Concerns for the future - related to JKR backlash

[IDanielRadcliffe]

I’m in my 20s. I’m despairing at the treatment JKR has had from my generation - teens/20s. Obviously the misogyny has completely enraged me, but I find the wider picture alarming.

I’ve tried to type a post several times now and I’m really struggling to articulate myself - but my main point is: what happens in 10, 20, 30 years when these people are in power? I know they wield a lot of power already, but it seems although a lot of organisations pay lip service to the woke, it’s more like they’re running scared of the mob and don’t really believe what they’re saying. But one day those in the mob will be running media organisations, corporations, they’ll be politicians and leaders etc (not just social media interns). They hate the discord now, when they are in charge they will have the power to ban it altogether.

Then, when the mob are in charge, who will speak out? In the next 10-20 years, how do non-woke people get into media organisations? I know lots of people say they know younger people don’t swallow the TRA ideology but how do they get to be in the position (usually older and established) of those who felt able to speak out? Media industries are known for being dominated by middle class, university educated people who can afford to do unpaid internships and it’s only getting worse - and they are most likely to be woke.

The Times have stood firm behind Janice Turner etc, but any young journalist looking at the abuse may just think they’ll not bother getting involved, or be too scared to and worried for their future career. Anywhere left of the Spectator and the Times seems to be unwelcome to those who don’t toe the line. It seems to be even worse at the BBC and in the arts.

Obviously I’m mainly concerned with women’s rights, but what’s to stop them applying these tactics to other topics? Denial of reality, denial of science, no dissent allowed and abuse and threats to anyone who tries to speak out.

What can we do? Do you think once they’ve lived in the real world a bit they’ll change their views? Is there an inevitable backlash against wokeness (in all forms)? I’d be interested in anyone’s thoughts. Sorry if this is all a bit melodramatic, I’m WFH and I’m wary of talking to friends about this atm so it’s going round and round my head!

I get your concern, but honestly the biggest sign of a dishonest cause is selective outrage.

If you look at my other thread “[Must see for all weary 2]...” you’ll see that when grown men (and a trans-woman) go on camera and say the same things (albeit a bit harsher) they’re safe.

Jk Rowling was thought of as a influential mouthpiece for all their arguments, but she’s not.

I feel like a lot of women will change their views when the reality of life as a woman kicks in. I also really feel like things are changing. I said this on another thread, but people are now having conversations that just were not being had 10 or even 5 years ago. Different viewpoints are being aired by public figures and in the press - even the mainstream. That just wasn't happening before.

I think there is a real... I don't know how to say it... undercurrent, perhaps, of science denial within some circles. But I feel like it's coming to light more, and the more this stuff comes into the open, the more people are seeing the madness, and that is good.

I feel like a lot of women will change their views when the reality of life as a woman kicks in

You make a good point OP, but I do think the majority of those trolling as young TRAs will get a life and find other more important things to do, like working, spending time with friends and partners, renting / buying a home, starting a family etc. Then your priorities shift. Plus, as we age our beliefs tend to become more conservative.

I feel like a lot of women will change their views when the reality of life as a woman kicks in

Will Jameela Jamil be a pregnant person soon?

When the GI comes into your own personal sphere and you have to change to bend to it, the next backlash against it will come. The LibFems who are a decade away from their lives being dominated by childcare and lack of fair employment opportunities, they will come to see how much they contributed to their own demise.

I see it as the ones fighting it now are protecting women and children now and for the future. They would like us to stop I'm sure but one day they might thank us.

This is a really good post. Bookmarking for later.

Also to help maybe cheer you up OP...
A statement from JKR’s publishers:

Last night Hachette issued a statement backing Miss Rowling’s right to express herself. It said: ‘We are proud to publish JK Rowling’s children’s fairy tale The Ickabog. Freedom of speech is the cornerstone of publishing. We fundamentally believe that everyone has the right to express their own thoughts and beliefs. That’s why we never comment on our authors’ personal views and we respect our employees’ right to hold a different view.

‘We will never make our employees work on a book whose content they find upsetting for personal reasons, but we draw a distinction between that and refusing to work on a book because they disagree with an author’s views outside their writing, which runs contrary to our belief in free speech.’

Honestly the woke crowd will have had their position noted for staff reviews and if they fundamentally don't support free speech I doubt they won't last long in publishing.

Yes, I was just coming back to add that, although a lot of media types are young, companies are mostly still run by old white dudes whose job is to appease the shareholders. People who are in it to make money and keep money are not generally 'woke'.

I don't know whether people will change their minds and become more tolerant or not. I think people tend to be more conservative as they age not just because of life experience, it's having more of a stake in society. If nothing changes regarding access to housing, zero hours contracts, being able to afford to have a baby (price of childcare) - that's having less of a stake in society. Maybe they won't mellow. Maybe they'll still feel aggrieved and disenfranchised.

We do need to encourage people with a public platform to moderate their language though. Social media is a scourge and O think encourages people to entrench positions because it makes graceful climbdown so hard. Plus echo chamber reinforcement.

I've been feeling very down about it this week to be honest, because it's hard to see what the future holds, and I'm scared for my small daughter that this will eventually take hold of her and her friends and their future lives.

I am on a few social media sites, and I do find that some sites have a lot more pushback against this stuff. Tumblr for example has a thriving community of young radfems who give a lot of pushback to woke extremism. Both there and here on MN women seem to feel safer than Twitter to do so - Twitter seems to have the most extreme culture of nasty pile-ons at anyone who is perceived to step out of their box.

I know it feels like we are banging our heads against a brick wall but things have changed. The TRAs have lost control of the narrative and #nodebate is no more. And the more it is debated the more sunlight is shone on it and the more it unravels. JKR has done us a huge favour (at great personal cost). She really is too big to cancel (although they tried) and a lot of people are starting to ask what it's all about. We carry on and our numbers will grow.

I do urge anyone who feels worried to find a way to take action. Aside for my mental health I take great personal comfort in knowing I am doing something.

There is no shortage of organisations who need volunteers and even if you just find a local GC group to meet up with or have chats with, it all helps. We have Scotland to tackle too.

The holding of current law, against GRA reform didn't happen without us all doing something about it. We have a voice.

This campaign for gender identity has become a victim of it's own success, the more training in it and publishing on it they have undertaken, the more it's inherent implausiblity and downright lies are there for everyone to see. It's imploding under its own weight and won't survive long.

The woke scolds will always be around but are mostly too dim to be leaders of anything, and this angry mob behaviour will quieten down once the free money ends and they are back to work, and off their heads on MDMA at festivals again.

I understand what you are saying OP but I am more optimistic than you.

There's another thread on here taking about the generation gap on this issue that raises some really good points.

One that particularly resonated with me is the thought that women who work in Male dominated industries are more likely to be GC because they have more exposure to a misogynistic culture. I certainly know that's my experience.

Conversely if you work in a female dominated workplace you don't see the sexism (or as less likely to) because you're on a level playing field with mostly women.

A lot of woke women in their early 20's are either fresh from the uni bubble or at the start of their career and fundamentally have yet to be on the sharp end of what it's like to be a woman.

Overtime they'll start to wonder why they are always asked to keep the meeting minutes (meaning they concentrate on that task to the detriment of their contribution to the discussion) or why they end up getting/serving the refreshments.

They'll notice that certain decisions get made whilst the men in the team were all playing football and they'll find out later as a fait accompli.

They'll see laughing a joking about a man coming in with a hangover and "let off" with an easy ride for the day whilst they are crippled with period pains and expected to perform to the same high standard as usual.

Then they might get pregnant and see how little provision is made to accommodate them - from crap maternity packages to simple things like a desk/chair that can comfortably accommodate a 7 month bump and how their daily commute becomes unbearable because they can't sit down and their ankles are painfully swollen every day as a result.

These experiences will change their perspective because they'll come to realise they can't identify out of them.

I also think JKR has been pivotal here in throwing sunlight on this issue and even the backlash against her has worked to a GC advantage.

There are many people who previously didn't have a position on this issue that are forming one because they believe in JKR's right to have an opinion without getting death/rape threats and then they look at what that opinion is and can't understand why it's even controversial.

Real life and twitter are very different and the TRA's are starting to realise their "monopoly" of the subject on social media doesn't translate into popular support.

*I feel like a lot of women will change their views when the reality of life as a woman kicks in

I think that young people often have black and white views. It's because they haven't had the sort of life experience that shows you that not everyone is what they seem, that life is shades of grey. They'll grow up.

The LibFems who are a decade away from their lives being dominated by childcare and lack of fair employment opportunities, they will come to see how much they contributed to their own demise

Bit curious here - how does trans rights have anything to do with childcare and fair employment opportunities?

I've been feeling very down about it this week to be honest, because it's hard to see what the future holds, and I'm scared for my small daughter that this will eventually take hold of her and her friends and their future lives

Same. I've got a four-year-old daughter and I'm genuinely scared about what the world will be like for women and teenage girls in 10 years. Authoritarianism on both the right and the left, ubiquitous violent misogynistic pornography, the collapse of traditional media and journalistic standards, control of speech in the hands of a few tech giants, social media destroying people's capacity for empathy, reason and dialogue, and a generation steeped in illiberalism and gender ideology in charge of most public and private institutions. It's grim, and I share the OP's despair at what is happening with people her age.

One thing I would say WRT to trans ideology specifically is that while I think it is not going to collapse any time soon, it will change. And that will be due to the sheer numbers of young women who have enthusiastically embraced it. On another thread a while back, a poster (can't remember who, sorry) remarked that teenage girls are experts at creating their own subcultures and finding ways of passively resisting authority. Right now, the older men are in charge of the trans movement and its direction. The girls are cannon fodder to them in pursuit of their goals. The young women, I think, will ultimately change the cultural direction of 'trans', in what way I can't say, except that I doubt they will continue to offer the men of the movement the unquestioning fealty they are getting now.

There's always the possibility, of course, that this is just the beginning and we are headed for some kind of full-scale dystopia. Of all the things I listed above, the one that scares me the most is 'control of speech in the hands of a few tech giants'. To paraphrase Rowling's publishers, free speech is the cornerstone of a free society. A world in which people cannot challenge prevailing orthodoxies, or where they have no way of verifying if what they are reading or seeing is true or false, will inevitably be a world without respect for reason or human rights.

I feel like a lot of women will change their views when the reality of life as a woman kicks in.

I agree with this. I think there's also an awful lot of empty vessels making the most sound. Young women who have their doubts about this ideology tend to stay quiet for fear of being shouted down. If we succeed in changing the climate, they might be less afraid of speaking up.

Bit curious here - how does trans rights have anything to do with childcare and fair employment opportunities?

Because the guidable young women of today, that are being taken in by the mantra TWAW and are handing over their rights to dignity, privacy and protections to male bodied people, will realise they were lied to, when reality bites. They will eventually realise how many challenges women have to face, just because of their sex.

Because the guidable young women of today, that are being taken in by the mantra TWAW and are handing over their rights to dignity, privacy and protections to male bodied people, will realise they were lied to, when reality bites

OK, but still not sure how any of that would affect a woman's (bio for clarity) woman's employment opportunities or childcare issues.
It's not like trans rights would suddenly make it so women can't get a good job in the future or nobody to look after their kids.
That's a bit of a leap.

Bit curious here - how does trans rights have anything to do with childcare and fair employment opportunities?

Because a GC viewpoint is fundamentally about the protection of women's rights.

When your life experience to date has not required the protection those rights provide you're less able to see the consequences of giving them away by re-defining the biological experience of womanhood to include men.

Once women experience why those rights are important they do not want to see them eroded and the only way to ensure that is to maintain the definition of a woman as an adult human female.

I think a couple of things will happen, they will grow up and become parents of girls who they will do anything to protect and totally change their minds.
The other thing is what happened to lots of the flower power hippies of the 60's in California, very idialistic living in communes, having babies, free love and all that. Then they realised life costs money, mum and Dad aren't funding you forever, they got jobs and ended up running multimillion dollar companies and being total sell outs. Only a few remained true to the ideas.

But one day those in the mob will be running media organisations, corporations, they’ll be politicians and leaders etc (not just social media interns). They hate the discord now, when they are in charge they will have the power to ban it altogether.

It seems like this dynamic is already in full-swing, with senior journalists running scared from the woke youngsters.

This article by left-wing Rolling Stone journalist Matt Taibbi is good on the authoritarian madness that has engulfed the left in the US, and its effects on the freedom of the press.

It feels liberating to say after years of tiptoeing around the fact, but the American left has lost its mind. It’s become a cowardly mob of upper-class social media addicts, Twitter Robespierres who move from discipline to discipline torching reputations and jobs with breathtaking casualness.

The leaders of this new movement are replacing traditional liberal beliefs about tolerance, free inquiry, and even racial harmony with ideas so toxic and unattractive that they eschew debate, moving straight to shaming, threats, and intimidation. They are counting on the guilt-ridden, self-flagellating nature of traditional American progressives, who will not stand up for themselves, and will walk to the Razor voluntarily.

taibbi.substack.com/p/the-news-media-is-destroying-itself

Obviously I’m mainly concerned with women’s rights, but what’s to stop them applying these tactics to other topics? Denial of reality, denial of science, no dissent allowed and abuse and threats to anyone who tries to speak out.

These are all frightening prospects, I agree, OP. We just have to keep speaking the truth and defending others who do.

The trans movement didn't suddenly appear everywhere by chance -- it made enormous progress in a very short time because it is very well-funded, knew how to influence social media and had an effective 'policy capture' strategy. A feminist who researched their funding reported here:
mrkhvoice.com/index.php/2019/08/10/follow-the-money

It spread fast partly because it was accepted by well-meaning people who believed it was a modern equivalent of gay rights.

Enough people have now seen the Emperor's New Clothes for what they are. But we have to keep speaking out.