#it's like if jkr hated gays instead of trans women

[mopeing]

It really frustrates me when I go into threads about JK Rowling, because there are plenty of legitimate reasons to hate her, but most of the comments are completely made up reasons? Please don't lie and spread misinformation even about people you dislike, because it'll make your own position look weaker under scrutiny.

If you need to lie to make a point, people will think it's because you don't have one. So don't lie in the first place.

Not reasons to hate JKR:

- there is a star of David on the floor of Gringotts bank. This was in the movies, it was not described in the books. Unless evidence comes out that she asked Chris Columbus or whoever for that detail to be included, it is not evidence of antisemitism (that is not to say that the goblins in general aren't problematic though)

- she didn't say Hermione was black all along, she said casting a black actress as Hermione doesn't contradict her description (although it does)

- all the retconning and "oh actually X character was Y all along" after the series has ended. This isn't "problematic", it's just cringe. Nothing to get mad about

- she did not retcon Dumbledore as being gay after the series ended. I distinctly remember this being a topic of discussion while the 6th book was coming out. She didn't include it explicitly in the books, but it wasn't an after-the-fact change (Although it is a valid criticism that not including it explicitly in the books means it isn't representation)

- Seamus Finnegan being a clumsy Irishman who makes things explode. This was in the movies, not the books. In the books it was often Neville who was used for this comic relief

- she's a bad writer. I'm not saying this is incorrect, just that it's not a reason to hate her. People don't deserve hate for being bad at something, she deserves hate because she is a bad person. Please do not conflate these two; it is possible for bad people to make good art and it's possible for good people to make poor art. A lot of this insistence comes from people who used to be big fans of Harry Potter who now that they don't like her any more are now saying "well the books were shit all along anyway..." It just seems performative tbh.

- a trans character in Hogwarts Legacy being named "Sirona Ryan". Honestly this is the biggest stretch I've ever seen. Look - there's plenty of things to criticise about this game. The fact that one of the early writers was apparently a bit fashy and is responsible for the leaning even further into the goblin antisemitism for example. But this one character? I highly doubt JKR even had to approve of details that small, let alone the fact that the name likely isn't problematic at all. If you're reading this and, like me, you have no clue whatsoever what is apparently wrong with the name - it begins with "Sir" - implying that trans women are actually men, and ends with "Aryan" - implying that trans people are nazis. At this point, people are actively looking for things to get mad about even when they're not there. I'm not even sure the "sir" in "Sirona" is even supposed to be pronounced like the English word. How about getting mad about the actual obvious actually harmful things she does instead???

Actual reasons to hate her:

- her transphobic tweets

- the fatphobia in the books

- her transphobic articles

- the whole "Hermione is dumb for being anti-slavery" subplot

- her transphobic actions

- lack of regard for other cultures, whether it's the naming of foreign characters and places, or the fact that the wizarding Irish government apparently still isn't independent of the UK's

- her defending and associating with people more mask-off transphobic than she is

- she is a billionaire, and there are no good billionaires

Inb4 "how dare you defend this bad person" - correcting misinformation about a bad person is not defending them. Good people should also care about intellectual honesty. It isn't good to lie about someone just because the person you're lying about is bad.

[the-land-of-women]

Since next to no one who is criticising and labelling jkr as a bigot has actually read what she said I’m gonna paste her essay from 2020 here:

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The 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.

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.

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.’

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

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.’

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

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.’

As I didn’t have a realistic possibility of becoming a man back in the 1980s, it had to be books and music that got me through both my mental health issues and the sexualised scrutiny and judgement that sets so many girls to war against their bodies in their teens. Fortunately for me, I found my own sense of otherness, and my ambivalence about being a woman, reflected in the work of female writers and musicians who reassured me that, in spite of everything a sexist world tries to throw at the female-bodied, it’s fine not to feel pink, frilly and compliant inside your own head; it’s OK to feel confused, dark, both sexual and non-sexual, unsure of what or who you are.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[harrypotterfuryroad]

genuinely fascinated how terfs can still act like JKR isn't connected with highly homophobic and sexist people, as in people who are actively trying to campaig against abortion rights and same-sex marriage (Emma Nickelson, Posie Parker etc.)

At some point you'll have to realise that trying to enforce anti-trans laws will always affect bodily autonomy for all women and they are going after gay marriage next. Or I guess you could stay mad abt trans people, without being affected by them negatively in any way whatsoever

what’s it going to take to get you people to understand that they’ve been going for gay marriage since the second the obergefell decision was announced and they’ve been going for women’s bodily autonomy since forever

fucking hate it when people say they’re coming for women’s bodily autonomy or gay marriage “next” as though that hasn’t been a core part of the political strategy of the right for centuries, you’re just admitting that you haven’t been paying attention to things that don’t directly affect you

without the fights for abortion access or marriage equality the trans movement would have nothing to blatantly imitate in their push for legitimacy (the original slogan was “women’s rights are human rights,” and “queer as in fuck you” had its origins as a political statement to throw in the face of a government that was letting people die by the thousands with no intervention instead of the “it’s not a phase mom” thing it’s warped into (if your impulse here is to say that the aids epidemic is equally as bad as gender dysphoria i will embarrass you))

the difference is that The Gay Agenda™️ never had medically sterilizing minors as a core priority of its platform so conservatives never had that angle to use against us which is why anti trans legislation seems like it’s gaining traction much faster than anti gay legislation, but that’s mostly because a) it’s really easy to argue why cosmetic procedures with no medical evidence supporting their therapeutic efficacy are not necessary and b) homophobia and misogyny are so fundamental to our society that you don’t even notice it. women and gay people have been dealing with targeted legislation for centuries before the first pronoun pins rolled off the production line. or do you actually think that attempted drag bans are like a novel thing and have nothing to do with historical homophobia

[papirouge]

God I love JKR so much.

Matt Walsh has literally repeated how much he’s a christian nationalist (so he’s not a true Christian) and has spoken about how minors are “most fertile” and how he had thought about his own son raping his daughter and he would first worry over his son being labeled a sex offender. This man will be the next Crowder, with his wife wisening up to leave him and he’ll then next crusade against divorce. These weak trad larping men ARE NOT against the trans agenda. They’re only contrarians. If trans women were all anti feminists and conservatives, men like Matt would openly embrace them. Women like JKR stand up for women unapologetically

You're absolutely right. Those men aren't against the trans agenda : they hate anything remotely gender non conforming. If trans pepe didn't exist, they'd bully effeminate (gay) men and butch instead. Trans are just a more easier target (because they are much more visible and therefore hugely antagonizable).

People like him are precisely why trans people do exist, because they shame people into gender conformity. In a sense, trans people are paradoxically very gender conforming though: they think that because they don't have interest or tastes "socially accepted" they have to be of the opposite sex. So while they think they're gender conforming (transwomen think they're women so it's "normal" to them to wear women's clothing) they're actually gender non conforming for normies (transwomen are still considered as men by most people so they are seen as transvestites).

Joanne is very smart for not falling into this trap and fake benevolence of those Conservative men who don't have any remote respect for women (beside pickme fawning over the ground they walk on). She probably remember they were the ones clowning her as a big bad leftie just because she canonized some of her characters as gays or Black...

If only radfem could have such a good discernment. I'll never forget how hard they whiteknighted for that scrote nest that is Kiwifarm just because it was beefing with one trans YouTuber.... One of their biggest L so far.

[thegeminisage]

okay i DIDN’T want to be an asshole but that woman was HOMOPHOBIC which means i’m allowed to shit talk her in public. i’m looking at some of it now and WHAT WAS WRONG WITH HER?? why was i reading this at age 12! 

[radkindoffeminist]

I wish that TRAs would divert at least a small percentage of their hate towards TERFs towards groups they should hate/people they say they hate. Like imagine how much better shit would be instead of having pages and pages full of people hating TERFs and essays discussing how JKR is the worst person ever and incredibly damaging to trans people, that energy was directed at the trans women who embody and spread misogynistic stereotypes, everyone who calls being gay a ‘genital preference’, and the men who are actually violent towards/kill trans people.

Maybe then TRAs would be tolerable and I could believe them when they say they're not homophobic or misogynistic.

[cordycepsfem]

Do women have more in common with men, no matter how they identify, or do we have more in common with other women, no matter their country of origin, profession, or stage of life?

(For me, I find that the experiences I’ve had that are specific to my oppression as a woman in a patriarchal society are not shared by males, and are in fact the thing some of those males choose to use as vitriolic hate mail towards me. It’s telling that somehow they always know who to call a “bitch” or a “cunt,” and they always know who to send rape threats to… and it’s not other men. I will therefore always have more in common with JKR than a trans woman. And if trans people aren’t our enemies, then why do so many of them send hate mail, physically attack women, destroy things women have built, try to prevent women from speaking and meeting…?)

Do you believe we have a “two-dimensional” view of feminism because we focus solely on women and girls and leave out all males? I know it can be hard to desire things like female-specific movements, activism, spaces, and laws when literally everything else in some way benefits males, no matter how they identify.

Gay men and gnc men are still misogynistic. They still benefit from the patriarchy. If men are punished by their “peers” for not acting a certain way, that’s nothing to do with women. Radical feminists want gender, and therefore stereotypes like “masculinity” and “femininity,” to be dismantled.

We don’t want males as “allies,” because they’ve proven over and over that they’re not. If trans women were “allies,” for example, they might respect things women built, be grateful to be included and take cues from women on how to act in movements and respective circumstances, and raise their voices not to shut down women’s work in feminism but instead to add to it. So far, they seem determined to destroy those things, take over movements and spaces, and give no shits about things women’s activism has built and continues to build upon. Why would feminists want those people as “allies”?

Some boomers are poor, sure. But no male has ever been a woman and therefore has no idea what it is like to live as a woman or girl under a patriarchal society. For some reason this makes most of them incapable of a scrap of empathy.

And fuck yeah we want female supremacy. I don’t want to be equal to a segment of the population responsible for the majority of rapes, murders, and other crimes. I want women and girls to be free to learn and achieve and grow apart from male influence. The goal is liberation, not patiently coaxing males into “giving” women and girls freedom “if they feel like it.”

I’d recommend some reading, but I have a feeling you just needed to be performative with your Wizard Woman Bad Though!! post.

(I know it's not good for me but) I've taken a mild interest in the terfs of tumblr because I just want to be educated on what kind of bullshit and misinformation they're using to argue their bigoted opinions. Almost across the board it seems like these people have such a 2 dimension understanding of feminism.

I feel like the closest thing I can compare it to is generational politics. It's pretty easy to be like "oh those selfish rich boomers ruined the planet" but fact of the matter is there's poor and impoverished boomers who've suffered under the hands of capitalism so all that does is alienate you from potential allies in the class war. Likewise these self proclaimed "radical feminists" operate on flawed logic that "all men are violent and profit from the patriarchy" while there are gay and gnc men, as well as trans men and women who get punished by their peers for not performing masculinity/femininity well enough.

What these have in common is that people generalize complex issues into black and white terms, thereby alienating people who have experiences in common and could serve as worthy allies. The TERF reframe feminism not as equality between genders but as female supremacy. There lies the flaw, because of it they'd inevitably become nothing more than new oppressors with nothing about the way we run society having fundamentally changed. The ruling class will always find little ways to distract us with stupid infighting, if people would stop falling for it that would be brilliant. Trans people aren't your enemies. You have more in common with an average trans woman than a billionaire who wrote a wizard school book series as she cosplayed being poor while relatives paid her bills.

[firespirited]

Mum accidentally ended up under a pile on when she said death threats against DV survivors were not okay when JKR was brought up by someone totally ignorant of the past decade's drama and the very angry very sweary 'death to joanne' replies poured in. She was then labelled a terf by some teenagers for asking why their anger was directed at jkr and not the tories in power which made clear she was British and an older woman.

She's very literal and doesn't believe in death threats against paedophiles either, just that they should be locked up. That's just how she is... Readmore for length.

So I had to explain what trans exclusionary radical feminists were, how they labelled themselves & it's not a slur and how outrage online isn't rational and often isn't focused at the systemic issues but fallen heroes also often turn into the biggest scapegoats.

The thing that really got to her was the disproportionate energy people had for hating jkr but not other authors or politicians who are far worse, the energy for outrage but no political/community engagement elsewhere.

I wasn't really able to explain why people have energy to be mad at jkr but don't do any offline activism or even get that angry at politicians, there's a sort of passivity, the sense that the game is rigged I guess but people feel maybe they might have the power to make jkr uncomfortable talking smack about marginalised people in public ??

It's hard to explain, on some level I feel like people enjoy bullying and when there is a righteous reason then it's ok to engage in such "fun". On the other, I'm seeing this strange manifestation of trauma where people will be vicious with people who fail to live up to perfection (and that definitely includes trans women - think Hot Allostatic Load: it's a great article that explains something I've seen play out too many times but also isabel fall and the lady who made the mistake of griping about being locked out of the local lesbian scene and ended up painted as the evil pervert who coined the cotton ceiling - she was just really lonely and rightfully sad) with the stored anger and pain that deserved to be directed at multiple systemic issues and instead comes out like a firehose on a peer who is no longer a 'good' peer so they're the enemy. I'd love to read any psych studies but I'm not sure what key words. I know a lot of people are noticing this: energy for rage, apathy for even minor changes we can make. I've seen multiple "stop with the 'omg look at this terf who deserves to die' when you're just retraumatizing trans people by boosting" in the same way that people of colour had to beg for folks to stop boosting black and brown people being brutalised, just graphically making people relive that trauma but please boost actions and learning instead. You know what I'm talking about? Right.

I know the world is terrifying right now but the way social media has raised folks to channel it is not healthy let alone constructive. I'm not sure how to help and not sure how mum can ever regain her purity in the eyes of the little book group she's in. She doesn't like gender, she's actually long been gender non conforming but doesn't know any of the vocabulary. She's still processing trauma from DV and being in a cult so being told how to think gets her hackles up even when she's trying to be as logical and fair as possible. I'm scared the gender crits will reach out and say "hey we're real feminists who care about women, we don't even hate trans folk, come hang out with us and leave behind the rude meanies".

I don't know where to start. With pretty much all other marginalisations we have had people in our life to relate to. Mum's got lesbian, gay, black, Muslim, jewish, sex worker, disabled and mentally ill friends but zero point of reference for trans folk above 14-15 (a friend's child is autiqueer). If any of her friends came out as trans she'd be eating every book available and ready to advocate for them at doctors appointments but right now it's just an abstract concept that makes no sense when she's never been feminine enough to be more than a failed woman and never been that attached to gender.

How do you explain gender dysphoria to someone who's never experienced gender euphoria?

This is someone who never once questioned the anger behind some black lives matter posts, never took wypipo or 'white woman tears' personally because of course anger comes out messy and of course people don't like to think they're racist and have to deliberately learn to be anti racist and will mess up.

The problem here is that it's very hard to talk gender with someone alienated from anything gender related except misogyny.

I remember back when I got into feminism and she'd given up on all that because it didn't have anything to say for working class women who love men. Womanism had the keys to her heart: loving men + hating the patriarchy that crushes their souls along with yours, not wanting the capitalist dream but a different society.

If you've read this far you deserve dog pics, thank you for letting me rant. I'm going to try and find some books by older trans men and women from similar working class backgrounds (no showbiz) and some intro to Judith Butler. Maybe something on the left eating it's own to explain why these younguns don't know how to just boycott and never listen to jkr again.

Replies are welcome, reblogs not. This is delicate and personal. Please have grace. She's trying. I'm trying.

[icaruskey]

on your post about this weird uptick in forcefem memes (usually from radfems, exclus or exclus leaning people) i think what makes me uncomfy with it is how non consensually these people go about it? (especially since due to them going "uwu we're justd oing this to give advice to men on how to be valid uwu" thus maknig them not tag it as nsft even when it has an nsft undertone going on.) i care less about the fact that people have those kinks. and moreso that it's heavily implied that men in those communities have to do this. to prove that they're good men. otherwise they're still evil and misogynistic conservatives if they don't and especially how often this is directed specifically at trans men and transmascs more than cis men. it just feels like it's intended to be woke detransitioning encouragement from a lot of the blogs that do that. 6o6 who falls under exclus did this too. many bloggers pointed out how that's not progressive to say about all trans men. and 6o6 made it very clear that they think all trans men should become feminine as well and doubled down on the post's bad implications. i wish these people would understand that coerced kink shit is bad even in the name of their so called leftism takes. (btw no one go after 606 over this. just block them if this opinion of theirs i'm referencing offends you. i'm just giving this as an example of how radfems and exclus keep pushing forcefem fetish mining onto men in their spaces as the only valid way for them to be male radfems or male exclus/.) I call it coerced kink cuz despite how anti kink radfems and exclus are. i feel like they manage to find roundabout ways to voice their kinks in the format of posts like these. they think it's worse to be honest and vocal about having these kinks even in a consensual kinkplay scenario. so instead they have to disguise it as them giving advice to men on how to be good men in radfem and exclus spaces. thus doing fetish mining in the process in the name of some leftist goal. because fetish mining done with leftist wording is better than consensual kink according to these people?? idk it just feels really weird to me especially with how often radfems and exclus do vore kink fetish mining and piss kink fetish mining as well as humiliation kink fetish mining. i think these people need to realize that it's impossible to stave off your internalized kinks you're trying to shame out of yourself in an aba therapy like manner essentially. cuz they'll keep finding ways to leak into your hot takes about what trustworthy men in a relationship should be like. especially with the high standard man hating bias that's very involved in takes like these. maybe i'm looking too deep into it but at the same time i can't help but wonder if that's why posts like that exist. especially when i've seen a lot of anti kink terfs/radfems lately (which exclus keep "reclaiming" their anti kink takes from btw, we see you you're not fooling anyone) claiming that just doing the sexual act non consensually that the kink is imitating is better than doing the consensual kinkplay procedure.

As someone with a forcefemme kink I don't think they even see this as a kink but rather as something that needs to happen because feminism has been touting men=bad, women=good and thus the correlating aesthetics also are bad/good in turn.

Idk, I feel like saying that "x has y kink" falls into "Putin hates gays because he's secretly gay/JKR hates trans people because she's secretly trans masc" category of can we not assume?

They may indeed have this fetish, but they've not allowed themselves to unpack what they do and don't find titillating and I feel it really narrows the field and forgets that some people just genuinely believe this is what needs to happen, regardless of how wet it makes their panties.

[nientedal]

So, the JKR bullshit.

She has published one book with a dangerous, unstable trans lady trying to kill the protagonist. Now she has announced another book, this one featuring a serial killer cis man who dresses as a (muslim!) woman in order to stalk his victims.

(What the fuck muslims have to do with all this, I don't know. The scenario wasn't fucked enough so she added Islamophobia to the mix, I guess? Hey, great job, JK. Really knocked this one out of the park.)

But like, she's been going on for a while about this whole "trans women are scary - oh I mean, er, men? in dresses? men in dresses are scary! Trans women are cool though, totally, except I don't actually think they're women at all even if they are trans and not just confused." And I have been sitting here sort of vibrating with rage about this, but... I've also been very confused about just how hard she seems to be pushing. She's obsessed. I don't get it. How does one person go this hard on their hatred whole still denying they hate anyone? How does that not cause any cognitive dissonance?

Well, I went back and read the essay she posted back in January, and a few things jumped out at me, but what I think everything boils down to is: "I'm scared of men due to past trauma and I believe my fear is justified. Also, I don't think people can be trusted to know their own realities." (but I think the latter point may be a red herring; or, if genuine, it takes a serious back seat.)

She mentions an "avalanche of emails and letters...which were positive, grateful and supportive...from a cross-section of kind, empathetic and intelligent people...who’re all deeply concerned about...dangers to young people, gay people and about the erosion of women’s and girl’s rights" after and while the Twitter stuff went down. Also, she says one of her early "cancellations" was due to her following (and contacting) Magdalen Berns, a terminally ill lesbian feminist and "a great believer in the importance of biological sex, [who] didn’t believe lesbians should be called bigots for not dating trans women with penises."

So basically - she was already casually bigoted on a bunch of fronts (that much has been evident for a while), but on trans issues specifically...she opened herself intentionally to the TERF community, and they supported and empathized with her in a time when she was being harassed and re-traumatized on Twitter. She said in her essay that she believes we're living in a more misogynistic time than ever before. It's evident that she feels her fears are being confirmed everywhere she turns, and instead of asking "am I right to be afraid?" she's saying "because I am afraid, there is something to be afraid of."

This passage is, I think, the meat of it:

She tips her hand when she says "any man who believes or feels he's a woman" instead of "anyone who says they're a woman." She claims to fear cis men who lie & take advantage, but she does not think trans women can be trusted, either.

Lack of trust is a running theme throughout the essay, by the way: she believes that without a long and arduous pre-transition vetting process, no one - not even trans people - can really be sure a person is transgender. They'll want to detransition, they'll regret their decision, lose their dysphoria, they're autistic and confused, they're girls who want to be boys to escape misogyny. Blah blah blah trans people can't be trusted to know their experiences and shouldn't be allowed to decide what kind of care they need.

And I'm pissed.

But yeah, this is where that book is coming from. And the really hilarious (read: infuriating) thing about this is, she has completely fucking ignored the fact that if a cis man wanted to hunt women while dressing as one, there was already nothing stopping him. He could do that in the 1960s, the 1880s, 600CE, 5700BCE, whenever. No one is standing at the bathroom door checking to see who's got a vulva and who doesn't. Men can and do assault women in bathrooms already, without ever dressing up as one. Jo? Hey, Jo? Men don't need to dress up in order to hurt women. You absolute goddamned moron.

Anyway. She's scared and trying to justify it, and I get that, I really do, but it's not helpful or rational and writing this nonsense is not going to make her feel any better. It's only going to hurt people. I know she has been abused and assaulted and that maybe makes her vulnerable to her fear and to the suggestion that she's right to be afraid, but - wow, I'm ever so fucking sorry - I do not give a rat's patoot. She has preemptively burned every ounce of goodwill she might otherwise have received from me. She didn't deserve what happened to her, but she needs to reevaluate her trauma and get better therapy; she is holding the world responsible for the fear that lives inside her, the fear she can't let go of, and she is hurting people. In this case, she was met with what she saw as abuse and instead of just saying "I don't deserve this level of vitriol, but wow I seem to have pissed off an awful lot of people; maybe I'm missing something," she ran to look for why she might not deserve it (no one deserves abuse, ever, full stop; looking for a reason you don't deserve it only implies that circumstances exist under which you would deserve it) and why everyone yelling at her might be Wrong and Bad and Abusive. And then, just to be sure, she invented a reason that fit her fear and wrote a book about it to prove her fear was real and rational.

Her fear is real, book or no book. But it is not rational. If a man wants to prey on women in bathrooms, he can do so right now. If someone begins to transition and goes "hey wait this isn't for me," that's on them. That's nobody else's lookout. That is not her fucking responsibility to worry about or gatekeep.

And let's get something straight: I'm not saying this is Twitter's fault for yelling at her. I am not saying she deserves sympathy and a free pass. I'm making an observation about what I think she saw and reacted to. Twitter didn't give her that reaction; she reacted all by herself; she's a racist transphobe who refuses to entertain the merest notion that she might be a racist transphobe, and that is on her!!! She's fucked up and she's bound and determined to fuck everyone else up, too. I am ALSO not saying this is a recent development or totally unforeseeable; she wrote plenty of shitty shit into Harry Potter too, including but not limited to:

Cho Chang's name

Someone infected with a thinly-veiled metaphor for HIV intentionally infecting children with it

House elves: slaves who enjoy being enslaved

The Gringotts goblins

The entire Wizarding world treating sentient non-humans as lesser beings and...never really questioning this. Some of the characters think that's a bit fucky, but the narration is just kinda fine with it.

So like, I am absolutely not defending her or calling for sympathy towards her! She was already merrily skipping in this direction with her fingers in her ears, chanting la-la-la, and has been for a while. But the above points could be examples of unthinking, unquestioning biases and prejudices, if only because they aren't the point of those novels the way "men r scary!" seems to be the point of this one.

I don't think she was radicalized then the way she seems to be, now. I guess that's what I'm trying to say.

Unfortunately the one thing JKR has been consistently good at over the years is never admitting fault, ever; I am CERTAIN people tried to talk to her about those things, and I am certain she did not and does not care. Also, her pen-name, Robert Galbraith, is a direct reference to Robert Galbraith Heath, one of the fathers of conversion therapy; she is not acting in good faith, here.

But yeah. If you're wondering where the hell all this particular nonsense is coming from - here it is. My take, anyway. It is coming from her fear of men, plus her total inability to entertain the idea that she might be wrong about something. She's scared of men who want to hurt women and she sees them everywhere she turns, and she sees trans women as an opportunity for wolves to wear sheep's clothing. And she will never, no matter how polite we are, revise that or turn away from the comfortable world she lives in, where she's afraid but always right.

So we might as well just keep screaming. The louder you are, the harder it is for bigots to talk over you, and speaking softly to bullies has never stopped any bully I've ever met. And I do not know what to call someone who picks Robert Fucking Galbraith as their pseudonym except a bully and a bigot.

As for what else to do about it...I don't know. I don't know that there's anything that will actually get results. Writing to her publishers and distributors might help. I saw one post that suggested we all hype this book up so the publishers print more copies, and then we don't buy them, causing a giant loss. That makes sense enough to me but I'm not sure how to swing it.

I really don't know. I'm just angry and throwing my two cents into the void, here. I was angry and confused before, so I went looking for answers, and now I'm just fucking angry. I don't know if that's better, but it is what it is.

[tra-receipts]

In response to your last ask, I couldn't agree more! I started out being completely pro trans very early in my life, as I'm a lesbian, and always considered them to be a part of my community, the one subjugated by straight people. But as the movement has gotten more and more militant and violent, as I've seen people like JKR be threatened with rape and death simply for disagreeing with some aspects of the trm, and having her words of support and affirmation of the identity of trans people be completely ignored and dismissed, and have somehow made homophobia and misogyny acceptable again, I find myself struggling to not hate trans people. As a woman, and as a lesbian, I feel deeply betrayed by the trans community. The term that they've created, "genital fetish" has completely demonized gay people. We're no longer allowed to be attracted to the same sex, instead forced to be attracted to anyone who follows the cultural gender stereotypes of the same sex. I hate that I have to make this ask anonymous so that I don't alienate a huge chunk of my followers.

Sorry, this ask has been kind of all over the place, I'm just upset and afraid that there's no way out. How are we supposed to fight against this?

Hello, anon. Sorry for taking a while to get back to you on this but it’s quite heavy and I needed a little bit of time to think about it.

It’s is very difficult to see all of the horrific things which they say and then being expected to pass it off as nothing and not affect your opinion of most trans activists and trans supporters. What annoys me more is those who try to dismiss them as such a small group because they don’t want to deal with the issue or even recognise it really.

But my advice? Deal with it as much as you can, which might not be a lot because of the threats people get. I have thick skin. 95% of the hate-mail I get just roll off me but not everyone is nearly the same. It’s a difficult thing to deal with. Definitely try to connect with some other gender critical women/radfems, even if you make a side blog or second account because it is really nice to interact with other women who feel the same way and have been through the same thing.

You are not alone. Thousands of other women are on your side and we are all threatened into silence by trans activists.

[aryanna5323]

I have literally never made my own post on here before and only like 3 entire people might see this, but I can't quit thinking about how much i dislike the idea of a black hermione granger. I first thought about this while having a conversation with my sister a while ago, but I just saw a fancast of a black girl as hermione on insta, and I have to spit this out somewhere.

The most obvious problem here is that if you want to have a main character be black.....maybe actually say that she's black? While writing the book? Not after publication? And definitely not after you said a white girl was the perfect actress and just what you imagined? You don't have to be like, "and this black girl came and knocked on our door" in the book, but you could mention her blackness other ways. Show her culture, but not as something weird and different. Describe the way shawdows cast from the candles in the great hall dance across her dark skin if you want. Just fucking describe it. And like not just once? Don't be like oh yeah she's black that's all because that's not all. Being black is about more than just having dark skin.

And also, why would jkr wax poetic about how pale other characters are and the way their skin looked if she didn't feel the need to describe hermione's dark skin at all? You can't just say "well I never said she was white... >;p". Don't make a main fucking character's appearance and culture ambiguous. Imagine giving someone a more genderneutral name like Alex and just never using pronouns. That's kinda strange right? Like are we supposed to say she/her, he/him, they/them? You wouldn't make it so we wouldn't know what to call a character accurately, so why make it where we can't imagine and understand a character accurately? If you're going to identify a character, fucking fully identify them. Let us actually know who they are. Bc again, being black is not that same as being white so that ambiguity is shit. You can't tell me hermione's personality would be the exact same if she were white or if she were black. There are differing cultures and experiences, and you have to include those in the character.

And when you basically surround this character with white characters and don't specifically mention that she's black, you can't expect us not to assume she's white as well. It's especially bad though, when jkr makes it disgustingly obvious when other characters aren't white. Fucking Cho Chang. Kingsley fucking Shacklebolt. I think that's all I need to say on that point.

Basically, if you want a character to be a certain ethnicity, just fucking say it (without going overboard and playing into gross stereotypes!!). It's not that hard. She described a few other characters' non-whiteness. Why couldn't she describe this in one of the main characters then?

Another issue with hermione being black is that there are few other black girls being actively described in this series. While it's fine to have very few black girls in a fictional school when it's a predominately white area in real life, it's not fine to shit all over the most described black girl for having bad hair and teeth. If you mainly only talk about one black girl and you give her bad hair and bad teeth and then say she's not pretty.....this is a problem to me. It feels like jkr thinks black girls in general have bad hair and teeth. Like their natural hair and teeth make them ugly. It feels like she's associating blackness with ugliness. Which, fuck that.

I know a lot of black girls are proud of their hair and their teeth, as they should be. But I also know that a lot of black girls don't like their hair or teeth because what's shown as conventionally pretty for hair is often straight hair, and for teeth it's perfectly closed, straight front teeth since these things are attributed to being closer to a standard of whiteness, which is what is portrayed by the media in the most positive light (which is also shitty and a different conversation).

My little sister is half black, and we spend a lot of time telling her how much we love her curls and how much we love her smile because we don't want her to grow up and think her hair is ugly and damage it to make it "pretty" or if she has a gap in her teeth that she has to close it. So to say that a very popular female character, known for her bad and untamable hair, who purposely fixes her teeth that she hates, is black, does not send a good message to young black girls. It's something I would steer my little sister far away from.

I also don't like the idea of hermione being black and the only one who cares about the house elves' enslavement. I would understand maybe her being black and the first person noticing the wrongness (even though in this century people in general should see the wrongness) or at least feeling the most motivated to stand against it based on her background (it's all a stretch but I'm trying to give the benefit of the doubt here), but shouldn't her friends realize how she might feel being black and surrounded by literal fucking slaves? Why wouldn't her friends join S.P.E.W.? Shouldn't ron specifically, who loves her, try to be more supportive and understanding instead of rude and condescending? Shouldn't harry, who was normally the one standing up for hermione, who made friends with a house elf and freed him after being mortified by his treatment, care a little more? I feel like the house elves' situation was mostly for laughs and barely for plot and almost unrelated to character development (besides the fact that the whole house elf plot was disgusting itself. Saying that slaves enjoy their work and were disrespected by someone trying to free them?? Wtf???? But that's a whole other can of worms more unrelated to having a black hermione). If hermione were black, this could've been made a huge moment where a big movement was started and led by a black girl (as we've seen and as is so often ignored in history! Black women are powerful. Give them their power in literature too!!). Instead of a joke of one whose meetings were never attended except by people who wanted hermione to quit annoying them. Instead of never following through with the house elves and leaving them in the dust when the plot got too busy. Instead of saying hermione is black so she's the only one who can really care about slavery.

Don't get me wrong, I would love a black hermione if the setup were different. If she wasn't told that some of her physical characteristics that balck girls can often be insecure about are ugly, if she were actively described as black and her blackness was incorporated into the character, if she wasn't the only character to truly care about an enslaved species, then a black hermione would be badass. A black girl as one of the main characters, who is so smart, who the chosen one would fail without, is powerful. It's saying black girls are smart and clever and important. It would've been so fucking cool if hermione were black if it was done in the right way. A powerful black girl, one of the brightest of her generation, who stands up for others. She would get all my love.

But I can't get behind her if she's ignored or shit on for things that would seemingly stem from her blackness. I, personally, think that it's better leaving her as white, since i think this is what jkr truly intended and worming around those intentions can lead to some nasty implications, and getting behind other black girls who got (or will get for the yet-unwritten ones!) the attention from their writers that they deserve.

I'm so open to having a conversation about this, especially if this is not how the black community perceives having a black hermione. Like if you're black and you think i twisted things and completely fucked this up, I'm begging you to shit all over me for it. I'm not trying to press my white bitch perspective (when I'm much less knowledgeable) on a community with lived experience. This is just how I felt jkr came across as completely insensitve and shitty with this comment. Or ways I thought having a black hermione was more bad than good if that statement was true, by whatever definition we want to give that word here. But if I'm wrong, I want to learn from this. I don't want to be speaking for black girls here, i want to be standing behind them in support. I just can't make myself spin this situation in a more positive light, not after everything jkr's said about her "gay" characters and about real trans people, without a little assistance (if y'all think I'm wrong and that assistance is necessary, anyway). I just don't have that faith in her. But if black girls truly think that having a black hermione does more good than bad, I'll be behind you and I'll support you.

Love for anyone reading this except for prejudiced bitches, homophobes, terfs, misogynists, and other shitty people of the like! <3 <3 <3

[dmitri-smerdyakov]

Okay, so, Potter and Beasts fan here. As someone who loves both series, I have to admit that it’s incredibly problematic and that JKR’s prejudice is woven into both series because of her views.

You seriously think that JK fucking Rowling has enough foresight to think of Seamus Finnegan as “an extremely useful guerilla fighter”? No, she doesn’t. As someone who has Irish grandparents and Irish extended family, “the Irish kid who likes to blow shit up” is an extremely damaging and untrue stereotype. Irish people faced a LOT of discrimination from those in the UK by people of Rowling’s generation - my grandparents, when they came over from Ireland to England, literally saw signs saying “no blacks, no dogs, no Irish”. Why did she have to make the sole Irish character the one who likes to blow shit up? Why not Ginny, for example? The fact that when writing an Irish little boy into her story, her first instinct was “he likes to blow things up” is fucking gross.

I think you’re kind of missing the point. Black people especially not having dads is a huge stereotype. And it was only in DH that JKR came up with the spiel that the reason Dean’s father abandoned his family was because he was protecting his wife and child from Death Eaters - before that, in her own words, JKR merely said that his dad walked out on them when Dean was young. Either way, doesn’t change the fact it’s a stereotype.

JK Rowling is a writer, right? Why couldn’t she have come up with an original non-anti-Semitic way to describe characters like the Gringotts goblins and Snape?

The Werewolf-AIDs thing: the AIDS crisis was a HUGE and terrifying time for many gay men during the 80s and 90s. Obviously we know now that anyone can get AIDs, but at the time it was referred to as “the gay disease” and was a reason for gay men to be discriminated against, because the view was that gay men were promiscuous and couldn’t stop having sex, hence why it was spreading. The fact that the books were written in the 90s and early 2000s makes the lycanthropy-is-AIDs metaphor even worse. Then you have Fenrir Greyback, who is said to specifically have a preference for children - he likes infecting and biting children. This also plays into the harmful idea that “gay men are pedophiles”.

With Anthony Goldstein, it’s the fact that the revelation of him - an incredibly minor character who has zero impact and input on the story - being Jewish was done as another of JK Rowling’s Twitter moments and isn’t mentioned in the story at all.

Following on from that, the fact that Tina and Queenie are distantly related to him and therefore also probably Jewish too, yet there’s ZERO mention of this in the Beasts films, and the set designers couldn’t even be assed putting a menorah in the background of their apartment despite the fact that Hanukkah of 1926 took place during the days that FBAWTFT do. If I, a fanfic writer, can do my research then maybe JK Rowling and the set design people on a major movie should too.

One of my mutuals on Instagram who is a transgender man messaged me directly about the Rita Skeeter thing and pointed it out. I would argue that sure, maybe Rita Skeeter simply has mannish hands, maybe she just so happens to play into several harmful trans women stereotypes by wearing “gaudy” clothes and fake nails, plus fake looking blonde curls, maybe it’s a mere coincidence that she likes to change form so she can spy on people for harmful purposes... But whether she realised it or not, JKR played into several damaging trans stereotypes, and the fact that a trans man pointed this out is very telling. Maybe we should listen to what actual transgender people say about it instead of what cis people say.

The house elf thing is just yikes. Adding onto that, Hermione is treated as strange and her friends make fun of her for caring about house elf rights. Dobby is also treated as a social pariah among elves because he loves his freedom. Also, hate to break it to you, but house elves are NOT the same as brownies who turn into boggarts. If it’s based off of that folklore, then why not put that actual folklore in? She had no problem putting in the anti Semitic goblin stereotype in, why not just write the actual folklore with boggarts straight in? Oh, that’s right, because she decided that boggarts were something else for some reason...

Ilvermorny IS part of the wider Wizarding World. The whole of her backstory about Ilvermorny and the fact that Native American wizards had to be taught “civilised magic” by white colonising wizards is so problematic. To add, the houses are cultural appropriation of several different Native American legends and creatures, like the Thunderbird and the Wampus. Again, actual Native Americans have criticised her for this, and they’re the ones who we should listen to when it comes to this stuff.

Now, I agree that because Dumbledore has always been private about his life and the fact he’s gay, having him wander around in Crimes of Grindelwald in rainbow robes and proclaiming “I love cock” would have been terribly out of character. Frankly, I think it’s extremely obvious that Dumbledore was in love with Grindelwald just from CoG: “we were closer than brothers”, the mirror of erised scene, the blood pact etc.

Having said that, it’s obvious you haven’t actually watched the film, which is why your comment about OP not “loving” the books enough is incredibly ironic. For a start, Eddie Redmayne plays Newt Scamander, who is not gay or in love with Grindelwald (his love interest is Tina). Dumbledore is played by Jude Law. So, yeah, no one is expecting Newt to make out with Grindelwald, that would be fucking OOC and not fit the story at all. Also, JK Rowling wrote the Beasts series, she’s the one who when WB came to her said “I want to do a film series about Newt Scamander”, so it’s not just “a Warner Bros thing”, it is part of the canonical Wizarding World for better or for worse.

There are many other problems we could address in the series but this post is dragging on enough frankly.

As for “the choice between what is right and what is easy” - JKR took the easy route by not educating herself and by not even trying to rid herself of her transphobia. Nowhere in her essay did she apologise or even acknowledge how what she said could be viewed as harmful - it was 3000+ words of excuses and victimising herself.

The actors who’ve spoken up in support of trans rights are not “betraying her” or “biting the hand that fed them” - just because they were in movies based on books/written by her, it doesn’t mean she owns them and their opinions. It’s been 9 years since the last Potter movie, the cast owe that woman nothing now. Also, none of them attacked her or belittled her; some of them didn’t even mention JKR, they just said “trans women are women”. Even those who did mention her didn’t attack her; they just said “I disagree with her”. I know this is kind of a revolutionary way of thinking but - gasp! - you can have differing opinions/views and STILL respect someone and not hate them! I know, it’s almost unthinkable!

Since you like using Potter quotes... “Sometimes it takes a great deal of courage to stand up to your enemies, but even more so to stand up to your friends” - just remember that. The cast who have spoken up can’t have found it easy, which is why some of them probably didn’t speak up until a few days after, because it’s obvious they do care and like JKR, and they respect her even if they don’t agree with all of her views.

But they spoke up for what is right, which I think is not the easy thing. They’re the ones who chose right over easy, not JK Rowling.

I'm tired of non-asians on twitter trying to tell asians that we shouldn't be offended by the racial stereotype that is Cho Chang. I mean,

Cho and Chang are both last names

One's Korean, the other's Chinese (no I dont remeber which is which)

She got sorted into the Smart House

Her only interactions are following 2 white boys around like a lovesick puppy

Cho Chang sounds suspiciously like "ching chang" a term used to mock asians (This has been used multiple times against my family and other asian friends)

The only person East Asians can identify with, one of the 4 asians in the entire series (Patil twins, Nagini)

All of the Asian characters are only seen in relation to white men.

Honestly, we wouldn't be as mad if there was other East Asians that DIDN'T conform to that stereotype, but Cho is the only one we got. Thanks Joanne.

Also JK Rowling said the Voldemort's snake used to be an asian women named Nagini... who is now in service to him... and is basically his pet...

JK Rowling is a transphobic, homophobic, TERF, anti-semitic, and racist.

The only Irish kid blows shit up (ira) (Seamus Finnigan)

The most prominent black character doesnt have a dad. (Dean Thomas)

The other black Hogwarts students, (Blaise Zabini) his mom is implied to be a gold digger.

(Angelina Johnson) is good at sports (stereotype, but she's still badass)

The bankers are described as hook nose goblins... yeah.

Apparently she made aids/HIV a comparison to werewolves... where it was unwillingly given to Lupin by a man who targets children...

The only jewish character is a dude named Anthony Goldstein, who is never specified to be jewish in the books or movies, and I actually have no idea if he was actually in either.

Rita Skeeter literally described with manly hands, a strong jaw, and other traditionally masculine features... painting her as a trans women, and someone who is a liar, and is hated by everyone... and oh yeah, changes form to spy on kids.

The house elves love to be enslaved

The american wizard society, where she just shits on everything. Implying that the indigenous people had to be colonized so they could be taught "proper magic", mishandling of native cultures, and incorrectly grouping them into one entity

Saying later that Dumbledore was gay, but not putting it in the story, or into Fantastic Beasts 2, where the storyline is LITERALLY about his former lover.

I'm tired of JK Rowling. I'm tired of "it wasn't relevant to Harry's story, so I didnt include it" I'm tired of people outside of these communities telling us that we're overreacting, and that we shouldn't be offended by what we see.

I love the books, but I hate Joanne.

[averageagenderjoe]

Hey.

If you defend JK Rowling, you kind of suck.

You’re allowed to like her books—I get it. I know good literature when I see it, and while I was never a huge fan of the books myself, really, I did get some joy out of them, and I have friends and family who grew up with the books and loved the characters and the story. So long as you acknowledge what the author has said and done, and acknowledge that the book DOES have it’s problems, you’re free to enjoy it, really. And I mean, you kind of suck, but I don’t hate you or anything, because I believe you just don’t understand something that’s happening, and a lack of understanding doesn’t mean you are a bad person.

ANd the reason JK Rowling is facing so much backlash isn’t because she said that sex is real or whatever, and that saying that has offended trans people. Sex IS real—it just doesn’t decide our gender. I have never met a trans person who says that sex isn’t real, we know sex is real, for the love of god.

I could make a mile long list of shit she’s done that’s pissed me off. Her books lack diversity—in a beloved series that’s been praised for years and years, I never saw myself in any of the characters. I never saw myself at Hogwarts—the only gay character was an old man who hooked up with a bad man in his youth, but none of that was ever really mentioned except outside of the continuity. Even if Dumbledore is gay in canon, I would have preferred seeing that IN THE FUCKING BOOKS instead of in one of JKR’s tweets. And she has no excuse, really—sure, maybe the original books, but when making new books and movies, with ample opportunity to be able to make queer characters, and all you really see is Dumbledore saying they were “closer than brothers?” Queer baiting at it’s finest. And she seemed to think that was enough. She acts like she knows shit about the LGBTQ+ community, but when trans people say they found something offensive, she doesn’t think to apologize. People got offended over something that was offensive, and she—as a cis woman—didn’t believe she was in the wrong. Tried to act like whatever she knows makes it okay that she’s offended actual trans people. I cannot get over that.

JKR’s made millions after milking the series this long, writing a story about love and shit, when she’s a woman who seems to be fueled by a hatred towards men—comparing woman towards hens and men towards coyotes, I want to say? And said you couldn’t let one into a pen or whatever even if they identified as a hen, in the context of trans woman and how she didn’t believe they should be allowed into woman’s prisons, because what if they raped the woman or something. Because trans women are just men, disguised as women? Because trans women are supposed to actually be men just wearing what they want and calling themselves what they want, not like they actually ARE what they say. That’s not even mentioning how, while women can easily be the victim of violence, trans women are just as likely to be victims of the same sort of violence? Because obviously, you gotta protect the cis women from the trans woman by sending her to a prison full of men, when their very existence is political and heavily debated and they are just as, if not more, vulnerable?

And don’t get me started about the love potions in Harry Potter and how they were just sold—like it was no it deal when one of the main antagonists was literally born because his mother raped a man under the influence of a love potion? But they’re sold, like it’s no big deal. And there’s jokes about them being used and shit?

And how Draco Malfoy was literally a kid surrounded by toxic influences that greatly influenced him and that lead to him being this irredeemable villain of a character, instead of a kid who had clearly made mistakes but could grow from them if given the opportunity? And Snape is viewed as a tragic, lovely character when he’s really more of an idealized Nazi who believed he was entitled to a woman and was horrible to her son when he was a grown ass man? And that wouldn’t bother me so much, (and maybe it’s not so much of the author, as it is the fandom, I don’t really know) like, show a character who did absolutely awful things in the past, but in the present tries to be a good person, and is still mourning the woman he fell in love with? I would have preferred a character who knew that, in his past, he was terrible and was trying to be better, even if he was struggling with the being better part.

And as someone who’s come from an abusive home, it felt a lot to me like Harry Potter’s own abusive home was played for laughs, but maybe that’s just me. And no, Aunt Petunia’s mentioning how she lost a sister or whatever doesn’t make it any better, because even if she’s grieving her sister, she treated her sister’s son, her NEPHEW like shit.

How come an author who wrote a series that was supposed to be about magic and love says things that seem so filled with hate and why will you defend her? I’m not saying that JKR’s a horrible person, really—it’s that she should be apologizing for the shit she says, it’s that she faces backlash and she, with countless followers on Twitter and a zillion dollars in her bank account, claims she’s being censored. And people, watching others wanting more diversity, not pleased with simply being told that Dumbledore and Grindleward DEFINITELY had a sexual aspect in their relationship, and a bunch of straight people seem to think that’s enough somehow.

I don’t ask for perfection from JKR—but effort would be nice. Admitting when you are wrong would be nice. And this isn’t about DIFFERING OPINIONS��trans people fucking exist. Biology is a complicated thing, and choosing to reduce people to their genitalia is just faking stupid—you aren’t a woman or a man or both or neither because of your body. Being trans isn’t about your sex, its about gender which is an entirely different thing.

My existence is not an opinion that might differ from yours. My indentity doesn’t get to be an opinion. The rights I get for my identity aren’t just DIFFERING OPINIONS.

Anyway, if there’s some information in here that I got wrong, feel free to point it out (I mean, if I said something about JKR’s tweets or whatever that wasn’t quite what she said, or if you have a different take on a part of the books, or something similar. I do’t want to hear that you think trans-issues is a matter of opinion and that JKR’s not transphobic or anything, especially if you’re cis.