Trans People Launch High Street Protest Against Sale of Harry Potter Merchandise

Honestly, you need some more stock phrases - nobody believes this is ‘unsafe’ nonsense anymore.

Ah I see the issue, you think JKR is actually Voldemort's wife. Don't worry lovely she's actually not, Harry Potter is just fiction. No one in it is real and so none of the characters will be lurking in the bookshop ready to make anyone feel unsafe.

I'm sure Waterstone will be taking all your concerns very seriously but you do need to be a little wary of blindly trusting other people's judgement.

I think people are being very harsh on poor Bella, he's obviously very young and still needing a lot of guidance. #BeKindToSnowflakes

Are you actually for real?
Have you heard yourself?

I think Rushdie has more reason to be "islamaphobic" than most, wouldn't you say?

That's the point. I think this is about curbing free speech.

Why do you feel unsafe in the shop? Attacked by staff or customers? Verbally assaulted? Or please dont tell me - you are unable to accept that other people have different views to you? In a democracy.

Society seems to have become sectarian. Certain groups are completely intolerant and bigoted. Imagine being "triggered" because someone has a different viewpoint. JKR doesn't wish trans people harm, she's not advocating mass arrest, imprisonment or even "cancellation".
The ignorance and prejudice is astounding.

Mr Trump springs to mind 😬

What I find utterly disgusting is an author being threatened with death for having the temerity to write a book.

Some should be careful about being open minded. Too open and their brain can fall out. Splat! That would make a mess of their pavement chalking.

Nightmare. It would quickly become a Stalinist nightmare.

Definitely. To be fair to Bella, other than the mistake over using 'folks' instead of 'folx', she (he?) is doing quite a good job of mocking the over-privileged pretend 'progressives'.

Or I.

Waterstones is not unsafe for anyone. Ridiculous assertion.

I think it was Aristotle who said "It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain an idea without embracing it". (Thanks, Civilization VI!). So we've known that reading something you don't necessarily agree with won't actually kill you for at least 2,300 years. Is it me, or does that make Bella just a tad slow?

Unsafe 🤣🤣

This is why people have had enough of this BS. If walking into a bookshop and seeing a childrens book about wizards genuinely makes you feel UNSAFE (Actually think about the gravity of that word) then maybe you need some help.

Waterstones sell all sorts of books by offensive people; Hitler, David Williams and Juno Dawson just to name a few.

When I read posts from InstantlyBella I am reminded of the batshit Scottish Greens and the crazy demands and foot stomping that went on. Can you imagine the being governed by a party with such fragile members.

Unsafe! 🤣

I'd have bought a Harry Potter book and waved it around going past them, the gang of idiots that they are.

I'm shocked at the disgusting attempt to smear Salman Rushdie. He spent a decade in hiding from religious fundamentalists who wanted to murder him because he wrote a book (an astonishingly brilliant book too) and was later stabbed on stage by one of the evil fundamentalists. To ban books written by an innocent victim of decades-long terrorism from a reading group says everything about the kind of people there and none of it good.

Doesn’t Waterstones also stock
books about (gulp) biology?

And the name. Perhaps this poster became 'Bella' the instant he decided he was a woman. Because 'feelings'.

Wow - that's some large scale protest. JKR will be quaking in her (expensive) boots.

Thoughts and prayers to them all - that amount of navel gazing must be exhausting, poor things.

If a bookshop feels unsafe I suggest these "community members" get a life.

These pavement chalkers remind me of that thread on reddit a while ago, where they were all trying to offset their guilt at buying HP merch by donating to Mermaids or somesuch every time they bought an item.

Maybe the pavement chalking is penance for buying some of the new merch.🤔

Your reading group clearly isn’t “full of very open and commited progressive folks” if they have banned these authors and their books. The whole point of reading is to expand your exposure to ideas and/or ideology that you might not have previously understood or been exposed to. It broadens your horizons and allows you to be a free and (more importantly) independent thinker.
By banning anything that you disagree with you banish free speech and independent thinking. After all, don’t forget that biology is indisputable: there are two biological sexes and you cannot EVER change your sex. You can randomly decide on a different gender but your sex cannot be changed. Your lack of learning seems to mean that you have missed this lesson, perhaps?

Waterstones does stock books by Salman Rushdie and yes, I would tell a muslim that Britain is a liberal democracy where people are free to worship as they please and also free to state their beliefs without being cancelled (theoretically, although TRAs seem hell-bent on destroying that particular right) . Do you live in the UK?