JK Rowling threatening legal action

[TheLashKingOfScotland]

A TRA and Canadian Green Party rep has made libellous comments about JK regarding her position on trans rights and her suitability to be trusted around children.
JK asked her to retract them or they would hear from JK's lawyers. Currently they are digging in. Seemingly unaware that JK has pursued legal cases based on Twitter comments before and that it isn't acceptable to make unfounded statements about people.
It will be interesting to see how it unfolds.
It could have wider reaching consequences if certain sectors see they can't just make unfounded accusations any more.

@JellySlice

nihil pene in invitis spiritus spatia ibi non potest vestes

No uninvited dicks in spaces where I'm not wearing clothes?

(A bit of guesswork - 3 years of Latin, 40 years ago!)

heh heh heh - online translators can be rather good. I daren't ask DS to do the honours (he will merely roll his eyes at his crude mother).

I may start a new needlepoint...

Clockwork Orange was bloody brilliant while simultaneously horrifying in many directions.

I don't want to talk to you personally about it though, ProfessorSlocombe, because you've triggered my subconscious "danger" alert by denigrating "cleverness". Nothing personal, blame the bullies of my childhood, adolescence, and adulthood, etc.

Lordfrontpaw, it doesn't work as well in the other direction:

the garments can not be against the will of the spirit of the spaces there is nothing, the penalties for

I’ve never read a clockwork orange. Should I?

It's both brilliant and really bloody disturbing, so I guess it depends on your tolerance for reading about disturbing things. If you ever had to read the Canterbury Tales at school and found yourself going from having the check the glossary every paragraph to being able to read smoothly it'll feel a bit familiar in that way.

In terms of the how does this apply to our current timeline aspect of things Brave New World is definitely worth a read, and I'd throw in We to round out the set.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_(novel)

Ooh A Clockwork Orange! Did my A-level lit coursework on that. All the other classes did Wuthering Heights. Luckily we had a brave teacher who was willing to go with the class vote. Brilliant book. Travesty of a film adaptation.

Sometimes it looks like Brave New World will be the most prophetic of the dystopian futures

I'm inclined to think so.

I ave this to my dd15 to read this year for school, and it made her cry.

Sounds almost poetic

The garments can not be
against the will of the spirit
of the spaces there is nothing
the penalties are death
Despair or castration

@TheHoneyBadger

The biggest trick I found is to shout out and ask for explanations of things you haven’t encountered. Usually when I do several others will be going thank fuck someone asked and it’s not just me that flew straight over.

I have had long breaks out of my profession and return to find people talking in code. I have to be the annoying one going sorry to interrupt but what does x mean. After a day of code I once said sorry to be dim but what do you mean by runways? Confused faces and then someone said I think you mean flightpaths

at shark infested moats for uninvited penis’

I know we take the piss sometimes when people like the Midnight Misogynist appear to be JAQing off, but the truth is asking for explanations is usually well received here. Sometimes we need to ask for clarification because the google simply confuses. Someone referred to "HSTS people" in another thread and google says it is an http web service directive and I know that can't be right.

I think that might've been me, TehBewilderness. HSTS is homosexual-transsexual - most of the old-school transsexuals fitted that profile (because the straight fetishists didn't make it past the gatekeeping) and women tended to be pretty sympathetic because we intuitively grasped that they'd been horribly damaged by a homophobic world.

I like it when people ask for clarification too - if I have to find the words to explain something it helps me to understand it better myself, so it functions as a learning aid for all parties.

1984 is an absolutely brilliant book in terms of the story and breadth (and depth of vision). But by God is the prose leaden

It's not as leaden as Keep the Aspidistra Flying, IIRC.

I know this isn’t helping get back to the original topic but I want to give some love for The Road To Wigan Pier and whilst we’re at it Bea Campbell’s Wigan Pier Revisited.

Also a fan of The Road to Wigan Pier. But it's def an odd read

I went to Wigan once, and looked for a pier. It was a bit disappointing.

True story.

Well you must have visited a good few years too late. in the 1980's it was quite interesting. A Victorian schoolhouse and a 'living museum'.

I’m from Wigan and the pier is so ridiculously disappointing it’s worth taking any visitor just to see their reaction.

Though the nightclub was good, back in the day.

@TyroSaysMeow

I think that might've been me, TehBewilderness. HSTS is homosexual-transsexual - most of the old-school transsexuals fitted that profile (because the straight fetishists didn't make it past the gatekeeping) and women tended to be pretty sympathetic because we intuitively grasped that they'd been horribly damaged by a homophobic world.

I like it when people ask for clarification too - if I have to find the words to explain something it helps me to understand it better myself, so it functions as a learning aid for all parties.

The best is when I ask what an acronym stands for in a staff meeting and nobody even knows despite bandying it about

Sometimes it looks like Brave New World will be the most prophetic of the dystopian futures
Agree, and you know what, I might object to surrogacy less if there was honesty about it. If we are to have a class of women, deltas or epsilons, who are breeders for the rich alphas and betas, come out and say it. What really sticks in my craw is all the stories and brain washing one sees and hears, of women saying how proud they are to give the gift of life, help build a family, what an achievement to go through pregnancy and birth to provide a baby for someone's house feels entitled to have a baby. So many cliches repeated ad nauseam.
Women gaslighted to think they must be kind and the ultimate kindness is to give away a baby.

I think much of my cynicism stems from reading "Island" (Huxley) age about 18. Basically you can create utopia but human nature is such that there's always some greedy bastard who'll trample all over your paradise and ruin it.

I’m from Wigan and the pier is so ridiculously disappointing it’s worth taking any visitor just to see their reaction

Wigan Pier is an area around the Leeds and Liverpool Canal in Wigan, Greater Manchester, England, south-west of the town centre. The name has humorous or ironic connotations since it conjures an image of a seaside pleasure pier, whereas Wigan is in fact an inland and traditionally industrial town

IIRC I was about 13 so it would have been late 80's.

Ive always liked the phrase

Take a long walk off a short pier

It was very cutting in my youth...

It's very short in Wigan.

I was lucky to be brought up in a house that contained lots of books. I was about 12 when I read Animal Farm, 1984, Brave New World, Lord of the Flies and many others. Lack of social media, technology and anything much else to do meant that school holidays were spent reading or walking the dog.
I often feel that one of the saddest things now is that not many younger people read books at all.

@Goosefoot

I'm not sure why being kind would be lumped in with being a push-over. The kindest people I've ever met were very far from push-overs. In fact I would say their kindness came out of a very strong sense of their own place.

I don't like either of the words, clever/kind. Kind does sound very push-over-ish: just doing what others want, giving them what they want. Clever can be ice-cold, heartless, narcissistic.

The word I would use is wisdom, which involves both compassion
and the knowledge of human nature; a wise person (I've known a few) has a heart full of love but is solid and unrelenting as a sword to a fool. You don't toy with a wise person; a word from such a one can shut you up. Wise people are also seldom young; wisdom comes through life experience, learning from mistakes, growing and maturing. Not all clever people do that, neither do all kind people.

JK sounds pretty wise to me.

Coming back to the language point, one of our issues here is that guidelines prevent us from speaking clearly so it becomes hard to follow the multiple linguistic hurdles we're forced to use to communicate what should be simple concepts.

On the other side, we know that TRAs and academics are using constantly changing language as a way to try to maintain control of the debate. Either way it leads to a situation where the average person can't easily follow the argument without prior experience or a lot of effort AND frequently misunderstand what is being said.

This can be seen in questionnaires when people are broadly supportive of transwomen accessing female changing rooms until it is clarified that the vast majority retain their penis at which point opinion is firmly against it.