I never gave gave a shit about “Harry Potter” in the first place before it was cool
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I’m not sure whether the fact of this being perpetrated by one of the high priests of whining about ‘cancel culture’ is ironic or totally unsurprising.
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Yeah, it is basically the worst possible response, and all too common amongst rich assholes. The source of the phrase “fuck you money”, I suppose.
Money is not affection. I will not respect you just because you got lucky, JKR. It just reminds me of how better writers like Terry Pratchett and Iain Banks are no longer with us, and it makes me resent the uncaring universe.
Hell, I’m surprised she hasn’t sued Ben Aaronovitch for mentioning Harry Potter in his Rivers of London series yet. She seems like the sort.
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Oh, they’re just sneering “I thought you said Cancel Culture doesn’t exist Graham”, because as always, being cruel is the point
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From what I’ve gathered (someone I follow on Twitter has a sideline in gender-critical/TERF/whatever activism), Rowling believes that she has a moral duty to use her fame and wealth to help protect vulnerable children from gender therapists, rapists and other threats coming from the transgender movement. Her supporters are proud that she is standing up for her beliefs and taking a financial hit despite the obvious temptation to keep quiet and let the money flow in.
Now Rowling herself comes along to say that the money is still flowing in and being “cancelled” hasn’t hit her where it hurts.
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One thing that stands out to me (and might well be something Graham Norton has also noticed), most of the anti-trans rhetoric in the UK is identical to the anti-gay nonsense from the 1980’s/90’s. Literally the same (bogus) claims, sometimes word for word, but with trans people as the villains, in place of ‘the gays’.
Fuck the bigots.
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The whole “well I’m rich and you’re not” is basically an attempt to hide hurt feelings. A lashing out, using their wealth as a fist to punch back. Because they are hurt, feel robbed of the love we owe them for existing.
There are so many good authors, let her books and creations rest and give your money elsewhere.
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Don’t think that Norton is going to join them whining about cancel culture. He just fucked off Twitter because it’s a full time job dealing with driving trollies’s fans and their bullshit.
I encountered Ms. Dursley’s works in what I imagine is the ideal way to encounter them. My big brother had a child who was sick and needed someone to go to hospital with him and it had to be me (long story not worth it) so I stayed overnight while he was nil by mouth before an operation. I brought along her first, thankfully slim, volume. It was already something of a phenomenon though even the second wasn’t out yet, let alone the film (I think). I offered to read it to them, I’m good at reading books out loud, always have been. Like mistake me for a pro type. Anyway so all the kids were excited in the ward and eventually they are all gathered around me in a semi-circle with their guardians. A whole room full of expectant little faces excited as they had all heard of this book. I opened it up and started reading…
… the actual shittest prose it has been my misfortune to have to read aloud. I felt like Harrison Ford talking to George Lucas “gee George you can write this shit, but you can’t say it”. Fucking awful. And on top of that it was just a retread of one of those posh English public (i.e. very private) school books from early last century with their houses and midnight feasts and all that.
What a disappointment. Hype don’t make shit shine.
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It certainly was something to see Martina Navratilova giving an interview to the Sun attacking trans kids in sports and unironically parroting talking points the Sun said specifically about her in the 80s.
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You can add, “Why is Rita Skeeter, one of the most prominent female antagonists, repeatedly described as having masculine features? Is there anything about JK Rowling that we can use to answer that question?”
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And it’s not just that it reverts to the status quo. That could be done in a way to set up our protagonists to keep fighting for a more equitable society now that Wizard Hitler is dead for real.
Instead, our focal character becomes a cop.
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It’s always surprising when any woman is bigoted about anyone because you’d think, being one of the most oppressed groups in all of human history, all women would understand.
Sadly, oppressed groups are people too with our own blindness and bigotry. This goes all the way down. Historically, for example, gay men and lesbians have not actually gotten along all that well outside Pride parades because the boys don’t tend to understand how much easier they have it just for being men. It’s much less of a rift now, but when I was active in the community in the 1990s, they didn’t even like us being in their bars (even though we had nowhere else to go). And of course lesbians have a long history of treating trans women very poorly (which I experienced first hand quite a lot in those days also).
Politically conservative women are always a mystery to me too. Particularly in the US where the platform is explicitly Gilead. Why any woman wants to vote for that is baffling to me. But, people are people and people are messy.
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Parents, do your kids and the world and our shared future a favor: get your kids the Earthsea books instead.
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Ursula, FTW.
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Derek Landy’s Skulduggery Pleasant series too.
Magic and weirdness that’s tightly plotted, fun and funny and features queer characters of all kinds throughout. I’ve read all 15 this year and loved them.
No derogatory terms, no hate, no transphobia, no veiled antisemitism… awesome!!
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It would be the latter, as always. Free speech for the privileged only. Peons need not apply.
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I would recommend getting kids into reading Terry Pratchett instead, his last novel in the Discworld series was rushed, as he was dying of Alzheimer’s at the time, but one of the characters he introduced was a boy who wanted to become a witch. Many of his novels in the series deal with people not fitting into the role gender wants to force them into.
The man wrote with compassion, and I miss him so.
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When Renee Richards was her tennis coach.
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The fifth book in Discworld was about a girl who is (not “wants to be”, but “is”) a wizard.
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Also see Monstrous Regiment…
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