JK Rowling featured in Guardian person of the year

[Blackandwhitehorse]

www.theguardian.com/world/2021/dec/30/guardian-readers-nominate-their-person-of-the-year

Ah - penny drops - responses on twitter makes more sense. He has 2 and a half million rabid followers. Must be older than my kid I guess.
Do the young people even do twitter, mind? Thought it was all insta now.

But as to why he has been placed in that gender debate sentence is a weird one because afaik he hasn't ever commented, other than to be supportive of his fans full-stop. The guy is not even out as an unmasked public figure let alone a vocal activist for trans rights. I think his LGBTQ teen fandom have adopted him as an ally in terms of him being able to explain gender envy without being judgy.
I am way too old for this world.

This is great.

Do they usually do a list of many like that or focus on one?

I'm wondering if she had many more votes and this was the compromise?!

@WarriorN

This is great.

Do they usually do a list of many like that or focus on one?

I'm wondering if she had many more votes and this was the compromise?!

I don't know what they've done in the past, but this piece is entirely congruent with what I expected on the basis of the piece asking for nominations.

I will always appreciate women like Rowling who brave insane death threats when defending women and their right to be respected. However, there's an exhausted, bewilderingly ignored man out there called Richard Ratcliffe who has been fighting for his wife's rights for years. Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was unnecessarily and unjustly dropped into an outrageously horrifying political nightmare by our effing PM when he was being even more incompetent (I kid you not) as Foreign Secretary. Making him Person of the Year will expose the absolute corruption at the core of our wretched government and hopefully force a desperately needed change and shame Boris Johnson's utter incompetence LOUDLY.

Richard Ratcliffe is also on the list

@stucklnAChimneyCantGetOutOflt

The assembler of the list was pulling a conclusion from the Twitter feed.
It looked like the nomination was first because someone was a fan. Then it was pointed out he made the donations to charity. Some tweeters were trying to use him as a counter protest because he would have a large number of followers.
It was both funny and sad to see the comments of how a donation rather than his social contribution was seen important.

Oh fantastic! And, as others have said, Michelle summed it up perfectly. Slightly surprised they printed it.

Some really deserving names on that list.

When I read that Ranboo had raised money for the Trevor Project, I immediately thought of Daniel Radcliffe. He has some kind of link with that charity - perhaps a celeb ambassador? - and referenced them while biting the hand that fed him. Apparently he (Radcliffe) put a statement out on their website distancing himself from the wicked witch.

Anyway. Brilliant that she made the list!

@Whatiswrongwithmyknee

Regardless of whether she got more votes or not I think we can agree that the binary concepts of winning and not winning do not properly encompass the relationship which a person has with winning or not winning. This is definitive proof that there no longer is any winning or not winning in any scientific or mathematical sense. If JK feels like a winner then she is. If we, are JK fans, feel like she is a winner, then she is and it is bigoted of anyone to suggest otherwise.

Basically, I think she won. Moral victory at the very least (in terms of what she stands for, not in relation to the other nominees).

Brilliant. She definitely won.

@CrispAndFrosty

When I read that Ranboo had raised money for the Trevor Project, I immediately thought of Daniel Radcliffe. He has some kind of link with that charity - perhaps a celeb ambassador? - and referenced them while biting the hand that fed him. Apparently he (Radcliffe) put a statement out on their website distancing himself from the wicked witch.

Anyway. Brilliant that she made the list!

I think putting him on the list was an underhanded way for The Guardian to snub JKR & women whilst making out that they'd listened to us.

@Whatiswrongwithmyknee

Healthcare worker here and v happy with JKRs place on this!

Me too! The NHS is far from an equitable employer and every day we see the impact of misogyny and sexism. We need people who stand up to that as if we accept the current dogma NHS staff, and our patients, pay the price.

Really agree with this. Women and girls all over Britain, whatever their job or situation, are facing losing the right to single sex spaces, female provision of health care, safety from males in refuges etc It is a massive threat to the rights of women that affects all female people.

Excellent news. And it's a good list overall (though I've never heard of Ranboo - am I too old??).

@Notahandmaid

Excellent news. And it's a good list overall (though I've never heard of Ranboo - am I too old??).

He's a TRA, he was included to "balance" the inclusion of JK Rowling.

I doubt many grownups had heard of Ranboo. The comment by the nominee included a lot more explanation about who he was than the other entries, most of whom needed no introduction at all.

Also, whoever Ranboo is, they clearly think he was picked because he represents a side of this debate.

What happened was that when people on Twitter started encouraging everyone to nominate JKR, the trans activists picked Ranboo as their alternative person to nominate - there being no obvious trans figurehead, so it was best if they could all focus on one person rather than split the vote.

Thing is, most Guardian readers won't have heard of Ranboo. I certainly hadn't. It's just an attempt to manipulate the vote (or what people thought was a vote). Admittedly you could say the JKR nominations fell into the same category, except loads of us genuinely admire JKR and for us she really is our person of the year. She's an exceptional woman.

Yay- glad that JKR is there and she was written about at the beginning.

Yes, some very interesting people on there. Great for Ranboo for his profile to be increased. The only thing I will say about the write up is that "Anonymous, Australia" writes like a journalist rather than a member of the public who genuinely feels passionate about the work that their nominations are doing. The contrast is striking.

Interesting to note they did so with more grace than I expected
He's a TRA, he was included to "balance" the inclusion of JK Rowling.

One of my interests is the visual display of quantitative information. Published data that is really hard to comprehend is sometimes due to incompetence with statistics, graphing and tables. BUT as in this case the omission of the number of entries for each submission person is a deliberate choice. The paper received its submissions online, lending itself to a straight tabulation of how many unique entries were received for each. Sure they published a non-hierarchical grid that also served to highlight some deserving people working in relative obscurity. Excluding the top ten by number of entries received is to hide something, and we can speculate as to what they are hiding.

Its good news. People are feeling able to speak up...slowly.

Am curious as to how this has gone down in the US Guardian office.

I think I'd enjoy the YouTuber LOJ's reaction too

Has anyone told Owen Jones?

It was perfectly clear that that JKR by far had the most votes and that the Guardian hurriedly changed the format when they realised.

Trying to bury her win by making it an article about some of the many people doing good works (and some random youtuber) is just another hamfisted and transparent act of misogyny.

Let's not pretend that there is anything good about this. The Guardian dug a hole in which they could not pretend the woman they have consistently lied about had won and they put up an absurd smokescreen so they can gaslight readers into pretending the hole didnt exist.

This spoof Guardian article is funny 😆

Ranboo raised $325,000 for Charity:Water in August (a charity that provides clean water in developing countries), but it was only his $100,000 donation to The Trevor Project that gets a mention? Interesting.