#i know the scene has been criticized for being trans exclusionary

[wonderfulworldofmichaelford]

Psycho Analysis: Dolores Umbridge

(WARNING! This analysis contains SPOILERS!)

Sometimes it’s not enough to have a villain. Sometimes, you have to have a character who is thoroughly, unrepentantly awful, someone so despicable the audience will root against them, guaranteed. These are hate sinks, characters that you sink your hate into. When executed well, these characters can be truly great, because they are just so horrendously evil that their ultimate comeuppance is overwhelmingly satisfying. And while she’s certainly no Huey Emmerich, Dolores Umbridge at least gets to take home the silver medal in characters you love to hate. And you will, without a doubt, hate her, for more reasons than you might realize.

Motivation/Goals: Umbridge is seemingly only motivated by her desire to keep whatever power she has. Whoever is in power, she serves unquestioningly, going above and beyond what anyone should. Her tenure as the Ministry-appointed Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher was filled with horrific violations of human rights, including her brutally torturing students, and keep in mind this was all done in an attempt to monitor the school because they thought Dumbledore was training an army of child soldiers to stage a coup and overthrow the Ministry by claiming Voldemort was back.

Later, when Death Eaters took over the Ministry, she would put her same cheerful energy into desecrating the dead body of Mad-Eye Moody and sentencing Muggleborns to have their souls sucked out. So, yes, she’s just the pinnacle of the unpleasant government drone who goes on a power trip and abuses those beneath her with impunity

Performance: While she certainly didn’t fit the description of the ugly, toadlike woman from the books,  Imelda Staunton definitely showed that sometimes changes from the book are better than the original. By making Umbridge look like a kind, maternal figure she manages to project an outward air of sweetness and kindness; who exactly could think such a sweet-looking lady would be capable of such malice? It just makes the fact that she invented a blood pen torture device for use on students and that she can wear a piece of the soul of the most evil wizard to ever live around her neck with no ill effects all the more horrifying. Staunton absolutely kills it in the role, and even manages to make Umbridge a bit more cunning and competent than her book version in small ways while still keeping the smug, sickeningly sweet condescension that we all love to hate.

Final Fate: Umbridge, like any good hate sink, gets only the most brutal of comeuppances her way. In Order of the Phoenix, Hermione leads her into the Forbidden Forest; in the books, Harry explicitly mentally notes Hermione is unknowingly bumbling her way into Aragog’s den, but in both versions they are accosted by centaurs, and when Umbridge tries to assert her authority over them, they drag her off kicking and screaming. If you know anything about centaurs in mythology, you can probably imagine what they did to her, but mercifully neither book nor film spells it out. The sad thing is, she not only survives this, but she gets to retain her position in the Ministry, which pisses Harry off to no end when he finds out.

Fortunately, her good luck runs out in the final book and film. While in the book she’s merely knocked out of the story when the gang goes to retrieve Voldemort’s locket, and she would only be revealed after the story concluded to have been sentenced to life in Azkaban for her role in sentencing Muggleborns to death, in the movie it’s heavily implied that the Dementors she had been holding off sucked her soul out when Harry broke her concentration. I hate to imagine how her soul must have tasted, but really, it’s what she deserved.

Best Scene: I don’t think her best scene is even necessarily HER scene, but a scene in which she gets some sweet, sweet karma: Fred and George’s glorious escape from her nightmarish Hogwarts, a moment so awesome even Professor Flitwick pumps his fist from the sheer righteousness of the Weasley twin’s magnificent getaway.  

Best Quote: Looking through her quotes, during one of her exchanges with McGonagall she drops this line: “I am sorry dear, but to question my practices is to question the Ministry and, by extension, the Minister himself. I am a tolerant woman, but the one thing I will not stand for is disloyalty.” Now this line is already chilling on its own, but taking into account some recent developments, in which Umbridge’s creator, a woman who has a skewed idea of ‘tolerance,’ has been quick to label anyone who dare criticize her toxic views as a misogynist… the line has become disturbingly relevant.

Final Thoughts & Score: Dolores Umbridge is such a very real, very chilling kind of evil, and ultimately this is what makes her so effective. I think most of us have been in a position where a seemingly kind person in a position of power abuses their authority with a smile, and most of us have likely had an extremely rotten, unpleasant teacher. There is just something infinitely relatable to the experiences the students go through in the books.

But I think what truly cements Umbridge as one of the most disgusting and evil characters in a franchise which includes Sniveling Backstabbing Rat Man, Literally Insane Fascist Torture Fetishist, Pedophile Cannibal Werewolf, and at least two wizards who are Literally Hitler, and what ultimately helps her stand out is that she projects this air of kindness and sweetness, that she puts on this mask of being kind, agreeable, and friendly… and then she goes and uses her power to sentence innocent people to death. She has the demeanor of an angel with the heart of a devil, and while this alone makes her such an enjoyably detestable character, what helps her stand the test of time is that she really also holds up well as a criticism of J.K. Rowling herself.

Rowling put forth this sweet, motherly identity for years, this kind older woman who cared about the plight of the LGBT+ community, strived for diversity and inclusiveness, and donated so much of her fortune to charity… and then, on Twitter, she began slowly but surely showing cracks in the sweet facade. A tweet here, a comment there… and soon enough, Rowling had outed herself as one of the most disgusting things a person can be: a trans-exclusionary radical feminist. It certainly was not intentional on her part, but there is some sick humor in the fact that the woman who identified so heavily with Hermione, the girl who fought for the freedom of the oppressed with every fiber of her being, ultimately ended up being more like the oppressive, fascist monster with a sweet face.

Umbridge is an easy 10/10. She’s not nearly as fantastical as the other enemies in the series despite being a witch like they are, but her evil is so much more down to earth and relatable… even more so because she disturbingly reflects the attitudes and personality of her creator. Combine that with Imelda Stauntons incredible performance and, well, what other score could I possibly give her? She’s second only to Huey Emmerich in the hate sink department. I think Stepehn King put it best:

“The gently smiling Dolores Umbridge, with her girlish voice, toadlike face, and clutching, stubby fingers, is the greatest make-believe villain to come along since Hannibal Lecter. One needn’t be a child to remember The Really Scary Teacher, the one who terrified us so badly that we dreaded the walk to school in the morning, and we turn the pages partly in fervent hopes that she will get her comeuppance… but also in growing fear of what she will get up to next. For surely a teacher capable of banning Harry Potter from playing Quidditch is capable of anything.”

Oh, and one more thing: fuck Huey.

[dream-of-hydaelyn]

Regarding my twitter suspension

This is going to be a very long, and hard to write post, but I feel like I need to get everything going through my head down or it’s going to drive me insane.  So as some of y’all know my twitter account was @WillowPlaysXIV  I used this account to announce my streams, post memes, and talk about my experiences as a trans woman in the gaming and comedy scenes. The other day, this account was permanently suspended by twitter. I’m not writing this for pity, or for attention, or even as some desperate bid to get my account back because I know that twitter will likely never respond. I’m posting it here because this is quite literally my only avenue now.  I guess the best place to start at this is the beginning.  I first came out as trans when I was 18 years old, and in my freshman year of college. I was already invested in LGBTQ activism, I was an intern for the human rights campaign for a while, and actually helped found the first LGBTQ student union on my college campus. When I began my transition, my activism continued, even moreso when I left college. I wasn’t even aware of the existence of TERFS (Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists, more detailed information can be found here) until a girl I went to middleschool with turned out to be one. 

It started small. I would get anon hate on my original tumblr account. Nothing I couldn’t handle. If any of you remember me from my “fursecutions” days you remember this. But month by month the amount of terfs targeting me specifically because of my activism grew. They organized campaigns against me, putting me on lists of “violent males” next to news articles about actual rapists. They contacted my employers. It came to a head when I was 20 years old. For two weeks straight I had a 24/7 nonstop barrage of harassment from these supposed “gender critical” feminists that culminated in a Suicide attempt.  It was the darkest time of my life, and my supposed “crime” to these people? I retweeted a story about a trans woman getting kicked out of a feminist event in manchester for being trans.  That was when I stopped participating in feminist activism all together. I stopped campaigning, I stopped working with the LGBTQ youth group I was involved with, I stopped meeting with congress people. ever since I was a kid, I wanted to be an advocate, and I left the career I’d been working at since I was 14 behind.

Terfs celebrated this, cheered and laughed and took screenshots to make fun of me when I was suicidal, but the harassment continued unabated. in the end my block list was somewhere around 24 thousand people long.   Once terfs decided they weren’t getting anywhere with outright bullying anymore, they resorted to reporting anything and everything I tweeted. most recently, the reported a tweet thread about me attempting suicide when I was 20, as I described above, enough times to finally trigger an automatic suspension of my account. I have filed an appeal and twitter has decided that my account will not be restored.  so that’s that. 

Terfs have been doing this to countless trans women with the express purpose of removing us from places where we are safely able to be ourselves and alienating us from our communities. they do not want us to exist, and they will never stop until cis people, en masse stand up to them.  Even if you aren’t political, or even if you’re just a Final fantasy RP blog who never talks about anything OOC, or just a friendly twitch streamer... This is never going to stop unless you take the time to stand with your trans peers. This is never going to stop unless you make space for trans people, and speak up when they’re pushed off of platforms because if you don’t... before long we’re not going to be around at all.  I still don’t know quite what this means. Twitter was how I booked a lot of my shows as a standup comic, and also how I announced my streams. So the future of both those prospects are completely in question. For the time being I will still be streaming according to my usual schedule and posting here.  Thank you for reading 

-Willow (Seska Tayuun, Balmung Server)

[go-scottishgal14]

Why does one group have to annihilate & negate another group? can’t they co-exist?

Masked pro-trans protesters ambush feminist 'Let Women Speak' rally in London and clash with police and rival activists

Daily Mail online,May 29, 2023

Two opposing crowds of gender activists clashed after masked trans activists carrying banners reading 'arm trans kids' descended on a women's rights event hosted by Kellie-Jay Keen.

The 'Let Women Speak' event, held yesterday at London's Hyde Park, has continually been a fractious one with demonstrators - and counter-demonstrators - arriving to voice their opposing views.  

Video from yesterday shows uniformed police restraining people at the scene of the protest after violence broke out, with officers later confirming they had made three arrests.

Many trans rights activists were pictured carrying banners displaying slogans such as 'trans joy will outlive you all', 'Cis d**** for trans rights' and 'Terfs off our turf, defending trans lives.'

The term terf refers to a trans exclusionary radical feminist, a slur commonly aimed at women with reservations about trans visibility in female spaces.

Demonstrators from the Let Women Speak event were also carrying colourful signs emblazoned with messages like 'Lesbians don't like d***' and 'Stop lying to children.'

In videos from the scene, trans rights protesters can be seen massed in a large group facing the women's rights demonstrators.

They can be heard chanting: 'Facist scum, off our streets.'

In another video Parker can be seen dancing as her fellow demonstrators call her a 'legend.'  

Speaking following the event, a Metropolitan Police spokesman said: 'Police are present and engaging with multiple protest groups at Hyde Park, and a proportionate policing plan is in place.'

MailOnline has approached the Metropolitan Police for an update on the situation.

The events organised by Parker's group in Hyde Park have frequently been targeted by trans groups - often resulting in clashes between the two sides.

At the last event in April, police were forced to keep gender critical activists and pro-trans protesters apart from each other.

Parker is leading a campaign for the word 'woman' to be defined as 'adult, human, female' in law, but has been met with protests from trans activists.

Also known as Posie Parker, the mum-of-four who dresses in bright jumpsuits and sports a Marilyn Monroe-style hairdo, has built a following by claiming it's impossible to change sex as she pushes to exclude trans women from female-only spaces.

NOTE:  I’m no expert/authority on issues concerning transgender people, and I think children should NOT be influenced to change genders at a very young age but allowed to voice their concerns about being uncomfortable in their own body, educated about transgender options, and then able to make their own decisions once their older. How old? I don’t know, that’s a quandry for me...what I don’t like is that WOMEN are being negated/overlooked/discriminated against, TRANSGENDER people feel they’re being negated/overlooked/discriminated against, and I don’t understand why the two groups can’t just co-exist. Peacefully. Work to resolve the issues that are affecting them -- and even come together on some issues to provide a stronger unified voice that benefits both groups.  Maybe I’m just out of touch with the world, which I realise is another  possibility and I hate the idea of possibly becoming limited/narrow minded in my thinking.....