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Sep 2020

you really did research it! I like you!!
people like you make my day!
but yeah I agree with what you said... the initial statement defo isn't something that can just be summed up in a tweet...
and she kinda dug her own grave ... she had a valid point but ... wtf why would you explain it that way.
she did kinda make cooked herself up as the perfect prey for cancel culture
but from these I still can't see her being homophobic or against LGBTQ+
idk I never liked cancel culture and I'm not gonna like it now it attempts to just cancel Harry Potter for some tweets

I appreciate that you're going into detail on this, and explaining exactly which parts of cancel culture you think are ridiculous. Yes, I don't agree with bullying either, and especially not bullying casual fans or people who just want to keep having fond memories of the franchise.

But I must respectfully disagree when you say you're not part of the culture war. We're all part of this culture, which means we're all in the struggle whether we like it or not. There's been too much social engineering this last century, and very little of it has been in the public's interest.

@DiegoPalacios I also appreciate that you're moving away from having a twenty-word opinion. May I ask where you think Rowling stands at present?

Giving a ear to a known prejudiced someone "just asking questions" is exactly how we got vulnerable people buying conspiracy theories and some facist lines of thought(Folding Ideas' recent video on this is a good watch if you have the hour and feelings to spare). There's a limit where you just gotta say "regardless of your points being valid, you just want an opening to say bad things about trans people, so how about no", and JK has long since passed it considering the content of her newer books.

huh fair enough, good thing you don't agree with bullying !!
attempting to rip appart someones carrier because of a set of tweets would be awfully similar to that !! I'm glad we see eye to eye!
also I'm still not part of a war! I'm part of a friendly debate, which doesn't have any real impact on society at all!
tbh these things happen a lot people go ballistic about what some celebrity said... personally I don't really follow celebrities or hang onto their each and every word...
from what I see Rowling started with a valid argument that simply could not be summed up in a tweet... and she dug herself a grave attempting to explain it through tweets... I'm sure someone you have done the same when you were driven into a corner while trying to explain something.
this debate has been fun though but it looks like I'm finishing with the same opinion I started with :confused:

Some people dont`t realize that snarky comments often fail to make the person willing to listen. Also, they may fall into strawman fallacy sometimes.

It was the most recent article at the moment and easiest to link. I'm not much of fan of Fox, but it was easier than reading through a bunch of other articles to find just the perfect one. I think folks get the point of the situation. :slight_smile:

yeah I had only read the first tweet and the menstrual one ... the rest isn't as bad as the menstrual one but its still pretty bad..
aha and strawman fallacy what a useful term I didn't know existed this makes my life so much easier!
I feel like the more I hear about cancel culture the more I hate it... it feel like a bunch of wild dogs attached to chains that will bite at the heals of anyone who get close... if you slip up for even a second you don't know when they'll strike even if its not actually racist or homophobic you don't know how they'll interpret it ...
of course, that's Rowling's fault for not taking it into account its sad but she shouldn't have said what she did through a tweet ...
thanks again Diego! I've learned so good things!

haha fair enough!
well I hope that reading our debates allowed you to see a good perspective from both sides, so you can form your own opinion.
Have a good day!

This is Rowling we're talking about though. A multimillionaire owner of a billion-dollar franchise. We're very much punching up toward the moon.

Society is everywhere, even in this forum. Every little bit of productive discourse counts towards progress. You say that your opinion hasn't changed (and that's totally valid) but you had fun, you refined your arguments, and you defended them with greater rigor. Those are good outcomes too.

This whole conversation has been very enlightening. I haven't interjected much since I really just wanted to learn how people feel about it. I'm also pleasantly surprised how civil it has stayed for the most part.

you have a good point!
I guess the fastest way to grow and improve your way of thinking is through sharing opinions and debating ...
it has been fun indeed!
This is kinda wholesome, but, thanks a lot for your time!
have a good weekend!

The newest thing that sparked this thread is that her upcoming(or maybe it's already out?) book is a serial killer that dresses as a woman to kill his victims(and is sexually fascinated with women's clothes in general). It's EXACTLY a fictional justification that transwomen are just faking it and harming the feminist movement from the inside, just like the other dangerous stereotype with the t-word. Apparently this also came up a bit on the Robert Galbraith books but I only saw small snippets on twitter.

It's in the air exactly how much of Harry Potter's problems came from ignorance or deliberate attempts at bad stereotypes, but there's no hiding anymore with this new work of hers, since she was so kind as to leave it all over twitter and her blog.

Does Rowling do any significant work with or donates to charities or organizations that help cis women to escape domestic abuse or similar? Or is her entire weight is thrown behind going down on trans community?

Reading that string of tweets, it doesn't seem like the writings of an outright transphobe as much as the writings of someone who doesn't have a way with words. Which is odd, for a writer, but considering the subject matter more than understandable. Half of the words she used have been ascribed multiple meanings by now, and it's easy to get tangled up in your own web of arguments.

As for the new book, I haven't read it, but it sounds more like an attack on transvestites than trans people. It's not like evil cross dressers don't exist, but a story like that usually benefits from showing another cross dresser that isn't evil just to reassure the audience that crossdressing=evil is not the message they should take away from it.

I'm guessing that's just a big fail on her part, rather than malicious intent.

As for her other posts on twitter, most of what I'm seeing is poor word choice, genuine confusion and genuine concern. Is it misguided? Perhaps, i won't be the judge of that. But she's no villain for questioning these things. If it weren't for questioning things, the lgbt community wouldn't be as prosperous as it is today. Adverse arguments provide opportunity for refinement.

It's literally just come out within the past week or so I believe. And given her rants in her "essay" about how men will dress up as women using the "excuse" of being trans to attack women... yeah. Not good optics to put it mildly.

She did openly claim to be helping migrants and would let them stay in her house and everyone else should do the same or you're awful people she... didn't. And then sued everyone who reported it. And she does support child poverty prevention charities and is big on donating MS research (something that comes up in her essay to further prove why she's "right"). Her wiki has an entire section on her charities, but of course, giving to charity doesn't automatically make you a good person. You can't buy not being a bigot. (In many ways it makes it worse that she constantly uses her charity work and that she's been the victim of domestic abuse as a shield to prove that she can't possibly be hurting other people because she's the victim and a good person)

Okay, didn't catch that one. Yikes. it's not like nobody would ever. We should always assume people will take advantage of what they can, but it's really bad to assume it's the norm.

The frustrating thing is... yeah actually, she does. She has been extremely generous in her support of women, particularly single mothers, donating vast sums of money.
She just seems very angry and excessively concerned about a hypothetical scenario in which men pretend to be women to sneak into "women's spaces" in order to abuse them, and applies this logic as a reason to oppress trans women, who she categorises as potentially dangerous because they were "Socialised Male" (ie. she thinks cis women can never be safe around trans women because trans women were raised as boys to be violent, abusive and sexually pushy... like men.... Yeah, it's really problematic and kinda insulting towards basically everyone.) She also claims that cis lesbians like me are frequently bullied by trans women into sex etc. (I have never experienced this or heard any example of it).

If you analyse her texts, Rowling has a preoccupation with bad people pretending to be something they're not in order to get things they don't deserve or sneak into places with vulnerable people. Her new book will be about a man who dresses as women to commit murders, but even if you look at previous Galbraith books, there's a big subplot involving a group for "trans-abled" people (people who have no disabilities but who act like they do, going around in wheelchairs etc.), framing it as though it's a much bigger thing than it actually is. Or Peter Pettigrew pretending to be a rat for decades to take shelter with Ron's family is another example. It seems like Rowling imagines a world where loads of people are pretending to be harmless and disadvantaged in order to get special treatment or to trick people so they can attack.

Ok so I was hesitant to post this because I don't want to spread her stuff, but I lot of people seem to be missing bits and pieces so, much as I don't want to give her attention and much as some of you don't want to watch long videos explaining, I suggest you remember to take this all with a grain of salt (I've already spoken about about why Maya's case is BS) and please know what you're going into pre-reading, if it's going to upset you don't read it. But, for the sake of educating yourselves here is the essay.3