"Dumbledore is Gay" sez Rowling

jk rowling is frequently posting her own words on twitter which could be discussed but so far on this thread have not been.

jk rowling has been a terf for years. she is also very friendly on twitter with "brian spanner" a unionist troll account that has tweeted at multiple female snp msps calling them cunts

― xmas respecter (jim in vancouver), Tuesday, December 24, 2019 6:40 AM (eight months ago)

don't want to link to wings over scotland but he details her literally @ing the brian spanner account 200 times.

― xmas respecter (jim in vancouver), Tuesday, December 24, 2019 6:42 AM (eight months ago)

to me it seems unlikely that an angry entitled millionaire soft Tory would be a terf

― a very powerful woman in the dog world (Noodle Vague), Tuesday, December 24, 2019 8:06 AM (eight months ago)

can’t wait for my wee girl to be old enough to want to read these and then spend years trying not to yell about how all harry does is defend his elite private school and the horrible racist status quo it supports from having to make any sort of change and then grows up to be a cop so he can do it some more

and also that rowling is a blairite terf

― hot nuts (small) (bizarro gazzara), Saturday, December 28, 2019 11:56 PM (eight months ago)

You know, I don't really think whoever wrote this bit was purposefully aiming at Rowling, but I think they hit her pretty well with it:

https://entertainment.theonion.com/frozen-2-creators-confirm-that-elsa-gay-but-also-tran-1839981134

― revenge of the jawn (rushomancy), Monday, December 30, 2019 1:19 AM (eight months ago)

I certainly agree that tokenism is mockable.

The Telegraph is trash. Pink News is trash. That's where the story came from. None of us here have read the book. I remember JKR getting burned at the stake over Scottish Independence. I remember getting burned at the stake for Brexit. What's new?

― everything, Thursday, 17 September 2020 bookmarkflaglink

What's this burned at the stake for Brexit? You a Brexiteer?

'crossdressing serial killer' is still a transphobic trope even if that character isn't really the focus of the novel

like, congrats to rowling on managing to write a book that isn't as hateful as her public comments (but still very much reflective of her worldview) or one of her previous galbraith books ('the silkworm', as mentioned earlier)

lmao @ the idea the torygraph is "trolling the left" by pointing out transphobia in the works of a writer who agrees with the torygraph on Scottish independence, Corbyn, neoliberalism....

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/sep/20/making-a-demon-of-jk-rowling-is-a-wretched-sport-born-of-misogyny-and-resentment

Observer columnist says the JKR controversy is all about misogyny against JKR. Personally I am not convinced by that.

There’s a real vein of wealthy white terfs saint any criticism of them whatsoever is misogyny, and they’re not shy about using it against other women either. They’re also not shy about calling women who disagree with them handmaids, men, or just straight up predators ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

My colleague Nick Cohen’s reading is supported by early reader reviews on Amazon

lmao oh reader reviews on amazon you say?????

Citing Nick Cohen 😬😬😬😬

I have to agree: if your two supporting sources are a dire fellow writer at the same paper and Amazon reviews -- that's as weak as it gets.

Hey Nick Cohen knows misogyny when he sees it in the first person

The worst thing is that when The Observer dies all the worst ppl will just start writing for The Spectator or cow mag (the Jenny Turner -- in her latest for the LRB -- essay is quite good at covering these fault lines)

Definitely misogyny yeah

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/how-graham-linehan-fell-foul-of-the-transgender-mob

I love that use of "fell foul", just innocently skipping along, Tweeting transphobia 24/7, and suddenly this horrible mob who are just looking for a fight set about you

GL of course no stranger to telling women who disagreed with him that they were misogynists

I love the balls on these guys. 2M followers too.

Transphobic creator J.K. Rowling 'not involved' in new Harry Potter game. https://t.co/I9FaT64vRv pic.twitter.com/JsWG3A8iHJ

— Kotaku (@Kotaku) September 17, 2020

As people used to say of Linehan 'What's the end game here?', has to be said i'm baffled. Whatever her intention is or was it's not working. Deliberate anti-marketing or something?

One comment I would hazard on that, without knowing too much about any of it, is:

JKR is used to people agreeing with her, buying her books, worshipping her and supporting everything she says and does, treating her like a cultural queen (a bit like a multi-million-selling Marina Hyde in a sense) - so she never expected many people to challenge her.

I feel like this is what happened with Linehan, what started as being mocked or corrected for ignorance rapidly hardened into outright war because he couldn't handle being owned on the Internet

Entitlement plus underlying previously unexamined bigotry

does her end game have to be any deeper than affecting public/political attitudes towards transgender people? she's already a gazillionaire, now she's found her passion

Tbh I am hesitant to point out the actual reason as both are extremely litigious

As people used to say of Linehan 'What's the end game here?',

Linehan now does a daily newsletter pointing and screeching at trans people on twitter, since his main account for abusing them directly was banned, and mocking people who turn the replies off on any given tweet. (He charges 8 quid a month for the ability to post comments on the blog version of his newsletter.)

The worst thing is that when The Observer dies all the worst ppl will just start writing for The Spectator or cow mag (the Jenny Turner -- in her latest for the LRB -- essay is quite good at covering these fault lines)

― xyzzzz__, Monday, 21 September 2020 4:13 AM (six hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

its already happening - hadley freeman, one of the guardian's many transphobe writers, wrote a piece in it the other day to complain about the oscars and then tell an anecdote where she explained to a friend how transphobic she is

I've become radicalised about gender, says Hadley Freemanhttps://t.co/09hOkimPxp

— The Spectator (@spectator) September 19, 2020

I don't think Rowling holding awful transphobic views and her receiving misogynistic abuse are in any way mutually exclusive.

it's problematic when it's used as a tool to shut down discussion that is specifically calling her out for being transphobic.

Neither justifies the other, obviously. But women in the public space with controversial views - good or bad - always get pushback that is more virulent, more personalised and more sexualised than men do. I don't know why this situation would be any different.

it's a consistent tactic of Linehanian terfs to categorise any pro-trans speech as misogynistic.

JKR receives the same kind of violent and sexualized abuse for being outspoken about Scottish independence and Brexit. Her sex is absolutely a reason for that.

I find it striking how suddenly people like Freeman appear to care deeply about edge cases in prison management and the finer points of eligibility in athletics competitions, having never evidenced any prior interest

This is entirely fine and thankfully one of the most famous and beloved authors in the world has no influence

JK Rowling platforms anti-trans shop selling ‘lesbians don’t have penises’ and ‘f**k your pronouns’ merch https://t.co/PtgoTSQEGY

— PinkNews (@PinkNews) September 23, 2020

i'm sure this has been said, but i do not understand having that level of wealth and caring about this issue in this manner

damn, is this a conservative paper psy-op too

This is a good if weird read:

I don't know what the interviewer was expecting but Butler
shutting down every poorly offered anti-trans dogwhistle here is something.https://t.co/hy9KFWqSRG

— Ian Williams (@Brock_toon) September 22, 2020

https://www.newstatesman.com/international/2020/09/judith-butler-culture-wars-jk-rowling-and-living-anti-intellectual-times

my college hero

and she's just whipping ass in this interview

"I think we are living in anti-intellectual times, and that this is evident across the political spectrum. The quickness of social media allows for forms of vitriol that do not exactly support thoughtful debate. We need to cherish the longer forms."

I tend to agree.

that was a great read, butler still as sharp as ever.

wow, she just cuts through all the bullshit in those questions so perfectly, amazing

and she's just whipping ass in this interview

― mellon collie and the infinite bradness (BradNelson), Wednesday, 23 September 2020 15:29 bookmarkflaglink

Just FYI, Judith Butler is nonbinary and uses they/them.

The footnote in the article mentions that Judith Butler goes by she or they.

TROUBLED BLOOD is as good or better than the other Cormoran Strike/Robin Ellicott novels. J. K. Rowling is a wonderful storyteller and a gifted stylist. I'm loving this one.

— Stephen King (@StephenKing) September 28, 2020

Read the room my guy.

look, the man pumps out like fifty blurbs a day. He can't be expected to vet every single one

lol it doesn’t matter, she already unfollowed him after he tweeted in support of trans women

I just feel like a guy that spends as much time on Twitter as he does would find this a pretty easy pothole to avoid stepping in.

Instances where you can't separate the art from the artist. vs. instances where you can.

https://clickhole.com/the-saga-continues-jk-rowling-has-revealed-that-ron-weasley-became-patient-zero-for-coronavirus-after-messing-up-a-spell-where-he-tried-to-turn-a-bat-into-a-larger-bat-he-could-have-sex-with/

Because I'm petty, I'm going to gather you all around and tell you about that time JK Rowling was extremely wrong about something and, by being wrong about it, poisoned Google search results for it for years afterwards and generally made the world ignorant about it

— Arthur Chu (@arthur_affect) September 29, 2020

Lol that Judith butler thing is p hilarious as there seems to be some implicit suggestion that there is some kind of intellectual equivalence here

(by here I mean in the article)

I mean King pumps out shitty books by the truckload, not astonishing he would also like to read shitty books.