Excellent point.
Actively listening to those who are oppressed and persecuted because they choose to live their lives as themselves openly is highly important.
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I don’t understand what any of this has to do with what you were saying, though. I haven’t said anything against non-binary people, and wouldn’t. Meanwhile Rowling has been an absolutist saying there are two genders equal to two sexes, you are assigned one at birth and then that’s the bathroom you go into (unless you’re a wizard and then you use the floor, but I digress). I think it’s a safe bet that if she bothered to notice non-binary people she would dismiss and work to hurt them too.
So I still don’t know at all the answers to what I asked. Rowling is out to hurt people, and for the record I have talked to people her campaign has, British people who are having a tough time getting services they need because so much of their country despises them. And you’re telling me I shouldn’t get too polarized in response to the famous person using their vast wealth to do that to my friends. Why the hell not? What exactly is the extremism you’re worried about?
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No. It’s not. If Rowling had said this, I would still think she was a transphobic bigot and should have kept her mouth shut.
Would you think someone who said, “I don’t have anything against black people, but I’m just not comfortable with white people and black people getting married” wasn’t a bigot? Because that sentiment is super fucking racist, and it doesn’t get better when you translate it to other situations and marginalized groups.
Anyone who isn’t comfortable with transfolk has some work to do on themselves.
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It should also be said that there’s something very perverse about people who always seem to have a plethora of opinions on topics involving Trans people, yet they never seem to listen to or take into the account the opinions of people who are Trans.
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“Imagine how different this whole dynamic would be if Rowling had just said, “Trans activists make me uncomfortable” and left it at that. Being uncomfortable is a long way from being a bigot.”
Wait… no I don’t think so. Being uncomfortable is part of recognizing one’s own bigotry. Sitting with the discomfort and being honest about where it’s coming from is part of dismantling one’s own bigotry.
To be a long way from being a bigot one would need to decide to move away from that self-involved position. After all the assumption that one’s own feelings about trans activism or trans people are relevant to the actual rights of others or constitute a meaningful position at all is … narcissism.
I was raised in a bigoted world. You were too. Every single one of us was and privilege pretty much defines only how aware we had to become of that and how much it affected us either directly or indirectly through others we met.
Recognizing our own bigotry is part of growing. No one escapes it. Being a victim of it only makes it harder to escape. Ultimately it can’t be escaped. It has to be confronted… uncomfortably. It’s a bit like tying a wire around a small tree and about that easy to extract.
Saying “trans activists make me uncomfortable” or even more honestly “trans people make me uncomfortable” is not less bigoted it’s just less dishonest. Saying “how has my discomfort hurt trans people” would be the first step in moving away from bigotry.
Rowling can’t even take that first step. To admit she’s hurt women would make her a bad feminist. And her ego needs to believe she is a good feminist. So she digs her heels in and in doing so doubles down on her bigotry. Her denial is useful to people who don’t just think “trans people make me uncomfortable” but who instead believe “trans people need to be eliminated.”
To me it isn’t polarizing to recognize that a vain and egotistical person will hurt infinite others to protect their own self-image and that is what I believe Rowling is doing.
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Oh boy, it is because her bigotry goes way deeper than you might think at first glance.
Go reread the Potter series with the following notions:
- All characters are 100% cis and extremely so
- And straight (Gay Dumbledore was not in the original…)
- Even Hermione has to be pretty. Notice the old Hollywood trope that she can be gorgeous for a dance -If Only She Does Something With Her Hair!
- Evil witches are ugly, good witches are not
- Women are still bound to feminine role, Ginny halts her successful quidditch career once a kid shows up…
- Bad witches like Dolores Umbridgfe are often described with male characteristics (eg. large hands)
- They all pair up neatly, boy+girl+children…
- Race in the books? Yeah, we get an asian girl as a shorthand for a pretty available girl. Nice one JK.
etc… - Oh, and the elves. Most of them enjoy their position and must be explained by an outsider being a slave is bad. Dobby is an oddity! More a Tom Show than Tom’s Cabin iykwim
etc…
If you really look at it the Potter was never more progressive that let’s say the Famous Five. One plucky girl does not a feminist book make.
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There’s no way I’m subjecting myself to this, but she basically wrote transphobic pulp…
The excellent Contrapoints video delves into it in some detail. I’ve cued the timestamp for anyone specifically curious about it:
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I didn’t comment because I never read it, and I’ll never read it because I can name off the top of my head at least 50 books I’d rather read 
but my point is that the same stuff is in the Potter series, cleverly hidden in the mess.
Maybe one day I’ll write out all the problems with how Rowling writes other nations too >:(
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Don’t blame you one bit. I’m immensely thankful to the critics and journalists who slog through bigotry and other poisons so we don’t have to. Every one of them deserves free counseling along with every mod.
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No such thing, IMO; there was nothing in the original novels indicating it, in any way shape or form, as his sexuality was never discussed nor even remotely hinted at.
The fact that JKR made the claim after the novels had all been published and the movies had come out was just BS lip service; an attempt to look ‘woke’ even though she clearly doesn’t giving a flying fuck about the LGBTQ+ community.
Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if I were to learn that she secretly dislikes Black people as well, despite all her past support of Serena Williams on Twitter.
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Dunno, Dumbledore’s youthful relationship with young Gellert Grindelwald reads very differently once you consider the possibility that he might be gay. But that’s about it.
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Note, I did specify the ORIGINAL novels; ie, the Sorcerer/Philosopher’s Stone to the Deathly Hallows.
I haven’t read anything of hers after that, nor have I seen any of the films since then… and now, knowing what a colossally bigoted asshole JKR is, I never plan to.
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Same. She may have shoehorned some weak-sauce retcon in to the Fantastic Beasts series absent from the Harry Potter series rife with cis-het relationships, but my reading list is too long to bother with transphobic authors.
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That is what I said. Rowling has done an awful lot of retconning, rarely for a good reason. It looked to me like she was just trying keep her twitter feed relevant. Gay Dumbledore was born out of this.
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I think it was in Deathly Hallows, it becomes more obvious if you are familiar with the euphemisms that the British press use to avoid being sued for libel.
It was still BS though, Byker Grove on CBBC had a gay major character a decade before that book came out and section 28 had been removed from law so her books wouldn’t be removed from school libraries if it was obvious that Dumbledore was gay.
The irony is that JKR now wants to bring back section 28 for trans people, but anyone with any sense of awareness knows it won’t work like that.
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Is it though?
“Sir, I’m going to have to move you to another table. You’re making our other guests uncomfortable.”
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Yes. You can’t choose how you feel, but you can choose how you act. In this case, the other customers and/or the restaurant staff are acting in a bigoted manner, and that’s the problem.
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Those words reminded me of something
The women were identified as “noncompliant” by a flight attendant who said he overheard them talking with other passengers about how there was not enough food or water on their delayed plane which was sitting on the tarmac for 5 hours. Their complaints about how bad the experience was made him “uncomfortable,” so he decided they must be terrorists. The flight attendant also told the women that taking photos on a plane was a “federal offense.” This is just made-up bullshit.
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But not the most important one.
You’ve pointedly ignored the input of every Trans person on this thread who’s addressed you directly.
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Again, Rowling has been working hard to hurt my friends. You dismissed opposition to that as a “three minute’s hate” as if it was nothing but an ideological game, instead of concern about real people. Now you are dismissing criticism of that as playing a game of zingers too.
It’s like you can’t understand that there are real people whose lives are damaged by all this, and I’m afraid so long as you don’t care to consider them, none of the rest of your clarification or apologies matter an iota to me.
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