That Transphobe that wrote a few books a while ago.
I am a bit of a compulsive reader. I will read the shampoo bottle if I am in the bathroom without a book. However, there were a few book series that just never sucked me in. The twilight series, that thing EL James had going on and of course Harry Potter.
I have never had much of a patience for cutesy magic or the “british aesthetic”, so it’s no great surprise that I was kinda “meh” in regards to Harry Potter. That said, JK Rowling did earn a spoon of my respect as an author. She inspired many people to read, something I regard as extremely valuable. Her stories had some original ideas and were accessible. How many people started reading and developed a love of it as a result of a Harry Potter novel? How many people went on to read the works of Tolkien and others based on that very accessible delving into the magical world of Potter? I am betting more than a few. In a time of blockbuster movies she took her handful of novels and created a literary phenomenon that drove an on screen success as well. I don’t like JK Rowling’s writing and apart from Harry Potter, I don’t think she has done anything worth reading. That “one hit” of hers, was a pretty damn good hit though. So whether you write that up to style or story or era, you have to respect her literary contribution.
Post late nineties/early aughts you can get quite analytical of the HP Books and pick out a few less than great details. The Dobby slavery thing and the banker goblin things are a bit off. That said, was JK Rowling writing anti Semitic tropes and “racism” into her novels? I don’t think so. I think she wrote stories and didn’t consider much beyond the aesthetic of the imagery and story. I don’t believe for a second JK Rowling premeditated anything “problematic” in the HP novels. In fact, in her Cormoran Strike novel with the trans woman, I think she just grabbed the latest buzz word, “transgender” and used it. I don’t see an ounce of conscious malice in her books. I don’t even buy the story that she picked Robert Galbraith deliberately.
It is a commentary on her character that she sees anti Semitic tropes, racism, slavery and prison sex threats as aesthetically pleasing though. But it doesn’t mean she is conscious of her own nature. I think JK Rowling lacks the self awareness to understand that she is a hateful person. I think she is a shitty person, but I don’t think she is aware she is a shitty person. We are not dealing with a genius or an empath here.
In my view JK Rowling and Graham Linehan are cut from the same cloth. Glinner wrote some comedy, not great comedy but not trash either, It was entertaining. He wrote one shitty episode of the “IT crowd”, got some push back and turned into a prick. That “Iran/I used to be a man” joke and the portrayal of the trans person was kinda crap. That said, if they had an actual trans woman play the role, like a famous trans woman from Iran and skipped the fight at the end, maybe I would have found that funny. The joke presented an opportunity that Glinner wasted. He took what could have been a good natured laugh at ourselves with our allies and made it a “trans women are men” joke when they fought.
(assholes laugh at, respectful people laugh with. Something Chapelle, Glinner and Gervais need to learn)
JK Rowling liked a few tweets that sucked. She became a fan of Magdalen Berns.
Look, there is no defending Magdalen Berns, she was a nasty piece of work who had nothing positive to offer society. She is also dead, from a massive brain tumor that possibly drove her bigotry. I mean, Magdalen Berns was on par with Ms Cade and there is something wrong there. I am not absolving Berns from her hate, hate is hate and Cade is a very sick person. However, Berns did have a massive personality altering brain tumor. I don’t know what Lily Cade’s problem is and I hope she gets the help she needs before she harms someone.
But when called out about these faux pas’ Rowling and Linehan just dug in deeper. Both of them retracted into a defensive position and pretended the Transgenders® had laid siege to them. I guess you could blame trans people for collectively deciding “F&`?kit, we’re not taking this crap anymore” and pushing back.
But I am not playing both sides or Devil’s advocate, Glinner and Rowling are at fault..
I don’t think there are two sides to this argument. In fact, I don’t think there is an argument or debate to be had. The question of what trans people are has been answered long ago. Sure there are some ideologically driven assholes in the medical field. I am looking at you Blanchard, but the consensus is that sex and gender are two extremely complex entities and the best thing to do with trans people is let them transition. There is no epidemic of trans people committing sexual assault, there is no grooming of kids. There is no conspiracy of doctors to give blockers to kids. There is no army of detransitioners either.
There are anti vax doctors and cis female rapists as well as caring trans mothers and medically astute doctors. You can’t take the actions of the individual and extrapolate the entire group. When you say “Black people are more prone to criminality, it’s in the stats”, we call you a racist because you are a racist. When you say “ban trans women from women’s spaces” we call you a transphobe because you are a transphobe. You can say “well I don’t think trans women are women ‘’ and I am gonna say that I knew a few racists skull measurers who told me black people were not the same species as white people. It’s the same shit, repackaged for 2022.
And that brings me back to JK Rowling and to an extent Graham Linehan. I posit that it was arrogance that led them to their bunkers and its arrogance that won’t let them out now. They are like white supremacist who cling to their archaic bigotry well past the rest of society having a moment of introspection and growth. Rowling didn’t like being called a transphobe, she still has an issue with it. Instead of a moment of introspection, she fought like a cornered animal, with a billion dollars. Same goes for Linehan, except I don’t think he was that rich. These two people rail against Self ID, medical transition, Lesbian erasure, crime stats, women’s sport in the same way a drowning person claws at anything that grants them hope. The problem for them is that they aren’t in the mid Atlantic, they are not even in a bathtub, they are on dry land. Listening to Linehan whine about losing his family is sad, but it’s also really pathetic. Rowling though, she is in a whole other league!
I haven’t read her new book and I won’t either. But I did go onto twitter and it’s sad watching the person who wrote the Harry Potter series slowly succumb to insanity. This is a billionaire who seems to be trawling the web for any mention of trans people with the express purpose of tweeting her anti trans opinion. A billionaire who fills her days with sniping tweets at a marginalized community is sad. A famous author whose Wikipedia entry has a whole section dedicated to her transphobia is doubly tragic.
In typical right wing reactionary fashion, she can’t even objectively understand that Mermaids giving trans teens binders is not the Mount Everest of social collapse she is selling it as. Its a Mole hill of kindness. Her raving about the “pedophile” scandal at Mermaids is another example of a lack of objectivity. The fact is pedophilia is complex and I don’t think we understand it completely. That does not mean child sexual abuse at the hands of a pedophile is complex, that’s a crime for a very good reason. A crime we, as a society, need to punish with harsh action. There is an infinite difference though between a person who realizes they have a serious sexual deviance and seeks help and a person who rapes kids. There is a big difference between a person who acknowledges their disease and seeks assistance and the person who seeks child porn. Dr Breslow and B4U-Act are attempting to help the people who recognize they have a problem, NOT endorse or excuse abuse. And they are right, its high time we understood and found treatment for pedophiles before they resort to abuse. Frankly, I would rather have a person admit they have a problem and seek help than a crime be committed and a child hurt. Proactive action always beats reactive punishment. JK Rowling presents Dr Breslow as a pedophile enabler and apologist, a danger to children. I think a better characterization of Dr Breslow is as someone who seeks to understand pedophiles to better protect kids and those who seek help. Its clear the brain rot has taken root in Rowling’s less than fertile brain.
JK Rowling is slowly morphing from a very successful author to someone known for her transphobia.
Glinner was known as a comedy writer, now he is known as an anti trans campaigner. There is a market for anti trans activists, it’s just not the mainstream market. Because no matter what some edgelord will tell you not everyone is a transphobe. General society has a way of sniffing out bigotry and isolating it, just ask the KKK or the anti integrationists in the 1960’s.
Where does this leave JK Rowling? Well it leaves people regarding her as a melodramatic bigot. Trans people are slowly clawing their way into the sunlight. I think it’s moving faster than black liberation (Which is a very sad commentary on white people to be frank, fellow white people we need to do better here guys, we have truly fucked up integration. Too many of us are racists, we need to fix this now). One day trans will be a meaningless word, just like it’s not gay marriage, it’s just marriage. We already look at the Tories and the Republicans and the evangelicals as bigots. We regard them as socially regressive and negative forces in society. They know it too, in fact they have had to relabel “consequences of assholery” as “Cancel Culture” so they can escape facing the fact that they are assholes. JK Rowling has tossed her lot in with them. She is starting to look as pathetic as “one million moms” or Ted Cruz.
It’s sad to see a mediocre comedy writer become a greasy haired middle aged cringe fest crying on the BBC because his family left him due to transphobia and not having a “oh f&£k I did this myself, I am the bad guy, I am sorry” moment. It’s heartbreaking seeing the person who inspired millions of new readers be remembered as a bigot. It’s sad looking at JK Rowling’s twitter feed and seeing transphobic sludge ooze into every corner, displacing all reference to anything else. Unfortunately I don’t see a way past her pride and self righteousness. It’s just a matter of time before we start seeing her family members distance themselves from Rowling.
JK Rowling is killing her legacy, her credibility and her image of kindly author. She is fast becoming “That transphobic idiot who wrote a few books” instead of “The person who wrote Harry Potter and who had a middle aged moment”.
Someone, please, take away JK Rowling’s twitter account before we forget Harry Potter completely and only remember this shit.
