved with any sort of political movement. The only two real exception I can think of are (1) LGBTQ rights kind of, although to be honest some of this seems performative to me, and (2) his weird and sort of short lived foray into BLM with the march he joined and his Instagram post. That, combined with his decision to move forward with his tour and the general outrage and feeling that Harry is “disconnected” from his fans, that he is “money hungry” that he is “using his fans” etc. has had me thinking. I disagree with the discourse vilifying Harry for his tour decision, and I think a lot of it is that people are angry and scared and frustrated (for valid reasons) but they are equating their rightful feelings of frustration with the situation to mean Harry failed them on a personal level, which I don’t think is true or fair. But I do think Harry is a celebrity who seems generally out of touch with what the rest of the world goes through, and worse he doesn’t actually seem to care. I feel like he withdrew so much after 1D days, and in general I do applaud that decision - I imagine he was dealing with a lot of trauma, and a retreat to as much of a private life as he could manage was probably well called for to protect his mental health. But his withdrawal has continued, and we only really see him when he has something to promote. We don’t get anything at all from him expect his music and now his movies. I don’t want this to come across as me yelling “Harry tell me about your personal life!!!” Because it’s not. I believe he should have complete privacy in that realm, if that’s what he wants. But to me, Harry cutting so much of himself off from the world has made him feel incredibly shallow and disconnected from his fan base, except when he has something to sell. And I do wholeheartedly think when you’re in the position of massive privilege that Harry is, you have a duty to be a well educated, well informed, active participant in your communities, and to throw your weight around for good. On the one hand, I do want to give him the benefit of the doubt. He came into this life he has now at 16, after leading a childhood that seemed to be fairly untouched by any real hardships. He has lived a life that is largely insulated from the way the rest of the world lives. On the other hand, he has the ability to educate himself, and not having those lived experiences personally doesn’t, I think, excuse him from learning about them and working to help who and where he can. I don’t think I really have a question here, I guess I’m just interested in your thoughts. I value your input, and your answers always push me to think about things in ways I hadn’t before. This has been taking up a lot of my mental space, and I’m curious if you’ve thought about it any.

Oh anon - there's a lot here and I'll try to untangle some of my reactions.

First of all - leaving outside the politics of all of this - I think there is part of Harry, both artistically and how he presents himself as a celebrity, which is very good at suggesting things, and leaving space for possibilities. And I think, at least at this stage, there isn't necessarily a solid core in there if you push. And that's OK, it has a lot of value artistically - blank space is pretty core to any design. But by the same token, it's OK if you want more. If you're dissatisfied with Harry you don't need to be fair for him - you can just think 'I want something you're not offering at the moment'.

But obviously I'm me so I can't leave the politics aside for long. I want to start with the interview - because context is important - that interview was Dan Wotton and the fucking Sun. Here is what was printed, which I think is a little different from what you remembered:

I ask Harry about sexuality in pop, a topic in the headlines after MILEY CYRUS spoke openly about her pansexuality. What’s his take?

He says: “Being in a creative field, it’s important to be ­progressive. People doing stuff like that is great.

“It’s weird for me — everyone should just be who they want to be. It’s tough to justify somebody having to answer to someone else about stuff like that.”

So has Harry personally labelled his sexuality?

He replies: “No, I’ve never felt the need to really. No.”

Would he like to elaborate? “I don’t feel like it’s something I’ve ever felt like I have to explain about myself.”

I want to be clear that everything Dan Wotton was doing here was wrong, from existing to obviously trying to push Harry out. And while Harry was also wrong to be doing an interview with the Sun, he did a really good job of not saying anything he didn't want to say in difficult circumstances.

I want to make it absolutely clear that I'm with Harry. It is tough to justify somebody having to answer to other people about their sexuality. I mean particularly when that person is Dan Wotton working for the fucking Sun.

But in general I don't think there's anything wrong with Harry saying implicitly and explicitly 'Just let me sing and don't ask me for anything else'. More than that I reject the whole premise. In the questions you imagined Dan Wotton asking, you set up the idea that the only way a queer artists could speak to queer fans is by coming out. And I think it's important to push back at that at every opportunity. I've said it before, but that I identify more with Louis reciting the women he's pretending to be attracted to by rote, much more than I ever have with anyone waving a rainbow flag. I reject every part of the premise of 'you coming out would mean a lot to people and somehow that is your problem'.

Throughout what you've written me, you emphasise a belief that celebrities should be active politically - and I really want to push back and ask why? What good does that expectation do you or the world? I think the last thing this world needs is more commentary from people with large microphones and without knowledge or a perspective. The world isn't made better if celebrities feel oblige to talk about politics. And your experience

You seem to think of politics like charity - as something you do for other people out of a sense of obligation. I would argue that very little useful politics has ever been done under that model. Instead I would argue a model of politics based on solidarity: 'If you have come here to help me you are wasting your time, but if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.' (Aboriginal Activist, 1970s).

I think this is what makes the English football team so powerful. Marcus Rashford is fighting for school lunches, because he knows what it's like to be hungry. They're taking the knee, because they have experienced racism, or are expressing solidarity with teammates who have experienced racism. I think Jordan Henderson believes that his world and life would be better if queer fans could be themselves at a football match.

Harry has said in so many ways that he hasn't figured out to relate politically, and he doesn't have anything more to say. That might change, but in the meantime, believe him.

Last off I want to point that you seem to be drawing a parallel between him being disconnected with his fans and not interacting politically and I don't think there is any connection at all. You said:

But to me, Harry cutting so much of himself off from the world has made him feel incredibly shallow and disconnected from his fan base, except when he has something to sell. And I do wholeheartedly think when you’re in the position of massive privilege that Harry is, you have a duty to be a well educated, well informed, active participant in your communities, and to throw your weight around for good.

There is no connection between these two points - none. I also don't think there's anything wrong with being cut off from your fan base, or silent on politics. But they're also independent (I mean look at Shawn Mendes at the period of his career when he wouldn't turn anyone down a selfie. He wasn't at all active in politics then).

I don't think there's anything wrong with valuing an artist being out, politically active, or connected with their fan base. But there are plenty of artists who are out (Lil Nas X, Olly Alexander, and I'll give a shout out to Grace Petrie) and there are plenty of artists who are politically active (Jade Thirwell, Dua Lipa, Stormzy). I'm sure there are also lots of artists who connect with their fan base (although I don't track that personally). If that's what you want, find artists that meet those needs. Rather than choosing an artists who offers something else entirely and having expectations they will never meet.

[tenbees]

Hi sorry to rant here but like I don’t get the gold star discourse like I don’t hate non gold stars and I’m not opposed to dating them at all but like I don’t understand how they can say gold stars are privileged?? Like when they were pressured into having relationship with men in high school(like some of them say) or something but like is it too hard to simply say no? Is someone actually point a gun to your head and saying you HAVE to be with a man or I’ll shoot you??? to be continued...

and like I understand you know women who didn’t want to accept they were lesbians and forced themselves to have a relationship with men because they hated themselves and I get why they would do it because having depression I have always struggled with self hating and self harming and I think lesbians with men are self harming but I just could never bring myself to be romantically involved with a man not matter how much I hated myself and felt alone and misunderstood. to be continued...

But I don’t think it’s fair to say non goldstars aren’t really lesbians because as a gold star I get a lot of the “you can’t know if you like men or not if you never tried being with them.” And like I don’t have to try and force myself to be with someone I don’t want to be with ??? And sometimes I get back to self hating and thinking yeah maybe I should try and be with men so I know for sure?? But at the same time I’m like I DONT WANT TO!!! to be continued... (the other is the last part)

And I don’t see myself being capable of forcing myself in a situation like that. Point is, saying lesbians who had experience with men OR lesbians who had never been with men are not “real” lesbians is awful and both of us have a hard time enough as it is so I think we should all be more understanding of each other. Because in reality none of us are “privileged”. Sorry for the word vomit in your inbox it’s cause when this discourse comes up I genuinely don’t understand why it even comes up??

at first i thought very similarly to you--i accepted that some lesbians date men because they feel pressured to, because they hate themselves, etc, but that for whatever reason i’ve never done it despite experiencing a lot of the same pressures. but after reading multiple stories of ‘lesbians’ who had religious families (me too), grew up in conservative areas (me too), didn’t know women were an option (me too), felt like they had to be attracted to men (me too), thought something was wrong with them because they weren’t attracted to men (me too) and so on and thus decided to pursue men, ask men out, accept men’s advances, flirt with men, fuck men, date men, marry men, have children with men, i was like... something doesn’t add up.

you said yourself that you feel the same pressure but won’t date or fuck a man because you simply don’t want to and because no one’s actually forcing you. what makes others different? why did feeling all of that make them have relationships with men, when it made us just not participate? what makes some women willing to give men a try while others refuse? i think the women who pursue men despite their (exaggerated, in many cases) disgust are attracted to them on some level and that this shows the difference in how lesbians and kinsey 5 bisexuals respond to homophobia. lesbians respond by avoiding relationships with men, even if it means becoming an outcast, while bisexuals respond by entering relationships with men despite their heavy preference for women/negative feelings about men.

lesbians have been talking about it because the dominant lesbian narrative is that it’s normal for lesbians to have sex with men before coming out, which is a bisexual narrative. a lot of us have felt isolated and like we’re the only lesbians on earth who decided to just never date and instead be alone throughout our childhood/young adult years. it’s very isolating to watch movies, read books, and hear the life stories of ‘lesbians’ who were in relationships with men before coming out, relationships that were completely optional--why should ex-het voices be the most common in lesbian spaces? why should we just accept that lesbians will have sex with men before knowing they’re gay? you don’t just flip a switch and turn into a homosexual, you act like a homosexual your entire life and show consistent interest in women and apathy about men without even knowing what you are. any narrative that suggests lesbians will willingly have sex with men under the right circumstances (social pressure, religion, self hatred, mental illness, etc) is harmful, let alone the idea that lesbians are privileged and lucky if we’ve never had sex with a man--as if all of the women saying that couldn’t have literally just chosen to not have sex with men if they didn’t want it lol. not to mention how ridiculous it is to suggest that women who categorically say no to men's wants are privileged in any way.

[sage-nebula]

Some Steven Universe fandom salt I need to get off my chest below the cut. DO NOT reblog this under any circumstances, I don’t want to discourse about it, I just want to vent.

The fandom is ruining Spinel for me, mostly by virtue of using love and defense for her as a platform for more unwarranted hate for Lapis Lazuli.

At this point I should be used to the fact that Lapis attracts untoward amounts of unwarranted hate, and to an extent I am. When I saw people reacting with rage because she made an obvious joke about still being “on the fence” with regards to wanting to kill Steven (which should have been obvious it was a joke because she didn’t actually want to kill him in the first place!), I was disgusted, but not surprised. At the same time, though, it really, really grates on me that people are continuing to vilify Lapis, accusing her of everything from never recognizing her own flaws (incorrect) to being an abuser (MASSIVELY incorrect), while at the same time dismissing, downplaying, or excusing the actions of a character that Rebecca Sugar herself has said is toxic. 

Don’t misunderstand, what happened to Spinel was absolutely heartbreaking. The scene where Pink Diamond tricks her into staying in the garden is one that was, for me, reminiscent of when a dog is told to wait (or decides to wait) in one spot for their human to come back, only to wait forever because their human (usually unwillingly) never does. That Pink Diamond abandoned Spinel on purpose, not unlike how Damien abandoned Charmander in the PokéAni, made it really hard for me to get through, and made me furious at Pink Diamond. Of all the things Pink Diamond did, I think this is the one I personally can’t forgive her for.

But maybe it’s because I don’t personally relate to Spinel that I don’t think it at all justifies or makes her later actions understandable. Don’t get me wrong, I know full well what abandonment feels like. Unlike Spinel, I didn’t “happily” watch it happen, because I’m an incredibly perceptive person (who also happens to have Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria) and so I knew what was happening the entire time and as a result spent an entire summer in misery so profound I was sobbing myself to sleep almost every single night. I was in love with this woman, would have done anything for her, but all I could do was watch as our relationship completely fell apart because she never cared for me the same amount that I cared for her (i.e. even if she loved me the same amount but platonically it would have been fine, but she didn’t even when she claimed to). I know full well what it is to have my heart put through a meat grinder at the slowest speed possible and be able to do absolutely nothing to stop or change it, despite my best efforts. And again, I have Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria for a multitude of reasons (including past abuse), so it’s not as if that was a one-off experience for me. But the primary difference between myself and Spinel, apart from the fact that I knew what was happening and miserably watched as it did, is the fact that I never felt like hurting others just because I was hurt. I never wanted to hurt the woman I loved, even when she hurt me, because I loved her. And even in my moments of being angriest with her, I never wanted to hurt her because that’s just not who I am. Don’t get me wrong, I’m assertive at best and I’ve been known to throw hands curled into fists when the situation calls for it. But even in moments of flash-pan anger, I usually catch myself when my first is raised and stop (such as when a friend of mine who, because of a misunderstanding she had about me, wrote me a letter to tell me I was just like my abusive mother, whom she knew nothing about, and I---barely a year out of that hellhole---raised a fist to deck her . . . but then put it down and stormed off because I was furious, absolutely livid, but still didn’t want to cause hurt if I could avoid it). I don’t want to hurt others. I’d rather people who don’t like each other, myself included, to just leave each other alone rather than chase down and cause pain. Spinel is the opposite. Spinel was hurt, and hurt a great deal, and her reaction to that was to chase down people she knew weren’t involved and knew had nothing to do with it (e.g. she addresses Steven as “Steven Universe,” and says in her song, “. . . the loser of a game you didn’t know you were playing”) so that she could hurt them. It’s not just that she wanted revenge on the one who hurt her, something she knew was impossible; it was that she wanted to bring pain unto those who weren’t even involved, which is something I can’t relate to, because I’ve never wanted to do that. 

All of this does not mean that I think that Spinel is irredeemable or shouldn’t get a shot at a happy ending, because I don’t think that at all. Setting aside the fact that this is Steven Universe, a world where everyone can be redeemed if they want to be, I don’t think Spinel has done anything so heinous that she should never be forgiven, particularly in light of what she has been through (and why she went through that, which goes all the way back to the problems with the Gem hierarchy, et cetera). But it does mean that if we’re going to talk about characters who are (or were, but I don’t think Spinel is in a place where she’s going to be able to truly heal and grow at the end of the movie because the Diamonds don’t really encourage that sort of thing, and I think that will come back into play in season six and beyond) toxic, if we’re going to talk about characters who did terrible things for terrible reasons, then in the context of this show Spinel is going to top the list, next to characters like the Diamonds. It doesn’t mean she should be hated, but given that Sugar said that she wanted to show the toxicity and ridiculousness of taking out your pain and anger on those who had nothing to do with it with Spinel, ignoring that is . . . well, ridiculous.

But that said, all of that I could let slide if not for the fact that people were contorting themselves to reach for reasons to defend Spinel’s actions while simultaneously continuing to insist that Lapis is a selfish, abusive monster, when she is anything but. Setting aside Lapis’ own backstory, which to be honest is still worse than Spinel’s (sent to Earth to be part of the war when she was a terraformer and not a soldier; got poofed as a result; got captured by Homeworld, imprisoned in a mirror, and interrogated because they believed she was a Crystal Gem and would not believe her when she told them she wasn’t; was abandoned---still in the mirror---on the warp pad and got her gem cracked as the others escaped; was picked up by the Crystal Gems who knew she was in the mirror yet left her imprisoned for 5000 years and regarded her as an “it,” a tool to be used, and worst of all tried to stop Steven from freeing her; finally gets a chance to go back home only to be immediately captured by Homeworld again because they believed her to be allied (or at least have information on) the Crystal Gems again; accosted by Jasper when she tried to escape so Jasper could force her into a fusion; “chose” to fuse with Jasper to save Steven (it’s not much of a choice if there’s a metaphorical gun to a loved one’s head); kept in a toxic, abusive fusion at the bottom of the ocean for months with no hope of reprieve, only leaving the fusion when she was literally too exhausted to hold Jasper back any longer), Lapis never actually wanted to hurt anyone apart from Jasper, and that was only when they were already in the fusion and Jasper was hurting her, so Lapis wanted to hurt Jasper back to have some sort of mental / emotional reprieve from what was going on (which does not make it right, which Lapis herself acknowledges and recognizes in “Alone at Sea”, but she was trapped in a situation with no foreseeable escape, and Jasper was 100% the source of the situation she was in). All Lapis wanted to do was be left alone to live in peace. That’s it. When she fights Steven, the Crystal Gems, Connie, and Greg in “Ocean Gem”, she fights them because they come to her and refuse to leave (well, and because the Crystal Gems, as stated, kept her trapped in a mirror for 5000 years and regarded her as a tool to be used, i.e., they were very much the people who hurt her, or at least some of the people who hurt her). The situation with Jasper, as stated, was a mutually toxic relationship that Jasper herself instigated when she grabbed Lapis’ ankle was Lapis tried to escape and refused to let her leave, insisting they fuse instead (and, later, when Jasper wants to get back in that relationship, Lapis rebuffs her again and again because she doesn’t want to, she doesn’t want to go back to that, she just wants Jasper to leave her alone). Lapis had no idea that Peridot was withholding information to “keep her happy,” and in fact expresses shock and upset when she learns this, and again, chose to leave rather than stay and face the Diamonds or continue to conflict with Peridot.  Even when someone is triggering symptoms of her own complex post-traumatic stress disorder, such as Navy in “Room for Ruby”, Lapis removes herself from the situation as quickly as she can to avoid lashing out at / hurting Navy. Over and over again, Lapis only fights when backed into a corner.  This only changes when she returns and drops the barn on Blue Diamond. Then she did intend to hurt someone, but once more, Blue Diamond was the one who started the conflict to begin with.

So to see Lapis continuously vilified for her very real symptoms of C-PTSD (one of the best damn representations of it that I’ve seen in recent times, at that), particularly when she’s acknowledged her own faults, when she tries to avoid hurting others whenever she can, when she apologizes when she makes mistakes (e.g. when she almost smashed Peridot’s tablet because she thought Steven was trapped inside, just as she was trapped in the mirror, in that one short), while a character who actively wanted to hurt others who had nothing to do with her issues, hunted them down in order to do so, and continued to try even after realizing that what she was doing was wrong once already . . . is incredibly frustrating to me, and is really souring me on Spinel’s character. I wouldn’t care so much that people were downplaying or ignoring Spinel’s actions if they weren’t bashing Lapis in the same breath, but so far my experience has been that I cannot look at the notes on a single Spinel meta without someone taking the opportunity to bash Lapis once again. Particularly considering the fact that I do find Lapis to be quite relatable (right down to her deadpan humor; “I’m still on the fence” is a joke I would make), it really stings.

In the end I know none of this truly matters, in the sense that this is a cartoon and people’s opinions on it aren’t going to affect the world one way or another. But it’s still something I needed to get off my chest. Again, I don’t think Spinel is truly evil, that she’s undeserving of redemption, or any other nonsense like that. I don’t think she’s going to get the development she needs with the Diamonds, because they don’t encourage that kind of growth and immediately latching on to someone new can’t be good for her, but maybe at some point she’ll get what she needs, and I hope that she does in the future. But I do think that what she did was wrong, and toxic, and that she was definitely one of the most outright villainous characters we’ve seen on the show yet, second to the Diamonds (all four of them, imo) themselves. And I really think that nothing Lapis ever did came even close to what Spinel pulled, or wanted to pull, and the fact that so many in this fandom want to claim otherwise just . . . really makes me feel some kind of way.

Once again, do NOT reblog this, this is a vent post, I don’t want discourse, thanks.

[filmtrash]

a few things about 13 reasons why *contains spoilers*

not trying to start a debate about 13 reasons why or anything i feel like anything i say about it people will come for me. i keep getting asks/messages about it and thought i’d just answer everything in one post. just a disclaimer to say that i watched it because i watch everything. i also think it’s hard to make up your own opinion on the show because everyone has an opinion on it and it’s hard not to be influenced by that. not even tagging anything, this is just for my followers who were interested to know my thoughts. 

things that were okay:

the justin and clay friendship/brother relationship. i think everyone could tell from the last season that justin was not bryce. justin’s character development was interesting to watch. clay basically saving him and then him saving clay. all of my favourite moments from the series involved them to. ‘i need you. please.’ ‘why did you stay?’ ‘because you said you needed me.’ ‘your parents said we could drive together and they’ll follow in another one of the prius’s’ clay teaching justin how to tie a tie, clay not wanting to go to the dance but justin acting like a sad puppy until clay agreed to go and of course when clay asked if justin wanted to be adopted by him and his family

when mr. porter was on the stand. he was the only one i truly connected to when he was on the stand and the only one that made me cry.

clay doing his speech at hannah’s memorial was the only clay/hannah exchange that didn’t annoy the fuck out of me and one of the only times throughout the whole series i felt CONNECTED and MOVED by the story. nothing was confusing. nothing was trying to attach itself to the last series. it was just honest and reflective of anyone who has lost a loved one in those circumstances. 

when they were at the dance and ‘the night we met’ came on and they all found each other and danced and cried together. the purest moment of the whole series. 

things that weren’t okay:

every time alex and olivia were in the same scene i was so confused who was who

they clearly made this series because the first one was deemed successful and i don’t feel like it served any real purpose in representing anyone who can be seen in those characters

i get katherine langford is the star vehicle but she could have still been in the series through the additional flashbacks. i literally couldn’t stand her just appearing everywhere and asking ominous questions

if you listened to hannah’s dialogue as the ‘ghost’, none of it made any sense. when clay says ‘i’m scared of forgetting you’, then hannah says ‘then don’t.’ thank you hannah. now you said that clay will stop all future events and future interactions with people that will effect your prominence in his life. 

i literally feel like nothing happened until episode 11 and then so much happened at once

the producers and creators of 13 reasons why, you can’t try and tackle every problem there is in america. maybe you can try and create different series under the same title; ‘13 reasons why’ but following different issues. you already handled rape and suicide in one series, throwing the subject of mass shootings in there at the end is too much. if you want to address that problem, get a whole new cast, a whole new circumstance. you want this to be real and reflective. not all of this would happen to one school. 

i don’t really see how it was beneficial to build the backstory of a school mass shooter for 13 episodes yet have no justice for hannah and no justice for jessica and all the other rape victims.

jessica says she felt better and like she got some sort of closure but i don’t feel like still having to be in the same school hall as her rapist is justice. 

every witness got completely done in on the stand and i really think it would discourage all people in a similar situation to speak out. 

um the zach and hannah summer lovin? literally what the fuck? so unrealistic it drives me insane. the excuse for it not being on the tapes was ‘was everything on your tape clay?’ and ‘i was trying to protect myself.’ lousy writing and a lousy way to prove zach is a good guy. we get it. he’s one of the ‘good’ ones. that whole part was so far-fetched. also it’s just another massive shit on clay to be honest. hannah always made out clay was some rare angel sent from heaven too good and pure for hannah when she seemed to have a much better relationship with zach. 

i spoke to someone the other day and they said they’ve read the books and apparently the purpose of the tapes was for hannah to clear her name and tell her own story etc, which i never would have got from either season. i remember a line in season 2 when clay asks hannah why she did it and hannah says something along those lines ^ but it just seemed like a lousy attempt to patch up previous discourse PLUS even after her saying that, i just don’t buy it from watching the series. when someone loses another to suicide, there is pain, suffering and mourning. that is ENOUGH. these people will be destroying themselves enough over what they could and couldn’t have done to save them, they don’t need it to be told to them on a recording they can listen to repeatedly. if hannah wanted to increase suicide awareness etc, i feel like the tapes only increase the chances of it happening more (alex is an example. clay is an example. justin is an example.)

i feel so uncomfortable by the fact clay, courtney, alex, zach, porter are grouped together with bryce. by being on the tapes they all share blame. even though the only true villain is bryce. all the other people are good people that made a mistake. bryce literally reminisced about raping hannah after she killed herself and got hard over it. i just can’t get my head round the fact they’re portrayed as equals by all having a tape.

literally nothing got solved from the end of season 1 to the end of season 2 apart from the fact bryce had a restraining order. 

they spent two seasons talking about hannah and jess’ rape, tyler was sexually assaulted in the last half an hour of the series and that was that basically 

here’s what’s going to happen. there’s going to be another mass shooting and someone’s going to think they’re clay jenson and go out and try and stop it and end up getting killed before the mass shooter continues to kill everyone else. clay jenson in no lifetime would have been able to stop a mass shooting. also why the fuck did he let tyler get in a car. if someone is 2 seconds away from taking hundreds of lives, they should not be free in this world 

they set everything up for a 3rd season and literally, fuck off

my predictions:

there’ll be a third season *scrunches fist* (i’ve seen a lot of stuff about it being urged to cancel a 3rd season because of all the things they did wrong this season)

something will happen with justin and his mum’s boyfriend because of the whole vengeful glare outside monet’s

alex and zach will get together 

the whole series will probably be centred around tyler

[musingsofamurderess]

On the Categorical De-Humanization of Addicts and Alcoholics (a short discourse on addiction and alcoholism and an exercise in combatting codependency)

THIS IS A VERY ROUGH DRAFT ONLY!

I am living proof that recovery and rehab work. I currently have 5 and a half years clean and sober. I am not perfect, nor do I expect anyone else to be. Flaws and assets amount to very much the same thing in my experience. This story and its conclusions are from my experience and are dedicated to my mother, who loved me so hard that she tried EVERYTHING in her power to help me when I believed I was beyond help. In her struggle to understand me, I have found parts of myself that I thought were lost forever. I have found some rudimentary dignity in being myself.

Disease or no, we should all be held responsible for or own actions. We should also learn to hold ourselves accountable. Period.

When I was using, I woke up every morning either angry or depressed that I hadn't died overnight. I had been using, in one form or another, since I was 15. I thought that drugs were the only way for me to deal with the reality. I couldn't process my own emotions, thoughts, or actions in healthy ways then because it was easier to let drugs and alcohol do the coping for me. I did not know of any other way for me to live. Drugs seemed to work, at first. I had fun, went to parties, and had lots of sex, but I was denying myself the dignity and experience of learning to walk a mile in my own shoes. The drugs and alcohol kept me "sane" before I learned what sanity was. I loved them for it, but I hated myself.

Learning a workable definition for sanity was paramount in my journey. Although I am aware that there are infinite interpretations of the concept of sanity, the definition that stuck with me was an a quote by Albert Einstein. "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over, expecting different results." When I looked back on my life before sobriety, this was very much an established pattern for me in my personal relationships, through work and school, and in my day to day activities. In short, it all boiled down to one simple example: I went to bed each night wishing I would die, and awoke each morning wishing I had died. I was truly miserable, but that wasn't what got me to get help.

You would think that each day filled with the horror and dread of the coming day, along with the fear and embarrassment whichever debacle the previous day had begotten would be enough to get me motivated to get the fuck out of my own filth, but sadly, it never was. Enough was never enough. I was determined to find the "right combination," to switch drugs or take them in the right amounts such that I would finally "be ok" with myself and the universe. I suffered years of degradation, humiliation, and bad decisions, all the while thinking that I would one day find a "magic solution," something outside myself that would make everything better. It would negate all the years of being abused, and, more so, an entire lifetime of self-abuse.

"You never have to be miserable again," a friend told me shortly after I decided I was willing to do something different. A tall order, I know, and again I am aware that this is no altruism. How did I get here, and how could this lofty idealist jargon ever become a pivotal and functional part of my idiom? I'll drive you. Drunk, about midnight, driving to a friend's house to apologize for getting too drunk during our previous encounter (not to mention drinking most of his large container of Listerine from the restroom), it was darker than usual. Perhaps my headlights were out? BANG. The window looks funny, why am I having to lean sideways to drive? I'm almost there, I'll just get off the main road and park behind the middle school for a bit and see what happened. Nope. I hear sirens. Better to just keep driving normally like nothing's wrong. Shit, it's for me. I park the car. I insist on a field sobriety test.

Him: Say the alphabet, starting with the letter G.

(He was going easy on me, or was he?)

Me: Backwards?

Him: No, in order. Starting with "G."

Me: The alphabet? "G"....backwards?

Him: Just say the alphabet starting with "G."

Me: Ok, I thought you meant backwards. G, H, I, J, K...I give up.

offers hands for cuffing

Blood Alcohol: 0.18%, you can imagine my disdain after one successful attempt at breaking the filter by blowing too hard. I had lost. At least I'd spent the ride over explaining how I had suicidal tendencies and had seriously hurt my back last time I was drunk tanked trying to break through the door to get away from the other ladies there, specifically the pregnant one who told me my predicament was "no big deal" which demeaned my panicked drunken freak-out session and thus promted said attempt to escape. I asked them to call my psychiatrist and may have given them his number, as I did have it memorized for such occasions, but I have his name and apparently was convincing enough to score myself a single suite. I could barely sleep and when breakfast came under the door, I thew the eggs all over the floor as if smashing them was going to relieve the mental anguish of my current situation. I kept pressing the button and the lady on the speaker told me to clean it up or I wouldn't get to use the phone (because I kept asking). The embarrassment I felt when that woman shamed me for making confetti out of my breakfast was intense. Something snapped. I cleaned and waited.

I had already used my "get out of jail free card" with my parents and began to contemplate my dilemma. I couldn't get away with it again. I would call the bail bondsman, who was very nice to me last time, I'd have him call mom and dad, and tell them.....tell them what? I knew what. I balled my eyes out, full on wailing, moaning and sobbing like the love of my life was just murdered in front of me...I could tell them I'd go to rehab. Dad got better, why couldn't I?

I made the phone call to the bondsman, crying almost to the point of laughing at the irony of it all.

This is just the beginning of my story. I can honestly say that I hope that what happened to me, will happen to other addicts and alcoholics. I am glad to live the beautiful, meaningful, challenging and fulfilling life I now lead.

All this is to say, for the purpose of the event that led me to write this evening, I understand the anger, sadness, and exasperation felt by those who have experiemced, still are experiencing, or will experience the phenomena of watching others kill themselves with drugs and alcohol, brutally destroying everyone and everything in their paths. These are people you love, doing something frankly incomprehensible to most. To you, I say: distance yourself. Get away from these probable addicts and alcoholics who either refuse help or don't think they need it. You don't have to be party to that, you have the right to separate yourself for your own well being.

In fact, by cutting them off, you'll most likely be helping them to reach a point in their lives where they will be willing to try something different. To stop making excuses based on past trauma, blaming the people they love and consequently wondering why, time after time, everyone leaves and things don't work out the way they like or expect them to. Encourage them to stop doing the same thing over and over and expecting by doing the same yourself. Don't give in to pity, blaming circumstances and making excuses for them will only increase your emotional, physical, mental and spiritual investment in them, which will lead only to further heartache and disappointment for you. Offer to help them get better, failing their acceptance, distance will provide you the perspective you need to process the hurt you've endured by being involved with an addict or alcoholic. Get the help you need first, just like emergency protocol when the oxygen masks come down in an airplane, you cannot save them before saving yourself. It's hard, but true.

Unfortunately, some of us do die before they reach a point where they are willing and able to get help. The old adage "if you love them, let them go" seems to ring true in this case (in my experience, at least). I know this sounds harsh, but if you think about it, even a sane and sober person wouldn't change their entire lifestyle without a damn good reason. Help give them that reason by letting go. I'm not saying don't love them, I'm saying do it from a distance; for your own safety and in hopes that one day they will understand and perhaps even thank you one day because you did the right thing. Even though it was harder than you imagined, even though every bone in your body may have wanted to fight it or find any other way, you will have done what was best for you and the other person by offering either real professional help or an end to the relationship as it stands.

I sincerely hope, for everyone's sake, that every user will have enough horrible things happen to (and because of) them that they will be moved enough to do whatever it takes to change. In the meantime and for the record, the categorical dehumanization of addicts and alcoholics will not stand. We are people, and people deserve basic dignity and understanding. Period.

Oct 8, 2017

[bughead-fic-request]

I would like to thank @leaalda for making these amazing banners.

This is an effort to spread the word about all fan fiction writers in our little fandom. If you would like to be featured or nominate a writer, please contact me. Please reblog this post if you can and check out some of @cooperjones2020 work!

1. First things first, if someone wanted to read your stories where can they find them.

I post all of them on AO3 as well as on tumblr @cooperjones2020 under the tag #mine and on my master list. (also fyi it’s a sideblog, so if you ever get a reply from @acitrusmoon, that’s also me!)

2. Tell us a little about yourself.

I’ve tipped the scale into second half of my 20’s. I’m currently doing my master’s in English lit, focusing on early modern drama and cultural studies. Canada is the third country I’ve lived in. I’ve been in four separate countries within a 24-hour timespan on two separate occasions. I prefer children’s toothbrushes to adult ones. I made my parents let me drop out of preschool when I was four because they wouldn’t give me orange juice.

3. What do you never leave home without?

Nothing. I leave with the absolute bare minimum I can get away with. So 99% of the time I have my phone, but even that’s not a sure thing. If I can stick a card or some cash in my bra so I don’t have to carry a purse or wallet, I’m doing it. If I do have a bag, I definitely have my giant reusable water bottle and a book with me.

4. Are you an early bird or a night owl?

Early bird. I’ve hit the level of adulthood where I wake up at like 6:30 sans alarm. And I have no excuse. I don’t have to be at work til 10.

5. If you could live in any fictional world which one would you choose and why?

I’ve been thinking about this question and I can’t come up with anything other than HP. I basically learned to read off those books and grew up alongside them. That fictional world is so embedded with my real one, it would be a disservice to pick something else.

6. Who is the most famous person you’ve ever met.

In general, I have no interest in meeting famous people, so I think the most famous person I’ve ever actually met was Roger Ebert at an ice cream shop in Michigan when I was 8. But I’ve been adjacent to famous people. I saw Josh Radnor in my college bookstore, I’ve emailed with John Green, and Chicago Fire used to film in my old apartment in Chicago before it became my apartment. They would still shut our street down to do external shots, and NBC paid my landlord not to gut the apartment when he rehabbed it, in case they needed to use it again.

Does Walk the Moon count as famous now? I’ve met Nick Petricca at parties (figure out what Josh Radnor, John Green, and Nick Petricca have in common, and you’ll learn something else about me).

7. What are some of your favorite movies/TV?

I’m the worst with “favorite” type questions because I change my mind all the time when my attention wanders. So TV shows I’ve loved a long time and will continue to rewatch ad infinitum: Gilmore Girls, Charmed, Boy Meets World. I don’t really re-watch movies, which is my general bar for loving something. I recently saw The Third Man and it blew my mind, so much so that it made it into chapter 5 of “Nobodies Nobody Knows.”

(but also I haven’t had consistent access to a television since 2006 because I went to boarding school for nerds, so I’m out of touch with a lot what’s been on unless I’ve been able to find it on the internet and binge watch it)

8. What are some of your favorite bands/musicians?

Again, I don’t know if I have anyone I would say is a favorite above all the music I like. I cycle through songs I get obsessed with for a week or two. The Spotify playlist I’m currently listening to on repeat includes Halsey, Imagine Dragons, Walk the Moon, Regina Spektor, Lorde, Cigarettes After Sex, Ed Sheeran, Adele, X Embassadors, and Sia. But it’s also my Bughead writing playlist. I’d really like to see Maren Morris in concert.

9. Favorite Books?

I could fill a library with my favorite books. The books that have been most foundational to me as a person were probably HP and the Anne of Green Gables series. The books/authors I loved enough to ship to Canada, which really just means I like rereading them, include Emily Dickinson, Raymond Carver, Louise Erdrich, Junot Diaz, Harper Lee, Milan Kundera, Diana Gabaldon, Deborah Harkness, and a little bit of Nora Roberts and Andrew Greeley for variety. But actually the hardest part of moving back to America will be having to round up all my books and get them to my new place of residence.

10. Favorite Food?

Soup. Which is really a non-answer because there’s infinite varieties.

11. Biggest pet peeve?

People who are passive aggressive and manipulative.

12. What did you want to be when you were little? What do you want to be now?

I went through an intense phase of wanting to be a flight attendant for a while. I was pretty sure I wanted to do a PhD, but the first year of my masters has taught me that I do not want to do that. So now, I have no idea. Something that involving writing and editing as part of its daily tasks. I did some freelancing for SparkNotes earlier this summer and they had a full-time opening that would have been perfect for me if it were a year from now. Before coming back to school, I worked for a tutoring company creating curriculum materials and overseeing/developing tutors.

13. What are your biggest fears? Do you have any strange fears?

The stereotypical things I’m afraid of are heights and clowns. I’m also afraid of bridges and really uncomfortable on escalators, though that’s gotten better. I’m a big believer in facing your fears, so one time I forced myself to do a high ropes course at a team-building retreat and I literally had a panic attack forty feet up in the air.

14. When you are on your deathbed what would be the one you’d regret not doing?

I think I’ll regret the times I’ve said no to things because I was afraid.

Okay… lets talk about your writing!

15. Which is your favorite of the fics you've written for the Bughead fandom?

The one I’m enjoying writing the most/is coming the easiest is ”Second City.” I also really love ”Marked” because it’s the one that got me into the fandom and because it challenged me to go out of my comfort zone.

16. Which was the hardest to write, in terms of plot?

“What’s Past is Prologue” because the plot structure is so weird, so I wind up feeling like I’m just hitting the same note over and over.

17. How do you come up with the ideas for you fic(s)? Do you people watch? Listen to music? Get inspired by TV/movies?

I haven’t written enough fics to have a developed answer to this. “Marked” and “WPIP” came about because of a conversation @jandjsalmon was having that I lurked on. “Second City” came about because I love post-break up/the characters are now in their 20s fics, and I was homesick (hence the setting). Also, with all the discourse around how healthy and communicative Betty and Jug are, I was wondering what would be a convincing enough circumstance to cause them to break up, and how would they find their way back to each other. As far as individual ideas within the fics themselves, I do, as mentioned, have a writing playlist, but I don’t listen to it while actually writing. Just while I’m doing things around the house or walking to school, which is when I brainstorm. I often have to stop walking and move out of the way so I can type ideas into the notes on my phone. A lot of times, I’ll just get a half a line or sentence that sounds nice and then I’ll have to figure out how to work it in later.

18. Idea that you always wanted to write but could never make work?

I haven’t been doing this long enough to be able to answer this question with any level of confidence. I don’t think there’s anything I’ve really wanted to write and been unable to, at least as far as fic goes. I have a lot of half-planned ideas for original stories that refuse to come out how I want them to.

19. Least favorite plot point/chapter/moment you’ve written?

The next chapter of WPIP because I don’t think it’s doing anything beyond serving as a vehicle to the chapter after it. But I recently had an idea of something to add to it which might help.

20. Favorite plot point/chapter/moment you’ve written?

I love chapter 5 of “Second City.” I’m genuinely happy about every scene in it, especially the flashback. I also really like the end of chapter 8, parts of chapter 10 and pretty much all of chapter 11. More than plot points/chapters, I tend to love little details or turns of phrase, like the crown scar from “Marked,” or Jughead in a “this is what a feminist looks like” t shirt, or lines like “It hurts. She knows it shouldn’t. She knows it makes sense. But it does. Because it sounds like ‘I don’t think about you’” from “Second City.”

21.Favorite character to write?

Betty because I overly identify with her. In “Second City,” I’ve found Alice and Veronica particularly easy to write in the little they’ve appeared thus far. Like, their voices have been very clear. But watch, I’ve probably just jinxed myself.

22. Favorite line or lines of dialogue that you've written?

I don’t know if I have a favorite, and I use too much dialogue to go back through it all. I try really hard to make it sound realistic. I’m particularly proud of the ending dialogue of chapter 9 of “Second City,” basically everything from after they go back into the spare bedroom.

Also, spoiler: “You harassed Sheriff Keller. You questioned FP. What’s next, Betty? Were you going to interrogate Jellybean?” Betty feels heat suffuse her face. “Oh, you thought I wouldn’t know about that, huh?”

“I did see JB,” she mumbles.

“Fuck, I knew she was lying.”

23. Best comment/review you’ve ever received?

I don’t want to call out anyone in particular because I love and appreciate every single one and I spend way too much time staring at my email waiting for comment notifications. I particularly enjoy when people point out a specific line or plot point that resonated with them, or when they say something rung particularly true to character. I also love when people will talk to me in the comments, because I reply to everyone and literary analysis is my jam.

24. How do you handle bad reviews or comments?

I’ve never had any! I’m not a big enough deal for that.

25. If you could change anything in any of your stories, what would it be?

I would have written more of “WPIP” before posting it because that was my first attempt at anything multi-chapter and I didn’t know what I was doing. I still don’t, but I’ve gotten slightly better at masking it.

26. What is your favorite story you’ve ever written? Any fandom?

Fandom-wise, I’ve only written for Bughead. “Second City”/the “Who Sings Heartache to Sleep” universe is (clearly) my favorite. I actually enjoy rereading old chapters, which is not a place I’ve been with my own writing in ages and ages.

27. What are you reading right now? Both fan fiction and general fiction?

I’m working on my master’s thesis proposal, so I’m doing a lot of reading about early modern theatre, seventeenth century midwifery manuals, and feminist theory. I’m also running a reading group on film noir, so I’ve read several of those this summer. I reread The Unbearable Lightness of Being for the sixth time, but it was for a student I tutor. I’m looking forward to reading a romance novel, probably Nora Roberts, when I visit my parents in a few weeks.

For fic, I’m subscribed to so so many and am behind on most of them. The ones I’ll drop everything to read as soon as I see the notification include anything by @lessoleilscouchants or @sylwrites, Summer Storm by @lazydaizies, Interbellum by @wolfofansbach, Serpent and the Swan by @jugandbettsdetectiveagency, Hearts in Velvet by @raptorlily, Carry On by @soulsofstarsliveinyourveins, Wicked Games by @ariquitecontrary, He Was Gone by @bettyluvsjuggie, What Fools These Mortals Be by @gellbellshead …gah, I know there are more. Those are ones that have either updated recently or that I’ve thought about recently for some reason or another.

28. Do you have an advice for writers that want to get into this fandom but might be scared?

Please please do it. I cannot emphasize enough how welcoming people are. I literally inserted myself in someone else’s conversation like a total creep and it’s the best thing I’ve done in months. I’ve never done anything like that before and definitely wouldn’t be able to in non-internet life. Think about if positions were reversed and you were the one already established in the fandom, how would you react to someone wanting to be your friend? You’d be pretty darn excited. That’s how I feel every day with all of you and I just want to spread the love.

And for writing specifically, and this is cliché advice but, you won’t get better unless you let other people read your work. And letting other people in and letting them be excited (because they will be) will make you so much more confident and motivated.

For real, though, while the last year of my life has been super rewarding personally and I’m happy, it’s also been one of the hardest and loneliest years of my life. And the hits just keep on coming. And you all have made the last month, at least, a lot easier.

[harrypotterfirsttime]

JK Rowling’s essay about why she’s a TERF: Full Overview

Be forewarned, this is going to be LONG. I started reading the Goblet of Fire today and saw that JK Rowling has written and posted an ESSAY about why she’s speaking out about her blatant transphobia. I never intended for this blog to be about her, but since this is happening while I am attempting to read the series for the first time, I feel compelled to address it.

“This isn’t an easy piece to write, for reasons that will shortly become clear, but I know it’s time to explain myself on an issue surrounded by toxicity. I write this without any desire to add to that toxicity.”

I cannot fathom how she believed this would be a good idea and not add to the toxicity surrounding this issue. During pride month. When Black Lives Matter is protesting for equal rights. How is this necessary?

“For people who don’t know: last December I tweeted my support for Maya Forstater, a tax specialist who’d lost her job for what were deemed ‘transphobic’ tweets. She took her case to an employment tribunal, asking the judge to rule on whether a philosophical belief that sex is determined by biology is protected in law. Judge Tayler ruled that it wasn’t.”

First of all, Maya didn’t lose her job. Her contract was simply not renewed by her workplace, something that she was not entitled to under any law. JK Rowling also continues to falsely assert that Maya’s belief was that ‘sex is determined biology’, when she actually asserted that under no circumstances is a trans woman a woman nor a trans man a man, and the judge ruled that it did not fit all five necessary limbs to be a philosophical belief (it actually only failed the last one). The judge ruled that the ‘under no circumstances’ part of her assertion was absolutist, and that is what ultimately failed the fifth limb. [source]

“My interest in trans issues pre-dated Maya’s case by almost two years, during which I followed the debate around the concept of gender identity closely. I’ve met trans people, and read sundry books, blogs and articles by trans people, gender specialists, intersex people, psychologists, safeguarding experts, social workers and doctors, and followed the discourse online and in traditional media. On one level, my interest in this issue has been professional, because I’m writing a crime series, set in the present day, and my fictional female detective is of an age to be interested in, and affected by, these issues herself, but on another, it’s intensely personal, as I’m about to explain.”

Not much to say here, except that this paragraph is meant to tell us that she’s considered including this debate in a fictional book she’s writing for some reason, and that she has allegedly had time to talk to all of these extremely knowledgeable people who all failed to inform her that trans people don’t actually hurt her or take anything from her.

“All the time I’ve been researching and learning, accusations and threats from trans activists have been bubbling in my Twitter timeline. This was initially triggered by a ‘like’. When I started taking an interest in gender identity and transgender matters, I began screenshotting comments that interested me, as a way of reminding myself what I might want to research later. On one occasion, I absent-mindedly ‘liked’ instead of screenshotting. That single ‘like’ was deemed evidence of wrongthink, and a persistent low level of harassment began.”

First off, this goes against the statement a spokesperson made for her when this happened, stating that she had a ‘clumsy middle-aged moment’ and liked the tweet by ‘holding her phone incorrectly’. The tweet she liked also had no content that she could research, it was a baseless claim that men in dresses get more solidarity than cis women (which I won’t even dive into, we have so much more to cover). [source] I also won’t dive into the use of ‘wrongthink’ as if we are all characters in George Orwell’s 1984, simply because nobody is controlling her speech, she is simply facing consequences for the shit she chooses to fling at the wall.

“Months later, I compounded my accidental ‘like’ crime by following Magdalen Burns on Twitter. Magdalen was an immensely brave young feminist and lesbian who was dying of an aggressive brain tumour. I followed her because I wanted to contact her directly, which I succeeded in doing. However, as Magdalen was a great believer in the importance of biological sex, and didn’t believe lesbians should be called bigots for not dating trans women with penises, dots were joined in the heads of twitter trans activists, and the level of social media abuse increased.”

Just take a moment to laugh at the fact that she misspelled Magdalen Berns’ last name. But to clear things up, yes, Magdalen was suffering from a fatal aggressive brain tumour, but no, she was not a brave young feminist, she was an extremely outspoken transphobe, who regularly made videos misgendering, slandering, and twisting the words of trans people and trans activists in order to victimize herself. The vast majority of trans people will agree that you shouldn’t date anybody that you don’t want to date, or have any kind of sex with anyone that you don’t like. But Magdalen took it a step further, and said that NO lesbian could have sex with somebody with a penis and still be a lesbian, and NO lesbian could have a penis, despite trans lesbians continuing to exist to this very day. [for sources, Magdalen’s twitter and youtube channel remain active]

“I mention all this only to explain that I knew perfectly well what was going to happen when I supported Maya. I must have been on my fourth or fifth cancellation by then. I expected the threats of violence, to be told I was literally killing trans people with my hate, to be called cunt and bitch and, of course, for my books to be burned, although one particularly abusive man told me he’d composted them.”

Can we salute the man who decided to tell JK Rowling that he composted her books, because that’s absolutely hilarious. But really, I just want to point out that no matter how many threats of violence JK Rowling thinks she is getting, transgender people are subjected to much more abuse both online and in real life, and it affects their wellbeing much more directly than simply being called a cunt or a bitch on twitter. [source] While JK Rowling thankfully isn’t killing trans people, she’s disappointing so many of her LGBT+ fans who looked up to her and found comfort during their childhood in her books that encouraged people to be brave and be themselves.

“What I didn’t expect in the aftermath of my cancellation was the avalanche of emails and letters that came showering down upon me, the overwhelming majority of which were positive, grateful and supportive. They came from a cross-section of kind, empathetic and intelligent people, some of them working in fields dealing with gender dysphoria and trans people, who’re all deeply concerned about the way a socio-political concept is influencing politics, medical practice and safeguarding. They’re worried about the dangers to young people, gay people and about the erosion of women’s and girl’s rights. Above all, they’re worried about a climate of fear that serves nobody – least of all trans youth – well.”

I’ll tackle this paragraph from top to bottom. Firstly, the reason you believe the overwhemling majority of people supported you is because many of those who don’t (myself included, until now) simply rolled their eyes and ignored you, because you are not worth our time. We have lives to live that are unconcerned with your bigotry. Second, I hope those people who were working in fields dealing with gender dysphoria and trans people have since left their jobs, because they have no business serving a community who they secretly harbour unsupportive ideologies about. And finally, the idea of supporting and helping trans people (specifically trans youth) is DANGEROUS to young people, gay people, and women’s and girls’ rights is simply false. No women’s rights have been repealed in favour of trans people’s rights (mainly because trans women continue to shockingly be women). In fact, trans youth with parents who are very supportive and affirming show a statistically significantly lower rate of both depressive symptoms and suicide attempts. [source] [specific graph]

“I’d stepped back from Twitter for many months both before and after tweeting support for Maya, because I knew it was doing nothing good for my mental health. I only returned because I wanted to share a free children’s book during the pandemic. Immediately, activists who clearly believe themselves to be good, kind and progressive people swarmed back into my timeline, assuming a right to police my speech, accuse me of hatred, call me misogynistic slurs and, above all – as every woman involved in this debate will know – TERF.”

I can completely understand taking a step back from Twitter for mental health reasons (perhaps we all would have been better off if this had been an indefinite hiatus). To be clear, no activists are claiming the right to police your speech. People are speaking up against your speech because it is hateful and contradictory to current research about transgender people and the best way to treat and support us effectively. Some people maybe using misogynistic slurs, which I don’t condone, but let us be clear that TERF is not one of them.

“If you didn’t already know – and why should you? – ‘TERF’ is an acronym coined by trans activists, which stands for Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist. In practice, a huge and diverse cross-section of women are currently being called TERFs and the vast majority have never been radical feminists. Examples of so-called TERFs range from the mother of a gay child who was afraid their child wanted to transition to escape homophobic bullying, to a hitherto totally unfeminist older lady who’s vowed never to visit Marks & Spencer again because they’re allowing any man who says they identify as a woman into the women’s changing rooms. Ironically, radical feminists aren’t even trans-exclusionary – they include trans men in their feminism, because they were born women.”

The first two sentences in this paragraph are true. Viv Smythe, a trans inclusive cis radfem, is credited with coining the term TERF to describe her fellow radical feminists who are ‘unwilling to recognize trans women as sisters’. It has also become widely used to describe feminists who exclude trans women from their feminism, even if they are not radfems. [source] I don’t care about who has been called a TERF, all I need to know is that they are transphobes, which they should feel equally disgusted at the fact their behaviour warrants the label. Trans men do not want to be included in radical feminism because we were ‘born women’, and JK Rowling including this as if it is an excuse is appalling. Trans men are not women, therefore we do not appreciate radfems claiming to support us based on their obsession with what genitals we were born with.

“But accusations of TERFery have been sufficient to intimidate many people, institutions and organisations I once admired, who’re cowering before the tactics of the playground. ‘They’ll call us transphobic!’ ‘They’ll say I hate trans people!’ What next, they’ll say you’ve got fleas? Speaking as a biological woman, a lot of people in positions of power really need to grow a pair (which is doubtless literally possible, according to the kind of people who argue that clownfish prove humans aren’t a dimorphic species).”

I cringed hard at ‘speaking as a biological woman’, because that’s just the kind of language that TERFs consistently use to make it clear that they are NOT under any circumstances to be mistaken for trans. The notion that these people, institutions and organizations are ‘cowering’ out of fear of being transphobic as opposed to wanting to openly support and welcome trans people as they would any other person is extremely biased. And as a last note, people using clownfish are trying to show that sex is noy cut and dry binary, it varies between species, and there is so much more to it than ‘XX vs XY’ and ‘penis vs vagina’ like JK Rowling and company seem to think.

“So why am I doing this? Why speak up? Why not quietly do my research and keep my head down?

Well, I’ve got five reasons for being worried about the new trans activism, and deciding I need to speak up.

Firstly, I have a charitable trust that focuses on alleviating social deprivation in Scotland, with a particular emphasis on women and children. Among other things, my trust supports projects for female prisoners and for survivors of domestic and sexual abuse. I also fund medical research into MS, a disease that behaves very differently in men and women. It’s been clear to me for a while that the new trans activism is having (or is likely to have, if all its demands are met) a significant impact on many of the causes I support, because it’s pushing to erode the legal definition of sex and replace it with gender.”

I don’t think anyone will argue that JK Rowling’s charitable trusts and funds are a bad thing. But her need to specify that these have an ‘emphasis on women and children’, imply that survivors of domestic and sexual abuse cannot be men or trans people, and for some reason pointing out that MS can present differently in men and women, are all red flags that these are issues she’s injecting into her charitable efforts, as opposed to actual threats to the causes she supports. The fear that transphobes have over people being classified by the gender they experience and walk through life presenting with instead of the genitals they have underneath a few layers of clothes is ridiculous, especially when you strip it down like this.

“The second reason is that I’m an ex-teacher and the founder of a children’s charity, which gives me an interest in both education and safeguarding. Like many others, I have deep concerns about the effect the trans rights movement is having on both.

The third is that, as a much-banned author, I’m interested in freedom of speech and have publicly defended it, even unto Donald Trump.”

The movement to secure equal rights and protection under the law for transgender people will not have a negative effect on children or education, other than allowing kids to learn more about the diversity among people they’ll interact with throughout their lives. And once again, nobody is trying to tell you that you cannot say these things, only that you will face consequences for saying them, like Donald Trump does daily. Trans people and activists don’t even have the power to affect the right to freedom of speech, so this is a moot point.

“The fourth is where things start to get truly personal. I’m concerned about the huge explosion in young women wishing to transition and also about the increasing numbers who seem to be detransitioning (returning to their original sex), because they regret taking steps that have, in some cases, altered their bodies irrevocably, and taken away their fertility. Some say they decided to transition after realising they were same-sex attracted, and that transitioning was partly driven by homophobia, either in society or in their families.”

There is a lot to unpack in this paragraph. And I don’t have the room in this already much too long post to dive into detransitioning, so I’ll say this: it sucks that some people transition only to realize they shouldn’t have. But these people are a staggering minority of people who do transition, and there is no external person they can blame for believing them when they relay their symptoms (as doctors are supposed to do) and acting accordingly, with the patient’s consent. The issues I have here are the language JK Rowling uses to say young women are transitioning, purposefully misgendering trans masculine people. And implying that people are transitioning because they are gay, because their families or society push them to not be gay and instead transition, is absolutely laughable. Studies have already shown that society as a whole is much less accepting of transgender people than they are of gay people and lesbians. [source]

“Most people probably aren’t aware – I certainly wasn’t, until I started researching this issue properly – that ten years ago, the majority of people wanting to transition to the opposite sex were male. That ratio has now reversed. The UK has experienced a 4400% increase in girls being referred for transitioning treatment. Autistic girls are hugely overrepresented in their numbers.”

There are a number of factors that could have led to such an increase in referrals, and no studies have a definitive answer, though most speculate that the increase in acceptance and visibility of trans people is likely a major contributor. [source] Additionally, I personally believe that more trans women seeked transition years ago because it was impossible to be accepted as a trans woman without fully medically transitioning, whereas trans men could get by without transitioning and simply presenting as their gender. Now that transition is more acceptable and available, trans men do not need to hold themselves back from transitioning, but unfortunately, with more visibility has come more vitriol that is specifically aimed at trans women, and this could discourage them from transitioning or coming out at all. I won’t dignify the statement about autism in afab trans people being prevalent other than saying that cis people can be autistic, trans people can be autistic, and implying that neuro-atypical people cannot make informed decisions about their bodies and healthcare is abhorrent.

“The same phenomenon has been seen in the US. In 2018,  American physician and researcher Lisa Littman set out to explore it. In an interview, she said:

‘Parents online were describing a very unusual pattern of transgender-identification where multiple friends and even entire friend groups became transgender-identified at the same time. I would have been remiss had I not considered social contagion and peer influences as potential factors.’

Littman mentioned Tumblr, Reddit, Instagram and YouTube as contributing factors to Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria, where she believes that in the realm of transgender identification ‘youth have created particularly insular echo chambers.’”

Lisa Littman’s study can be read here. There are a multitude of issues with this study, and many big names in psychology and gender studies have spoken up about the issues in her conclusions and in the methods to begin with, which are unscientific and deeply flawed. [source] The biggest flaw, in my opinion, is that the study interviews parents of trans youth as opposed to the trans youth themselves, and takes the parents’ limited knowledge of their child’s inner thoughts and experience as fact without consulting the trans person at all. Additionally, recruitment for the study was mainly done through anti-trans organizations. All of this information is available in the original study and in the rebuttal. Because of this, I cannot take anybody who cites Lisa Littman or her study seriously, because it is not credible whatsoever.

“Her paper caused a furore. She was accused of bias and of spreading misinformation about transgender people, subjected to a tsunami of abuse and a concerted campaign to discredit both her and her work. The journal took the paper offline and re-reviewed it before republishing it. However, her career took a similar hit to that suffered by Maya Forstater. Lisa Littman had dared challenge one of the central tenets of trans activism, which is that a person’s gender identity is innate, like sexual orientation. Nobody, the activists insisted, could ever be persuaded into being trans.”

There are reasons clearly stated above why Lisa Littman and her work should be discredited for publishing this work and claiming it to be a study (especially because it was not published in any journal and was therefore not subjected to peer-review). Also, for argument’s sake, why do people like JK Rowling take people’s word for it when they report their sexual orientation, but not their gender? Why should one be recognized as innate, but not the other? Both can only be determined by the individual and their internal thoughts and feelings and urges and sense of self. Nobody can be persuaded to be trans any more than anyone can be persuaded to be gay, or lesbian, or bisexual.

“The argument of many current trans activists is that if you don’t let a gender dysphoric teenager transition, they will kill themselves. In an article explaining why he resigned from the Tavistock (an NHS gender clinic in England) psychiatrist Marcus Evans stated that claims that children will kill themselves if not permitted to transition do not ‘align substantially with any robust data or studies in this area. Nor do they align with the cases I have encountered over decades as a psychotherapist.’”

I didn’t think it needed to be said, but a single psychiatrist’s experience is not representative of the entire reality. Many people misquote studies in order to make them work for their agenda. Studies show that trans people have higher suicide attempt rates, not higher rates of actually killing themselves. To insert personal experience like Marcus Evans did, I attempted suicide multiple times, and experienced high levels of depression and anxiety directly tied to my gender dysphoria, all of which has been alleviated since being allowed to medically and socially transition. There are hundreds if not thousands of other trans people who will report similar struggles to myself.

“The writings of young trans men reveal a group of notably sensitive and clever people.  The more of their accounts of gender dysphoria I’ve read, with their insightful descriptions of anxiety, dissociation, eating disorders, self-harm and self-hatred, the more I’ve wondered whether, if I’d been born 30 years later, I too might have tried to transition. The allure of escaping womanhood would have been huge. I struggled with severe OCD as a teenager. If I’d found community and sympathy online that I couldn’t find in my immediate environment, I believe I could have been persuaded to turn myself into the son my father had openly said he’d have preferred.”

Comparing having OCD to suffering with gender dysphoria and all the side effects it can have (many of which she listed here) is offensive. So is saying that she, too, may have transitioned, because she clearly is very comfortable as a cis woman. Trans men do not transition to escape womanhood, we transition because at our core we know we are not women and this causes us deep turmoil, on top of all the sexism and misogyny we face as a result of moving through the world being perceived as women while in the closet. Comparing the admittedly terrible experience of growing into a world riddled with sexism and misogyny to that same experience topped with multiple deeper levels of emotional turmoil is just not a comparison any cis person can make or attempt to understand, which is difficult to hear and accept for JK Rowling I’m sure. If there were online communities when JK Rowling was struggling with severe OCD, she likely would have found sympathy in other people who have OCD. The following implication (out of nowhere) that there are trans people online luring in teenagers with unrelated mental health struggles trying to ‘persuade’ them to transition is just ridiculous and I cannot believe she attempted to make this comparison.

“When I read about the theory of gender identity, I remember how mentally sexless I felt in youth. I remember Colette’s description of herself as a ‘mental hermaphrodite’ and Simone de Beauvoir’s words: ‘It is perfectly natural for the future woman to feel indignant at the limitations posed upon her by her sex. The real question is not why she should reject them: the problem is rather to understand why she accepts them.’”

More people than JK Rowling is probably aware of feel ‘mentally sexless’ in youth, because they have no crippling discomfort regarding their gender identity, and either do not feel pressure to prescribe to gender stereotypical behaviours or actively rebel against it. According to brain studies, everyone is technically a ‘mental hermaphrodite’ because there remains to be no such thing as a male brain or female brain. [source]

“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 both my mental health issues and the sexualised scrutiny and judgement that sets so many girls to war against their bodies in their teens. Fortunately for me, I found my own sense of otherness, and my ambivalence about being a woman, reflected in the work of female writers and musicians who reassured me that, in spite of everything a sexist world tries to throw at the female-bodied, it’s fine not to feel pink, frilly and compliant inside your own head; it’s OK to feel confused, dark, both sexual and non-sexual, unsure of what or who you are.”

Just to clarify for JK Rowling, trans men and trans women both existed in the 1980s, and long before that. If she had been a trans man, she would have been able to pursue a social or medical transition. Those trans people in the 80s also turned to books and music to get through their struggles. It has been long documented that women and girls have negative feelings towards their bodies that are mainly rooted in the misogynistic society we all have to grow up in, and it’s a battle that trans people fight to end alongside cis women. I think JK Rowling will also find that trans people are at the forefront of making it known that gender roles and stereotypes are not necessary and should not be the standard for being a man or woman; women do not need to like pink, frilly things and men do not need to like monochrome, masculine things. Trans people are also huge advocates for finding yourself and living your life in the way that is most authentic to you, without focusing on whether your body is ‘male’ or ‘female’ and fighting against stigmas surrounding that obsession.

“I want to be very clear here: I know transition will be a solution for some gender dysphoric people, although I’m also aware through extensive research that studies have consistently shown that between 60-90% of gender dysphoric teens will grow out of their dysphoria. Again and again I’ve been told to ‘just meet some trans people.’ I have: in addition to a few younger people, who were all adorable, I happen to know a self-described transsexual woman who’s older than I am and wonderful. Although she’s open about her past as a gay man, I’ve always found it hard to think of her as anything other than a woman, and I believe (and certainly hope) she’s completely happy to have transitioned. Being older, though, she went through a long and rigorous process of evaluation, psychotherapy and staged transformation. The current explosion of trans activism is urging a removal of almost all the robust systems through which candidates for sex reassignment were once required to pass. A man who intends to have no surgery and take no hormones may now secure himself a Gender Recognition Certificate and be a woman in the sight of the law. Many people aren’t aware of this.”

First of all, the number of kids who “desist” from their gender dysphoria are not reliable. Mainly because the methods in these studies are not robust (ie one study defined gender dysphoria as exhibiting any behaviour that was not typical of their gender, such as boys playing with barbies and girls playing with monster trucks; another study classified subjects that did not return to the clinic and did not follow up as desisters without confirming). [source] Additionally, studying children who do exhibit true gender dysphoria, the main factor determining whether it will persist or desist seems to be the intensity, and not at all related to peer relations. [source] Trans people wishing to transition medically may no longer need to subject themselves to extensive and unnecessary therapy to convince medical professionals that they are who they say they are, but they still need to wait on very long lists for our turn to access hormone replacement therapy and surgeries, and can spend all of that time being sure that we are indeed trans and want these medical treatments. JK Rowling is also purposefully misreporting facts in regard to Gender Recognition Certificates. In order to get one, one must be over 18, have lived as their true gender for at least 2 full years, and provide two medical reports (one from a gender specialist and another from a general practitioner) citing that they have gender dysphoria. If they have not had any medical transitional treatments, the medical reports must state whether they are waiting for them or why they are not pursuing any, in direct contradiction of JK Rowling’s assertion that any man can get this certificate. [source]

“We’re living through the most misogynistic period I’ve experienced. Back in the 80s, I imagined that my future daughters, should I have any, would have it far better than I ever did, but between the backlash against feminism and a porn-saturated online culture, I believe things have got significantly worse for girls. Never have I seen women denigrated and dehumanised to the extent they are now. From the leader of the free world’s long history of sexual assault accusations and his proud boast of ‘grabbing them by the pussy’, to the incel (‘involuntarily celibate’) movement that rages against women who won’t give them sex, to the trans activists who declare that TERFs need punching and re-educating, men across the political spectrum seem to agree: women are asking for trouble. Everywhere, women are being told to shut up and sit down, or else.”

I find it hilarious that JK Rowling believes that 2020 is more riddled with misogyny than the 80s, and even the 90s. There is only backlash against feminism that isn’t intersectional and purposefully excludes groups of people for reasons rooted in ignorance and bigotry, like TERFs. Her personal belief that things are worse for girls are not reflected in society as a whole for a multitude of reasons. Although I’ll give that Donald Trump being president is a failure of the American people and highlights the bigotry of Americans, it is completely unrelated to trans people, and I’m not sure why it is relevant. I’d even argue the existence of incels is due to the fact that women are no longer forced into relationships and marriages the way they used to, no longer have to find a husband because they can work and live without leaning a man for financial stability, and can say no to sex with less repercussions (except a very small minority of men throwing tantrums about it). Comparing trans people fighting against TERFs and wanting to re-educate them to incels, Donald Trump, and misogynistic men is just a blatant attempt to derail the conversation. JK Rowling refuses to see that she is not being told to shut up because she’s a woman, she’s being told to shut up because there’s a transphobe. (On a lighter note, this reminds me of the post of a comic where homophobes were told to hit a beehive like its a pinata, and Christians got upset for being targetted, without Christianity ever being mentioned....seems relatable here)

“I’ve read all the arguments about femaleness not residing in the sexed body, and the assertions that biological women don’t have common experiences, and I find them, too, deeply misogynistic and regressive. It’s also clear that one of the objectives of denying the importance of sex is to erode what some seem to see as the cruelly segregationist idea of women having their own biological realities or – just as threatening – unifying realities that make them a cohesive political class. The hundreds of emails I’ve received in the last few days prove this erosion concerns many others just as much.  It isn’t enough for women to be trans allies. Women must accept and admit that there is no material difference between trans women and themselves.”

I think all trans people will admit that people with vaginas have shared experiences because, well, they have the same body part, the same way all people with arms can relate to having arms. What we are arguing though, is that womanhood is not tied to having a vagina, or the struggles that come with having one, even though those experiences may be shared by many women. Many women may also share the experience of playing with barbies or being part of a soccer league as a child, neither of which have to do with being ‘biological women’. Pushing the absurd accusations of segregation and some weird political plan, trans people don’t pretend that we’re the same as cis people. There are material differences between trans women and cis women, and between trans men and cis men. There are also material differences among cis women and cis men. Our argument is that these material differences are not a valid excuse to exclude us from being women and men.

“But, as many women have said before me, ‘woman’ is not a costume. ‘Woman’ is not an idea in a man’s head. ‘Woman’ is not a pink brain, a liking for Jimmy Choos or any of the other sexist ideas now somehow touted as progressive. Moreover, the ‘inclusive’ language that calls female people ‘menstruators’ and ‘people with vulvas’ strikes many women as dehumanising and demeaning. I understand why trans activists consider this language to be appropriate and kind, but for those of us who’ve had degrading slurs spat at us by violent men, it’s not neutral, it’s hostile and alienating.”

Trans people are not claiming that being a woman is a costume, or an idea in anyone’s head, or a pink brain or any gender stereotype. Men do not know what it is like to be a woman. I have absolutely no idea what it feels like to be a woman, because even when presenting as one, I did not feel womanhood or any kinship with other women, because I knew that on a deep level I was not a woman. But on to less personal experiences. Inclusive language shouldn’t have quotation marks around it. Those you call female people (which I call afab, or assigned female at birth) do not all identify as women, and do not all like the label female. Therefore, using inclusive language such as ‘people who menstruate’ and ‘people with vulvas’ includes all the women who have vulvas and menstruate (because not all cis women do), and also includes the people who do not identify as women or associate the word female with themselves, despite menstruating or having a vulva. This is not an attack on women, this is not the same as misogynists using these facts to degrade women. It is simply language being used in a more encompassing way that in no way harms cis women, no matter how much JK Rowling or any other transphobe tries to play victim.

“Which brings me to the fifth reason I’m deeply concerned about the consequences of the current trans activism.

I’ve been in the public eye now for over twenty years and have never talked publicly about being a domestic abuse and sexual assault survivor. This isn’t because I’m ashamed those things happened to me, but because they’re traumatic to revisit and remember. I also feel protective of my daughter from my first marriage. I didn’t want to claim sole ownership of a story that belongs to her, too. However, a short while ago, I asked her how she’d feel if I were publicly honest about that part of my life, and she encouraged me to go ahead.

I’m mentioning these things now not in an attempt to garner sympathy, but out of solidarity with the huge numbers of women who have histories like mine, who’ve been slurred as bigots for having concerns around single-sex spaces.”

It goes without saying but obviously I am sad to learn that JK Rowling is a survivor of domestic abuse and sexual assault. It pains me to know she went through something so traumatic and that her daughter also either witnessed or experienced similar horrors. I do however have a problem with weaponizing these experiences as a reason to continue being a transphobe.

“I managed to escape my first violent marriage with some difficulty, but I’m now married to a truly good and principled man, safe and secure in ways I never in a million years expected to be. However, the scars left by violence and sexual assault don’t disappear, no matter how loved you are, and no matter how much money you’ve made. My perennial jumpiness is a family joke – and even I know it’s funny – but I pray my daughters never have the same reasons I do for hating sudden loud noises, or finding people behind me when I haven’t heard them approaching.

If you could come inside my head and understand what I feel when I read about a trans woman dying at the hands of a violent man, you’d find solidarity and kinship. I have a visceral sense of the terror in which those trans women will have spent their last seconds on earth, because I too have known moments of blind fear when I realised that the only thing keeping me alive was the shaky self-restraint of my attacker.”

Again, I am deeply saddened knowing that JK Rowling had experiences that caused lifelong struggles for her at the hands of someone she gave her trust to and had to endure throughout her first marriage. It is interesting that she feels she is able to sympathize with trans women who suffer similar abuses, despite her blatant disregard for trans people’s struggles on display throughout this essay.

“I believe the majority of trans-identified people not only pose zero threat to others, but are vulnerable for all the reasons I’ve outlined. Trans people need and deserve protection. Like women, they’re most likely to be killed by sexual partners. Trans women who work in the sex industry, particularly trans women of colour, are at particular risk. Like every other domestic abuse and sexual assault survivor I know, I feel nothing but empathy and solidarity with trans women who’ve been abused by men.

So I want trans women to be safe. At the same time, I do not want to make natal girls and women less safe. When you throw open the doors of bathrooms and changing rooms to any man who believes or feels he’s a woman – and, as I’ve said, gender confirmation certificates may now be granted without any need for surgery or hormones – then you open the door to any and all men who wish to come inside. That is the simple truth.”

‘Natal girls and women’ is another transphobic dog whistle. There is a non-offensive way to say this, which I am sure if JK Rowling has done all the reading she has claimed to do, she must have stumbled upon the word ‘cisgender’ at some point. It effectively communicates the same information without alienating trans people and implying they are less than cis women. Trans women are not ‘men who believe or feel like women’, and this long standing myth that cis men will use the guise of being a trans woman to gain access to public bathrooms and changerooms has been thoroughly debunked, because trans women have been using women’s bathrooms and changerooms for years with no issues. [source] And scroll up for the claim that Gender Confirmation Certificates are given out to any man who decides to be a woman for a day above, this is just more misinformation, no ‘simple truth’.

“On Saturday morning, I read that the Scottish government is proceeding with its controversial gender recognition plans, which will in effect mean that all a man needs to ‘become a woman’ is to say he’s one. To use a very contemporary word, I was ‘triggered’. Ground down by the relentless attacks from trans activists on social media, when I was only there to give children feedback about pictures they’d drawn for my book under lockdown, I spent much of Saturday in a very dark place inside my head, as memories of a serious sexual assault I suffered in my twenties recurred on a loop. That assault happened at a time and in a space where I was vulnerable, and a man capitalised on an opportunity.  I couldn’t shut out those memories and I was finding it hard to contain my anger and disappointment about the way I believe my government is playing fast and loose with womens and girls’ safety.”

First of all, JK Rowling is blatantly lying. The Gender Recognition Act Reform has been completely shelved by the Scottish government in light if the more pressing need to fight the coronavirus on April 1st, and I cannot find any updates on this being considered by the government. [source] The only trans related news out of Scotland I can find is that on June 5th, the Scottish government included trans women in the definition of women in guidance for school boards, which will have none of the effects that JK Rowling is fear mongering about. [source] Again, I am upset to know that JK Rowling is a survivor, but she is using this revelation as a weapon to make people fear that it will happen to others as a result of trans people gaining access to the same public spaces as their cis counterparts. Women’s and girls’ safety is NOT being put at risk by trans people using a bathroom or changeroom.

“Late on Saturday evening, scrolling through children’s pictures before I went to bed, I forgot the first rule of Twitter – never, ever expect a nuanced conversation – and reacted to what I felt was degrading language about women. I spoke up about the importance of sex and have been paying the price ever since. I was transphobic, I was a cunt, a bitch, a TERF, I deserved cancelling, punching and death. You are Voldemort said one person, clearly feeling this was the only language I’d understand.

It would be so much easier to tweet the approved hashtags – because of course trans rights are human rights and of course trans lives matter – scoop up the woke cookies and bask in a virtue-signalling afterglow. There’s joy, relief and safety in conformity. As Simone de Beauvoir also wrote, “… without a doubt it is more comfortable to endure blind bondage than to work for one’s liberation; the dead, too, are better suited to the earth than the living.””

This is misinformation. On Saturday evening, JK Rowling took issue with inclusive language being used in an informational and medical piece about coronavirus, which is in the best interest of getting the information out to the necessary people. I would stop reading an article that said it was concerning the health of women or females, because I do not consider myself a member of either category. I have, however, menstruated in the past, and continue to have a vulva, and if an article used that language, I would continue reading, because it would concern me. She then went on to strangely imply that trans people were removing the right of gay people and lesbians to be attracted to the same sex, which has never been true, and I don’t have time to get into the same-sex vs same-gender attraction debate, nor is it relevant to her original tweet. It’s ironic that Simone de Beauvoir’s quote relates more strongly to trans people and activists fighting for liberation instead of continuing to be bound by a transphobic society.

“Huge numbers of women are justifiably terrified by the trans activists; I know this because so many have got in touch with me to tell their stories. They’re afraid of doxxing, of losing their jobs or their livelihoods, and of violence.

But endlessly unpleasant as its constant targeting of me has been, I refuse to bow down to a movement that I believe is doing demonstrable harm in seeking to erode ‘woman’ as a political and biological class and offering cover to predators like few before it. I stand alongside the brave women and men, gay, straight and trans, who’re standing up for freedom of speech and thought, and for the rights and safety of some of the most vulnerable in our society: young gay kids, fragile teenagers, and women who’re reliant on and wish to retain their single sex spaces. Polls show those women are in the vast majority, and exclude only those privileged or lucky enough never to have come up against male violence or sexual assault, and who’ve never troubled to educate themselves on how prevalent it is.”

The only people who have any reason to feel any negative way about what a trans activist might say to or about them is a transphobe, so I can only assume the people JK Rowling is talking about are transphobes. The following sentence is just more fear mongering about ‘woman’ being redefined to include trans women, as if that somehow invalidates cis women or puts them in any more danger than they were in before. Predators are predators regardless of the existence of trans people existing. Trans people are not, nor do we have the power to, infringe on any right to free speech or thought, but transphobes will continue to face consequences for their speech, in way of trans people and activists exercising our own freedom of speech. The assumptions made about people who are okay with trans people in single sex spaces are baseless and completely unfounded, only biased assumptions that serve JK Rowling’s personal agenda. Even if these polls are true (she offered no sources), just because public majority agree with something does not mean it is right. History has multiple examples of this.

“The one thing that gives me hope is that the women who can protest and organise, are doing so, and they have some truly decent men and trans people alongside them. Political parties seeking to appease the loudest voices in this debate are ignoring women’s concerns at their peril. In the UK, women are reaching out to each other across party lines, concerned about the erosion of their hard-won rights and widespread intimidation. None of the gender critical women I’ve talked to hates trans people; on the contrary. Many of them became interested in this issue in the first place out of concern for trans youth, and they’re hugely sympathetic towards trans adults who simply want to live their lives, but who’re facing a backlash for a brand of activism they don’t endorse. The supreme irony is that the attempt to silence women with the word ‘TERF’ may have pushed more young women towards radical feminism than the movement’s seen in decades.”

Again, more fear mongering, because women’s rights are not being repealed or altered by granting similar rights to trans men and trans women. I find it entertaining that JK Rowling ironically fails to see that trans people are not the loudest voice, when she has clearly been the loudest voice internationally and has gained huge amounts of attention from her words, much more than any trans person has about this subject. Gender critical people feigning concern for trans youth aren’t excusing the harm their ideology does to trans youth (one example is the idea that trans youth must wait until 18 or even 25 to transition to be sure, and not ruin their fertility or body). Then comes the idea that the ‘good trans people’ who agree with JK Rowling and gender critical feminists and TERFs are getting a bad name from the trans people who just want to be allowed to change for the gym and pee in the right changeroom or bathroom. If more cis women are becoming transphobic, it has much more to do with loud voices like JK Rowling than it does with trans people, again, just fighting for equal rights and protections under the law.

“The last thing I want to say is this. I haven’t written this essay in the hope that anybody will get out a violin for me, not even a teeny-weeny one. I’m extraordinarily fortunate; I’m a survivor, certainly not a victim. I’ve only mentioned my past because, like every other human being on this planet, I have a complex backstory, which shapes my fears, my interests and my opinions. I never forget that inner complexity when I’m creating a fictional character and I certainly never forget it when it comes to trans people.

All I’m asking – all I want – is for similar empathy, similar understanding, to be extended to the many millions of women whose sole crime is wanting their concerns to be heard without receiving threats and abuse.”

I find it deeply troubling that JK Rowling chose this moment to come out as a survivor. It is extremely manipulative, claiming not to want sympathy, when she knows all decent people will feel hurt for her going through such experiences, and weaponizing it for her transphobic agenda. JK Rowling cannot expect empathy and understanding from any trans people or activists until she stops actively advocating and spreading ideology that directly works against the fight for equal rights and protections for trans people, that in no way infringes on the rights and protections for women. Until she stops trying to twist everything about trans rights into her own victimization, she will be stuck in the classification of transphobe, and TERF is she continues to align her views with radical feminism.