this has caught the attention of the critics
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Thanks for the warning, I guess.
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This is not the first book she’s painted a transphobic view of transgender women. The Silkworm was a previous published book of hers that depicts a transgender woman as nuts, and focuses on her genitals and practically chortles at the idea of her getting raped in prison “pre-op”. I’m not sure what the hell, but this is not the first time she’s decided to stick transphobic views on transgender folks in her books, this is just an even bigger fuck you to her critics.
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Can’t think of anyone in recent memory who has had burned so much good will.
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I noticed that transphobes frequently are frequently obsessed with trans people’s genitals. At my previous job there was a transphobic guy. When he started spewing his usual transphobic shit, he did so with really creepy mixture of hate and passion. My former cousin who is rabidly homophobic also talked with similar kind of hate/fascination.
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Graham Linehan (Father Ted, Black Books, The IT Crowd) might be comparable. Several other British comedians have cut off contact with him because of his transphobia.
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Well, a big part of the books is that the society of the Wizarding Britain is messed up. Stuff like the Malfoys enjoying a high social position despite their despicable beliefs and behavior, the treatment of nonhumans like goblins and house-elves, and part-humans like half-giants, and werewolves like Remus Lupin, or the frantic ostrich emulation of the Ministry of Magic when it becomes more and more obvious that Voldemort is coming back, despite them wishing it not to be so, is all meant to be bad, and something for the reader to discover and realize as the books go on and they mature, alongside with Harry and his friends.
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That’s a cliché you can find in any number of books and movies. For example, Robin Hobb managed to have two characters eaten in the same book in the Rain Wilds Chronicles, and we’re apparently supposed to think it’s OK because they weren’t very nice.
Might be worth reading Guardian’s opinion on Rowling’s book too:
That reinforces my opinion. She knows exactly what she’s doing with this character. To say that the character isn’t trans when it represents her view of what trans people are and is criminal in the way she foists on trans people to say rights legislation shouldn’t exist is disingenuous.
It’s perhaps also might be instructive to look at the history of the Guardian on trans people and issues when it disses a publication for an opinion of this book and brings up their history on said issues.
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Looking back at the series myself what I see is Barty Crouch jr taking the polyjuice potion to pretend to be mad eye in order to sneak into the safe space that is hogwarts in order to try and hurt Harry in his safe space as a pretty good allegory for the kind of transphobia she holds and what she is afraid trans people are secretly trying to do. That may not have been her intention when she wrote it for it to be transphobic but now that her horrible views have come out those are the parallels I see.
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I wonder what her deal is. Kind of a weird thing to get hung up on. Former lover turned trans perhaps?
Anyway… Bish, chill.
Change that to “came out as” and you won’t sound like an asshole.
Just a heads-up, not actually calling you an asshole. Word choice matters to trans folk like me.
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Not as far as I know.
You also can’t turn trans, trans people can only deny being trans until they break from the pressure of lying about themselves. I broke early in my life but was forced to carry on a false cis life until early adulthood which led to further breaks. TERs have a real problem understanding the difference between cause and effect though, and fail to realise they are the cause of mental health problems.
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WTF? Way to dismiss real concerns about a person with power in our culture maligning a whole group of already marginalized people. This shit has real world consequences for real human beings.
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I find that weird creepy mix of hate and passion more than I feel for being transgender. I have never understood the obsession with my genitals.
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As has been mentioned in this thread:
The goblins were a pretty anti-semitic trope unto themselves.
She self admits that the werewolves were a parallel for HIV/AIDs, and being gay. Which having them then hunt for children is a pretty old time homophobic trope about gay men.
At this point, having read her other works, I think we can thank her copy/development editors at her publisher for getting a good coherent work out of her that tied together. Sure the books were fun, and had some good themes, but at this point I think it was accidental. I’ve read her other works, and they are a mean spirited mess.
I think we, humans, are really good at creating meaning and patterns in all sorts of things. If you go back with a critical adult eye, there are glaring issues in the HP series. Which in and of itself is not even a problem. I loved them anyways. But when you look at JKR herself, her views, and then look at her works? You start to see that it was always there, hidden under fantasy.
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I don’t get the past admiration for JK Rowling and I don’t get much of the recent condemnation
She is just a mediocre writer at best but with a keen eye for business, mostly occupied in flogging her IPs to any business venture offering enough cash while using her Twitter account to offer her world views, which are as important as we make them to be.
The Harry Potter books are (in my opinion) awful, specially the first one. You can see the class envy, the desire to belong to the higher class, the ones within the power elite that go to british private schools. You can see the latent casual racism and ignorance and the conflicting theme of blood purity.
Harry Potter is a mary sue type character that after a brief episode of neglect and abuse is told not only that he is a wizard but THE wizard, the chosen one, the best at almost everything, a billionaire, descendant of the most esteemed wizards, liked by everybody except for the comically inept “enemies”, he excels at everything he attempts and when he fails, the rules are bent to make him victorious.
I specially despise the dog latin spells and how she unceremoniously copies any fantasy theme and character she can get her hands on.
But hey! she sold quite a few books that made her a few bucks so that means she is better than us and her opinions more relevant somehow?
Sure, it’s just an incredibly popular writer spreading misinformation about vulnerable and marginalized people… NBD! /s
That’s the problem. She has a lot of fans and plenty of people listen to what she has to say and trust her. They believe her when she says that transwomen aren’t women and as a result, they might act in ways in the REAL WORLD that cause damage to ACTUAL HUMAN BEINGS. We SHOULD care about people who are already marginalized being further attacked and pushed back into the closet as a result of her actions.
The point isn’t that YOU think she is a good writer or like or respect her. It’s that lots of other people you apparently look down your nose at like her work and found solace in it, and are now being fed lies about other people that might cause them to act against them in some way.
You’re missing the point.
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So here’s the thing: those things are never once presented as bad in the entire run of the books. The Malfoys hold high esteem until Lucius is arrested (and the Malfoys are redeemed without ever changing their wizard-Nazi ways), non-human rights is dropped entirely from the plot and literally only Hermione cares (including giant racism and werewolf racism where Lupin becomes a token good werewolf), and the Ministry of Magic being bad just leads to talking about how brilliant an individual that frees himself from the chains of the government can create a utopian meritocracy. Literally all the issues in Harry Potter I sort of buttoned up myself in my head are in fact left entirely as is in a fantastical world being sold as better than the real one - probably why the real world needed the Dursleys to compare to for 7 books.
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She’s promoting conspiracy theories about maginalised people to millions of people. I think that’s worthy of condemnation.
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