"Dumbledore is Gay" sez Rowling

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.

re: that arthur chu thread, it's kind of astonishing how lazy and poorly thought out jk rowling's universe is, considering how big a deal it became

Harry Potter is not the millennial LOTR, it's the millennial Battlefield Earth.

People love CS Lewis and his worldbuilding is balls too, as Tolkien pointed out.

I do enjoy how the Wizards all make fun of "muggles" for trying to approximate magic, all while waiting months for owls with letters to arrive while the muggles get emails, texts, or snail mail in mere days.

A superior list.

More than 200 writers and publishers sign letter in support of trans and non-binary people https://t.co/bXG7z9bU0z

— Guardian Books (@GuardianBooks) September 30, 2020

I do enjoy how the Wizards all make fun of "muggles" for trying to approximate magic, all while waiting months for owls with letters to arrive while the muggles get emails, texts, or snail mail in mere days.

tbf I think it's made clear that Weasley dad's stance that muggle tech is actually very impressive and wizards should respect it more, while idiosyncratic in their world, is to be seen as correct.

Yeah but he’s seen as a weird fetishist, like a western hentai collector or something.

Funny you mention that, Rowling actually revealed in 2009 that Ron's dad loves hentai

xp right but I think narrative voice has it that it's an example of wizarding world's shortsightedness that he's seen as a weird fetishist, resonating with the general wizard bloodline obsession!

https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/2017-01/25/15/asset/buzzfeed-prod-fastlane-01/sub-buzz-28441-1485375523-1.jpg?downsize=600:*&output-format=auto&output-quality=auto

like I like that these wizards had strong olfactory coping mechanisms cos even if I knew the poo and pee would flee after a flick of the wand, dear god, the sensation of wading in it and smelling it for those 3 seconds would make me hurl

This is the YA fantasy version of Badger's Star Trek: TOS treatment.

re: that arthur chu thread, it's kind of astonishing how lazy and poorly thought out jk rowling's universe is, considering how big a deal it became

The vagueness made the Potterverse a great sandbox in which the fandom could play. Rowling has said many disturbing and distressing things, but you should have seen the butthurt entitlement when JKR started saying things that contradicted fans' cherished fanon.

You don’t even have to read that Arthur Chu thread to get that, is the thing, you just have to look at that map of wizard schools or read that tweet about wizards shitting themselves where they stood (!)

I'm with M John Harrison, world-building is for rpgs tbh