John Lithgow on JK Rowling

We typically do not welcome and applaud people who believe they can appropriate someone else's culture or identity as a costume.

A man who wears a dress because he likes dresses and thinks men should be able to wear them is cool.

A man who wears a dress because he enjoys the frisson of wearing "women's" clothes or because he believes he is a "woman" has disordered and sexist ideas about the reality of womanhood and is very much not cool.

I think it's absolutely fine to say the latter is a problematic man, being at least one if not more of a misogynist, a bigot, a sexist and a fetishist.

Would you like to post links to the posts that make those generalisations?

Or are you talking about her responses to the male people who abuse her or abuse other women and she responds to them?

I think if you make such claims you should be able to back those up. Is she making general claims, or do you believe she should absorb abuse directed at her and respond in the way you, personally, decide is appropriate for a victim to respond.

A conversation between JKR and a Transwoman. I can’t see any accusations of perversion due to this persons beliefs.

And just to add. Despite the fact that Dolatowski has done terrible things, I'm not telling him he's a bigot for pretending to be a woman or wailing about his inability to accept my self-ID as a sex realist. Claiming he and people like him are literally DENYING MY EXISTENCE by not accepting my sex realist view. Am I?

Nope, if he wants to think he's a special male type of woman he can crack on. What he can't do is go into women's toilets because those are reserved for biological females. It's the law.

If you are suggesting special treatment for some people can you expand your personal world view by answering the two questions below?

Can you please explain why you think a teen age girl should be made shower and change clothing in front of any male?

Can you then explain why you support the State policy which (on your behalf) decides that Women in the care of the State should be forced into providing companionship to male sex offenders?

Why are people unable these days to see the difference between thinking something about yourself and forcing other people to pretend to have the same beliefs? It's very 1984.

I feel this inability to see other people as fully human and capable of making their own mind up about what they see is not going to end well.

Anyway, I don't have the way with words of JKR. I thoroughly recommend the bit with Tom Riddle and Dumbledore refusing to call him Lord Voldemort. It's a great example. (p.414 in my copy of the book - just over halfway through).

So both JKR and I believe that Katie Dolatowski can self-identify and see himself as a woman. We're not stopping him from doing that.

What we're saying is that WE (and most of the rest of the world) see him as a man. As I'm sure his victims do too.

If she sees a man in a dress or observes male behaviour she thinks is predatory does she not have the right to say what she sees? You're confusing self-identification with imposing and forcing your view of yourself on everyone else.

I want everyone to see me as the millionaire I secretly am inside. The bank doesn't agree. They are not bigots for not giving me a million quid.

I'm pretty sure JKR (and most women) self-ID as recognising biological sex as important for safeguarding. Why are you not respecting that self identity as reality-based?

Why should someone like Katie Dolatowski who is a 6ft 5 convicted sex offender whose offences are against children be able to self identify out of my perception of him (which is also fact) as a male sex offender?

JKR has liked/supported statements on X that call trans women 'men in dresses' 'delusional' 'dangerous' 'predators' so that kind of invalidates any notion that she accepts a personally subjective view on gender without their being some kind of perversion attached to their beliefs…ironically that she herself suffers from.

I think you will find that you and she agree.

Perhaps you should find and post a link where she has stated she doesn’t support people identifying how they wish. Otherwise you are sounding like every other person who hasn’t read what she has actually said.

Her books do not simply accept people no matter the harm they cause. Voldemort is not accepted as a murderous bastard they should all just let murder whoever he wants.

But before this, he tries to cross boundaries and manipulate. Quite familiar that. He goes to see Dumbledore to ask for a job (really to try and get into Hogwarts for reasons I won't go into as spoilers) but there's a fantastic scene where he says to Dumbledore 'I am now called Lord Voldemort' and Dumbledore says no. He does it graciously but he does not agree to using Voldemort's new name and title (accept his self-identity as more important than anyone else). Doing so would be giving ground and allowing Voldemort to set terms. Dumbledore doesn't. He says, I recognise you as Tom Riddle and that is how I'll address you.

I mean it's basically the coercive control aspect of trans ideology right there.

The HP books are about healthy respect. Voldemort's the one trying to dominate everyone else via coercion (at first) and then brute force.

No one has the moral right to self determine into someone else's identity.

Men (original sex based meaning) cannot redefine womanhood to include themselves without undefining the basis on which half of humanity understands itself, without disconnecting the reality of women (original sex based meaning)'s experiences of their own bodies and how that impacts their own lives, and without disconnecting half of humanity from our history and understanding of how that leads to our current experiences.

I don't know about you, but I think the female half of humanity matter enough to have its own name and its own voice and its own history, even if that means some men are excluded from excercising self determination.

HTH

JKR doesn't think all people have the right to self determination so no, she doesn't really believe everybody should have the same rights.

When it comes to sex (not gender identity or sexuality) she doesn't believe anyone should have the right to self determination (because you can't self determine reality - nor can you self determine your height, age, or how much you're affected by gravity). That is the same rights for everyone.

People who live in any social structure can self determination as much as they please.

She as far as I am aware has never objected to that.

Can you point out where she¹ has done so?

(¹And by she I dont mean a third party said she said .... )

JKR doesn't think all people have the right to self determination so no, she doesn't really believe everybody should have the same rights.

People having the right to self determination is a separate matter to how they should be treated in terms to access to services. Different circumstances often require different treatment.

@Gretel346 Perhaps you should actually read her essay first hand (not through a filtered and distorted second hand/third hand lens) before embarrassing yourself on here.

How is advocating for female only safe spaces "opposed to acceptance", @Gretel346 ? Acceptance of what? Fully intact males in women and girls change rooms? Damn right most people don't accept that. How about you try having some acceptance for womens hard won sex-based rights?

opposed to acceptance in practice

Odd how she has said that everybody should have the same rights and responsibilities and that nobody should suffer discrimination.

Are you suggesting that ^ should not happen?

Or

If you are suggesting special treatment for some people can you expand your personal world view by answering the two questions below?

Can you please explain why you think a teen age girl should be made shower and change clothing in front of any male?

Can you then explain why you support the State policy which (on your behalf) decides that Women in the care of the State should be forced into providing companionship to male sex offenders?

@SionnachRuadh Happen to have just finished Nick Harkaway's contribution to his dad's Circus novels, there's some rushed business in the final chapters & the ending feels sketched in, but otherwise not a bad effort if you're ever in the mood for Smiley.

“It upsets me when people are vehemently opposed to me having anything to do with this,” he added. “But in Potter canon you see no trace of transphobic sensitivity. She has written this meditation of kindness and acceptance. And Dumbledore is a beautiful role.”

I really appreciated this point by Lithgow that despite JK's views being opposed to acceptance in practice its important not to let that prevent young people learning about acceptance that HP is such a brilliant vehicle for.

Lithgow is an old pro, but he could still learn from observing other members of his profession.

Good example: Sydney Sweeney, because she's thought to be Republican leaning, often has interviewers asking gotcha questions trying to get her to make a political statement. She doesn't rise to the bait. She's there to promote a film or sell jeans or lingerie, and by golly that's what she's going to do.

Bad example: Watch an awards ceremony - we're in that season right now - and you will observe Mark Ruffalo buttonholing the first person he sees with a microphone and sharing his opinion on everything that's happening in the world. If bus drivers in Jakarta are on strike, Mark Ruffalo, the most progressive actor in the world, needs you to know that he supports them. He may not know what a Jakarta is, but he saw it on Bluesky and he needs you to know that he cares.

Actors speaking about politics, unless they're genuine experts like Richard Gere on Tibet, rarely add anything to the sum of human knowledge. Lithgow is a much loved veteran who can stay a much loved veteran just by knowing when to dodge a question.

Exactly this.

Like so many other shrill puritans, Lithgow has outsourced his opinions on this to the 6th hand ghosts of a tweet from lying activists.

Everyone says it, ergo, it must be true.

Transphobia this, anti-trans that, hateful bigot the other. They're never asked any piercing questions and not one of them has read JKR on thd subject.

I don't mind a literary cheap shot. Despite my love of Le Carre's good novels, I still laugh at the scathing review Updike gave him in the New Yorker, which... well, I could get nitpicky and argue that Updike didn't know anything about the spy genre, but I have to admire a man with the audacity to bracket Le Carre with Tom Clancy.

Apparently JLC was furious and had a terrible case of writer's block that he couldn't get past until he'd found yet another much younger woman to shag. I sort of wish the writer's block had stayed with him and spared us all those crappy didactic late-career novels that should really just have been Guardian op-eds.

I'd still read either one of those old sexist gits rather than have another crack at Joyce Carol Oates.

Her greatest genius as a creative writer was her ability to write in a credibly modern style that wasn't terrible (as opposed to Sontag's 60s/70s novels & short stories)

But cheap shots aside she represents practically the sole living member of the old literary public intellectual (e.g. Sontag, Hardwick, Gordimer, Didion, Ozick, Greer, Said, Morrison, Bloom, Eco, etc), and unfortunately one of the least gifted and certainly one of the shrillest.