Tom Felton getting stick. Is this really the world we live in now?

[User012389]

Whatever your stance is on trans issues do people really have nothing better to do than verbally slaughter him for choosing to continue within the franchise and being honest that he has no strong opinions on the matter? He's a big boy now and I'm sure he can handle himself but it makes me terrified for the young actors who are also already being subjected to this as well.

I myself was also pretty much forced to remove a post on a facebook group congratulating one of the young actors on being cast in the TV series as some of the vitriol I received completely overpowered the positive intention of the post. I said nothing inflammatory just pointed out that not everyone disagrees with JK's opinions and that we need to be accepting of opinions which are different to our own.

I'd understand the backlash if JK or so called TERFS were spreading genuine hate or encouraging persecution of a group but I just don't see that. IMO whatever your views on gender identity are there's way more horrible and important things going on in the world. Is a lot of trans-activisim really just a way for young people to express their very valid dissatisfaction with the world in general in a reasonably safe way? Honestly maybe I'm getting old and boring but I just don't get it.

JK Rowling is a billionaire who wrote a children's book about wizards, and she uses her money to sway our democratic government by expanding her personal say on our laws.

JKR isn't a politician, or a Supreme Court judge, and she didn't write the Equality Act. FWS would have won in the Supreme Court however the case was funded, whether funded by a billionaire or by loads of £5 and £10 donations from the public. JKR's and everyone else's opinions were irrelevant to the case. FWS won because they were correct - women's rights and protections don't exist to benefit males, and never have.

So my family member tried to kill themselves after a series of bullying occurrences last year, before trans rights were even rolled back by JK Rowlings funding. It was me who found them and had to try to save them. Its a horrifying experience that i will never get over.

I am very sorry that this happened to your family member.

Perhaps you and they would be helped if you understood the law a bit better.

JK Rowling has not changed the law.

I'm not sure what you mean by 'cis', but women can only defend their rights if they can be defined in law. Women need abortions because of their sex, not their gender identity or their level of femininity. That is why the Supreme Court decided as it did - not because of a campaign against trans people, but because it has to deal in logic and the reality of the material world.

Your family member remains protected by the protected characteristic of gender reassignment.

Part of my job in charity fundraising once upon a time was to source grants from foundations which meant checking out their history of giving . Who they supported and what.

There were some bloody wealthy weirdo foundations and donors at that time.

Yes, I agree that I am quite entrenched in my view that sex is relevant to law and policy, and that women depend on sex based rights to participate equally in the world.

I admit that I am baffled that anyone would think otherwise.

I remain unclear on your views, but you obviously have no obligation to spend time here explaining them.

Very sensible approach. Some other actors could do with following his example, starting with David Tennant.

I'm sorry about your relative but there are many incorrect statements in your post. J. K. Rowling was just one of many donors who donated to For Women Scotland so that they could take their case all the way to the Supreme Court. The highest judges in the land have confirmed that the law was the way people critical of gender ideology have always said it was. Sex in the Equality Act means biological sex, not a self-chosen gender. We have never had gender self-ID in this country. Single sex spaces and services are permitted where proportionate and if someone is born male they remain male, so don't belong in a female-only environment, no matter how much medical treatment they have had to make superficial changes to their body.

Since the 90's 5000 transgender people have been murdered as a hate crime and counting. Where does this figure come from? It looks like a worldwide figure, in which case it will include Brazilian sex workers, whose high murder rate is in line with the very high murder rate in that country for anyone working in the sex trade. The number of trans-identified people murdered in the UK, for all reasons, not just transphobia, is absolutely tiny. Fortunately in most recent years the number has been 0. It's one of the safest demographics.

Finally, this a copy and paste of the OP of another thread which Mumsnet has hidden. It's not done to spam the site with the same extremely long and rambling post, especially when it's linked to a petition.

Oh he's a prat these days.

Gosh. Well. That is me told off for asking for clarity. Oh. And my ‘friend’, I assume you speak of merry. I think I probably would have a friendly discussion with merry because she seems to be open to to having a discussion about what she says and seems pretty clear about it. But I don’t know her.

However, I think that this post pretty much sets the expectation of you providing any reasonable discussion about your accusations of manipulation and polarisation. You have made assumptions based on what seems to be your own entrenched prejudice and need to appear righteous and moderate.

When you don’t seem well informed at all, you seem to be unable to even have a discussion and have effectively ‘told’ me what I believe. So, I think I will take your accusations as being just as others before you who have posted about this in the past. in other words, based on falsity and pure laziness of thinking.

In the UK, and other countries such as Australia, women campaigning and contributing to court cases has been by women raising funds through crowdfunding. With the exception of JK Rowling only recently funding one or two court cases.

The polarisation accusations are just like Starmers rhetoric. Except it turns out that Starmer agrees with the women he diminished and belittled with such accusations.

But apparently, you can speak however you want, and use whatever tone you want, (you even acknowledged you were rude) while accusing others. That sounds like the definition of a hypocrite to me.

Stonewall, perhaps.

I agree, @Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g

To the poster who posted the long story about their trans relative, I am genuinely sorry for their distress and yours. It's only natural to want to alleviate their unhappiness and I hope they can find a way to live in which they find peace.

However, your relative is not a woman. No amount of surgery, hormones or attire makes a female human, females are born. Women's spaces and identities are not for those born male to appropriate and that is reality, both biological and legal. I can understand where your anger and fear comes from but your comments about JKR funding hate (or whatever your post said) are completely wrong. It isn't "hate" to say men aren't women and women's spaces are not only for women-only but they are not for other women to give away.

As for that petition, IMO it's the modern-day equivalent of women who campaigned against women's suffrage.

Isn't he just! It's a shame, as I've enjoyed many of his acting performances. He should have stuck to that. I've said before I have no idea why people turn to actors, musicians and other celebs in the hope of getting any interesting or informed views on current affairs. It's obviously different if they've thrown themselves into a cause and become experts, like Feargal Sharkey and water pollution, but just being famous doesn't make their views on other topics worth hearing.

So often women's rights campaigns and campaigners are accused of receiving "right wing money"...except no-one has ever been able to back this up with sources or evidence. And what constitutes "right wing" anyway? To go by most of the comments about it, it seems to translates as "something I don't like and I'm hard left so it must be far right because there are only extremes and middle ground/nuance simply doesn't exist".

no one cares about Harry Potter anymore,

Ha ha! Whoever said that hasn't been to Kings Cross Station lately. I was staying near there a few months ago. The shop selling Harry Potter merchandise was packed and the queue to have your photograph taken at the Platform 9 3/4 sign seemed to always be very long, even at 8 or 9 in the evening.

Tom Felton has low key had hassle for the last 6 years because he continues to trade on his HP role post stuff about Harry Potter on his socials and refused to denounce JKR. He knew what he would get taking this role and he doesn't care. Good for him!

They need to stop being asked every 5 minutes by interviewers who want to know their opinion on the trans debate and what they think of jk. Anyone associated with HP is constantly bombarded with the question

Shades of Hogwarts Legacy, isn't it? (Which I'm still wanting to play but it's not available for Mac )

There was a whole lot of wittering about how it was going to be boycotted, no-one would play JKR's game, that would show the awful TERF etc. etc...except it was a thumping success because people either didn't care or didn't agree with the boycott. I'm sure in certain corners of Reddit there was a boycott* *but one little echo chamber does not a population-wide action make.

I say this as someone whose political views have mostly aligned left through my life, but 'the left' have absolutely lost the plot and while I think there are some online communities where it is more extreme, it's also becoming a wider problem in the 'real world' too.

There is this really insidious vibe that there is only one right way to think and anyone who strays even slightly from that is demonised. There is zero room for nuance. Sometimes I feel like they turn to their chosen online community to find out what that view should be for each issue then very aggressively parrot it.

At work we have a very firm 'no discussing politics' rule in professional spaces such as MS Teams, but a lot of people seem to think that criticisms of Trump or other big issues they feel on the correct side of are exempt from this. To be clear, I don't like Trump either, but they feel they are so objectively right that it doesn't even count as talking politics - to them it's just stating an undeniable truth. This is applied to many other issues which their echo chambers tell them they are objectively correct about.

Every celebrity at the moment wants to weigh in with their views on everything, despite often having no knowledge of it. I think it's refreshing Tom is stepping back and refusing to get involved as his job is as an actor and he doesn't feel he should have to justify his beliefs about every issue to everyone. We could do with more of that and less bandwagon-jumping.

I also hate that everyone thinks not only is JK Rowling herself awful but anything she's created should now be burned and never spoken of again. The irony is these are the same people who are often completely fine with the likes of Roald Dahl for example.

I got a load of flack online when my husband posted a picture with a bookshelf in the background that had my childhood Harry Potter books in them. I haven't even touched them for years but apparently I should not have them in the house or else I am part of oppressing trans people. Someone from a hobby group I'm part of said she would judge anyone who lets their kids read Harry Potter now.

I've watched a lot of people who are part of this 'tolerant' community, in the last couple of years, say some really horrific things about Jews (and no I don't mean they criticise Israel - I mean literally stating they have no sympathy when random Jews around the world are killed because the likelihood is they're Zionists so it's justified).

I watched a gay man at work do a talk about how to be a good ally and spoke a lot about how important it is that he can be his true self at work and how he should never have to hide who he is. I was relatively friendly with him but he completely stopped speaking to me when he found out I married into a Jewish family.

I've seen the same tolerant community completely dismiss the experiences and trauma of women and wish physical harm to survivors of abuse for the crime of wanting to be supported by a biological woman.

I admit that I did used to look at my GB-news watching family members and despair at how closed-minded they are when they said a load of stuff about e.g. immigrants that was completely untrue and IMO ignorant. I still just as strongly disagree with them, but it's harder to be holier-than-thou about it when the 'other side' seems absolutely no better now. The superiority from the left is honestly laughable at this point.

I realise I went off on a tangent but I wanted to come back at the end and say that I'm also really concerned for the young children who are about to take up their roles in Harry Potter. How much is it even going to be possible to protect them from all this?

How long are they going to be given a pass because they're kids before they're expected to denounce JK publicly or even quit their jobs to prove they're on the "right side of history" when it comes to trans issues. How old are these children going to be when they're reading death threats?

I feel so sad thinking of how excited they must be and what awaits them. I'm sure there's already awful comments out there but looking at the pictures of their little faces they just look so small and I just truly hope they're protected as much as possible from this.

He wasn't voluntarily sharing his beliefs. He is being lambasted for taking on a role in a JKR pay.

@Dancingintherainxxx It's amazing you think people advocating for womens rights are 'transphobic' and 'uneducated' (I'd look in the mirror there). Transgender is a recent phenomenon and pumping children with dangerous chemicals and removing health breasts is not healthcare. Simply because you don't understand womens rights and are blase about the sterilisation of children doesn't mean you should post ignorant and misogynistic comments.
PS There is no such thing as 'cisgender'.

@Londer I feel the same, particularly with the concept of "correct views" and it somehow being acceptable to spout them in the most inappropriate settings, as if signalling one's virtue trumps (pun not intended!) everything.

I didn't leave the left, the left left me.

Please tell us what is "unreasonable" about women wanting our basic human rights?

You are not alone in thinking that we are in a time where it feels upside down as far as how many words, including 'tolerant', are used. I have this below and I also have another I will find and post too. A lot of it revolves around people making false accusations about those who they don't agree with instead of having a discussion about their views and being able to clarify their views.

‘You can’t say that!’ – New polling shows students want more controls on free expression

The Higher Education Policy Institute has polled 1,000 full-time undergraduates on free speech issues via YouthSight, a market research company specialising in students’ views. The questions were identical to those posed by HEPI via the same polling company in 2016 (with two additions).

The new results, published as ‘You can’t say that!’ What students really think of free speech on campus (HEPI Policy Note 35) by Nick Hillman, show students are significantly less supportive of free expression than they were.

www.hepi.ac.uk/2022/06/23/you-cant-say-that-new-polling-shows-students-want-more-controls-on-free-expression/

Key findings

Free speech and discrimination

-79% of students believe ‘Students that feel threatened should always have their demands for safety respected’ (up from 68% in 2016) while 4% disagree (down from 10% in 2016).
-61% of students say ‘when in doubt’ their own university ‘should ensure all students are protected from discrimination rather than allow unlimited free speech’ (up from 37% in 2016).
-The proportion of students who believe ‘universities are becoming less tolerant of a wide range of viewpoints’ has risen to 38% (up from 24% in 2016), and this view is considerably more common among male students (51%) than female students (28%).
-The proportion of students who agree that ‘if you debate an issue like sexism or racism, you make it acceptable’ has doubled to 35% (from 17% in 2016).

Events

-Most students believe one or more political groups should be banned from speaking at higher education institutions, including the English Defence League (26%), UKIP (24%), the British National Party (19%), the Communist Party (12%) and the Conservative Party (11%) – when presented with a long list of political parties, just 13% say ‘none of the above’ should be banned from speaking (down from 27% in 2016).
-64% of students think universities should ‘consult special interest groups (e.g. religious groups or gender societies) about on-campus events’ (up from 40% in 2016).
-When asked what rights students and staff should have to respond to an event they dislike, 39% of students say they should be able to ‘hold a protest outside’, 20% say they should be able to ‘stop the event from happening’ and 12% say they should be able to ‘disrupt the event’ (all up since 2016).
-The proportion of students who think ‘gender segregation should be allowed at official university events’ is 32% (up from 20% in 2016).

Students’ unions

-86% of students support the No-Platform policy of the National Union of Students, (up from 76% in 2016) while just 5% say ‘the NUS should not limit free speech or discussion’.
-62% of students support students’ unions refusing to sell tabloid newspapers on grounds of sexism (up from 38% in 2016) while only 10% disagree.
-39% of students believe ‘students’ unions should ban all speakers that cause offence to some students’ (more than double the 16% figure in 2016).
Staffing and academic resources
-77% of students believe there should be ‘mandatory training for all university staff’ on understanding other cultures (up from 55% in 2016).
-The proportion of students who think academics should be fired if they ‘teach material that heavily offends some students’ is 36% (over double the 15% in 2016).
-When asked about university libraries, one-third of students (34%) say ‘all resources should be included for the purpose of academic study, regardless of content’ (down from almost one-half of students – 47% – in 2016).
-Trigger warnings, removing memorials and safe spaces
-86% of students support trigger warnings (up from 68% in 2016).
-76% of students think universities should always or sometimes ‘get rid of’ memorials of potentially controversial figures (up from 51% in 2016).
-62% of students support safe-space policies (up from 48% in 2016).

Government

-In response to a new question, around one-half of students (48%) support the Government’s proposal to establish a ‘free speech champion’ for universities in England. Around one-quarter (23%) disagree and the rest are uncertain (29%).

unherd.com/thepost/britains-students-will-be-woke-forever/

The thing is, you don't seem to want to actually engage. Whenever any of us try, you run away. You just want to lob attacks and run. You refuse to engage or even answer any questions. That can only lead us to believe you are here in bad faith.

Here is another

yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2021/12/22/cancel-culture-what-views-are-britons-afraid-expre

Here are some interesting highlights:

A majority of Britons (57%) say they have, at least sometimes, found themselves stopping themselves from expressing their political or social views for fear of judgement or negative responses from others.

Women are also more likely to have held their tongue than men (62% vs 52%).
29% of those who disagree with the statement “a transgender woman is a woman” feel they have to frequently keep bottled up.

Only 10% of respondents agree with the mantra.

This contains a very interesting chart at the bottom that shows ‘conservatives more inclined to have concerns about free speech and labour being more concerned about protecting peoples feelings and sensitivities.

The degree to which women have felt that they cannot disagree with statements such as “a transgender woman is a woman” makes me look in askance at statements such as the 'both sides' fallacy.

There is no symmetry to these supposed 'sides'. It is a lazy discussion point when you consider the history of discussion on this topic. It is used to censure and shame women, whether it is intended to or not, that is the outcome.