[kreuzberger]

Well, you can’t say I didn’t try. I leave the last word, which I hope isn’t in any way controversial, to Daniel Radcliffe:

Transgender women are women. Any statement to the contrary erases the identity and dignity of transgender people and goes against all advice given by professional health care associations who have far more expertise on this subject matter than either Jo or I. According to The Trevor Project, 78% of transgender and nonbinary youth reported being the subject of discrimination due to their gender identity. It’s clear that we need to do more to support transgender and nonbinary people, not invalidate their identities, and not cause further harm.

That's it, in a nutsack.

I don't believe that the case against her needs to be proven to the extent of the courts' requirements. My own judgement is that she is a committed, cause-driven contrarian. For that reason alone, I feel entirely validated in choosing not to listen to her, and I wish that bad actors wouldn't, either.

[Tubby Isaacs]

What have PETA got to do with it? I'll try and infer what you mean here. They go after, I presume, somebody famous and extravagant wearing a fur coat?

Rowling- formerly very hard up single mother, self-taught writer, regarded with respect for paying huge amounts of tax without trying to minimise it, generous donor to progressive causes, who's got millions of kids to enjoy reading. That's not the profile of what I imagine a PETA target to be. That's more like a News of the World target.

[Tubby Isaacs]

That's it, in a nutsack.

I don't believe that the case against her needs to be proven to the extent of the courts' requirements. My own judgement is that she is a committed, cause-driven contrarian. For that reason alone, I feel entirely validated in choosing not to listen to her, and I wish that bad actors wouldn't, either.

I wouldn't say contrarian overall. It's not like she's going to tweet one day that Bill Gates invented trans rights because he's got investments in puberty blockers. I think it's more likely she went off half cock at the start on this issue, and like Macbeth, has waded too far in to go back.

[Abernathy]

Well, you can’t say I didn’t try. I leave the last word, which I hope isn’t in any way controversial, to Daniel Radcliffe:

Transgender women are women. Any statement to the contrary erases the identity and dignity of transgender people and goes against all advice given by professional health care associations who have far more expertise on this subject matter than either Jo or I. According to The Trevor Project, 78% of transgender and nonbinary youth reported being the subject of discrimination due to their gender identity. It’s clear that we need to do more to support transgender and nonbinary people, not invalidate their identities, and not cause further harm.

That's it, in a nutsack.

The thing is, I don’t think that Rowling actually disagrees with any of that. She is supportive of people who have transitioned gender, and has expressed her support repeatedly. The hatchet jobs that Crabcakes posted in support of his take read like someone has trawled everything that Rowling has ever said or done, with the specific objective of finding things that, however tenuous, enable an inference to be drawn that Jo Rowling is virulently prejudiced against trans people, when she is no such thing.

It is somewhat bewildering how she has come to be painted as a kind of distaff Graham Linehan.

[The Weeping Angel]

Here's an example of the sort of shit Rowling has to deal with

https://deadline.com/2024/03/jk-rowling ... 235863403/

Not only did this account spread false information about Rowling they put an innocent person in danger by doxing her. Still right side of history and all that.

[The Weeping Angel]

choosing a nom de plume in Robert Galbraith that by staggering coincidence also happens to be the name of the psychiatrist who ‘created’ gay conversion therapy

Rowling has inevitably been asked about her choice of nom de plume "a name she took from Robert F. Kennedy, a personal hero, and Ella Galbraith, a name she invented for herself in childhood." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._K._Rowling You may not be aware that Galbraith is not an uncommon Scottish surname.

The only Robert Galbraith I'd heard of was an economist so I looked up the name. It turns out that the name of the person you're referring to is actually Robert Galbraith Heath https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Galbraith_Heath.

I'm not convinced that the coincidence of the similarity between Heath's name and Rowling's choice of nom de plume is as "staggering" as you think it is.

I remember a few weeks ago when someone tried to claim that Rowling using a male pseudynom was a sign that Rowling was a hypocrite because she used a male name and was therefore trans or some such nonsense.

[Philip Marlow]

Well look at what I gone and kicked off…

I am all of ten minutes departed from a night train and installed at home, so in lieu of engaging with the last - however many damn pages - I feel the thread would be vastly improved by an affront to the fundamental dreariness of Linehan and Rowling’s presently reductive view of the world; to whit, a louche song delivered by one of history’s finest trans performers.

It is admittedly not Christmas…And I shall return to the argument when sober…

[The Weeping Angel]

With the character names thing, she was kind of fucked either way. Give a character a generic name and then say that they are X, and you're accused of copping out. Give an indicative name and you're stereotyping. At that point people just want to roast you.

IIRC there were black students called Lee, Dean, and Angelina. References to their hairstyles, or comparing fantastic bigotry to what they experience among the normals. She also defended colour blind casting in the Potter stage show, saying she had never explicitly described some major characters as white.

I'm not defending her trans stance, but trying to distance that issue from everything else she has ever done. This 110% for or against crap helps nobody. I saw someone the other day accusing her of holocaust denial because she had said that the Nazis hadn't explicitly targeted trans people. They didn't. They just lumped them in with everyone else they considered perverts.

That hit me as a bit like in Life of Brian, where the rich couple complain about the social status of the people they're being crucified alongside.

I can't help but feel that if Rowling held the correct view on trans rights then a lot of these people saying the work is problematic wouldn't be so quick to point the finger.

[Abernathy]

Well look at what I gone and kicked off…

With respect, Phillip, you haven't "gone and kicked off" anything
The debate on this was well under way before you chipped in anything at all.

[davidjay]

I wonder, and I have no evidence for this, how much of the hatred towards Rowling might be based on the idea that "She's nice, she should be on our side"?

[Oboogie]

I wonder, and I have no evidence for this, how much of the hatred towards Rowling might be based on the idea that "She's nice, she should be on our side"?

That, and also she failed to genuflect sufficiently at the feet of St Jezza.
Plus, she's a woman so should shut up and do what she's told.

[Tubby Isaacs]

That, and also she failed to genuflect sufficiently at the feet of St Jezza.
Plus, she's a woman so should shut up and do what she's told.

Jez didn't really bother with trans rights as leader and hasn't since, so I think that's a red herring.

And she doesn't get a pass for being a woman, any more than Ayaan Hirsan Ali does for being a non-white woman. We all saw Rowling's Jordan Peterson act just this week. Trans people have every right to be very upset about that.

[Tubby Isaacs]

I wonder, and I have no evidence for this, how much of the hatred towards Rowling might be based on the idea that "She's nice, she should be on our side"?

I think that's part of it too.

[Oboogie]

That, and also she failed to genuflect sufficiently at the feet of St Jezza.
Plus, she's a woman so should shut up and do what she's told.

Jez didn't really bother with trans rights as leader and hasn't since, so I think that's a red herring.

And she doesn't get a pass for being a woman, any more than Ayaan Hirsan Ali does for being a non-white woman. We all saw Rowling's Jordan Peterson act just this week. Trans people have every right to be very upset about that.

It's not about Jez's stance (or lack thereof), some of his fan club however are eager for an opportunity to pile on people they perceive as an enemy.
No, women do not get a free pass - that's an absurd suggestion. However, I think they have rights and that those should be respected.

[Malcolm Armsteen]

Could you explain the 'Jordan Peterson Act' please?

[RedSparrows]

Could you explain the 'Jordan Peterson Act' please?

I believe Peterson once said a new law in Canada would make it illegal to say X, and he said X, posturing like the absurd pigeon he is, and lo, nothing happened to him.

[Malcolm Armsteen]

Hmm. That wasn't my impression of what she was doing, and showing that a badly-worded law is ineffective or likely to lead to injustice seems like a good thing.

[Crabcakes]

I think Tubby is referring to her “I’m saying this, come and arrest me” series of tweets.

Regardless of where you stand on whether she is a transphobe or not, the way she went about it was needlessly provocative and unpleasant. She deliberately misgendered, among others, a tv presenter, the head of a rape crisis charity and a young athlete. She further put them in a list along with a sex offender. She could have made the same point without tagging in people (with photographs of them). She could have at the very least not deliberately thrown in a criminal.

[Tubby Isaacs]

It's not about Jez's stance (or lack thereof), some of his fan club however are eager for an opportunity to pile on people they perceive as an enemy.
No, women do not get a free pass - that's an absurd suggestion. However, I think they have rights and that those should be respected.

I don't think the overlap between Jez ultras and trans ultras, for want of a better description, is that big really. The Jez issues are mostly foreign policy and anti-capitalism. They're much more bothered about Starmer or Paul Mason. I don't think trans rights and JK Rowling, especially now, are of much concern to them.

Why did you mention womanhood in the context of Rowling? I don't understand. What right isn't being respected?

[Tubby Isaacs]

I think Tubby is referring to her “I’m saying this, come and arrest me” series of tweets.

Regardless of where you stand on whether she is a transphobe or not, the way she went about it was needlessly provocative and unpleasant. She deliberately misgendered, among others, a tv presenter, the head of a rape crisis charity and a young athlete. She further put them in a list along with a sex offender. She could have made the same point without tagging in people (with photographs of them). She could have at the very least not deliberately thrown in a criminal.

Yes, this exactly. Philip drew the Peterson comparison on this thread. If you're worried about a bit of bad drafting, you don't act like this,,