JK Rowling - Thread 2

Michelle yes it is true but very rare. A chimera can occur if a foetus absorbs its twin, and could therefore have some cells with different DNA from others. Still only 2 gametes though.

I think the difference with historical efforts to get working class, female and black voices represented in literature (all still under-represented, btw, which is one of the reasons I am so ??? at the willingness to ditch these efforts for something more fashionable) is that the writers from these groups were largely non-authoritarian.

There's a very clear difference between asserting your own literary voice, experience and text, even if that means taking space from others, and not only asserting your own voice and taking space, but also demanding that others who are not you conform to your vision of the text.

As always, women writers, working class writers, writers of color and LBG writers will cop the inevitable backlash that's coming from the literary establishment.

I should add for clarity - some 'queer' poets are decent poets. I tend not to like their work, because it is often dense and self-referential in a way I don't respond to stylistically, but IDing as 'queer' or 'trans' or 'NB' does not mean being talentless. There are likely a few 'queer' poets whose work will last.

If they are female, I wouldn’t get their hopes up. Male, absolutely. Done deal.

The future is already here in poetry, not sure about literary fiction. 'Queer' voices are dominant, and the 'white c*s heteronormative canon' is to be set on fire, apparently.

Our local uni has a creative writing prof that walked into a tenured position without a PhD on the back of a recent transition

That's shocking. Someone I know with three publications (novels, mainstream publishing), a 20 year history of teaching creative writing in private and tertiary settings AND a PhD is struggling to get anything more in a university setting than casual, sessional work. And they are of colour. I should tell them to ID as non-binary.

There are intersex individuals who can produce both gametes

I want information on this, because I'm fairly certain this is plain not true. Can anyone brilliant confirm?

And again (and again and again and again) people born with DSDs do NOT prove perfectly typical biologically male people turn into females at will. Any more than people born with no legs prove that I can shed limbs at will.

I work in literary arts programming and 2020 offerings include a rash of gender queer offerings. If you aren’t trans or allied, you aren’t welcome. There has already been a twitter based shitstorm over an alleged misgendering (which was actually deadnaming, which actually wasn’t, because the person concerned had actually registered using their ‘dead name’. Questions of identity and colonialism abound.
I’m looking forward to 2020, when I’ll probably get sacked for not having pronouns in my signature block.
I don’t share the optimism of lamahaha. Our local uni has a creative writing prof that walked into a tenured position without a PhD on the back of a recent transition. No single white female need apply for an academic position in a creative department. (I use white to denote the particular horror reserved for white feminism.)
The majority of my time is spent trying to guess people’s pronouns by stalking social media, lest I bring down the sky.

Yes, there is already some trans literature in the genre LGBT, but it really is a niche genre. Also, I'm sure the erotica genre will have a new examples, though I'd guess mostly by indies , ie self-published. LGB erotica is already relatively big. The T is no doubt waiting in the wings, again piggybacking on the gay movement. But it will never be commercial enough.

And you are right about more writers being in demand. I "know" some of these writers.

Eugene Gu is still opining because another medic had the gumption to disagree with his response to JRK (respectfully):

Sweidan:
Dr. Gu - respectfully you are physiologically/biologically incorrect. Sex is defined by gametes. I support transgender rights. However, sex is a biological definition. Gender is fluid. Ms. Rowling is correct. To argue against her is to argue against science
twitter.com/ajsweidan/status/1208463702552264704

Gu:
Attending physicians from #MedTwitter come on social media to spout transphobic ideas and pass it off as medicine. There are intersex individuals who can produce both gametes and classifying sex as non-binary rather than bimodal is medical malpractice for your intersex patients. [Thread, of course.]

twitter.com/eugenegu/status/1209169793514762246?s=20

As ever, the lack of actual understanding of DSDs is disappointing.

I usually avoid the smugfest on Radio 4 that is The Museum of Curiosity but tonight's show has JK Rowling on so I'm giving it a listen.

As a bonus Bridget Christie is a current presenter of the programme.

To put it bluntly, it’s happened before for women, people of colour and currently working-class voices.

Well, in some of those groups it was necessary

Of course, I didn’t think that needed to be spelt out.

I wasn’t talking about books or works of art/productions/scripts necessarily being about trans experiences, I meant works by trans authors & creators. I wouldn’t be surprised if Lily Madigan wrote an autobiography or even branched into YA. That’s the fictional genre where imo there definitely is a market and it already exists. Leading YA writer and Stonewall ambassador Juno Dawson Is trans. Although her books (which are excellent I believe) don’t tend to have trans main characters, although do feature some. I think the YA trans romance story may happen though. Many teenagers call themselves pan and/or are staunch trans allies - I’m not the only mother & teen daughter combo I know of whose don’t agree on self-ID...

I hereby predict Pips Bunce or Munroe Bergdorf or that Juno whatnot winning the Women’s Prize for Fiction. And a few people fawning. Meanwhile women’s stories remain untold.

....and they'd win the big prize not because the book is really good, but because it is "daring" and stunning" and crosses boundaries*. A bit like that woman who won the Turner for an unmade bed.

The indies will publish bunches of trans narratives, and they’ll win all kinds of awards, like the recent Governor General’s award in poetry in Canada — but they won’t sell many copies outside of the literati.

Precisely. Indies aren't eligible for the really big prizes, like the Booker, but a small publisher might take the risk, win a big prize, and sell 67 copies.

Agents were definitely looking for trans stories for YA a few years ago.
If anything they are probably steering clear now after they saw what happened to John Boyne.

It’ll be interesting, though, when the first detrans story breaks through.

The indies will publish bunches of trans narratives, and they’ll win all kinds of awards, like the recent Governor General’s award in poetry in Canada — but they won’t sell many copies outside of the literati.

I predict a big deliberate shout-out for trans voices all across the arts in the next year or so.

Perhaps in the visual and performing arts, but I don't see this happening in literature or movies, in spite of what I wrote earlier.

To put it bluntly, it’s happened before for women, people of colour and currently working-class voices.

Well, in some of those groups it was necessary. I grew up as a "person of colour" (I hate that term!) never once reading a book with black or brown characters. The first book I read about a black person was The Autobiography of Malcolm X, and I was 16. Think about that in reverse: white kids only ever reading books where ALL the characters are black -- wouldn't it be weird?. It had to change, and it has changed somewhat and I'm glad. Racial diversity in books is a good thing, as long as it's not token blacks shoehorned in so as to be diverse. (I've contributed a bit to this market, hehehe! ).

Books by and for woman? It's a HUGE market, especially in fiction, because many women are voracious readers and like to read female-based novels.

I simply don't think there is a huge market for trans in fiction. As we know, most of the population isn't on board with the the ideology and I can't really visualise the scenario I mentioned above -- love stories, for instance, where the woman MIGHT have a penis and it's normal, or men have periods and give birth. It's all about what readers want, and readers are in the end pretty conservative. Same with movies. To this day traditional boy-meets-girl stories are what make the most money. And it's all about the money.

They are going to destroy all creativity and ability to write, with their two contradictory twin mantras of 'include all marginalised people and give them prominence in your story ' and 'don't write about experiences and cultures other than your own - that's appropriation.'

Yes - this contradiction has amused me for a long time. Except it's not really amusing any more, because some authors have had contracts cancelled for daring to write outside their own experience. And as you say, if they only write very narrowly about their own experience, they are criticised for not including minority characters from outside their experience. The whole thing is beyond nuts. These people don't possess even the minimum mental faculties required to develop a consistent logical position.

Lots of posts on twitter saying that people knew all along that JKL was a wrong un because of no gay characters in HP. I wonder if these young wokies actually understand how old these books are now, and how recent the relative mainstreaming of gay representation in the media is, let alone trans. They have little concept of historical perspective. Should writers have been woke in retrospect.

I am an older mum, and have watched a lot of TV, read books etc.. With my son (now 12). It is unrecognisable to how it was in the 90's/2000's. The 80's and before is like a Pathe newsreel. Mostly this is great. We talk a lot about this, and it is really interesting how he just understands and accepts things that not many years ago would have been controversial or simply out of the question.

I have asked him a little about transgender and gender. He seems readily accepting, but at a push will say that it's not really real.

I wonder if for young people who live in a virtual world with technology, whether it becomes harder to separate real and virtual. People now can genuinely live a fake virtual life. I would consider it fake, they wouldn't, or would not think the distinction matters. Of course it does, and the implications are scary.
Hopefully my son wont go too far that rabbit hole as he matures. I keep correcting him when he mentions the word gender instead of sex.

There's a "new chapter" of Harry Potter that was written by AI /
predictive text a couple of years back. Maybe bots will just write everything.

botnik.org/content/harry-potter.html

I think what they are aiming for is for all writing to go through a Disney channel show style process of having a team of writers and several lawyers and people there to check each line cannot offend anyone.

What ‘they’re’ aiming for is to be the people
telling the narrative. I predict a big deliberate shout-out for trans voices all across the arts in the next year or so. To put it bluntly, it’s happened before for women, people of colour and currently working-class voices.

basically writing will be via a committee, characters owned by a company and individuals will be unable to be creative.

They are going to destroy all creativity and ability to write

I think what they are aiming for is for all writing to go through a Disney channel show style process of having a team of writers and several lawyers and people there to check each line cannot offend anyone.

#ownvoice stuff too - authors can only write characters with their own lived experience, anything else is appropriation.

And yet JKR is regularly criticised (on twitter - by Americans) because there aren't enough Jewish, black or gay characters in the book. Dumbledore isn't openly gay, Lupin married a woman when everyone was sure he was gay, Jewish representation is Anthony Goldstein - doesn't even get a line of dialogue ... etc etc etc

But JK has never been an openly gay man, or a POC, or a religious minority in a white, secular, christian leaning country - so writing about them is appropriative. But not including them is colonialist and bigoted. She can't win!
They are going to destroy all creativity and ability to write, with their two contradictory twin mantras of 'include all marginalised people and give them prominence in your story ' and 'don't write about experiences and cultures other than your own - that's appropriation.'

This is without even getting into the cultural imperialism of Americans demanding to know the Jewish population of Hogwarts (tiny percentage of Jewish people in Britain, 1 in 300 11-18 year olds is probably not far wrong) and complaining about the lack of black characters (3% of British population - I can name 4 black characters off the top of my head (not including Dean who is black in the movies) not sure I can name 100 characters) - but never once stopping to ask where all the muslims are - who are actually our next biggest religious/ ethnic group after white/Christian.

Useful in knowing a book to avoid for my dc.