JK Rowling - Thread 2

[MoleSmokes]

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

She must already know that she has profoundly affected a whole generation. The fan mail that she gets must show her that they are utterly wedded to her fantasy. And probably know far more about her characters and she can ever remember.

I wonder if she realised quite how many of them might be trans tho.

I don't imagine this is very comfortable for her. It's a huge responsibility. All of it.

She must already know that she has profoundly affected a whole generation. The fan mail that she gets must show her that they are utterly wedded to her fantasy. And probably know far more about her characters and she can ever remember.

Yeah, she must constantly receive some weeeeiiiiiirrrrrddddd shit.

I don't imagine this is very comfortable for her. It's a huge responsibility. All of it.

It's not her responsibility to care for adults and young adults who read her books, they are adults.

Caitlin Moran says nothing. I can barely read her column now. Not quite a collaborator but not standing up for the Resistance. Others such as Lucy Mangan have managed to retweet the odd thing that signals where they are. Caitlin - nothing.

CaptainKirksSpikeyGhost

I'm not sure one can decide whether it should or shouldn't be a responsibility. I should imagine you just feel it.

Knowing that these people are deeply affected by your words? I think it's hard to remain neutral.

I mean, to me, the reaction is absolutely unhinged. But that seems like a product of many Internet users living their lives in a fantasy world. It's easy to be someone else online.

I'm not sure one can decide whether it should or shouldn't be a responsibility. I should imagine you just feel it.

Because you feel responsible for something doesn't mean you are.

Caitlin Moran got called out a few years ago for referring to a transsexual friend (iirc) as a "tranny"... She said it was meant affectionately and that's what they called themselves (again, iirc) but she got a taste of the animosity there.

Male colleague of mine tried to use it as an excuse to hate on her but it was really because he found her annoying but didn't want to just say that, better to say she was phobic or something.

The way the internet allows people to be detached from reality and even alter history has created a generation of people who want to do the same in real life.

Some (not all) will be people just jumping on a bandwagon, rather than actually being addicted to Harry Potter of course.

The detrans sub on reddit spells out time and time again that it's all a cult online, and that it feels amazingly warm and welcoming and affirmative when you're part of it, and then very difficult and mean if you try to leave.

Right now there will be at least a few people online writing numerous "my heart is broken!" messages so that they can join in with their friends, and/or beg for sympathy and attention too.

I refuse to believe they're all really THAT invested in a book.

The American fandom obsessive seem the most entwined in the HP fantasy world, with HP themed houses and all in between. Grown up people many of them. Weird that Americans are so mad about what is essentially a British boarding school tale with magic.
Many on Twitter are acting like they have accidently finding out they were adopted or that thier dad is a bigamist with a whole other family. They will be in therapy for years.
Still the rest of us will just carry on liking the books, introducing them to our kids, and enjoying the Strike ones. (the BBC adaptation is not half bad either).

I did however notice when I took my son the Harry Potter Studios that most people there were adults, hardly any kids. I was also 60% more excited than my son about the whole thing - but I did just go back to normal life when I got home. No HP merch for me.

Because you feel responsible for something doesn't mean you are

I don't disagree. And I definitely think there is a line.

It's one thing perhaps choosing your themes carefully because children are reading your books. It's quite another being responsible for adults who can't sort fantasy from fiction.

I absolutely agree with you Datun.

Just correcting myself, this quote from Caitlin Moran from 2012 might clear things up a bit:

The word “tranny” was interesting because a load of people really jumped on that. Three of my friends are transvestites, and we had always used the word “tranny” to mean transvestite, not transsexual, and didn’t know that that was a massive issue. Initially I was kind of equally tetchy, like, ‘There’s no greater friend of the gays! How dare you?” But after the misunderstanding that happened on Twitter, I researched lots and came across the word “cis” which I’d never come across before, and again it comes back to the idea of normality, so that educated me and that’s fantastic, that’s why it’s brilliant that Twitter’s there. It educated me about “cis” and “tranny” and “trans” in a way that I have educated people about feminism, so it was all very useful.

So in other words "I don't do class analysis" from Caitlin.

The detrans sub on reddit spells out time and time again that it's all a cult online, and that it feels amazingly warm and welcoming and affirmative when you're part of it, and then very difficult and mean if you try to leave.

A woman I know who has de transed recently talked about how someone who she knew previously, thought was a friend, and who was also trans, mouthed "fuck you" when they saw each other at a pride march.

I suspect JK Rowling knows that her fanbase encompasses a huge range of people, from the sane and well-balanced who just like a rollicking good story to the rather more unstable who perhaps invest too much of themselves in her imaginary world, through to people whose grip on reality is perhaps most charitably described as "tenuous."

After all, all authors of fantasy must be aware of the existence of fanfiction. On Archive of Our Own, there are currently nearly 234 thousand works in the Harry Potter fandom. Having dipped into it, these will range from quite well written "gap fillers" or "what if, instead of doing x, this character had done y instead?" spin-offs to barely literate drivel. A lot of them will be explicitly sexual in nature, and some of those really quite bizarre (and often graphically unpleasant) indeed.

It is not going to come as news to JK to discover that some of her fans are, to put it mildly, not playing with a full deck. This is in the nature of being an author of a highly successful series of books.

(To give you some idea of how weird it can get - and this is deliberately not taken from Harry Potter, but another fandom: I came across a Rogue One story. I didn't read it because one thing AO3 gets right is a very thorough "tagging" system which enables you to work out what the content is and avoid it if it's not your thing. But it was basically "furry porn" with Bodhi Rook re-imagined as a chinchilla. That is how weird some of this stuff gets.)

Just skimmed the thread so sorry if someone's posted this. JKR is gaining followers. SS from Thursday when the tweet was posted.

The number of the devil, it's all making sense!

I'm fascinated by how few Slebs With Ticks have either condemned or congratulated JK for her tweet.

Barely anyone at all.

Which is peculiar, makes me think that they all think the same as her but are still to find Magdalen Berns' videos and therefore their brave?

It might be a relief, not to be beholden to the Tumblr masses anymore. She was slated for not being inclusive enough, for not having openly gay characters in her books...the charge sheet was mounting.

Now she has effectively torn it up and is free

Now she has effectively torn it up and is free

I hope so.

This has reminded me of the mania of the Sherlock fans. At one point there were many blogs dedicated to trying to prove that Benedict Cumberbatch’s wife/marriage/children are a PR stunt.

so that educated me I hate this phrase “educate yourself”. These days it seems to mean do as you’re told by us and don’t question anything.

I get intersectional vibes from Caitlin, but hope to be proved wrong.She's always seemed far too wise and far too savvy to not understand this stuff. There are many many (if not a majority of) journos and celebs who are fully aware of this and on the same page as JKR, but pretending not to notice (because they're afraid of the fallout, which is aggressive and relentless)
JKR is so brave. She's fearless. I love her.

I get intersectional vibes from Caitlin

I really like Caitlin but I definitely get 'like me, like me' vibes.

I don't really blame her for not putting her head above the parapet, the backlash is so swift and harsh.

I couldn't do it.

I don't think that transgender nutcasery can be laid at the foot of the U.S.A. Plainly it cannot, as the weeping and wailing of fainthearted HP fans who can't believe that their fave author has the nerve to have opinions of her own is an international phenomenon. It's all stupid.