JKR on more people accepting reality and rewriting history

I'm wheeling out the phenomenon known as 'premature anti-[X]'. Two of the best known instances are to have been a premature anti-fascist or a premature anti-Nazi. Maybe what JKR is describing is women being premature anti-gender ideology?

‘Premature anti-fascist’ was the name by which the Lincoln Brigade veterans of the Spanish Civil War were known by the US Army in World War Two. This service and knowledge didn't distinguish them for a leadership position, it was counted as demerit on their record.

In John Platts-Mills' autobiography (barrister and post-war Labour MP), he recalls being ‘excluded from any form of normal war service by the stupidities of Bevin’. He noted: ‘An anti-Nazi history, was of no help and to have been prematurely anti-Nazi was a positive hindrance … we were condemned throughout most of the 1930s on the grounds that only Communists were against the Nazis and this hostility carried over into the war years.’

Commenting on (British?) veterans of the Spanish Civil War, Platts-Mills wrote that ‘many lefties who had served in Spain were called up or were accepted when they volunteered. Several more got in only after a tussle with the authorities.’

Gender beliefs will remain a thing in the same way new age beliefs are for some, but most people will move on. It will remain bigger in America, in the same way other extreme beliefs tend to be.

But still massive in universities, academia in general, and in showbiz. In the UK as much as the US. That's a hell of a lot of walking back to be done.

🎯

Top work as always from JKR. Just on 'both sides-ism', I was half-watching the ITV news earlier and a guy was interviewing Daisy Cooper, Lib Dem MP, and he said, are you worried about the direction in which politics in general is going? (the election of Trump, etc). She yes, and a bit more, and then he said, what can be done to take the toxicity out of current debate? Ah, that bloody word! both sides are just so toxic, aren't they? [essays 'more in sorrow than in anger' facial expression]

Sure, it's normally used in long-running episodic storytelling such as book or television series where writers have got themselves into narrative difficulty and therefore jettison inconvenient plot or charachter points that don't fit their current story.

In this case, the it's used to describe the attempts by some to claim that they didn't say the things they said, or that they'd believed something different all along. Similar to gaslighting, without the abusive baggage.

With history, certainly facts can be grouped together, given more or less weitght, or ignored to create narrative context, but those facts still exist. What is implied by a retcon is a little more sinister.

Hooray to JKR, and hooray to @Datun, and everyone who has been here and elsewhere for fucking years, and have never given up

Amazing JKR. 👏

And as this thread shows there will be the Clingons.

Fat chance that women's rights and safety will be seen as bigoted in 10 years time.

The times are a-changing.

Yes I'm still here! And women who got banned are still fighting the fight, just not on here

Anyway...

... As I was going to say before I nearly died laughing.

Getting a piece in the New York Times is in itself telling.

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

And breathe

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

Two words: material reality.

Ahh you’re still here! Was on another thread talking about the times of datun and langcleg 🤣

Glad to see you here and thank you for all your work over the decade! Nice to see some sanity is returning.

I ❤JKR

She's spot on, as always.

That's an excellent summing up by JKR, as one would expect. Every point was clear, succinct and accurate. It surprises me that allthatfalafel seems* *to have concluded that her explaining about the vile threats and abuse, which have only ever flowed in one direction - towards women, are akin to homophobia.

It's ludicrous, anyone who's followed the subject must have seen what the trans zealots have said and indeed, done. They must have seen newspapers, with photos, news footage and online posts of the disgusting and disgraceful slogans and threats, of trans zealots ranting their demented threats.

She’s a fucking Queen.

Ahh.Ok.

Thanks for your second sentence as your first made no sense to me whatsoever ( despite three degrees and brain size of planet etc.)

I think we need to avoid dense and obscure terminology in debates like this.

I need to go back and read that article again I think.

The past is always rewritten. It is why history exists. Context is all. But context has been eroded through the availability of information ( not knowledge) through the Internet - and now AI takes it a thousand miles further.

Brava, JKR! 💜 🤍💚

I am so truly grateful for JKR for so many reasons ❤️

JKR

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/26/us/politics/transgender-activists-rights.html

unsparing criticism yeah right.....🙄

The article seems to imply GCs will be welcomed into the TRA fold when they've come round... so don't be so mean to them.

“We have to make it OK for someone to change their minds,” said Rodrigo Heng-Lehtinen, executive director of Advocates for Transgender Equality. “We cannot vilify them for not being on our side. No one wants to join that team.”

Mr. Heng-Lehtinen, 38, who grew up in a prominent Republican family in Florida and came out to them as transgender after college, said that as painful as Mr. Trump’s election may be for transgender people, their movement should see the benefit in treating skeptics less like enemies and more like future allies “No one wants to feel stupid or condescended to,” Mr. Heng-Lehtinen said..

“It is our job to break the misinformation down and to say compassionately, ‘It’s perfectly understandable that you have questions,’” Mr. Heng-Lehtinen said.

Put more directly, he added, “That’s not yelling at someone.”

Retro-active continuity is a storytelling decice where past pieces of media are no longer considered canon.

Basically it means rewriting the past, especially where it is done to suit a new agenda.

I'm glad she's done this.

She doesn't strike me as the vengeful sort, but accountability must be had

"...calling left-wing feminists who wanted all-female rape centres 'Nazis' was such a smart strategy. Maybe parents arguing that boys ought not to be robbing their daughters of sporting opportunities might, sort of, have a point? Possibly letting any man who says 'I'm a woman' into the locker room with twelve-year-old girls could have a downside, after all?"

I can't imagine what sort of world you inhabit where you think this looks anything other than horrifying, but it clearly exists. And I'm sure there are people who thoroughly enjoy their stay.

She is bloody brilliant.

What is frightening is how few people have been able to take her stance. Without someone uncancelable prepared to put everything on the line, I fear how far this would have gone.

Regardless of where you sit on this debate, from a free speech perspective this has been terrifying.