JK Rowling - Thread 2

[MoleSmokes]

Thread 1 started by @MsMcWibble here:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3772685-JK-Rowling
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twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1207646162813100033

Dress however you please.
Call yourself whatever you like.
Sleep with any consenting adult who’ll have you.
Live your best life in peace and security.
But force women out of their jobs for stating that sex is real?
#IStandWithMaya #ThisIsNotADrill
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To start off thread 2 - everyone saying the time was right for this to hit the news stands right after the Election was right!

Maya Forstater's Employment Tribunal case is, by virtue of JK Rowling's support, more popular in The Spectator than Boris Johnson by Boris Johnson, The Tories and The Labour Party!

MOST POPULAR in The Spectator

1. In just a few words, JK Rowling has changed the transgender debate (James Kirkup)

1. Boris Johnson: Perhaps my campaign was ‘clunking’. But sometimes, clunking is what you need (Boris Johnson)
2. We’ve just had the best decade in human history. Seriously (Matt Ridley)
3. Keir Starmer looks and sounds middle class precisely because he’s working class (Isabel Hardman)
4. Let’s make David Lammy Labour’s next leader (Rod Liddle)
5. A new leader won’t stop the far left’s domination of Labour (Nick Cohen)

www.spectator.co.uk/

RE the Pratchett page I'd just note that there were no male witches...

Good article in the herald

www.heraldscotland.com/news/18117538.iain-macwhirter-britain-woke-2019---saw-wasnt-nice/?ref=twtrec

@TheProdigalKittensReturn I'd love to but fear I'd just be prompting a pile on.... 🤣😬😬

By the way if anyone has emailed JK on this email [email protected] - I emailed in support and received a response from the office of JK Rowling.

Me too @hazeyjane, came through this morning. Glad someone read it.

I just had an email back from Jk Rowling's office thanking me for the support - I emailed last week to express solidarity. Really wasn't expecting a reply! Very pleased that positive messages are clearly getting through.

I don’t know if this has been covered already (apologies if so) but has anybody seen the twitter thread by a biologist going into detail about how biological sex isn’t very straightforward?

I just wondered if anyone could break it down a bit clearer and whether they are mainly referring to a small percentage of intersex people in their arguments?

I got a lovely email back from Dame Kelly Holmes’ agent-type person when I emailed my support and donation after she was harassed and called transphobic by the Specialized twitter account. It is nice when the messages get through.

Lamahaha

She, and the Irish staff (it's Ireland based) were forced into complying, which for many of the staff (just ordinary folk) must have been extremely confusing

M/c wankery imposed on working people, so intersectional...

Jesse Singal did a whole thing a while back on the craziness of YA, including sensitivity readers. Totally wild. #ownvoice stuff too - authors can only write characters with their own lived experience, anything else is appropriation.

I'm 100% with Lionel Shriver on this one - the point of fiction is to imaginatively enter the experience of others, not to restrict oneself to variations on the memoir.

I think it can all be pretty simple. Our current gender change laws are fine and we should leave them alone. Those who are trans can change gender under those laws and most of us will treat them kindly and with respect.

Secondly, self ID is ridiculous and I hope the Conservatives do not change the law to allow it.

Thirdly most people want freedom of expression so if James who wears dresses to work on Fridays only and does his once a week self ID wants to say he is a woman he can but in law he remains a man until he's had the full legal sex change.

whether they are mainly referring to a small percentage of intersex people in their arguments

It's always them dragging intersex conditions into it. Despite being asked not to, by intersex organisations and individuals.

Been on holiday and also purposely took a break from trans related stuff for my mental health (not an exaggeration, many threats of rape and violence from random males for speaking my truth gets to me..) but dipped back in today and so glad to see JK has finally bit the bullet and stated her full opinion really..rather than 'middle aged moments' and such like previously. It has been fairly obvious for a while that she believed biological sex exists and matters sometimes so..good to see the many many TRA attacks have not deterred her.

Sad really to see the tribunal result though. But I expect it will continue until a judge is found who actually understands the GRA and such? As it appears this one..didn't.

I was so happy to see JK Rowling to comment about this. I have always had immense respect for her, as bookworm myself, I was incredibly excited to see an author come along to help ignite a love of reading in children. Of course this wasn't without its pitfalls. I lost a friendship with a friend (recent born again Christian) arguing about how appropriate her books were for children. I was really saddened that this happened and I understood why my friend felt the need to cling to religion at this point in her life. Still I would not change my opinion. It's actually quite horrifying is a better word to observe how similar today's arguments are to back then.

On a brighter note, I had a very interesting day yesterday. Catching up with some extended family for Xmas on my birthday (yes I'm a summer solstice baby). A young girl was present whom I'd only met briefly once before (remarriage of FIL long story). What a clever, articulate and engaging young girl she was. Other family members commented about how much she took to me. Yes she did monopolise my attention for most the time. Her parents were like "Sorry". No I told them don't apologise. I was that girl, decades ago, the only child used to speaking with adults, the brainy (girly swot) that was opinionated, slightly awkward and talked too much.

As the mother of teenage boys I forgot what it was like. That's why I have such an affection for JKR's books...I was like Hermione then, she is like her now. I think JKR has cast a spell. Because I have become more energised than ever to make sure safe spaces are maintained for the current and future Hermiones. I will protect them all fiercely.

Sorry for the excessively long post.... just one more thing, harking back to my Wiccan days....
Blessed Be JK Rowling.

In case you're wondering...
This author isn't a fan of JKR

From the weaponising of suicide and chants of obia, to citing the brave voices of Bergdorf and Fae, Olly single handedly scores a full house with this.

Eyes down, women:

www.independent.co.uk/voices/jk-rowling-transphobia-tweet-children-fiction-books-a9257841.html

Useful in knowing a book to avoid for my dc.

#ownvoice stuff too - authors can only write characters with their own lived experience, anything else is appropriation.

And yet JKR is regularly criticised (on twitter - by Americans) because there aren't enough Jewish, black or gay characters in the book. Dumbledore isn't openly gay, Lupin married a woman when everyone was sure he was gay, Jewish representation is Anthony Goldstein - doesn't even get a line of dialogue ... etc etc etc

But JK has never been an openly gay man, or a POC, or a religious minority in a white, secular, christian leaning country - so writing about them is appropriative. But not including them is colonialist and bigoted. She can't win!
They are going to destroy all creativity and ability to write, with their two contradictory twin mantras of 'include all marginalised people and give them prominence in your story ' and 'don't write about experiences and cultures other than your own - that's appropriation.'

This is without even getting into the cultural imperialism of Americans demanding to know the Jewish population of Hogwarts (tiny percentage of Jewish people in Britain, 1 in 300 11-18 year olds is probably not far wrong) and complaining about the lack of black characters (3% of British population - I can name 4 black characters off the top of my head (not including Dean who is black in the movies) not sure I can name 100 characters) - but never once stopping to ask where all the muslims are - who are actually our next biggest religious/ ethnic group after white/Christian.

They are going to destroy all creativity and ability to write

I think what they are aiming for is for all writing to go through a Disney channel show style process of having a team of writers and several lawyers and people there to check each line cannot offend anyone.

basically writing will be via a committee, characters owned by a company and individuals will be unable to be creative.

I think what they are aiming for is for all writing to go through a Disney channel show style process of having a team of writers and several lawyers and people there to check each line cannot offend anyone.

What ‘they’re’ aiming for is to be the people
telling the narrative. I predict a big deliberate shout-out for trans voices all across the arts in the next year or so. To put it bluntly, it’s happened before for women, people of colour and currently working-class voices.

There's a "new chapter" of Harry Potter that was written by AI /
predictive text a couple of years back. Maybe bots will just write everything.

botnik.org/content/harry-potter.html

Lots of posts on twitter saying that people knew all along that JKL was a wrong un because of no gay characters in HP. I wonder if these young wokies actually understand how old these books are now, and how recent the relative mainstreaming of gay representation in the media is, let alone trans. They have little concept of historical perspective. Should writers have been woke in retrospect.

I am an older mum, and have watched a lot of TV, read books etc.. With my son (now 12). It is unrecognisable to how it was in the 90's/2000's. The 80's and before is like a Pathe newsreel. Mostly this is great. We talk a lot about this, and it is really interesting how he just understands and accepts things that not many years ago would have been controversial or simply out of the question.

I have asked him a little about transgender and gender. He seems readily accepting, but at a push will say that it's not really real.

I wonder if for young people who live in a virtual world with technology, whether it becomes harder to separate real and virtual. People now can genuinely live a fake virtual life. I would consider it fake, they wouldn't, or would not think the distinction matters. Of course it does, and the implications are scary.
Hopefully my son wont go too far that rabbit hole as he matures. I keep correcting him when he mentions the word gender instead of sex.

They are going to destroy all creativity and ability to write, with their two contradictory twin mantras of 'include all marginalised people and give them prominence in your story ' and 'don't write about experiences and cultures other than your own - that's appropriation.'

Yes - this contradiction has amused me for a long time. Except it's not really amusing any more, because some authors have had contracts cancelled for daring to write outside their own experience. And as you say, if they only write very narrowly about their own experience, they are criticised for not including minority characters from outside their experience. The whole thing is beyond nuts. These people don't possess even the minimum mental faculties required to develop a consistent logical position.

I predict a big deliberate shout-out for trans voices all across the arts in the next year or so.

Perhaps in the visual and performing arts, but I don't see this happening in literature or movies, in spite of what I wrote earlier.

To put it bluntly, it’s happened before for women, people of colour and currently working-class voices.

Well, in some of those groups it was necessary. I grew up as a "person of colour" (I hate that term!) never once reading a book with black or brown characters. The first book I read about a black person was The Autobiography of Malcolm X, and I was 16. Think about that in reverse: white kids only ever reading books where ALL the characters are black -- wouldn't it be weird?. It had to change, and it has changed somewhat and I'm glad. Racial diversity in books is a good thing, as long as it's not token blacks shoehorned in so as to be diverse. (I've contributed a bit to this market, hehehe! ).

Books by and for woman? It's a HUGE market, especially in fiction, because many women are voracious readers and like to read female-based novels.

I simply don't think there is a huge market for trans in fiction. As we know, most of the population isn't on board with the the ideology and I can't really visualise the scenario I mentioned above -- love stories, for instance, where the woman MIGHT have a penis and it's normal, or men have periods and give birth. It's all about what readers want, and readers are in the end pretty conservative. Same with movies. To this day traditional boy-meets-girl stories are what make the most money. And it's all about the money.

The indies will publish bunches of trans narratives, and they’ll win all kinds of awards, like the recent Governor General’s award in poetry in Canada — but they won’t sell many copies outside of the literati.

It’ll be interesting, though, when the first detrans story breaks through.