Guardian gunning for JKR again

I feel for all the young people caught up in this and getting the backlash. Few of them will have benefitted from the gravy train in the same way that the (mainly) middle aged born males running these groups have. This won't end well unless and until there's a massive change in attitude and respect for others at the top of these organisations.

It is not just about having a wee in women's toilets or entering other single-sex places. It is having the whole vocabulary of biological sex erased (at least for the female sex), women's sports erased, and sex-based oppression turned into something we cannot even mention let alone address.

Fundamentally, for some trans activists it is about colonising the female sex.

Helen Belcher, the chair of the education and advocacy group TransActual and a Lib Dem councillor, said: “I am furious that our equalities body is telling me that I am a second-class citizen and can only do things if everyone else is OK with it. Now every trans woman in the country is gearing up to fight to have a wee. It’s vile

I read that in the Guardian. I am afraid I thought, 'Join the club' - biological women are often treated as second class citizens. As one actively involved in the early 70's wave of feminism, we fought hard for our rights, so join us in the battle that the rest of us have to face.

As an aside, I'd love to see statistics on the mental health crises of all the groups which have been affected by various recent events, not just by this particular issue (the war in Ukraine, Covid-caused isolation, women losing their jobs in higher numbers, the economy).

But on this issue it is particularly important to extend empathy in both directions. The Guardian's compassion goes in only one direction, and the possible solutions it proposes are also of only one type.

Was dead spiteful piece

I heard that 5 live as well.

Do film critics ever do spiteful pieces because of the person who write the script ?

Or perhaps

“Extrapolating a threadbare story from what was originally a slim encyclopaedia of outlandish creatures had resulted in something very close to a two-hour game of Pokémon Go.”

Oh the slander…. I’ve caught the first 151 Pokémon and almost reached level 40!

This is a very valid criticism of the industry-wide practice of franchises stretching material to breaking point in order to milk gullible fans for as much money as possible.

I don't know why the Guardian is peddling the line Transwomen are women - they are not. What's in it for the Guardian?

It would be amusing if JK bought the Guardian.

I don't mean like bought a copy. I mean, bought the company.

This is such a fabulous idea. Even if her people just made (quite loud) enquiries into the possibility of it, can you imagine the reaction of certain people.

At a rough guess less than one percent of JKR's fans care about this issue.

They seem to be the obsessed adults fans who spend their time playing quidditch and writing fanfic

The kids do not give a shit

I ditched my lifelong subscription to The Guardian when they ditched Lyn Gardner as theatre critic, to save money, but continued to publish vacuous 'lifestyle' rubbish.

To clarify - obviously it's the talents of a massive production team etc bringing it to life but it's really obvious whose brilliance and hard work has inspired every scene.

Oh and it's got JKR all over it. Every moment is purely her magic. She's duly credited and the losers can't separate her from her work no matter how many academic essays they spawn to attempt to justify the cognitive dissonance they feel!

DameHelena, I don't think we disagree. In general I would want the debate to be both deeper and more open while staying courteous. The current situation is untenable.

Right. I just watched it.
It's brilliant.

This is pure jealousy and spite. That's all. The writer of this article cannot contain his envy.

What a nasty little hack.

nepeta, Ada's 'original views are her saying 'I don’t believe in the trope that people are going to self-identify…My beef is with sports' etc, are they not?
You are right, I think, that the trans woman, Rebecca, is informed by her own experience while Ada didn't know much about the topic – she says so, when she talks about why she wanted to meet Rebecca.
This is a short feature and there's no background given; what you see is what you get. It's literally an account of a lunch meeting between two people and their conversation. It's a somewhat flawed format, for sure, in that sometimes you hear something one person said only from the POV of the other person reporting it, so you can't be sure exactly what was said.

I'm not sure if you and I are talking at cross-purposes. I don't think we're disagreeing as such. I hope not anyway, and I hope I'm not misunderstanding you.

There’s an article about this in the Spectator which says ‘Rowling's views on same-sex spaces are somehow more controversial than domestic abuse. Grim’

‘For Gilbey and the Guardian though, alleged wife-beating and choking women in public were 'small beer' compared to Rowling writing about own personal experiences and views on the transgender debate’.

Other stories may clarify this issue. I have not read them, so my apologies if I misinterpreted the context.

nepeta, I'm not sure what you mean, sorry.
Isn't the premise of this feature simply that two people with different views get together?
How informed or otherwise each party is varies from week to week, as far as I recall from the ones I've read.

May I suggest that people posting links to Guardian articles also/instead post an image of the article (if this is allowed)?

The way to do this is to archive the Guardian article to an archiving site and then to link to the archived webpage. Unfortunately when we do this MNHQ deletes the posts. I think there would be a similar response by MNHQ to an image of a Guardian article.

They can keep trying to pull her down, but it won't work. I was at the studio tour last weekend, and it was rammed. The gift shops queue was out the shop.

I've just finished reading the Ickabog to my daughter, after having read her the Christmas Pig. They were both such lovely, heartbreaking and clever books. She's got the new Strike book coming out later in the year... I'm sorry, Guardian, but she is just as popular as she ever was -- if not more so!

Harry Potter belongs to her. We are just lucky she has shared it with us all.