The really weird thing is how many LGBTQ folks latched onto HP in its early releases as what was recognized to be a kind-of pro-queer YA novel.
You had a young boy who was literally in the closet, disowned and disrespected by family, who is spirited away to a magical school where his differences are valued and cultivated. He’s got a bunch of friends who could easily sub in for queer icons. There are gender-bending magical spells, the bad guys are explicitly fascist, most books end with some kind of “The power of friendship and love will triumph!” rejoinder. FFS, Dumbledore is canonically gay.
It is far more a testament to the psychologically corrosive power of plutocracy that JK Rowling went off the rails. I don’t think it’s unfair for people to like the books and hate the author. Just remember not to pay for anything and you’re fine.
Keep in mind, it’s also the series where one of the fascist teachers kills the retroactively gay character but had a good reason for doing so and is actually not a baddie at all.
It’s most probable that Rowling is actually trans, but refuses to accept it. Denying it along with degrading empathy due to her financial success just creates a void she feeds with hostility. This leads to guilt, more hostility due to “shame”, etc. Her books portray her actual feelings, but she fell off the wagon because she believes it is shameful to accept a different gender. She has even said that she wished she was a boy. Regardless, funding any kinda hate group is fucked. Believe what you want, but don’t try and stop people from having their own joy if it’s not harmful.
That story she tells about wanting to be a boy is basically tailor-made to drum up sympathy for her while shooting down a carefully-constructed strawman that doesn’t actually resemble the real experiences of body dismorphia, but superficially appears as though it could.
No she’s just trying to sell the idea that being trans is a tactical choice just like how she put JK instead of Joanne on her book cover so more boys would buy it.
Standard terf belief is that trans men just sometimes wanted to do boy stuff as a kid but didn’t because of sexism and are too cowardly and weak to stand up for themselves so they treacherously try to join the enemy. As part of trying to convince herself and other people that’s how it works she has to do her own Evangelical “I smoked crack every day before I found Jesus” thing.
While the cultures are different, I don’t get it. Women in the US basically have a “just cause I lack a penis, doesn’t mean I am not equal” mentality. And women earned rights in the UK before the US. Just seems like the misogny would be less over there. Then again, racism was on the decline here, and now it’s like everyone has a golden ticket to be bigoted assholes, so…
The really weird thing is how many LGBTQ folks latched onto HP in its early releases as what was recognized to be a kind-of pro-queer YA novel.
You had a young boy who was literally in the closet, disowned and disrespected by family, who is spirited away to a magical school where his differences are valued and cultivated. He’s got a bunch of friends who could easily sub in for queer icons. There are gender-bending magical spells, the bad guys are explicitly fascist, most books end with some kind of “The power of friendship and love will triumph!” rejoinder. FFS, Dumbledore is canonically gay.
It is far more a testament to the psychologically corrosive power of plutocracy that JK Rowling went off the rails. I don’t think it’s unfair for people to like the books and hate the author. Just remember not to pay for anything and you’re fine.
When i was in kindergarten, i made my teacher call me harry potter for like a month. I was obsessed with those books. As a 6 year old.
Anyways, im a girl now and jkr and people who support her can go die in a puddle of piss
Keep in mind, it’s also the series where one of the fascist teachers kills the retroactively gay character but had a good reason for doing so and is actually not a baddie at all.
The undercover agent kills a secretly terminally ill teacher to protect a young boy who is being jumped into a fascist gang.
It’s bad storytelling (because the stakes have been ratcheted so low) not bad politics.
It’s most probable that Rowling is actually trans, but refuses to accept it. Denying it along with degrading empathy due to her financial success just creates a void she feeds with hostility. This leads to guilt, more hostility due to “shame”, etc. Her books portray her actual feelings, but she fell off the wagon because she believes it is shameful to accept a different gender. She has even said that she wished she was a boy. Regardless, funding any kinda hate group is fucked. Believe what you want, but don’t try and stop people from having their own joy if it’s not harmful.
Nah, that seems pretty unlikely.
That story she tells about wanting to be a boy is basically tailor-made to drum up sympathy for her while shooting down a carefully-constructed strawman that doesn’t actually resemble the real experiences of body dismorphia, but superficially appears as though it could.
No she’s just trying to sell the idea that being trans is a tactical choice just like how she put JK instead of Joanne on her book cover so more boys would buy it.
Standard terf belief is that trans men just sometimes wanted to do boy stuff as a kid but didn’t because of sexism and are too cowardly and weak to stand up for themselves so they treacherously try to join the enemy. As part of trying to convince herself and other people that’s how it works she has to do her own Evangelical “I smoked crack every day before I found Jesus” thing.
I’ve heard this speculated extensively. It would certainly be ironic.
But I’m more prone to believe she’s one more British Fascist, poisoned by money and a growing circle of reactionary hysterics.
A lot of that stems from British entrenched misogyny. Wanting the privileges of masculinity, as much as the actual biology.
While the cultures are different, I don’t get it. Women in the US basically have a “just cause I lack a penis, doesn’t mean I am not equal” mentality. And women earned rights in the UK before the US. Just seems like the misogny would be less over there. Then again, racism was on the decline here, and now it’s like everyone has a golden ticket to be bigoted assholes, so…
Rights are very different than status.
That’s debatable.
I think she’s actually talked about how she’d have been trans if she had been born in a more trans-friendly age.
Like you also theorise, maybe that’s what making her so mad, other trans people getting to have lives outside the closet when she was too afraid to.
Oh wait you had that in there
My bad read it too fast