#i’d just like to point out that i don’t support JK Rowling in any way

[mjthefaeva]

I had a solid hour where I got sucked down the rabbit hole of Radfem Terf tumblr blogs, and I was looking at it, not in a “oh I wonder what the people who want me dead have to say” way, but more the way you look at say a Dumpster fire?

Like I was reading through this and the way that they refer to Trans people and the people who support trans people (at least this specific blog) sounded like they do nothing but spend their time on 4chan.

AND IT ONLY GOT WORSE WHEN I FOUND THE ARGUMENT POSTS

CW: Transphobia and use of transphobic….. I don’t know if I’d call them slurs? Like they’re meant as slurs but it’s so stupid that it just feels like someone using gibberish.

So I saw two VERY LONG POSTS from this blogger that sounded absolutely unhinged, in that very specific “UH WAIT NO IM NOT THE WEIRD AND CREEPY ONE! YOU ARE! YOU UHHHHH YOU YOU YOU- YOU HATE VICTIMS OF SA” like you get what i mean? Even when that wasn’t brought up at all or when it was specifically brought up in the context of someone saying that they feel bad about this person going through the trauma but it doesn’t justify her acting insane.

Here’s a specific example. So one of the arguments was about JK Rowling and why she uses the K in her name in the first place, although it looked like they were way to caught up on the K (her grandmothers name that she used for her own name despite it not being a middle name) and it was really funny seeing someone point out that fact, and the fact that it sucks that JK Rowling had to go through a shit ton of misogyny through the process of writing Harry Potter, but that they still wouldn’t be supporting her because of her stance a trans people.

And I want to make this very clear. The replier was really civil about the whole thing. Like it was very clear that they were kinda just chilling.

And that’s when the world went a little crazy as the anime girl PFP radfem that I’ve been alluding to starts making a massive unhinged and unnecessarily long essay response to the reply (which was like 3 sentences long and included as a reference image in the reblog by this Radfem).

Again I say, it was Unhinged, way too long, and very unnecessary (much like this post! HEYOH!)

And they bantered back and forth, and each time the radfem kept saying shit like “You Troon likers” (I don’t remember specifically what the slang is for Cis women who support trans rights, maybe like Lib femmes) and like it just kept sounding like you could hear the tear drops hitting the screen with every bit of transphobia. Especially having a problem with the trans rights advocate saying that JKRowlinga response to trans people is incredibly harmful, and the whole time I was sitting there waiting for someone to bring up any of her unhinged ramblings.

Anyway to make a too long post shorter, I really hope that these Terfy types look at the stuff that they make and just like…. Actually ask themselves if what they’re making is….. honorable? Not embarrassing sounding???? Idk, TERF be more normal challenge? Terf Be more normal Challenge😌

[minksmallow]

okay, so this is why show creators need to plan out the ENTIRE plot BEFORE they start filming the show — that way they can use effective parallels,, and have an ending that makes sense and isn’t just “yo guys, hot take but what if we did this thing spontaneously” as they go along with the story.

because obviously that never ends well. you know how many shows i’ve watched that have a bad ending because the writers didn’t plan out the entire story before writing the actual scripts? too many to count. for a contrasting example, think of harry potter or the good place. those series’ plots were clearly planned out before the show started airing. the creators knew what they were going to do. they started from the end, and had all the big plot points planned out, and THEN they created the minor points of the story. and you can tell that they did this, because that’s what good writing looks like. it’s easy to recognise, they had a plan from the beginning and they saw it through.

now for a contrasting example, think of sherlock and more relevantly, supernatural — which is what this post is about lmao. those shows were written as “this is the concept, and we’ll just reference said concept as we go along”. this is, pretty clearly imo, bad writing.

they didn’t know what they wanted to do. unlike the other two series, the writers of spn and bbc sherlock didnt know when they were going to end the show, or how they were going to end the show. these caused them to create random plot points which weren’t planned out properly because they weren’t written in a way that would progress the show and lead them to the end. in the case of sherlock, mofftiss could’ve followed along with ACD’s (the author of the original books) version of the story which made a bit of sense. to be fair, ACD didn’t care about his sherlock holmes series but at least he was somewhat consistent with his characters’ backstories :|

mofftiss created this idea that there was a big secret about sherlock’s trauma from the very beginning. however, we finally got to the point of learning the truth behind this big childhood trauma of sherlock’s, and in turn we expected the canonisation of johnlock, but when season 4 came around we got things that made no sense when considering the rest of the story.

now i’m not gonna lie, i haven’t watched supernatural yet, but i’ve got a pretty solid idea of how it works and what happened in the end. the fans were given a show about supernatural creatures, that’s pretty clear. however, this show had no timeline; no predetermined plot points and no predetermined end. this led to the show lasting for 15 seasons,,, 15 long years of waiting for a finale and the canonisation of a queerbaited ship. because there was no planning for the show, characters came and went, drama took place, but nothing was effectively leading towards the end. so now the writers decided to end the show. but how? alright, let’s give the fans what they’ve been asking for over the course of these 15 years. so they spontaneously write in a love confession. the keyword here is ‘spontaneous’. now what? homophobic writers have left themselves with a gay main character. okay, let’s kill him off. but he’s a big character, so let’s make it a big deal — let’s send him to superhell. NOW now what? we’ve killed off one of our main characters, so we can end the show. but how do we complete the stories of the other two (2) main characters? ehhh idk, let’s just give the one tetanus so that he dies, and the other can have a generic picket fence trophy wife happy ending. oh and the first dude can have his car in heaven, ✨ cuz he liked the car ✨, and also we don’t know how else to transition into the montage of the second dude’s happy life.

so what do the loyal fans of 15 years get out of this?

the writers are so homophobic that they’d rather send a car to heaven than a gay angel

the show ended the same way it would’ve ended if s1e1 didn’t take place

the most random ending i’ve ever heard of in my entire life,,, wtf tetanus?? WHERE DID TETANUS COME FROM?? that’s so random i hate it here 😻

their comfort characters are all dead and only 1 of them got a happy ending, and it wasn’t even satisfying because he wasn’t with his brother and/or his friend

for some, this show was one of the only things that gave them comfort and happiness. the real world loves to kick people in the ass, and now the fictional world doesn’t even have a happy ending.

this show has quite possibly turned into a trigger for a lot of people. a trigger that will now be discussed until the end of time as one of the worst endings in existence.

so in conclusion:

plan out the main plots of your story before you start writing it,

and plan out how these plots will lead to an ending that will be thoughtful and satisfying.

it doesn’t have to be happy if you don’t want it to be, but it has to be satisfying. that’s good writing.

[soijustdidthat]

i adore harry potter. always have. but jk rowling fucking sucks and i have done my best to pull whatever monetary support from her that i can - i haven’t bought any official merch or watched the movies on hbo. other than the occasional youtube clip (not official even then), i haven’t watched harry potter content in years at this point, and i think i read more harry potter fanfic than i do the actual book series. i’ve only seen the first fantastic beasts, and at that point in time i had no idea she was a fucking asshole and i don’t think she’d exposed her true views online. i haven’t seen the trailer for this new one, and i won’t go see it, and i won’t watch it until/unless there’s a way to do it without giving her money. when relatives ask for a christmas list, there’s a note attached asking to please not buy any official harry potter merch. i’ve also done my part on attempting to get her removed from twitter in order to remove her main platform that she uses to spread hate - i know that she’s a billionaire and this basically does nothing, but i’m attempting to show my support to the trans community.

i grew up with this series and do my absolute best to love it while being critical about the problematic pieces within it - of which there are many. i listen to trans creators and proceed forward based on what they say. i myself have and still question my gender and it pains me to know that someone i looked up to and wanted to be when i was little does her absolute fucking best to bring this community down. i’m not saying that if you like harry potter you’re a transphobe: i’m saying that if you like harry potter and make no effort to be critical, raise the voices of trans people within the community, and remove your support of jk rowling, then it’s pretty clear where you stand.

i also am aware that she’s racist as hell - this was less clear to me simply because the last time i read the books i was like twelve and i haven’t read much of the illvermoney? content bc that came out after i’d read them and i think i was in my percy jackson phase or maybe minecraft. anyhow, i also look toward minority creators when it comes to the representation in harry potter, and as i got older, the blindfold was removed and yeah it is NOT GOOD. like the blatant anti semitism, and whatever the fuck she was doing with the house elf story line (how did that get past editing), and so much more. there are so many red flags that would make me stop reading them now - and it’s important to listen to the communities represented and remember that she’s not just transphobic, she’s also racist and that gets left out a lot.

at this point in time, not talking about this issue is pointless - harry potter is one of those things that has completely seeped into our culture - everybody knows about it even if they’ve never read it or seen the movies. it’s different than if a smaller author were doing the things jk is - it that case, talking about it would give the author a platform; whereas with jk rowling we have a unique opportunity to address the issues of homophobia, transphobia, racism and every other despicable thing that appears within these books with a unique lens that most of us haven’t had the opportunity to use. this does need to be done carefully, as too much interest causes her value to rise, and in this capitalistic hellscape, that’s the last thing we need. this conversation can’t be lead by cis white people - it needs to be led by the minority communities directly affected, and i will take me lead in this conversation from them.

i will always be grateful to the series for giving me a home when i was a lonely weird kid who was bullied and abandoned by every friend i ever had, and for giving me hope as i battled depression. but i will not let the fact that jk rowling wrote them lead me away from the fact that i believe in kindness and basic human dignity: therefore i don’t support her and i never will again. i will take my lead from trans people as this conversation moves forward, and adjust my position within the community as they voice their values, thoughts and opinions.

[the-scottish-costume-guy]

JK Rowling, transphobia and a hopefully helpful post.

A few days ago I posted on my Facebook (yes I have one sue me) debunking some of the things Rowling has been saying on twitter. Since she made a statement I felt the need to make another one... but this time Im sharing it here. Please note this is long, it is fairly opinionated in places but her statements have felt so insidious I want to share something in depth. If you are cis I implore you to read, but I understand this is long and a lot of people wont want to. No judgement. 

Jk Rowling’s latest statement is a mess of valid concerns and fear mongering. At this point there can be no claim she doesn’t know what shes talking about - she herself has said shes been researching this for years. She throws in token acknowledgements to “real” trans people while framing the rest of her statements as concern for confused teens.So first things first - and something that might not be popular with some of my trans friends. I agree that teenagers should not be able to medically transition. It is a choice that should be made when the brain is fully mature. Hormone blockers are something I trust - and that are reversible. I have seen enough detransitioned people hurting to feel like we do need to be careful - especially with children who are trying to find themselves. I dont know about other people but during my teens I was coming to the crushing realisation that I wasn’t special. I was learning that no matter how well I painted someone else did it better, no matter how badly I hurt someone had it worse - I was learning about the wonderful mediocrity of life, and having anything that made me stand out gave a brief reprieve from learning to be okay with all these things. For me to be fair it was dying my hair outrageous colours and dressing in black leather during 30 degree summer heat - but its still something we cant forget. I KNOW a lot of kids claiming to be trans are - and I dont want to keep that from them, however I dont want to cause harm to the kids that are wrong. Continuing on, I’d like to address her comments about TERFS. Terfs are Self Described Trans-exclusionary-radical-feminists and the term does get thrown around a little too liberally at times. Terf is not and never will be a slur. No more than “White” is. It is about a group of people who have taken it open themselves to segregate another group - and calling that what it is, is not a crime. The reason Terf and transphobe have become synonomic is because the ‘radical feminists’ that subscribe to this have lost focus on nearly all other issues of feminism and sit squarely on “dropping the T” from the lgbt community and “keeping men out of womens bathrooms.” Terfs are overwhelmingly women - this is sadly simply a fact. Terfs are reviled because of how much it feels like a betrayal to the community. A group that fights for rights - except ours. A group that wants equality - except for us. Its different to the conservatives who hate us all equally - with Terfs we are singled out. Terfs are not, as Rowling claims, inclusionary to Trans-men. I’ve been met with a combination of pity, loathing, mockery and revulsion by people within this group. I’ve been told that I shouldn’t let homophobia push me into transitioning - only for all correspondence to abruptly drop when I mention Im marrying another man. I’ve been told my old body was beautiful - only for stunned silence when I agree. I was beautiful - I was curvy, I was a dancer and had a body to match - but I wasn’t Me. When their usual arguments against me fail - I’m met with hate. Im called anti-woman, traitor, homophobic. I even have some such comments saved on my blog. I have yet to meet a Terf who was pro-trans-man. Rowling claims that had she had the ability, as a confused teen, she may have sought to transition. I hate to tell her but she did have the ability and trans people didn’t pop into existence in the twenty-first century. I’m actually looking to do my dissertation topic in my final year on lgbt presentation throughout history - and in my overeager way I’ve already started researching. James Barry has been becoming a common name for years - a transgender surgeon who died in 1865. If Barry was able to at least socially transition from 1790 to 1860, I am fairly sure Rowling could have in 1980 - over a century later. Rowling also claims that groups of friends in schools all suddenly identify as trans at the same time. Speaking from my school experience - the queer kids group together. We seek out others like us, and we take strength from each others bravery to come out - often around the same time. We almost get a rush of resolve when one of our group musters the courage and strength, and some of us use that rush to bite the bullet ourselves. Its one of the beautiful ways the lgbt community is here for one another - and the influx of people identifying as trans is partially a factor of more people knowing the name of their feelings. Survivor bias will ignore the trans people through history without the knowledge or means to transition - and will claim they were never trans at all. Her initial statements about charities worry me in particular. As I said last time - we know sex is real, we just dont really like to be defined by it. She is worried that we’re going to “rebrand medicine” and ignores that medications for years have had warnings in their leaflets about “If you are or become pregnant” regardless of if the person receiving it has a dick or a vagina. We dont advocate for ignoring the differences in how people respond to heart attacks - and I for one would like research to be done on how hormones effect that. I dont actually know if I would respond more like a cis gender woman or a cis gender man if I were to have a heart attack or a stroke. But where possible we do want to change the language around some of these things. I have had a double mastectomy, but some Cis-men have these as well. This is not a gendered term. Why should a period be called anything else? Why call it a “womens problem.” I and Im sure many other trans people, support the research into how different medical and mental issues affect different sexes. I just think that should be extended further - and we know it should, as some medical issues affect people of different ethnicities in different ways and we don’t know how. I am truly sorry that Rowling has experienced abuse and assault of any nature. I am truly sorry that she has felt unsafe. But her feelings do not invalidate others experiences. Of the trans people I know, a saddening number have been assaulted, have been abused and in particular have experienced these things domestically. There is much work to be done on this in the UK. There are nearly no mens shelters for sufferers of violence to my knowledge. I, a trans man who have experienced some of these things in my teen years, would Not want to be around cisgender women even if I could be. A cis woman was responsible for much of the pain I personally suffered - and in fact one of the acts of violence she carried out against me was directly after I came out as trans to her. Trans women, even if they could go to male shelters, should not have to be surrounded by a group that put them in danger - in a place that is detrimental to them physically and mentally and is frankly degrading. The belief that allowing trans women into shelters for those escaping abuse is dangerous is sad. To be so afraid is deserving of pity. To let fear blind you to the suffering of others - to think its better that a trans woman face homelessness or a return to an abusive household because you personally would sleep better at night is the kind of passive evil we should be aware of in this day and age. It comes from choosing to see the word “trans” before “person.” Its from choosing to see a persons genitals before their humanity. Trans people are not dangerous - and cause no greater risk than any other demographic.  Her claims that she can empathise with this fear are empty. A gender recognition certificate is not a ticket into womens bathrooms. Funnily enough you dont actually require a piece of paper to go almost anywhere. I do not have a gender recognition certificate and use male bathrooms, can enter male spaces as I please. All a gender recognition certificate does is change the letter on your birth certificate. It doesn’t even affect other forms of identification - my passport, my student id, my drivers license all already say male. I am not sure why so many people have chosen this as their hill to die on because its the least relevant thing to them on the planet. How often have any of you seen another persons birth certificate? Rowling says she and other ‘gender critical’ (a terf dogwhistle) people are concerned for trans youth. Well… she can take her condescending concern and direct it to matters that are relevant to her. Trans people want to be left alone. Its a simple request, and yet people endlessly seem to trip over the dirt level bar.

[red-talisman]

Are cisgendered heteroromantic aces part of the community?

This sounds like an attempted ‘gotcha,’ Anon, but just in case it isn’t and for the sake of any potential readers anxiously wondering this about themselves: Yes. Being queer isn’t about swapping out mainstream heteronormative standards for a new set of pre-approved (by whom, anyway?) standards, which is just swapping one set of overlords for another set: the point, in my personal opinion and American-specific context, is to destroy those standards in the first place so that people can love and express themselves however the hell they want within spaces of mutual consent, respect, and dignity. “Be gay, do crime” was never meant to be a cute Insta slogan, and we’re queer because we don’t fit neatly into boxes convenient for people with more privilege than us - and many of us refuse to even try. Gender, love, and sexuality are complicated! No two people experience those things exactly the same way, and when you factor in cultural differences and norms - well, there’s a reason that racism, colonialism, and the rest of the kyriarchy are an essential part of the conversation addressing gendered violence. The heart of violence, whether we’re talking domestic violence, bashing, or institutionalized brutality, is imbalance of power and need for control. Gatekeeping people for not being ~queer enough~ according to some completely arbitrary standard (again, who has the right to set that standard???) is an example on a smaller scale of the same dynamics of misplaced power**. It’s also an exercise in futility because we literally cannot know a person’s internal experience of their own gender and sexuality. Plenty of people’s labels change over time because people change, terminology changes, and personal understanding of ‘self’ changes too. Doesn’t mean they were ever wrong or lying. **(People who think they have a right to gatekeep others’ identities are also more likely to engage in controlling behaviors with partners and leveraging social power within their own communities for personal benefit.) Ace folks get shit thrown at them from all sides and corrective rape+sexual coercion is something over half of us, including myself, are subjected to, according to one Williams Institute study, because of unhealthy ideas of what one partner “owes” another and suspiciously TERFy-sounding nonsense about “human sexual nature.” Here’s a masterpost of acephobia info.

As always, when faced with a particular kind of narrative, e.g. ace exclusionism, you should always ask yourself: who benefits the most from this narrative and how do I know based on what evidence? Plenty of people right here on Tumblr have already linked ace exclusionism with TERF propaganda (and ‘liberal’ TERF propaganda is just diet white supremacy, as JK Rowling has been very publicly demonstrating for the world).

(Tumblr queer community is not at all like real-world queer community, ime. Oof.)

Anyway, a cisgendered, heteroromantic ace person who’s willing to throw their lot in with me and mine - the faggots and sex workers and the poor-as-shit queers - is way more queer to me than some assimilationist gay politician who likes to pretend to his or her rich friends that they’re not like those other queens and kings. Anyone who says “you must be This Queer to ride” is sure as shit not my kind of queer. I’m not gonna interrogate people on their claims of queerness as though I’m entitled to pass judgment on their being. That’s fucked up and the queer community ain’t a zero-sum game or a finite pie of resources anyway.

I’d much rather share space with a handful of people who might one day eventually decide that their queer labels don’t fit after all than leave people who could’ve gotten support out in the cold, alone and vulnerable to hurt.

[kittyprincessofcats]

Stepping away from Harry Potter

Melina Pendulum, Lindsay Ellis and Dominic Noble’s respective videos about quitting Harry Potter or why the concept of “Death of the Author” can’t really be applied in this case gave me a lot to think about.

Harry Potter has been a huge part of my life growing up. And even not too long ago, I was one of the people who still bent over backwards to justify some of JKR’s bullshit. Only 4 years ago, I went to see the Cursed Child in London two weeks after its opening, and made my brother a Hogwarts acceptance letter for his 11th birthday. (I could go on with other important memories in my life that are somehow connected to Harry Potter, but that list would get way too long and we don’t have all day. The point is - these books were a very big influence in my life.)

After JKR’s general shittyness became more and more obvious even for someone who idolized her as much as I did, I started to distance myself and expressed my disappointment in her over the years - and as much as I want to say it didn’t taint my love of the series itself, it did. I just couldn’t find the same joy in it anymore, and the only HP related things I still really enjoyed were Hogwarts Mystery and the works of fan creators like The Mischief Managers.

Now that JKR has completely gone full-blown TERF, I really wasn’t sure what to do at first. I thought I could separate art from the artist. I thought I could simply still enjoy Harry Potter guilt-free, while not supporting JK Rowling financially anymore (meaning: no movie tickets, no more merch or books, nothing that could give her another cent of my money). But as those very good videos^ explained better than I could - it’s not that easy. You can’t completely separate an author from their work if that author is still alive, has a huge platform that they’re using to hurt people, and is as deeply connected to their work as JK Rowling is. She’s made sure all the rights to Harry Potter belong to her alone. She acts like her word on the charactes is law even so many years later.

As much as I’d love to reclaim Harry Potter and say it belongs to the fans now - it does legally still belong to her. People add disclaimers to their fanfictions for a reason. I also haven’t forgotten that time JKR went to court against a fan because he’d distributed his French translation of Deathly Hallows before the official translation was released. Legally speaking, not amount of reclaiming can change that these characters are hers. And personally speaking, I also find it hard to disconnect her from this world. I’ve spent years reading and watching interviews with her - I can’t re-read Harry Potter now without remembering what JKR has said about this or that scene, about this or that character. I can’t read about Rita Skeeter’s “mannish” hands without remembering that JKR is TERF. I can’t read about the stairs to the girls’ dormitories turning into a slide to keep the boys out without remembering that according to JKR’s worldview, those stairs would keep trans girls out, too. I can’t hear JK Rowling say “Hogwarts will always be there to welcome you home” without remembering that according to her, there are people who wouldn’t be welcome to see Hogwarts as their home.

I’ve spent years being a fan of JK Rowling because she wrote Harry Potter. I bought The Casual Vacancy and The Cuckoo’s Calling not because I was genuinely interested in those stories, but because she wrote them. I’ve spent years admiring this woman - I can’t suddenly pretend Harry Potter wasn’t written by her (and I also don’t think statements like ‘Daniel Radcliffe wrote Harry Potter’ are really helping the problem).

And just a few days ago I saw so many Harry Potter fanpages and general fans wishing “Harry and JKR” a happy birthday - as if everything was fine. As if nothing was going on. As if she wasn’t using her enourmous platfrom to dehumanize an extremely marginalized group of people. A few people had the decency to say “Happy Birthday to Harry Potter an f*ck JK Rowling” instead - but even that is a reminder of who the author of this series is and how deepy entwined she is with her creation. 

Long story short: I personally can’t separate the art from the artist in this particular case. Like Melina brilliantly said in her video: “I love Harry Potter, but I love trans people more.” I know so many amazing and kind and courageous trans people and I admire them so much. Back when I was a closeted lesbian scared of coming out to my family, a group of trans people I barely even knew showed me kindness and support. They were there for me, while JKR and her books were not. (I find it insanely hypocritical that she’s pretending to “defend lesbians” from “predatory trans women”. Lady, you don’t even have a single lesbian character in any of your books. As a lesbian, I’m telling you to kindly shut up and leave my trans sisters alone.)

And this is why - at least for the foreseeable future - I’m not going to be talking about Harry Potter on here anymore. I won’t be supporting JK Rowling financially, I won’t get inolved with any of her future projects, and I won’t support Harry Potter creatively (through fanfics, metas, fan discussion, etc.) I’ve put my Harry Potter books and merch away in the same box all the old stuff from my ex is in. And I’m not saying that I’ll never open that box again, but for now I think there are way better things for me to be spending my energy on.

(And just to be clear: I’m not going to judge anyone else for still enjoying Harry Potter. That’s a choice you all have to make for yourselves and I’m not going to tell anyone what to do - especially since I’m not a part of the group most hurt by her transphobic ‘essay’. This is just about me personally.)

[a-method-in-it]

Trans(masculine) former Potterhead here! I still own the books, were a gift, a hardcover set from my mom from years ago. I even made a parody of Im a Lumberjack and I'm OK from Monty Python as I'm a Hufflepuff and I'm OK and helped found a Dumbledore's Army club at my High School I loved HP so much, I was obsessed, but now I have so many mixed emotions about the franchise I don't really know what to do.

I cannot speak for trans women, but as a queer trans person, if I see someone reading the books or watching the movies or wearing merch its like. Ok. I know I might get along with this person, they like the same stuff I (used to) like....BUT do they know how the werewolf thing is about AIDS, implying gay people are out of control monsters, and how the only villain with werewolfism specifically targets minors, implying pedophilia is a trait inherent in gay people? Do they know that when a trans woman reads the books they worry they wont be "woman enough" to keep the stairs in the girls dorm from turning into a slide, because they know that the author specifically thinks they don't deserve to sleep in the girl's dorm because of their gentials? Do they understand that JK Rowling's opinions are there, insidiously rooting into young minds? Are they reading this critically? Or do they support what JK is saying? Do they know all of these things and not care about it, dismiss it out of hand?

Does this person want me dead?

It boils down to a Feeling of Unease. Is this person safe for me to be around? There is a Very Real Danger that the person in the Ravenclaw Shirt and Golden Snitch Earrings is going to call the police on a trans woman going to the bathroom, or beat her, or even kill her, because the author of their favorite series has convinced them trans women are men in dresses and that men in women's bathrooms are dangerous. That person could also be a nice genuine nerd, queer themselves, even potentially a friend, but now I am Suspicious of that person. I am suspicious of anyone who openly enjoys it (unless they are children, kids don't know better, or if they have a tattoo, idk how old that tat is). They want to read it at home and want a discussion on new themes and how to make it better/less gross? Fine by me.

But if someone is publicaly supportting her, staying extremely active in the fandom defending the books or movies or JK herself, having and wearing merch which could direct new people (probably kids! Who will get Obsessed! And don't know better!) into buying things from her and giving her money? After all that she's done? After she literally helped create legislation against being trans?? Not cool.

The series is just simply tainted for a lot of trans folk like me. I still hold it dear foe what it did for me as a child, and I know if I read the series again I would still love it, but I would also HATE myself for enjoying it, knowing that the person who wrote this, the bit of her soul which she has given me, wants me dead. Wants my friends dead.

So I'm not really saying if you support HP publicaly people will see you as a TERF but I am also absolutely saying that people will see you as a TERF if you publicaly support the HP franchise. Death of the author is well and good when the author is dead and/or their estate doesn't get any money for new books or merch purchased, but she is alive and actively trying to kill trans folks, so literally anything that could be seen as support of her, or get others to support her even accidentally, can make trans folk uncomfortable and feel unsafe.

Hope this helped? I know I'm not the original asker, this is just my two cents.

Hi there! Thank you for posting this lengthy and very thoughtful response (and I hope you don’t mind my answering publicly -- if so, let me know and I’ll delete). There is one (admittedly very long) thing I’d like to say in response, but if you’re not looking for that, just know that I really value hearing your perspective and you can feel free to skip all of this and carry on your way. 

---

You say that you would probably enjoy the books if you reread them, but would hate yourself for doing so -- and I just want to say that what you like does not make you a bad person or act as any valid basis for deserving hate, from yourself or anyone else. 

Like, for instance, I’m a person who cannot stand horror movies and I am genuinely confused that anyone would enjoy watching terrible things happen to people for 90+ minutes. But I would never say that people who like horror movies are bad people just because they do enjoy that. The same goes for violent video games -- I don’t like them, but I don’t think the people who do are bad.

Because what media you personally enjoy has really no bearing on whether you are a good person. Being a good person is about how you treat others, whether you are kind, whether you are patient, whether you are understanding, whether you help people when you can and show up for the people in your life when they need you. It has nothing to do with whether you like a particular book or movie or videogame. 

So if you do want to reread those books because you think they would bring you joy, I hope that you do. 

Long before she became a TERF -- (and for the record, I don’t think that she was actively and consciously transphobic at the time when she was writing the books, for the simple reason that most of the people who are TERFs today weren’t at that point) -- I had already gotten used to tuning out Rowling and her fondness for Word of God pronouncements. 

Like, Dumbledore being gay actually fit into the canon very well, but others? They just felt tired and not thought-out and her whole short history of American magic was incredibly lazy. The werewolfism=AIDS thing was offensive in very real ways--and also it should be noted just does not make sense as a metaphor. Not just because AIDS will kill you and being a werewolf will not and there’s no way to bridge that fundamental disconnect -- but also because the way people talk about being a werewolf in the damn books doesn’t resemble at all the way people talk about AIDS patients in real life. Which makes me think she didn’t actually mean for it to be a metaphor when she wrote it and then years later threw it out there because it sounded good to her in the moment because she hadn’t thought it through.

By the time we got to wizards shitting on the floor because she very clearly forgot that she had already had chamber pots referenced in the text, I was long-since tapped out. 

Which is all just to say that it is beyond fair for you to use being a fan of Harry Potter as a data point in gauging your safety as a trans person -- but if we’re talking just about you enjoying the books?

Well, in that case, fuck Rowling and her weird post-canon comments that half the time don’t even make sense. If she wanted trans girls to not be allowed up the stairs to the girls’ dormitory, she should have put it in the damn text. As far as I’m concerned, trans girls and trans boys are allowed up whichever staircase matches their sense of themselves (and, I like to think, nonbinary kids get the run of the whole tower). 

In fact, as far as I’m concerned, she lost the right to have me care what she says about the Harry Potter universe when all of her comments started being unbearably lazy, asinine, and/or nonsensical. If she’d been half this uninspired and careless when writing the actual books, I would have stopped reading them. 

This has been a very long reply on that single point, but I want to end by saying that the point is, even if I accepted the premise that liking the Harry Potter books is in and of itself wrong -- and I hope I’ve made something of a case that it’s not -- it still shouldn’t be something you hate yourself over. Short of actually murdering people, I’m not sure there’s anything that’s grounds to outright hate yourself, honestly, but liking a book is definitely not on the list. 

Either way, you seem like a lovely person, one who is very thoughtful and has been very patient and generous with your time in writing all of that out. I hope that you find ways to also be a little more patient and generous with yourself -- about Harry Potter or any other topic -- because you deserve that and you do not deserve to be hated by anyone, least of all yourself. And I also hope you have a good rest of your night. 

[dmitri-smerdyakov]

The Fantastic Beasts Franchise and JK Rowling

Alright, so...hi everyone.

I don’t know how many people follow this blog anymore because my main blog of operation is now @alwaysahiccupandastrid - I still try to keep this blog relatively active though, just because it was my original blog, I’ve had it since I was 13, and I have so many memories attached to it.

I’m aware that a lot of the people who follow me, especially since late 2016, do so because a) I was a loud and proud Fantastic Beasts fan, b) I wrote some Newtina and Jakweenie fic, and c)...I don’t know. I literally don’t know why people bother following me anywhere because I don’t feel like I have a lot to say. But, anyway, many people probably follow me due to Fantastic Beasts and my posts/fanfics within the fandom.

Those who follow my active blog will already know my feelings and thoughts, but because of the fact many things about this blog - me, the posts for the last four-ish years, the url itself - are Beasts related, I felt it was necessary to come and write an actual post here instead of just reblogging things and calling it a day. I’ve always been very outspoken online, but I’ve been avoiding a certain topic of conversation on this blog for years now, and I’m finally in a place where we can discuss it.

I am, of course, talking about the hot topic that is JK Rowling.

Back in the days between FBAWTFT and FBTCOG, I was a very outspoken defender of JK Rowling and her decision to defend Johnny Depp’s inclusion in the films. Now, this is something I still stand by to this day, and due to the evidence that has since come out, I’m even more steadfast in the opinion that keeping Depp was a great decision. I am fully in support of him and the way he’s currently battling against his abuser. But that’s not what I’m here to talk about right now. As I was saying, back in the day, I was outspoken about the opinion that “we don’t know the full story” etc., and as a result I received very colourful anon messages. Now, to my knowledge, none of these were about JKR being a TERF/transphone, but I think it’s important to mention that at the time I scoffed at the idea she could be one. I openly admit that I didn’t listen to what other people - including actual trans individuals - were saying about JKR and her transphobia because I frankly didn’t want to admit it. I didn’t want to admit that the person who wrote something that saved my life could be so hateful and a bad person - that, and at the time I passed it all off as “wokeness out of control”.

It is now 2020. Up until last Saturday night, I was still in support of JK Rowling - I didn’t agree with some of the stuff she had said, but I was trying to be positive and have hope by telling myself that she didn’t mean to be transphobic, that she just didn’t know what she was doing was wrong, even though the evidence clearly showed otherwise (I.e. her liking transphobic / radfem tweets). I said to my followers on my Beasts page that instead of cancelling people outright, we should be attempting to educate them instead, and if they choose not to learn then fine. And, being 100% obvious, I didn’t want to admit it because I frankly already was feeling annoyed at two different Beasts cast members for different reasons: Ezra Miller (for choking a girl) and Dan Fogler (for his tweet about BLM - admittedly that was probably him being well intentioned but not saying it right). So yeah, I didn’t want to cancel another member of the Beasts “family”.

I had JKR’s tweets on notifications, and for the most part over the last few weeks, it was all about the Ickabog. However, on Saturday night I noticed that she had suddenly tweeted something completely different, and I looked at it. Given that I had adamantly defended her and said “freedom of speech” for so long, it’s telling that my first thought upon seeing her tweet was literally “for fuck sake, Jo, why”.

I won’t post her tweets here but to sum that first tweet up, it was her being annoyed over the term “people who menstruate” being used in an article instead of “woman”, and mockingly saying “there used to be a word for that” before pretending she didn’t know the word. She knew that tweeting it would start arguments and anger, and yet she still made the decision to do so. Her follow up tweets frankly dug the hole deeper; she tried to defend herself by saying, to sum it up, “I have a butch lesbian friend who agrees with me” “I just care about women’s rights!” And “IF trans people were marginalised I’d march with you!” (“If”, of course, being the real kicker here because what do you mean IF. They ARE. Every DAY.)

Since then, JKR has written an essay on her website defending herself and her opinions, and yes, I read it. I read it a few times, in fact. At first, I felt my anger simmer and felt I had been too hasty to make anti JKR jokes, that I was wrong...but then I read it again properly and realised that what she had written was a piece that turned herself into the victim, and that despite putting on the appearance of her saying she supports trans people, including the phrases “I support trans people” and “of course trans women are real women”, she still spewed much transphobic vitriol and hate. She cited no sources for any of her proclamations or statements about statistics, implied that trans men transition to escape their “womanhood”, that trans women are men in dresses, that trans women are dangerous to “real” women (aka cis women) and shouldn’t be allowed into women’s changing rooms or toilets. There was also the autism comment, and the implication of autistic girls somehow not being able to make decisions or whatever.

I’m going to get straight to the point: I don’t support JK Rowling or her radical feminism.

As someone who is a proud feminist (libfem?), I can honestly say that never have I felt threatened or like I was being silenced by the inclusion of trans women in feminist spaces or conversation. Never. In my second year at sixth form, I was in charge of the LGBTQ+ club until a new leader with better leadership skills could step in, and - put simply - that year, the club was made almost entirely of first year transgender students. Even though I had called myself a trans ally for years, I realised there was a lot I didn’t know, and I learnt quite a lot from these students. I continue to still learn today. They were some of the nicest and most intelligent people I got the chance to meet, and I can truly say that at no point was I ever worried to be in a room alone with a trans woman, nor was I concerned about which bathroom they went in - bathrooms are bathrooms. Speaking of bathrooms...when I was at uni during a particularly tense rehearsal a few weeks before our final show last year, a guy in our group made me cry and I ran to the women’s bathroom to escape. Not only did the other girls come to comfort me, but you know what? The guy came in and apologised profusely to me. Did any of us girls give a shit about having a guy in our toilet? Absolutely not. It’s a fucking toilet. And, on that note, I was never worried about a trans woman or even a cis man attacking me in the toilets. You know who DID attack me in the toilets regularly? Other cisgender women.

As a feminist, I fully support trans women and am not threatened by the inclusion of trans women in women’s spaces or in women’s rights discussions. While I agree that cis women and trans women inevitably go through different struggles, at the end of the day, we all identify as women and are women. I think that if your feminism is so threatened by the existence of trans women - TERFs, RadFems, JKR, looking at you - then your feminism is flimsy and not feminism at all.

As a woman, I find it highly offensive that JKR and many RadFems focus so much of womanhood and feminism on an involuntary biological function that, frankly, many of us would rather do without. Yeah, I’m talking about periods - no matter how proud I am to be a woman, I still fucking hate periods and would get rid of mine if I could without erasing my chance of having kids someday. I can hear the RadFems accusing me of “internalised woman hatred” for saying I hate my periods, but you know what, they suck and they hurt and fuck them. The fact that JKR (also the the radfem movement) reduced “women” to just people who menstruate and can have children, and vice versa, is incredibly offensive and misogynistic. For a start, trans men menstruate, intersex people can, non binary can etc. Next, not even ALL cis women have periods - women who are menopausal, young women who haven’t started puberty yet (some do start very late), some women don’t have regular cycles, some women have medical problems that affect their cycle, some women are on birth control that can stop their cycles. So the idea of women being defined as “those who menstruate” is offensive not only to trans/intersex/non binary individuals but also to cis ones too.

As I write this, I’m a 22 year old woman who is still learning and changing every day, and one of the things that I’ve found myself thinking about recently - especially since we’re in lockdown and we have nothing BUT time to think - is about myself and my identity as a woman. What prompted this was when I saw Greta Gerwig’s adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s beloved book, “Little Women”, which I’ve since read, for my birthday back in January, and I left the cinema feeling exalted and powerful with my own identity as a woman. (I’ll be returning to LW in a bit)

After some thinking, I’ve realised some things. For me, my identity as a woman is not just because once a month my uterus decides to shed; I do not identify as a woman just because I have certain physical features. I am not a particularly feminine person either, and I’m what some may call a “tomboy” (a phrase I actually don’t mind but I know a lot of people do for understandable reasons since it’s a phrase designed to differentiate people who don’t conform to society’s expectations etc) because I prefer video games and more geeky stuff to shopping or dressing up or make up.

For me, there is no one way a person has to be or appear in order to identify as a woman. Women are beautiful, complex human beings; we are not defined by our genitalia, by an involuntary biological process. Women are strong, intelligent, and interesting people - no two are the same. For example, some decide to raise families, some choose to pursue a career, some do both - all of these are valid and none are more “feminist” or “womanly” than the others, because it’s our as women. I guarantee that if you lined up every single woman in the world - cis AND trans - no two would be the exact same.

I mentioned “Little Women” earlier, and as I was pondering over what makes me identify as a “woman”, I thought a lot about a certain quote from the 2019 film that has stayed with me since it was first said in the release of the trailer. It’s spoken by Jo March to her mother, and I’ve started to understand what for me makes me a woman.

For me, being a woman is all of this: having minds, hearts, souls, ambition, talent, and being beautiful each in our own ways. Women are capable of love and empathy, capable of desire, capable of the most complex and human feelings and emotions, and coming out the stronger for it.

Sex is one thing; gender identity is another.

I won’t dissect every single thing JKR wrote in her essay, but I will just say this: her comments regarding autistic girls are extremely tone deaf and she does not speak for those with autism. I’m going to be honest and admit something here I haven’t before: I have not been diagnosed with autism or aspergers but I AM currently on the waiting list to see someone who COULD diagnose me. Apparently I show signs of a potential diagnosis, so...we’ll have to see. But I have friends who are autistic, and they’re disgusted by JKR trying to use them to support her TERF arguments. Autistic and other neurodivergent people are absolutely capable of making decisions and are NOT people who need to be babied or have their hands held, to be told who they are. It’s incredibly ableist of JK Rowling frankly.

I would also like to point out... I’ve seen people saying “but she doesn’t hate autistic people, Newt is autistic!!!” - yes, but JKR didn’t write him as autistic. Eddie Redmayne chose to play Newt as autistic - JK Rowling didn’t do shit.

It’s also time that I acknowledge that both Potter and Beasts inevitably hold JKR’s problematic views, and that by denying her ownership of her work, we’re not holding her accountable for the horrible things she’s done. This includes - but is not limited to -:

Anti-Semitic stereotypes in the goblins

Lycanthropy being used as a metaphor for AIDS - an illness that is heavily associated to the gay community, and also there was the panic of the AIDs crisis in the 90s where much misinformation and homophobia was generated and spread because of it.

Adding further to the lycanthropy point, one of the infected individuals - Greyback - is stated to have a sick preference for infecting children. Not only are werewolves tied to harmful gay/AIDs stereotypes, but also to the disgusting and frankly wrong notion that gay people are pedophiles.

The only Asian character is called Cho Chang. Cho Chang. That’s two steps away from outright just calling her “Ching Chong”. It’s not a name an actual Asian person would have.

The Goldstein sisters are probably distantly related to Anthony Goldstein, who JKR confirmed (on Twitter of course) is Jewish, meaning that Tina and Queenie are most likely Jewish too (and Goldstein is a Jewish surname). However, despite the fact that the first FBaWTFT is set DURING Hanukkah in 1926, there’s zero signs of them celebrating or observing it. Maybe that’s more on set design than anything else, but come on - if I, a fanfic writer, can do some research, JK/the crew of a major movie can too!

Adding on from that, gotta love how one of the JEWISH main characters then decides to join the Wizarding world equivalent of Hitler. I already had problems with Queenie’s characterisation in CoG, but that’s the icing on the cake.

POC/Black characters - in both series but since I’m a Beasts blog... Seraphina Picquery, a Black female president serving a term during a MAJOR wizarding world crisis, is severely reduced to have only 3 lines in CoG. Nagini’s only purpose is to be the only friend of Credence, a white man, before he joins Wizard Hitler and abandons her; she’s also an Asian character who we know one day permanently becomes a SNAKE, and who goes on to actually have a piece of Voldemort’s soul inside of her?? And some do see her as his slave, though you could argue that she’s actually the only being that he holds any love or respect for. Leta Lestrange is a half-black woman who is killed/literally sacrifices herself for TWO WHITE MEN, and who’s death was literally confirmed to have been added in last minute.

Also, the whole Lestrange storyline was fucking nasty: white Lestrange Sr imperius-ed a black woman (Yusuf Kama’s mother), raped her, and she then died in childbirth. I’m sorry, what the fuck??

In Harry Potter, Seamus is a terrible stereotype of an Irish person - he likes to blow things up. Look up the IRA and their bombings. Fucking Irish stereotype. As someone with Irish grandparents and who is proud of their Irish heritage, this really pisses me off.

Let’s not forget the whole Native American cultural appropriation. That truly speaks for itself.

So here is where I speak candidly to everyone who follows me and/or sees this post. While Beasts is no longer my No. 1 fandom these days, it and Potter still hold a huge piece of my heart. I have 5 wizarding world tattoos, so much merchandise, and I can safely say that being a fan of both series has shaped me as a person. Both of those series helped me get through the darkest days of my life, including bullying at school, my Nan passing away, and my mental health struggles.

This is why what’s happened has impacted me so much and broken my heart. For me, it feels like it’s tainted now because of Jo and her views. I know that we should separate the art from the artist, but when her views are so clearly woven into the very fabric of the Wizarding world, it’s a huge problem.

Here’s another part of the dilemma - I do not wish for the Beasts films to be cancelled. I’m well aware that the *cough* people who dislike me will say I’m trying to be negative, trying to boycott the series blah blah blah, but that’s truly the last thing I want. I still love the story, the characters, the soundtrack, and I want to know how it ends, if only for my own piece of mind. It’s also important to add that by boycotting Beasts, it’s also harming the hard working thousands of others who worked on the films: the cast, the crew, the extras, the musicians, etc., not to mention the fans who actually are invested in the series and have taken solace in it. It’s not fair for them to all suffer over the actions of one TERF.

This is one of my biggest worries, however: the Fantastic Beasts films do NOT have a good reputation as it is. The second film was boycotted by some due to Depp, and now there’s talk of people boycotting number 3 because of JK Rowling. Lots of people already talk hatred about it, and this will only fire that hatred up even more.

There’s also talk of Eddie Redmayne potentially being kicked from the franchise due to a “leak” that he doesn’t want to work with JKR anymore, but this could be sensationalist news reporting. But if it came down to it, I can honestly say that I would rather continue to have Eddie play Newt than keep JKR as a writer. Eddie has done more for Newt than even JKR has, and if he goes, then that will be the last straw for me within the fandom. That will be when I take a sharp exit out, sell my FB merch and have my tattoos covered.

To add, the Fantastic Beasts scripts are...not great. Or, at least, what we saw on-screen wasn’t. Maybe that’s David Yates being the literal worst (fuck you, Yates, you suck) and cutting all the parts with strong female characters, but I honestly don’t think that JKR can write screenplays well at all. I think she’s clearly better at writing books, and that’s fine - books obviously allow for more time to explore characters and story/plot arcs etc, and film scripts offer way less of those chances. I don’t think screenplays allow her to write what she needs to in order to tell the story she wants to, hence why CoG was kind of a hot mess. So maybe it’s just that she’s not suited for screenplays and should stick to books.

Honestly, I kind of just wish that WB would hire another person to finish writing the Fantastic Beasts movies - obviously they’d have to keep JKR on board to tell them the actual plot, but get someone who can actually write screenplays and not be problematic to write them.

By now I’ve gone on long enough that I’ve forgotten my original intent while writing this, so I’ll try to sum up and end now. In short, I am extremely disappointed in JK Rowling and do not support her or her views any longer.

I don’t know how any of you guys are feeling but I would be interested to hear other people’s thoughts, especially other Fantastic Beasts fans. I want to also add that, as always, my DMs and inbox are always open - if not here, then always at @alwaysahiccupandastrid where I’m more active nowadays.

Finally, you guys don’t need me - a white cis woman - to tell you this but you’re all valid and magical and fuck JK Rowling. Her characters would all be ashamed of her, and the characters we grew up with would not stand for the bigotry and vile hatred she spreads under the guise of ““protecting women””. Several of the amazing actors from Potter and Beasts have spoken out against her and her tweets: Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Bonnie Wright, Katie Leung, Chris Rankin, Eddie Redmayne. Some have been...less inspiring (Tom Felton, Evanna Lynch, looking at you two 👀)

I’m sending love to everyone right now. I wish I could say something more useful but I’ve spoken enough - I’ve made my opinion clear. I love you all, please stay safe.

[theissuewithred]

On Harry Potter, J.K. Rowling, and being Trans

TW: mention of  death, suicide, suicidal thoughts, self harm, transphobia, swearing (just cause i know some people don’t like it)

if anything is uncomfy for you to read, i’m really sorry, this is just my own opinion and the best way for me to explain it.

for my ADHD and autistic followers/anyone who has trouble reading long posts like this one, i’m gonna summarize everything in the last paragraph if you want to know what i said. I’ll also limit any potentially triggering stuff in that last paragraph.

Pretty much everybody in the potterhead community knows what has been going on with JK Rowling and her extremely transphobic comments that she has made over the years. I’m not exactly active in the online community, but i’m definitely a reaaaaally big fan of the books, and when I learned what Rowling had said, I had a lot of trouble processing it (which is why it’s taken me so long to post this.) 

My mental health has never been great. I’ve pretty much always had to deal with some form of depression and anxiety, and while for a good chunk of my childhood i was pretty okay, my mental health took a huge nosedive when i was about 10 or 11. my great grandparents both died around that time, and i was really lucky to know them and i had been really close with them. it’s been years and i still don’t know how to manage the grief from their deaths. them dying was basically pushed me over the edge and what threw The Big Sad in my face. 

I didn’t know that it was okay to talk about what was going on, so gradually I got worse and worse until I was starting to have thoughts of self harm and suicide. I did end up cutting a couple of times. It really sucked. 

And then I read the Harry Potter books. 

Lemme tell ya, I dove headfirst into the books. I couldn’t stop reading them, I think i read the full series in about two months? And then I just read them all over again, constantly disappearing into them. 

Harry Potter gave me a world I could disappear into, a place where I could cast spells and brew potions, and a place where everything felt completely okay! When I read the books I didn’t want to hurt myself, i didn’t think about how easy it would be to just end it all. It was fucking magical!! 

I made a ton of friends off these books, I met my first girlfriend because of these books! (she was wearing marauders map leggings in choir and i promptly started questioning my sexuality) Harry Potter brought me back to life, and without Harry Potter I would not be writing this post right now. I’d be six feet under, buried in Champlain, NY next to a bunch of dead people I’ve never met with a very christian headstone. (gotta love catholic grandparents *finger guns* *cries internally*)  

I started getting a bit better, I still deal with self harm a bit but luckily i’m not suicidal. i figured out that i’m nonbinary and pretty fuckin gay. I no longer am dating the girl in the marauders map leggings (which is a story i’ll share at some other time), and i’m doing mostly okay. I would say completely okay but Rowling just HAD to be transphobic. 

When i found out about what Rowling had said, I was really confused. This is the woman who wrote a series about love and acceptance, and she doesn’t love and accept people who are trans? I thought for a moment that I must be wrong, that it must be some big joke. But by that point to much was out proving me otherwise. I thought that I would have to distance myself from this fandom, stop loving the books. But to be honest? I can’t. I can’t cut these books out of my life. Harry Potter kept me going when nothing else could. When i’m having a really bad day (mental health wise) I still pick up the books and read them all again. They mean too much. 

JK Rowling should never had said what she did. She never should have told us that we don’t count, that we are predators or freaks. The Trans community is so beautiful and I’m so proud to be a part of it. Rowling's transphobia is such bullshit and I wish I could still see her as I used too, but I can’t and that hurts so much. I don’t really know how to put into words how much it hurts me. 

 ⚡ ADHD/autistic/can’t read long stuff fam, start here!! ⚡

I’m not going to leave the fandom. Rowling has been and will likely continue to be very transphobic. It hurts to know that the woman who wrote the books that saved my life will never accept me for who i am and will hate me for just wanting to be myself. But these books mean way too much to me for me to stop reading them. I’m not going to stop reblogging fanart and reading fics and obsessively analyzing the movies for new easter eggs. I’m still going to go see all the Fantastic Beasts movies as they come out. But I am not, in any way, going to continue to idolize and blindly support JK Rowling. She may have created something beautiful, but these books? They belong to us. 

I don’t think I can write anymore without getting irrationally angry/crying so i’m gonna stop now. if anyone actually reads this, feel free to add on to it. 

Happy pride month everyone! 

Mischief Managed. 

[aboycalledeverything]

An In-depth Response to JK Rowling from a Transman

**CW: transphobia, suicide, surgery, discrimination, assault**

Let me first say that we should not allow this conversation to derail the progress and momentum of the Black Lives Matter movement. Though race and sexuality intersect in many fascinating and important ways, it is important to allow the voices of our BlPOC to be heard and amplified for as long as it takes for meaningful, sweeping changes to be made in our society. That being said, I would be remiss if I did not take the time to process and respond to the conversation you have chosen to bring to the table. 

TLDR: To JK’s assertion that trans women threaten the political and biological class of ‘women’,  Acknowledging that trans women are women is not the erosion of a political and biological class. It is strengthening those classes by accepting the women who, despite all threats of assault or death, stand by their identity and celebrate womanhood.

Let me also begin by saying thank you. For surviving, for persisting, for blessing the world with the gift of magic. The books-which-need-not-be-named were and are pillars of my childhood, identity, and life philosophy. I will never stop finding solace in the pages of those books. 

Before we can continue the conversation, I need to introduce myself. I am a (relatively) young white transman and former D1 softball player. I chose to defer physical transition but came out socially as a transman in my sophomore year and was one of the few openly trans NCAA athletes at the time. I was also a student, and spent a large portion of my collegiate career studying LGBTQ+ issues and how they connect to human psychology. My senior capstone was a paper titled “Transmen and Suicide: Unique Contributors to a Disproportionately High Suicide Attempt Rate.” This involved both an in-depth literature review of trans research and theory as well as an independent collection and analysis of transman testimonies. The year after graduation was spent as a Lab Coordinator for the Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity: Health and Human Rights Lab at the University of Texas at Austin which does phenomenal sociological and psychological research on queer youth in particular. This is not to say that I am an expert, but rather to make it clear that I, too, have spent years researching the fraught topics of gender and sexuality.

Thank you for referring to my trans brothers as “notably sensitive and clever people.” We do try to use the unique empathy granted by being seen and treated as both women and men. Most of us grew up as girls and have been targeted by the misogyny and sexism that you reference; we try to use those experiences to inform our responses and opinions to societal issues. I, specifically, am going to use my lived experiences to respond to your essay. There are some points with which I agree and appreciate your recognition - freedom of speech, the importance of nuanced conversation, and the fact that both women and trans people are at disproportionate risk of violence and must be safeguarded. There are other points with which I take umbrage and will address one by one.

JKR: “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.”

Response:  Let’s be clear: trans activists - at least the majority of us - are not trying to erase sex as a definition. Instead, we are asking that the parameters be reconsidered to make space for intersex people and who have biologically transitioned. Your points about the biological differences in treatments for MS are well taken. Ignoring intersex people and focusing on only the binary sexes male and female, you’re right. There are often sex differences in diseases and health disorders. But the problem is that we don’t always know what drives those differences; if they’re based on hormones, physical bodies, or something else entirely. Intersex and trans people, if they choose, now have the medical capability to change their hormones and physical bodies to the extent that they can be classified as male or female.

I’m not going to give you a full explanation on sex as an expression of levels of hormones, chromosomes, and physical organs. I’m sure you already know that both biological men and women have varying amounts of the same hormones, and that hormone replacement therapy can and does give trans men and women the hormonal levels that correspond to each definition. I have been taking testosterone for just under 2 years and, for all intents and purposes, have the chemistry of a biological man. In the same way, surgeries can and do affect physical biology and organ makeup, from removal or reconstruction of a penis or vagina to the removal of ovaries and uterus entirely. 

This creates a gray area as to how to medically treat diseases like MS in trans people. We’re still learning, and I’ll be the first to admit that. What I can say is that there are many binary trans people who are not trying to replace legal definitions of sex with gender, but rather are trying to expand the legal definitions of sex to those who, for all intents and purposes, are biologically male or female.

JKR: “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.”

Response:  I would very much like to see the studies that you are referencing in this “huge explosion” of detransitioning individuals. If you’re referencing the article by Lisa Littman, it is definitely worth noting that her study was a) descriptive rather than empirical and b) based on the testimonials of parents and not the actual trans youth.

According to a different and arguably more experienced researcher, Dr. Johanna Olsen, regret and detransitioning as you talk about it are extremely rare. I encourage you to watch her video below and read over some of the other research she is and has been doing.

Even if we were to listen to descriptive research such as Littman’s and assume that there are people who wish to detransition, the lack of fertility you’re talking about is not universal and, as with people assigned female at birth, varies. According to recent studies, trans men who wish to reproduce biologically can take a break from testosterone while carrying their children and resume afterwards. So far, there are no negative side effects for the children of transmen.

What should also be considered, especially in youth, is that hormone blockers are entirely reversible. But puberty is not. When trans children are put on hormone blockers, they are essentially delaying permanent puberty and taking time to examine whether it’s right for them. Access to medical care such as hormone blockers are essential to trans youth because it does give them time to figure out their identity before going through the male or female puberty that affects them.

I have not seen any cases of transition driven by homophobia, but would like to note that working to make parents less homophobic and transphobic seems to be a better use of time than arguing against the right of many trans youth who do need access to medical intervention.

JKR: “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.’”

Response: This point is one of the more frustrating parts of your article because it is using one medical professional’s opinion to ignore a horrifying truth. Trans adults and youths experience suicidality and depression at staggering rates. While I cannot comment on studies in the UK, here in the US the lifetime suicide ideation rates for trans adults is 81.7%. The attempt rate is 40.4%, almost 10x the national average of 4.6%. 

And those are just the statistics of the people who survived long enough to participate in the study. Denying the real threat of suicidality in trans youth is not only saddening - it is actively harmful.

JKR: “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.”

Response: This is one of the most frequent arguments I see for people denying trans men their identity. My own mother has suggested that I transitioned to escape sexism. To this, I respond that choosing to transition does not provide an escape to discrimination and harrassment. I was well aware, when choosing to come out and transition, of the statistics of discrimination I was entering. I was well aware that it might mean the loss of my athletic scholarship, the dismissal of the team of sisters that I played on, It was not a matter of escaping sexism, but rather a matter of being my most authentic self. Even if you dismiss my own personal experience, I would point to the trans women who actively transition and give up their male privilege in exchange for the trials and tribulations of womanhood. Either way, I can assure you that the suicidality trans people experience makes the “choice” to transition no more of a choice than raising your hands because a gun is pointed at your head. 

JKR:  “ 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”

Response:  I appreciate your recognition of our reality! I would love to see the studies that present a 30% difference. In my experience, those of us that lived long enough to see adulthood have not grown out of dysphoria, even if we’ve learned coping strategies to make it bearable. And again, hormone blockers for teens allow the opportunity for them to grow however they need to without permanent changes being made.

JKR:  “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.”

Response:  Once again I cannot speak to the politics or legislation of the UK. What I can say is that “bathroom bans” on trans people that require us to use the fitting room/bathroom/locker room of the sex we were assigned at birth lead to significant sexual and physical assault on trans people, which already face a disproportionate risk (as you mentioned). I personally have been fortunate enough to have not been physically assaulted when I was trying to go to the bathroom, but have been harassed in both mens and womens bathrooms (which I varied between during my transition, depending on how well I thought I was passing). Many of my friends are not as lucky.

JKR:  “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.”

Response:  The implication that trans women - who are literally dying to be acknowledged as women - putting on a “costume” is flagrantly offensive. I am choosing to believe that you did not intend this implication and instead are confusing sex and gender. In which case,would refer you to the seminal work Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity by Judith Butler. According to her, gender is literally a performance that one chooses to express. Transwomen define their gender and femininity as individuals, and do not choose to go through the grueling process of changing their biological sex because they like Jimmy Choos. The gender ‘woman’ is not a “pink brain” but rather an identity that can be inwardly cultivated and outwardly expressed. The sex ‘woman’ or female is an amalgamation of complex physiological systems that, as we’ve already discussed, can be altered. 

JKR: “I refuse to bow down to a movement...” 

Response: There is undeniably a movement, a “cancel culture” that dismisses nuanced conversation. I, like you, am concerned about the erosion of free speech and the expression of alternative points of view in nuanced discussions such as this one. But this movement is not specific to trans people and should not be described as such. Most trans activists and researchers that I know are not asking you to “bow down.” We’re asking you to come to the table and have an open mind. We’re asking you to use your huge platform to help trans people (as you clearly want to) without harming them (as you clearly have).

JKR: “...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.”

Response: This is the crux of the “TERF wars”. The refusal to accept trans women as women. To this, I would simply say: Acknowledging that trans women are women is not the erosion of a political and biological class. It is strengthening those classes by accepting the women who, despite all threats of assault or death, stand by their identity and celebrate womanhood.

[imadethisblogfor1post]

What is gender? Please send help

Content warning: ignorance about transgender issues, discussion of sexism, well-meaning-ally-who-doesn’t-quite-get-it-ism. Callouts welcome and encouraged.

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I want to start by saying that despite my profound lack of understanding about what gender is, I don’t want to invalidate anyone. I want so badly to be a supportive ally to trans and nonbinary folks, and at first I did a lot of reading to try to understand, but no matter how much I read, I stayed confused. So eventually, I gave up. After all, I don’t have to have a deep understanding of an identity to know that people are deserving of respect. If calling someone a particular name or using a particular set of pronouns will help them know that I love and respect them, then of course, of course, I will do that. Nothing I am about to say changes that.

The only problem is, not understanding makes it really hard to call out bigotry, because I don’t always see it. This post was triggered by a recent transphobic tweetstorm by JK Rowling, and I think I get why most of those were bad, but with some I’m still more sympathetic than I’m comfortable with. This continues a trend I’ve seen for a while: some of the most helpful pieces of reading material have been posts from radical feminists that I found myself nodding along to, only to find that the point of the post my friend was sharing was the attached comment and call-out. These served as huge wake-up calls, but it still wasn’t enough to explain to me what I wasn’t getting. More than that, even after the call outs, even after knowing that some of the points of the original post were transphobic, I sometimes can’t help feeling that some part of it rang true. Therefore, my problems as an ally come in two parts. One, I deeply lack the understanding to call out bigotry in others and myself, and two, there are some real conflicts between the feminism I subscribe to and certain aspects of trans ideology (ideology is not a good word to use here, but I’m at a loss for what else to call it)(sorry).

I’ll start with the second— it’s the worse one anyhow. The crux of the problem is this: there are distinct consequences to being assigned female at birth. We are treated differently, we are socialized differently, and no matter how progressive your parents are, it’s impossible to completely escape. Put simply, cis women and trans women do not experience 100% the same types of oppression. This is not to say either experiences more or less pain, this is not to say either is more or less deserving of support, this is not to say that we as feminists should not strive to be intersectional (we should). All I am saying is that inclusion cannot come at the expense of erasing or silencing the experiences of people who were assigned female at birth.

I have a few specific concerns on this matter - these are the points that make me sympathetic to radical feminism (even when I see them called terfs, as ashamed as I am to admit it).

One, we need to be allowed to use words about female anatomy without being called terfs. It’s not okay to exclude people and imply that all women have uteri and all people with uteri are women, but it needs to be okay to talk about uteri.This one comes up less often, but when it does come up I find myself extremely indignant. I am sincerely sorry that talking about anatomy triggers dysphoria, but in a world where female anatomy is treated as inherently explicit, and people have been silenced in legislative settings simply for using those anatomical terms, we can’t afford to be silenced within our own communities. 

Two, it’s not okay to shout people down for how they experience attraction. I really shouldn’t have to say this, but too often I’ve seen lesbians pressured or called transphobic for not being interested in being with someone with a penis. It’s not uncommon for lesbians to experience compulsory attraction to men before recognizing their sexuality. That, combined with the prevalence of sexual violence against women and people who are assigned female at birth, makes me extremely skeptical of anyone whose response to rejection is to attempt to shame them into changing their mind. Again, I’m sorry, and it sucks that it causes dysphoria, but no one is entitled to anyone else’s attraction. It is not okay to pressure anyone else into a relationship or sex, regardless of the circumstances. I myself am gray-ace and panromantic - suffice to say I don’t really get how being attracted to genitals works, but if that’s how it works for them, then that’s how it works for them. If we need different words for “hi I’m attracted to the gender of woman” and “hi I’m attracted to female anatomy” then so be it, but honestly people probably shouldn’t have to disclose that much information right out the gates, and both should be allowed to call themselves lesbians. There’s a balance to be struck here, but I’m sick of seeing lesbians alienated for this, and it needs to be addressed.

Three, there need to be spaces for people who were assigned female at birth, without people who were assigned male at birth (unless they are invited as a guest). As mentioned above, sexual and gender based violence against AFAB people is incredibly common. A lot of us have trauma around it. We need spaces where we can talk about those experiences without being shouted down, the same way trans people need spaces to talk about their experiences. This is a bit of a slippery slope - obviously there need to be intersectional spaces as well, and it’s not okay to exclude people, as long as everyone is being respectful. But it’s important to make space for all of us, and understand that our experiences are not uniformly the same.

I’m not sure why this has been such an issue. Some part of me that I hate to acknowledge suggests that part of the problem is that people who are assigned male at birth tend to be more entitled than people who are assigned female at birth, simply because that’s how they were taught and socialized when they were younger, but that brings up a whole slew of other issues, and I’d hate to paint with too broad a brush. Perhaps it’s just that the fight for inclusion needs to be fierce and thorough, and any space where one isn’t included is treated as an attack, even if that isn’t the intent. No matter the reason, we need to understand that we are not all the same, and that’s not a bad thing. 

In a roundabout way, this brings me to my other barrier to being a good ally: I just don’t *get* gender. It’s not that I haven’t tried. As I mentioned early on in this post, when I first realized how much I didn’t understand about gender I did so much reading. I watched videos. I listened to podcasts. I went to a workshop (though truth be told the workshop did more harm than good). And what I got is this: it sounds like there’s a common experience, some strong internal certainty that composes gender identity, that says “I am a woman”, or “I am a man”, or “I am neither”, as the case may be. I have never felt this certainty. There is no emotion that tells me I am a woman, there is no internal compass, there is no sense of “no, that’s not right” when I imagine myself as a man, except a sense of unfamiliarity with the idea. As far as I’m concerned, I’m a woman because that’s what I’ve always been, and that’s how I’ve always been treated. It would be odd to use he/him pronouns for me because no one’s ever done that, and it would cause confusion, but that’s about the end of my issue with it.

This is, of course, directly in conflict with much of the narrative around gender these days. There must be something I’m missing, but I can never seem to pin down what gender actually *is* and every analogy and metaphor seems to confuse me even more.

Gender must not be biological sex, because trans people exist. Nonbinary people exist. Both are valid, and for all that I’m not a very good ally, I know that much.

Gender must not be personality traits, because, that’s personality. There are people on all areas of the gender spectrum with all types of personality traits. Don’t tell me that women can’t be brash, that men can’t be sweet.They are.

Gender must not be how you dress, because hey, we should all be able to dress however we want! How you dress doesn’t change your identity. (This part is gender expression though I think, if I’ve followed the articles correctly) Butch women exist, feminine men exist, androgynous people exist, all are valid.

Gender must not be gender roles, because honestly, fuck that. Gender roles are a tool of patriarchal oppression, and I’m not about to sit here and that be all there is to gender identity. If it helps you feel more at home in your skin then more power to ya, but that can’t be all there is.

So then, what is it? What is left? This isn’t a rhetorical question. I have genuinely tried to find answers to this and I have never been more lost. When I went to the trans allyship workshop mentioned above, I was told by the others at my table that to them being a woman was being nurturing, valuing family, being empathetic, being a caretaker. I was so relieved that we ran out of time before it was my turn. I don’t know what being a woman is to me, it’s just what I’ve always been. The only thing it has ever meant was shame about my body, shame about my period, enduring r*pe jokes and kitchen jokes from my guy friends, always having to be the one to “seduce the guard” when we played d&d, and other, darker things I don’t want to mention. It’s only ever been painful, and fearful, and ashamed. On the one hand, it means I’m inclined to believe trans women when they say that gender isn’t a choice— after all, who would choose this? But on the other, I know there must be more to this, something that I’m missing because my identity is too deeply rooted in oppression. I am ripping those roots out one by one, but they go deep, and I’m scared that without them I won’t have any point of reference left.

I want to understand gender, but even if I never do, I will always respect the identity and pronouns that people claim as their own. It is never my intent to dehumanize, or exclude. I want to be able to call out bigotry, I want to be able to stand up for my trans and nonbinary friends, I want to be sure that I don’t say something to them that causes them harm. 

But at its core: I don’t get it. What is gender? What makes a gender what it is?

Again, this is non-rhetorical. If you have the time and energy, I welcome any information, any resources, any anecdotes, anything at all to help me understand. I’ve looked, hard, but I won’t pretend to have read anywhere near the full lexicon of literature on this subject. If I’ve said something that upset or angered you, please don’t hesitate to call me out. Yell at me, if that’s what this post inspires, and I’ll do my best to learn from it, or at the very least maybe it will serve as a wake-up call for someone else. Or, if you agree, I’d be grateful to know that too. It can get pretty lonely feeling like there’s some manual to gender that everyone else has that somehow I never got.

TL;DR: What is gender? I want to learn but I’m hella lost and struggling to be both a trans ally and a radical feminist, and I was so afraid of offending anyone that I literally made a blog just for this post, which is silly because I don’t even really use my main blog. I just know that if you’re looking for callouts, this is where you go.

[scriptlgbt]

Hello, I want to write a fanfic SI in harry potter were my avatar was harry older sister, now the thing I'm writing to you about is that sh would be reincarnated in a AMAB body and while I'm not 100% cis, I'm comfortable with my assigned gender (most of the time, look, it's complicated), and I wanted to know how to write the story without being an asshole to trans people. Like there are potions that work similar to hormones and magic that work like surgery [1/2]

and the magic community is mostly accepting of trans people but she would still face transphobia wile living in the muggle world (the Dursley are horrible to the point her death name became a trigger for her), most of the abuse would happen in her backstory but I’m worried of being exploitative. She isn’t the only trans character, there are may others of all ages and genders so she isn’t some token character. You have any suggestions? [2/2]

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I want to preface this by saying that JK Rowling is a TERF and definitely not accepting of trans people, so do with that information what you will. (I’m in full support of fanfiction that makes her world better.) (I just mention this because I feel like I need to point this out whenever JK Rowling comes up.)

Also, your identity + experiences are 100% valid.

I think for the most part this is probably a pretty good concept, but I’d go so far as to avoid the deadname itself being mentioned if it’s not integral to the plot in some way. Be conscious of if a trans reader might be triggered by the content and try and get a trans beta reader to give it a sensitivity look-over.

Another thing would be to just generally avoid the trauma porn. You don’t have to go in-depth to know that those things are there. And frankly, not all trans people have a huge amount of trauma or anything. It all really depends on so much and it’s pretty normal to compartmentalize it.

I would focus on the plot of your fanfiction and not on making it a sob story about her life. Going in-depth on delicate social issues (like transphobic/transmisogynist abuse) that you don’t feel super confident in writing is really not a great idea. 

You don’t need to lay it all out there. You don’t need to bring it up so pervasively. Harry Potter for a lot of people was about escapism from home lives like what the Dursley’s were to Harry. You need to make the story feel like that for trans readers. Instead of making an exception for trans readers where we need to read stuff we already might know all too well.

I’m not saying avoid talking about past abuse at all or mentioning present stuff - but don’t be cavalier about it. You can mention or indicate that those things exist in a minimalist way where readers can recognize it as happening and not worry about bracing for impact or re-living very personal traumas.

When writing, ask yourself, ‘what is the purpose of me writing this in?’

If it’s because you think it’s going to be educational for cis people, maybe just drop it altogether.

Another thing I would think about is coping mechanisms. How would she find escapism at the times where she does need to live/stay with the Dursleys? I used to hide specific gender-affirming clothes and take selfies in them when I lived with my biofam. I kept a diary where I’d talk about myself in a gender-affirming way and allow myself to explore my identity there. I’d listen to music to drown out what was being said to me. Some people play D&D and make a character based on their own most gender-affirmed self.

I think a lot of issues that many (usually cis) authors have is that they assume that their readers are all cis. That’s never going to be the case so keep that in mind too.

- mod nat

[harrypotterfirsttime]

JK Rowling’s essay about why she’s a TERF: Abbreviated

My last post was LONG, much longer than I’d intended, and difficult to read on tumblr I’m sure (if anybody would like it sent as a pdf please let me know). So I’m making a shorter post and only including the paragraphs that I responded to with links to a source, for people who are more interested in the places where JK Rowling provably lied in her essay.

“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]

“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.

“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]

“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.

“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.

“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]

“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]

“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.

[thesydneyfeminists]

The Crimes of JK Rowling

CW: racism, homophobia, mentions of abuse and drugs.

The cool thing about growing up and expanding your world view is that you eventually see your childhood heroes for what they are. Flawed humans (and maybe, just plain assholes). First Joss Whedon and now JK Rowling. Nothing is sacred and no one is safe.

I loved the Harry Potter series (the original seven books, I refuse to accept any of the latest garbage she’s put out/had her name attached to – within the HP universe) and I still count Prisoner of Azkaban as one of my favourite books, but even fondness and nostalgia can’t shield JK Rowling from some of the problems with the world she has created, the way she explains/defends it, and her quarter assed (not even half) and damaging attempts to rectify that now in 2018.

Note: Simply for length reasons, these are all related to the Harry Potter/Fantastic Beasts franchises.

Crime One: Racism

It’s no great secret that there are very few characters of colour in the Harry Potter universe. Apparently, while it’s plausible that there’s a whole (not so) secret world of magic, it’s just too unbelievable for there to be many witches or wizards of colour. Before you come at me with “but Vee, mudbloods and Voldemort only wanting pureblood wizards is a metaphor for racism!” you can stop that right now. Because you know what’s also a great metaphor for racism? Actual racism. How about how people of colour are literally discriminated against every single day. They get passed over for jobs, they’re spat at in the streets, they’re being killed by police. Metaphors for racism? Not good enough.

I’m in the camp that think white writers shouldn’t write their main character as anything other than white, for a whole host of reasons, but if I had to summarize it, I think stories of colour should be told by authors of colour, we should be opening the doors for more authors of colour, we should listen to their voices, their stories, their experiences. I think white authors can’t know the exact nuances of what it’s like to be a person of colour, how the world treats us, the experience of living in diaspora, the disconnect between first gen, second gen and third gen family members, and so much more. It’s something that sure, you can read about it, you can do your research, but you’ll never quite understand it unless you’ve lived it. All of that being said, I do believe that white authors can include characters of colour in a meaningful way, that is, not for decoration, not as a handy plot device to move your story along, and not as a harmful, disgusting stereotype. But let’s stop for a second and count the number of background characters of colour that have been more or less confirmed (note that Hermione could easily be coded black, the only hint we get is in PoA, she’s described as “very brown”, but it’s not until the older Hermione was cast with a black actress in The Cursed Child did JK pop up and say “of course she could be black!”). So, we have Lee Jordan (maybe unfairly assumed, as he’s only described as having dreadlocks but he was cast with a POC), Dean Thomas (who was very good at drawing – also maybe unfairly listed, was cast with a POC), Parvati and Padma Patil (possibly unfairly listed, described as having long black hair, and cast with POC), Cho Chang (quickly, can I point out that a character of Asian descent being sorted into Ravenclaw the “smart house” plays into so many racist stereotypes that I can barely breathe), Kingsley Shacklebolt, Blaise Zambini. And then, well, there’s Nagini.

Tweet reads: “The Naga are snake-like mythical creatures of Indonesian mythology, hence the name ‘Nagini.’ They are sometimes depicted as winged, sometimes as half-human, half-snake. Indonesia comprises a few hundred ethnic groups, including Javanese, Chinese and Betawi. Have a lovely day.”

 About a week ago, the trailer for Fantastic Beasts 2: The Crimes of Grindelwald was dropped to mixed reactions. The trailer revealed a snippet that reveals that Voldemort’s pet snake was once a shapeshifting woman, cursed to become trapped in a snake’s body. An Asian shapeshifting woman. Reduced to becoming (a white supremacist but metaphorically) a white man’s pet. Cool. Naturally, there was some backlash about this turn of events, and so JK tried to tweet out the reasoning and explanation (while also saying she’d been keeping this racist secret for 20 years) that obviously Nagini had to be an Asian woman because it was based on a creature from Indonesian mythology, and that Indonesia comprised a “few hundred ethnic groups, including Javanese, Chinese and Betawi”. Cool, JK, but the actress cast is Korean, and you saying all of this kind of reinforces the idea that all Asian ethnicities are interchangeable. Let’s not even get into a white woman explaining Indonesian mythology or ethnicity, or the fact that it’s also an Indian mythology, the Naga. I don’t want to split hairs here, there are other examples of mythology that are similar but have key differences across other cultures (the kitsune/kumiho/huli jing fox spirit, for one). So it’s possible she only read up on the Indonesian myth and took her inspiration from there. But the way she “explained” the debacle sits uneasily with me. She brushes over any concerns that come from people of colour – valid concerns and questions, and instead chooses to ignore the real issue, which is that by playing into the harmful stereotype that Asian women are subservient, and that all of the different Asian ethnicities are interchangeable, she does more harm than good for inclusivity and that she is doing it for show. She doesn’t give a shit if her work includes characters of colour, and if it does, she doesn’t give a shit that they’re shitty stereotypes, 2D characters that are nothing more than the colour of their skin, just there to boost the POC count in her works.

Thinly veiled racism? Guilty.

Crime Two: Poor Handling of LGBT+ Issues/People

Back in 2007, speaking to a crowd of fans at an event at Carnegie Hall, JK Rowling revealed that she “always thought of Dumbledore as gay” to wild applause. Finally, a canon character was more or less confirmed as LGBT+ (sorry to the Dracarry shippers, that still just lives in our hearts). Great, right? Except, why did she wait until the book series was completed to come out with this revelation? Why didn’t she include it in the books? Sure, you might say “well, Vee, it’s a kids book, you’re expecting far too much” except it’s not a “kids book”, it’s always very clearly been in the young adult category (certainly after the third book, at least) and readership has always been split between adults and younger people. The series came out when I was a teenager, finishing when I was 21, and I definitely would have appreciated some LGBT+ representation in a book that meant so much to so many people. I’m not saying she needed to include a sex scene in there (she could’ve faded to black, like Stephenie Meyer did in Breaking Dawn) but to go back and retcon that Dumbledore was gay and that she’d always thought that, for it to ring true, she needed to leave us hints in the original series. She “always thought of Dumbledore as gay” but “didn’t feel the need to spell it out”. Maybe she didn’t see the point of it, maybe she didn’t want to spoil her “big reveal” (note that some fans had always suspected that Dumbledore had been in love with Grindelwald), but by not mentioning it until after the fact? It comes off as lazy, or as wanting to appeal to the LGBT+ community, by trying to earn an ally card by doing very little at all.

Tweet reads: “I was asked whether Lupin’s treatment by others could be seen as a metaphor for (then) stigmatised conditions. I agreed that it could. 2/4”  J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling)

Then there’s the Lupin issue. Supposedly, at some point in 1999, JK was asked whether or not Lupin’s “condition could be seen as a metaphor for (then) stigmatised conditions” and she said it could. Basically, lycanthropy is meant to be a metaphor for HIV/AIDS in the HP universe. In Short Stories From Hogwarts of Heroism, Hardship, and Dangerous Hobbies (released 2016, mind you), JK writes “Lupin’s condition of lycanthropy was a metaphor for those illnesses that carry a stigma, like HIV and AIDS. All kinds of superstitions seem to surround blood-borne conditions, probably due to taboos surrounding blood itself. The wizarding community is as prone to hysteria and prejudice as the Muggle one, and the character of Lupin gave me a chance to examine those attitudes”. Maybe she had the best intentions in mind when she came up with that idea, and true enough, blood and blood purity does matter to an extent in the wizarding world, but something about it feels hollow and gross. I’d like to note here that we only meet three werewolves in the series (Lupin, Greyback and an unnamed man who was bitten) and none of them were female. Take that how you will, but a few fans came to the conclusion that her “metaphor for HIV/AIDS” also includes the harmful stereotype that gay men were going out and maliciously infecting over men with HIV.

Retconning the source material to make herself seem LGBT+ inclusive but handling it terribly? Guilty.

Crime Three: White Feminism

Maybe this crime really explains the others. It explains her support of the decision to cast Johnny Depp in the Fantastic Beasts film series. Yep, Johnny Depp, you know, the guy who physically abused (then-wife) Amber Heard. Sure, he’d been cast before we knew about that. He’d appeared, for five whole minutes in the end of the first Fantastic Beasts film, so he’d already signed on. Surely, he couldn’t be fired when his contract was signed. Except, we’ve seen examples of men accused of abuse being let go from their jobs (not often, but it happens sometimes). Kevin Spacey, for one. So, why couldn’t Grindelwald be recast? Especially after a five minute cameo at the end of a movie? JK Rowling released a statement where she acknowledges that around the time of filming the first movie in the new franchise, stories involving Depp’s abuse of Heard started to appear in the press, and “based on our understanding of the circumstances, the filmmakers and I are not only comfortable sticking with our original casting, but genuinely happy to have Johnny playing a major character in the movies.” Comfortable and genuinely happy to have a known abuser affiliated with your work, based on our understanding of the circumstances, the circumstances being that Depp physically abused Amber Heard, who provided photo and video evidence. Even Daniel Radcliffe has spoken out about the decision to let Depp remain on cast, given the decision to fire a lesser known actor (Jamie Waylett) from HP: Deathly Hallows pt 2 after his arrest for growing 10 marijuana plants (he was later arrested for a more serious crime, but that was well after his firing from Harry Potter). DanRad mentioned how he was, of course, thankful for the opportunities provided to him from being cast as Harry Potter, but that “I suppose the thing I was struck by was, we did have a guy who was reprimanded for weed on the (original Potter) film, essentially, so obviously what Johnny has been accused of is much greater than that.”

Tweet reads: “Just unfollowed a man whom I thought was smart and funny, because he called Theresa May a whore. 1/14” J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling)

Of course, supporting the casting of an abusive man doesn’t make her a white feminist, nor does tweeting about unfollowing a man for calling Theresa May a whore. What does, in my honest opinion, is her handling of any criticism she receives, and the bullshit way in which she tries to earn her ally card, but only when it suits her. If all of this mattered so much, she would’ve included it the first time around. Retconning her source material in an effort to appear more diverse isn’t true diversity. It’s literally a made up world, she could’ve made it more diverse from the start. She needed to explicitly state things, because marginalised groups need to see representation. Good, strong, representation. Not weak and harmful versions. By being properly inclusive in her material, as a middle class white woman, she could’ve set an example of how things should be. If she’d spoken to any marginalised group, heard their stories, about their lives, gained an insight in how to write about them, her POC, LGBTQIA+, lower class, etc audiences would’ve come away with the message that she cared and wanted them included in her stories. In her world.

The bottom line is, JK Rowling does not care enough to follow through, and well, when you’ve made as much money as she has, why should she? She bangs on about how truly diverse the wizarding world was and gives examples to back it up, but she does so way too late, and without any real proof, just her word. Sure, she created this universe, maybe she did believe Dumbledore was gay, or Hermione could be black, but she needed to say it back then, not ten years later when people are critical of the cis-het white world she’d created. She rants about men immediately calling women names when they disagree with them, prides herself on blocking and unfollowing these men, but when called out about supporting the casting of a known abuser? She suddenly no longer cares about supporting another woman. One who was arguably, treated a little worse than just name calling. Her idea of feminism is clouded by her life experience, which would be fine if she took the time to listen to the people around her, from different backgrounds, and try to understand why they feel what she says and does is offensive, clumsy, and lazy. But when her opinion and her views challenged, she comes out swinging, blocking people, throwing around statements like “Dumbledore is gay!” or “Hermione is black!” as a clumsy attempt to appease the very people she does not give a shit about. The solution is laughably simple, all she would have to do is just listen to marginalised voices. Hear their stories and educate herself. And if she truly wanted to be a true intersectional feminist, she would do it. Understanding her privilege would cost her nothing. In fact, it would garner her more respect, something she’s lost a lot of in the last few years.

Just say you don’t care, JK, it’s more honest. Guilty, guilty, guilty.

By: Vee H 

 Sources:

Twitter

https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2016/09/08/jk-rowling-reveals-remus-lupins-werewolf-condition-metaphor-for-hiv/

https://www.jkrowling.com/opinions/grindelwald-casting/

https://ew.com/movies/2018/01/12/daniel-radcliffe-johnny-depp-fantastic-beasts/

[douxreviews]

Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald Review

By sunbunny

“The time’s coming when you're gonna have to pick a side.”

Writing this review without major spoilers seems like a Herculean task. So let’s start with this. If you’re uninitiated in the Potterverse, you’re going to be very, very confused by this mess movie. If you’re a casual Potter fan, you might like this mess movie. I honestly don’t know what it’s like to be a casual Potter fan. If you’re like me, a diehard Potterhead who definitely owns a wand and, at last count, three Harry Potter scarves, prepare for disappointment. Or maybe you trust JK Rowling more than I do and trust that this mess movie is setting up bigger and better things or has been horribly misjudged. If so, I’d love to know what you think.

Okay now that that’s out of the way, spoiler time.

SPOILERS ARE COMING. YOU’VE BEEN WARNED.

Instead of a traditional review, I’ve decided to take the controversial bits of the movie (or at least what I found to be controversial) and dissect them a bit.

First off, Minerva McGonagall was not alive, let alone teaching at Hogwarts, in the 1920s. Furthermore, you cannot apparate or disapparate inside Hogwarts grounds. Those are just straight up errors in continuity and should not have happened.

Johnny Depp as Grindelwald. Mistake. Just frankly a mistake. Before you attack me on this, know that I was a HUGE Johnny Depp fan for nearly two decades. And then he hit his wife. The first Fantastic Beasts was already completed (or close to) when the allegations became public so you really can’t blame the PTBs at Warner Brothers for leaving him in the movie. Now, the decision not to recast? A lot more controversial. Famously, the actor who played Vincent Crabbe (one of Draco Malfoy’s lackeys) was arrested for marijuana possession during the production of the original eight films. His part was cut out. Completely. No more Vincent Crabbe. This is why optimists like myself hoped Warner Brothers or whoever makes these decisions would see the light and recast. They did not. I felt so guilty that my money was in whatever oblique way, financially supporting him, I made a donation to his ex-wife Amber Heard’s favorite charity (Children’s Hospital Los Angeles) after leaving the theater.

Okay now that that’s done with onto my plot grievances and there weren’t a few of them.

Grindelwald (like his successor Voldemort) is shown to be the magical equivalent of Hilter. Allegory was a big thing in the original novels. The subjugation of muggles/muggleborns was meant to mirror racism in the world today. So why. In the world. Would they have A JEWISH WOMAN LIKE QUEENIE GOLDSTEIN JOIN FORCES WITH GRINDELWALD WHY WOULD THEY DO IT WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY. She’s a Legilimens (mind reader), which means she can hear thoughts. And, yeah, Grindelwald is probably skilled enough in Occlumency (the art of deflecting mind readers) to put her off his I HATE AND WILL ENSLAVE MUGGLES agenda but she was in a huge crowd of Grindelwald supporters and she didn’t pick up on anything in the least bit dodgy?

It is suggested that, if the wizarding world gave way to Grindelwald, the Holocaust could have been prevented. WHAT? That’s crossing a line. Bringing real world atrocities into this is crossing a line. I’d been spoiled on this particular point but that didn’t make seeing it any less horrific in the theater.

Nagini, Voldemort’s snake who he controls fairly completely, actually started off as an Asian woman (the script says she was captured in Indonesia, the actress who plays her is Korean, and the name Nagini is Indian, do with it what you will) with a curse. That is just so obscene. That a person, a real, flesh and blood person was cursed to turn into an animal and that the curse was used in a magical freak show as an attraction…I have no words. Let’s add in that, in her “wisdom,” JKR has decreed that all Maledictuses (Maledicti?) are female and the whole thing is just a disaster. The human Nagini disappears completely into Voldemort’s pet, doing horrible things like killing on command and (I still shudder to think about it) possessing the decaying body of Bathilda Bagshot in order to set a trap for Harry in The Deathly Hallows until she’s finally BEHEADED by Neville Longbottom. Gross. It’s gross.

I’m getting depressed by this litany of awful so let’s wrap it up with the Worst. Credence is a Dumbledore. Excuse me, what? Unless it turns out that Grindelwald is lying to Credence (PLEASE LET THAT BE THE CASE), Aberforth and Albus left a certain GINORMOUS FACT out of their family history as told to Harry (and Ron and Hermione). Also, I mean, if Dumbledore had a brother or half-brother or whatever don’t we think Rita Skeeter would have dug it up while writing The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore? She looked heavily into Dumbledore’s background and I’m not saying she’s a reliable source but she had a nose for scandal, surely she would have found some inkling of this and included it in her book.

Bits and Pieces

How dare JKR write baby nifflers into the script and give me only one short scene with the cuties? They could have lightened up a LOT of what happened later, which was almost exclusively grim.

Weirdly, there was no reference to Grindelwald’s obsession with the Deathly Hallows. I mean, he obviously had the Elder Wand, but that was it.

First mention in HP canon of…okay I already forgot what it was called. The blood oath that meant that Grindelwald and Dumbledore couldn’t attack each other. Unclear why they wouldn’t just use an unbreakable vow (which got a shoutout this movie, so you know JKR didn’t forget about them). Also a bit of a retcon because in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Dumbledore admits to being too scared to face Grindelwald because of the possibility that Grindelwald knew what happened to Ariana and Dumbledore was afraid of knowing the truth. Although that disclosure happened when Harry was in “King’s Cross” and it remained delightfully unclear whether Harry was imagining the whole thing or Dumbledore was really talking to him. “Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean it is not real?” As far as problems with this film go, it’s way down on my list.

You’d be forgiven for thinking it, but the ship Leta and Corvus were on was not the Titanic.

Favorite performances of the movie include Jude Law as sexy Dumbledore. Young. I meant young did I say sexy? And Zoë Kravitz as Leta Lestrange.

one out of four baby nifflers

sunbunny

[hopoo]

DEADBOLT Q&A

I tried to answer every question as honestly as I could, so I hope this is a good read. If your question isn’t there, it’s either identical to another one asked or joined together with another question. Cheers!

Q: In total, how much time does the campaign of Deadbolt span? It’s hard to tell, what with it being infinite nighttime and all.

A: I would imagine a month-ish. It is implied that the Candles are doing some sort of investigative work between missions, which would surely take some time. Q: Did you have any major inspirations for the visual design of DEADBOLT? A: John Wick is obviously the biggest one! Q: What would hopoo do if someone made a game completely based and inspired from Deadbolt and its… Concept? (with permission and not) A: There’s no way DEADBOLT is that unique in settings or thematics – ultimately, you know what’s right and what’s wrong when you’re inspired by a work, and so will everyone else! If you feel obligated to ask for permission, maybe you’re not exploring enough original ideas? Q: When will we get modding? if so could we get a simplified modding kit? Any plans for updating dedbort, even just the map editor? Feature for adding custom sprites, rotation tool, copypasta tool, just to name a few… A: So the thing with that is that the map editor is only half the equation – while the map editor may be writing stuff to files, it also has to be interpreted on the end by the DEADBOLT game itself. Therefore, adding features that aren’t supported in engine simply won’t work – it won’t know what youre talking about. While rotation is supported in the engine, it doesn’t know how to read that from the files, etc. I also am trying to avoid any legacy issues where old maps are required for old versions of DEADBOLT, or vice versa. Q: When is deadbolt 2 coming with werewolves and mummies A: Werewolves aren’t undead you dingus. But mummies could be cool.

Q: Will the stuff that came with the release of Deadbolt on Play Station, will be added on PC? A: Nope, that was sorta our deal-sweetener for getting on the Sony consoles. Q: Will we ever see expansion levels for Deadbolt or would we get Deadbolt 2 instead? A: DEADBOLT 2 maybe sometime

Q: Does Ibzan is gay? A: I haven’t really thought of the sexual orientation of any of the characters, and I definitely don’t want to pull a JK Rowling and retroactively assign them. So in terms of canon, that just hasn’t been explored.

Q: Would you prefer deadbolt 2 to be in 3d and 2d? Would you do a sequel? A: DEADBOLT is probably the narrowest design space I’ve worked with – there’s no dodging, insta death, insta travel attacks. By the end I felt very stretched out in terms of enemy design, and for that alone I’d think 3D. But hey, I may also just hate 3D by the end of RoR2 so who knows :^). I’d love to do a sequel one day, most likely from the perspective of Ibzan. But who knows! Q: Did Ibzan want to kill the Fire, or just try to reconcile with it? A: He just wanted to talk – but who knows what would’ve happened after the Fireplace rejected him? Q: Would you be interested in going back to the world of deadbolt sometime in the future? I remember hearing somewhere a 3D concept would be interesting to work on. A: I wish I was talented or driven enough to write comics for it – I think DEADBOLT is more about the stories of individuals, compared to RoR who is a story of the universe. I wrote the Cassette Tapes to reflect that. Q: Looking back, is there anything you’d change about Deadbolt? A: Hmmm… I just wish I somehow could expand more on the lore and gangs, and what their goals were. Gameplay-wise, it was a tad too short. I liked doing a few standard stages, and then a mix-up stage (sniper, trap, boss, etc) – maybe we could’ve fit in a few more rotations. Q: What’s your favourite loadout? A: Death/Taxes and Flashbang, like a scrub. Q: Would you ever be interested in restarting the asset suggestion thread A: I consider DEADBOLT to be done – as a 2 (now 3!) man team, we financially can’t do the games-as-a-service thing like most big companies can for smaller games like DEADBOLT. I also intended DEADBOLT to be a one-and-done thing as a contrast for Risk of Rain, which we updated for years after release.

=CONTROVERSIAL OPINION ALERT= I personally also think that EVERY game getting a bunch of DLCS and updates and patches for a long time is, in a way, exhausting as a player. I think it makes it hard to feel satisfied when you finished a game and it’s over and you feel completed in the journey, knowing it’s not ~technically~ over until the devs stop patching. I think it’s great for some games (mostly multiplayer-based ones), but some games you just gotta let… finish, on a good note. Semi-open ended endings are always unsatisfying, in my opinion, and so recently it just feels like you don’t ever complete a game. …On the flip side, we are planning on doing lots of post-launch support for RoR2 because it’s actually inline with our design goals, so don’t fret! Q: Will bugs like Scythe not having a cover sprite or some enemies not having a falling sprite (which causes the game to crash) be fixed? A: Which enemies have been missing a falling sprite? They should be resorting to idle, not crashing. Bosses? Q: Just wanted to say, you guys are my favorite games studio, hands down. Now for the question: Now that the Reaper has completed his task and is allowed to rest, what’s next? Is the Fireplace going to keep him resting for a while? Does our MC have another task to accomplish? A: The Fireplace has never let a reaper “rest” before - the reason he is allowed to rest is because Ibzan never got to, and the Fireplace is trying something different with you. This is unexplored territory for the both of them – presumably he just pets his cat and gets bored before getting back to work. Q: What happens to everyone else in the afterlife? A: People who aren’t in the Place? Who knows, and who cares about boring happy afterlife 😊 Q: I had a question about the lore. There’s mentions of places outside the city, across the river Styx. What are they and what are they like? A: The Styx connects the other realms together, including (presumably) wherever the demons came from. This is explored lightly in one of the demon cassette tapes. Q: Will you ever expand more on the world of deadbolt or are you 100% done with it at this point? A: Nope definitely not done, really wanna explore more one day Q: What’s your office address? For post and stuff, maybe I want to send you a box full of A4 sheets of paper with a thousand hoopters on each. A: Maybe this is the paranoia in me but I’m not comfortable posting my address online – you can just tweet it at me a thousand times instead Q: Did Ibzan think the flames would give warmth to the Dredged or was he just lying to them and using them for his own gain? A: He was lying to himself, but he did truly believe that this was going to work, because this (at the time, anyways) seemed like the only way out. Metaphor woawoawo Q: Could you add some sorta DEADBOLT reference into RoR2?  Will the Reaper be playable in Risk of Rain 2 as a bonus? A: Definitely references happening in some form, but playable might be stretchin’ it a bit, especially since it’d be taking up the slot of some more in-universe secret character. Q: How excited are for RoR2? A: Honestly very nervous for the reception, with very big shoes to fill as a sequel for RoR. I just hope people like it, and that we don’t get burnt on 3D because there’s so many possibilities in the future for our games in 3D. Q: How are the Demons born? We know they’re made in birthing chambers, but then is it just like humans or is there anything specific needed for a demon to be born f.e. skeletons>suicide, zombies>overdose, etc. A: Demons aren’t undead and don’t naturally exist in the Place, which is why they have to be smuggled over – they exist in whatever version of hell is in the DEADBOLT universe, and are natural denizens of the underworld. Q: was izban hot before he died? A: The hottest Q: do all the nightclubs canonically have chris c. as the dj A: Yes Q: I love Deadbolt very dearly and i’ve listened to its soundtrack (particularly “Now I Am Become Death”) more times than i can remember. What’s your favourite tune from Deadbolt ? A: Defunktorum or The Proverbial Dust Biters Q: In the Hardmode Cassette Tape it talked about a Reaper that wasn`t the current Reaper that we play as in the Game. Was this Reaper Izban? Since in the tape, he talked about the fireplace as his friend and that could be why he wanted to go back to the fireplace through the portal at the end of the game, to revisit his friend. A: Yes yes and yes. This was most heavily implied in Ibzan’s “home”, which parallel yours. Q: Will RoR2 still have opportunities to create silly messy builds like covering the screen in missiles or releasing an endless stream of Thqwibs? If so, how are you working to mitigate the performance impact of those crazy builds? A: Yep! Currently we have a system that detects the average particle count in a scene and slowly adds a chance non-important effects (like hitsparks or impacts) don’t ever spawn. This will at some point also involve turning off expensive effects and reducing particle LODs. Q: I really love the attention to detail to the characters, environment, aesthetics and gameplay mechanics. Its themes on the criminal underworld and the supernatural give a unique identity in a high-octane/stealth pixel action game I have not seen before. Additionally what prompted or inspired you to make DEADBOLT in the first place? A: DEADBOLT in its entirety was supposed to be not-Risk of Rain. It’s a gorey, violent, moody singleplayer puzzle-stealth game. We were just burnt out from the Risk of Rain experience, and we also wanted to flex our design muscles a bit and show that hey, we’re not just a one-trick pony of gamedevelopment :^) Q: I just played through this game on PS4/Vita over the weekend. Huge fan of Risk of Rain. Even bought it through Limited Run Games. So I had to pick up Deadbolt (Didn’t previously know you had made it either.) and I love it. Its a super solid experience. I’m not sure I have any questions about it. I guess I was curious if co-op multiplayer was ever considered in development? Keep up the great work. Can’t wait to see what you guys make next. A: Nope, because of the reasons above – we wanted a single player game, since RoR was a multiplayer one. Q: First of all, congratulations!! I really loved the game since came out, I bought it for my birthday, since risk of rain made me fell in love with all the pixel art in it, deadbolt didn’t disappointed me!! Everything in it I love it! Thanks for the game!! Now the question You already answered about how the skeletons or vampires came to be in that Place, how the vampires are killed by their lovers, but, how a reaper, becomes to be a reaper? I mean a candle said “I’ve never been so close to one” A: Originally, the reapers were actually supposed to be from suicides – if I remember right, the reaper when going down the stairs to the docks still has the hole in the back of his head in his sprite. Currently, it’s not explored how a reaper is made – I think a bit of mystery is always needed in making a believable universe J Q: Lorewise how many reapers are there total? Why are they incredibly fragile compared to the undead? What makes the reapers not undead? A: IIRC there were 4 fireplaces in the final stage, which was supposed to represent the way the fireplace was communicating to all reapers in the field. Q: Do you like turtles? How about corgis? A: Yes, and yes (although there’s way too many in Seattle now). Q: Did you have any idea Chris would break out a whole band’s worth of musicians for the soundtrack? His work was superb and the OST remains my absolute favorite to this day. A: DEADBOLT OST was actually done with many people – it must be in the credits somewhere! If I remember right, there is at least a drummer and a musician.

Thanks for all the questions, and happy hunting :)

hopoo