The Witch Trials of JK Rowling

Late to the party, I just started listening to this a few days ago and I'm on episode 5 already. Absolutely fascinating.

Why indeed? Someone helpfully linked to the 'it will never happen thread' a little further up if you want to discuss why you think all these things are already happening.

Back to this thread though, what were your key takeaways from the podcast

These two posts are so good. I wanted to repeat them. That self righteous anger is a drug, and its so important to check in with ourselves and reflect. I am so impressed with the thoughtfulness of this series.

Did you just assume that strawperson’s gender?

😀

Huh, looks like McSweeney has single handedly turned the thread into a exercise in strawmen arguments. Maybe I should create a bingo card.

I think we largely passed that point at least 3 years ago?

I’m firmly of the ‘no males in female spaces, ever, at all, no exceptions’ mindset now.

Happy to support a campaign for additional third spaces but I won’t accept any penis-haver, or former-penis-haver, in a female only space.

I was a lot less hardline in 2017-2018 but there have been too many women and children harmed to maintain the polite fiction.

To get into a woman’s shelter you have to be someone who’s been assaulted. That’s a great way to find vulnerable women to rape, eh? Get yourself raped in a dress then you are the fox in the hen house. I mean, just think about that for a second.

the basic question you need to ask yourself is why would a man put on a dress to rape someone when men rape women ALL THE TIME with impunity in there normal guise as men

And before you say, we aren’t getting at the middle aged trans woman trying to pee, have a conversation with one. Because she’s finding life increasingly difficult because of stuff broadcast by Rowling and her supporters.

Yeah, well we will have to agree to disagree. I think if you care about rape there are far for important things to teach your girls about than fear of assault in a toilet or changing room. And the whole idea that ‘we can challenge men now but won’t be able to after self ID’ is bollocks. Do you challenge men in a boiler suit with a bucket? I’ve seen men let into female bathrooms with a smile and a wave because the mens was locked. Because he seemed nice and apologetic. If there are women there to do the challenging there will be no assaulting happening anyway - who’d be stupid enough to assault someone with witnesses? The most dangerous man in your daughters lives is the man who appears to be nice and trustworthy but turns out to be a controlling dickhead, not the middle-aged trans woman trying to pee.

If you demonise women pointing at the erect penis in the changing rooms, and arrest them for 'discrimination' because they don't want to see penis in a female changing rooms, women are going to get fucking angry.

if you constantly say, letting trans women into female spaces lets rapists in

letting MALES into female spaces lets rapists in. In your ideological lingo that includes both cis men and trans women (all those AMAB). For the rest of us that includes all men including TW. We know that men (including TW) commit 97% of violence and sexual violence. If you want to allow a group of males access to female spaces that will inevitably cause problems for women.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/3348290-It-will-never-happen-resource-thread

Sex is real and some rapists are trans.

There is no way of knowing which males are going to rape, which is why we have separate sexed facilities in the first place.

People that pretend not to know this are either off their rockers, or willingly putting women and girls at risk so that they can virtue signal and make themselves feel better about being kind. To the rapists.

Fuck that shit.

Some rapists ARE trans.

For those saying Rowling is only arguing against rapists and not trans women: if you constantly say, letting trans women into female spaces lets rapists in, then however much you occasionally say ‘I know and love trans people’ you ARE building an association- if you then double down on that by tweeting stuff about how trans women are more likely to commit sexual assault, you are literally making the association, if you retweet and like tweets from people like KJK, who associate with the far right and have said men with guns are welcome in womens bathrooms to keep the trans women out (ffs!), people who constantly misgender trans women (and people on this thread who refer to Natalie Wynne consistently as ‘they’, I am referring to you though it’s better than he, I guess, which is the usual default) then you cannot also take the moral high ground and say in wounded tones ‘but I only said sex is real’ 🤷🏼‍♀️

Yeah, I suspect Contraptions (😆) IS probably the most reasonable voice they hear, but only because the other voices are so bonkers.

Plus, CP has been on the end of a few furious attempts at cancelling from CP own side (there was a particular tweet that made the Nonbinary People very angry indeed, whereas any normie person could see it was an attempt at self deprecating joke that landed badly).

I like the typo too 😊

I think your analysis is correct - Contrapoints’ YouTube output is considered rational, by people who want to be kind, especially in comparison to what’s happening in places like Tumblr and Reddit (even Twitter).

Perhaps Contraband appeared reasonably compared to the alternatives? (I noticed the mistyped name but decided to leave it as it's funny.)

Thanks Shire, I sent that preview link and suggested it might be something to listen to - we’ll see what happens 🤷‍♀️

I’m listening to the Harris preview myself and enjoying the frank discussion but I take issue with him describing Contrapoints as reasonable on the issue of JKR (and women’s rights in general). How Contrapoints (and the use of an OTT dressing up box) came to be seen as reasonable and measured on this issue I’ll never understand 😵

There may well be news stories about the Sam Harris podcast episode tomorrow that you could send.

In other news, Megan PR says there is a revisit episode to come and that they are thinking about releasing some of the unused interview audio of both JK and others (iirc MPR says they have 9 hours of JK audio recorded over 2, 2 day visits.

Do you think they’d be willing to give the Sam Harris podcast a go? The free bit is on YouTube:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5Z6rTJS3uDU

Sam Harris has good lefty credentials to the point he’s been mocked for having ‘Trump Derangement Syndrome’ (when people hate Trump so much they make tits of themselves).

I was a bit cross with SH earlier, annoyed as to why it’s taken him so long (his good friend Maajid Nawaz was talking about the topic circa 2017/2018 and I kept hoping Harris would too but I eventually gave up on waiting for him and stopped listening to his stuff) but I relistened to a bit of the podcast and he a) does admit he’s been avoiding the topic to avoid the mob (and goes as far as to say he believes activists have disproportionate mental illness incidence) and b) mentions a teenager who was bored during episode 2 (the religious right in the 90s) but who (paraphrase) ‘really needed to hear the whole series’.

So I now suspect that SH has been avoiding talking about this publicly due to a younger relative, who either identifies as trans or is one of the trans supportive teens who bursts into tears at the smallest challenge.

I recommended the Witch Trials podcast to someone today and they said they’d been thinking about listening but then got put off by negative reviews in the press. I read some of the reviews that were mentioned to me and they were dreadful - unhelpfully negative about everything from Phelps-Roper’s christian upbringing to Bari Weiss founding her own media company.

I found the Irish Times review that equated JKR expressing her opinions with Enoch Burke (ongoing freedom of belief case involving a teacher in ROI) particularly disingenuous in its analysis of the podcast series - it basically came down to 'Rowling deserves anything bad that happens to her'.

None of the reviewers seemed to believe that it was legitimate journalism to investigate this area of social change and to discuss differences in opinion on the issue.

Has anyone called him a Nazi yet?

You beat me to it ShireWife. Sam unequivocally plants his flag in that episode. He does feel the need for a preamble where he firmly states why he’s not transphobic, but there’s no “most vulnerable” both-sidesing. It’s a good listen.