Stephen King appears to have found his moral compass

[achillestoes]

It was behind the sofa, or buried in a Maine hayfield, but he’s got it now.

He is tweeting support for JKR’s new book. Taking a medium amount of flack (he is a man, after all).

Maybe he doesn't know who Robert Galbraith really is 🤣🤣🤣

Yeah I've really gone off him over his stance on JKR in the past.

Wonder how long it will last

He’s retweeted her.

I think there are lots of well-meaning liberal/left people who have uncritically accepted things as they have been presented to them. They need a way back.

@achillestoes thats a really wise thing to say and applicable to so much.

I agree with this so much. I think he just doesn't want the flack of the tras, frankly who does, but he shows her his support through praising her work.

This is how we will return to sanity: cultural leaders like King eventually seeing that popular opinion has shifted and reality is slightly different to how they believed it was. Gradually it becomes mainstream again to admit the obvious.

It’s just a shame they had to go all The Wicker Man with JKR before that happened.

I wonder if there was ever a private conversation behind the scenes. Glad he's able to behave like a grown up whether they fully agree or not.

Of course, there’s nothing wrong with people disagreeing. It’s when my disagreement (which I really can’t control - I can’t believe things on demand) is presented to me as Nazism that I draw a line.

The level of public dedication that the TRAs expect now makes it possible to read GC views into somebody who doesn’t do anything, rather than people that are proactively GC if that makes sense?

@Wouldloveanother

Sadly true. I’ve seen people on Twitter openly admitting to tracking people in their industries to see whose commitment to the cause is only skin-deep because they don’t tweet at the right intervals, or they sometimes like ‘problematic’ things or follow ‘problematic accounts’.

Mao off.

People are getting braver. I'm in a profession related Facebook group and someone said jkr was a terf/anti trans and she was put in her place. They were told it was a slur and she's no such thing as anti trans.

@Jackiebrambles

That’s brilliant.

Omg! That's amazing!!

The house of cards is slowly slowly falling!

I’m not sure he’s ever changed his position. I think it’s quite possible he’s always believed he’s treading some kind of middle line where he both supports JK Rowling’s right to speak out and still thinks that it’s the right thing to do to proclaim that men are women when directly asked.

This new tweet shouldn’t be construed as support for her position. That was the error made last time and led to the disappointment.

That sounds positive.

Unfortunately at my firm we had a recent newsletter (distributed to the network members) which listed JKR in a column of "cons" about the last year. Fair enough it was a pride themed newsletter, I can see why they'd say this but I was also shocked because there was no attached reasoning. Simply "JKR". And this is a huge firm of seemingly highly intelligent people.

‘I’m not sure he’s ever changed his position. I think it’s quite possible he’s always believed he’s treading some kind of middle line where he both supports JK Rowling’s right to speak out and still thinks that it’s the right thing to do to proclaim that men are women when directly asked.’

I’m okay with that. I think that’s a load of rubbish but people are entitled to think stupid things.

‘Unfortunately at my firm we had a recent newsletter (distributed to the network members) which listed JKR in a column of "cons" about the last year.’

This is why I’m opposed to workplace ‘networks’ based on aspects of identity. It’s personal and divisive. Work isn’t the place.

I quite agree @achillestoes
Unfortunately my workplace loves them and almost forced staff to join (hence why I am on the mailing list of this network).

@SingingSands

Grim!

I thought he was utterly rude and behaved disgracefully to JKR and at the very least should apologise publicly to her.

I wish people wouldn't get so excited about things like this. Likely King will be barraged by TRAs and forced to make some sort of statement decrying JKR's views. He's done it before.

He hasn't

Honestly this means nothing. King has always been supportive of Rowling's work, whilst maintaining a TWAW stance.