Is JK Rowling ‘too big to be cancelled’?

[IwantToRetire]

When JK Rowling dared police to arrest her for challenging Scotland’s new hate crime law, one outcome was assured – the multi-billion-pound Harry Potter brand continues to be a licence to print money whatever controversy surrounds her vocal campaigns.

The author, whose provocative posts this week will not be treated as criminal by police, has become one of the few public figures who appear to be “too big to cancel”, due to the enduring appeal of her wizarding franchise for big business.

Accused of transphobia for her vocal support for sex-based rights, Rowling has faced calls for a boycott of Harry Potter, from its books and movies to the blockbuster video game Hogwarts Legacy.

Potter movie actors including Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint and Emma Watson joined the backlash, criticising her comments.

Younger staff members at one of her publishers, Hachette, threatened to down tools and refuse to work on her book, The Ickabog, in protest at her views.

Rowling has said she is not concerned about how the backlash to her position on transgender issues – she has stated that sex is biological and that female-only spaces should be protected – will affect her legacy.

She had added that anyone who thinks she is concerned has “profoundly” misunderstood her.

Corporations which might normally distance themselves from public figures who face “cancellation” for offending minority groups are standing by her.

Hachette pulled rank on its staff, saying it was “proud to publish” The Ickabog, citing “freedom of expression” as a cornerstone of publishing.

The BBC is currently shooting season six of Strike, the detective novels published by Rowling under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith.
A ratings winner for the BBC, the broadcaster is expecting additional scrutiny of the new episodes which adapt The Ink Black Heart, the novel which echoes her situation with the inclusion of a character accused of transphobia.

The BBC has had to apologise twice to Rowling after guests on news shows accused her of being transphobic.

The author has seized control of her own narrative by appearing on the podcast The Witch Trials of JK Rowling, claiming that she is not concerned that the backlash will affect her legacy and that anyone who thinks she is transphobic has “profoundly” misunderstood her.

Its a much longer article than these few paragraphs, but I am surprised by the tone as it is published in the "i" paper https://inews.co.uk/news/media/jk-rowling-too-big-to-cancel-2987608

Can also be read at https://archive.ph/KavRe

Going back to the original question, yes, JKR is in the fortunate position of being far too big to be cancelled.

She started with a couple of measured tweets but the TRAs went for her. It's their trolling, death threats etc which have led to her present Don't Give A Fuck attitude.

I admire her for standing up for women's rights and for putting her money where her mouth is.

Many, many women feel the same way about her as I do. The number of TRAs who want to cancel her are small but vocal.

The vast majority of the population don't follow what she says and aren't interested either way.

What makes her unassailable is the huge earning power of Harry Potter books, films, games and merchandise. Unlike some other franchises, there's a constant supply of consumers as new generations of children grow up and discover HP.

I'm a primary school teacher and every single World Book Day, there are more children dressed up as a character created by JK Rowling than any other author.

Every single primary school in the country will have dozens of Harry Potters with a sprinkling of Hermiones and Lunas.

I only read the first section but, other than Marilynn Manson saying he got flowers and they were from JK Rowling, is there any actual evidence or proof he did receive flowers from her? If not the Twitter thread is junk.

Yes, all of this.

I have recently had a run in with a group of thirty something American women who love Harry Potter but hate JK Rowling. When they started slagging her off and I spoke out and said basically I don't agree that she is a Nazi, they kicked me out of their group.

What they don't understand is that there is a whole political context to her tweets, of which they, not being well versed in UK/Scottish current affairs, are entirely ignorant. Perhaps in the US the only people objecting to gender ideology are conservative Christians who also hate gays and want to ban abortion. But that's not true in the UK. Religious nutbags are their speciality, not ours. The women objecting to gender ideology in the UK are mostly left wing feminists, many of them lesbians, and they are objecting to it for completely different (and valid) reasons.

The fact that millions of American millennials who really, really love Harry Potter are really, really disappointed in JKR's stance on this issue does not mean she should not be allowed to express her opinion. She is perfectly within her rights to express her worries about things that are happening to women and girls in the UK, where she lives.

So if 35 year old Harry Potter fans don't like her views, they have a choice. Either they accept that an author they like has a different personal opinion to them, and continue to enjoy her books anyway. Or, if JKR's insistence that female rape victims in the UK should be entitled to single sex support and that female prisoners should not be locked up with male rapists really is ruining their enjoyment of a series of books she wrote 25 years ago for children, they could just move on from Harry Potter and read something else.

Meanwhile, I spent the afternoon in the company of my friend's 7 year old daughter who has just read the first Harry Potter book and was brimming with enthusiasm for it.

I think I want something about stirring up trouble on a t-shirt, with a picture of a cauldron.

She’s entitled to her opinions and won’t be gagged.

I suspect a large proportion of the population agree with her, quietly.

Someone has to stand up for the rights and safety of women and girls.
That’s all she’s doing but in a hugely mysogynistic society.

JK Rowling is hopefully going to turn the tide on this farce that a man can be a woman in ALL respects.

She's rich enough to not be silenced from fear of being financially impacted by her outspokenness. And respected enough to be listened to. Oh yeah, and she's right!

I think she is an absolute queen. So many other people in positions of power or influence have skirted around this whilst all the time allowing politically motivated groups bully changes through whilst we women have been sleeping (I count myself in this). It has only been through JKRs loud and eloquent voice that many have woken up to how changes may impact the future for our daughters and especially those who fall on hard times.
I take my hat off to all those that have suffered to protect our daughters safety, equality and dignity and am glad that they have had JKR adding her gargantuan metaphorical weight behind these women to support from the sidelines and when needed, the frontline. I do however agree with pp that said she seems to be getting frustrated which whilst I understand, hope it doesn't lead to derailing as she has walked the line magnificently so far as I can tell so far.

I can’t read that without hearing this

How can she be cancelled? Which part of what she says, is not true?

You don't have to say anything untrue to be cancelled.

I was about to post something similar. I have a small worry that she.might be targeted by one of the more unhinged.transpersons. They lie so much about what she says and deliberately twist her meaning. Threatening violence gives them a power surge. How beloved in the TRA world would a person be who had done violence to her?
But she will have security. And the police must surely be keeping a watch on her. They know the menacing hate mail she gets. They can't fail in protecting her.

I must preface this by saying that obviously - obviously - I do not want any harm to come to JKR.

But if this did happen, surely it would be the end for them. Anyone not completely unhinged would lose all support for the TRA brigade.

If you don't say anything illegal yet get the amount of hate mail and death threats that she does and live somewhere that is easy to find out I imagine you and probably your family get top notch police protection. And if she feels that needs supplementing she can afford to pay for it without a second thought.

She's still brave though as the hate must be hard to take and be scary at times.

What specifically do you disagree with?

I reckon she's too right to be cancelled - as in correct

I reckon she's too right to be cancelled - as in correct

I wont repeat my earlier post but what the article is pointing out is that those with the power to make or break someone, particularly in the arts world (as they did Glinner) actually dont care about the ideology either way. They just want to make money.

So in this instance JKR is "allowed" to go on being publicly GC, but as the many threads on FWR have shown less well established or small earners go get cancelled.

Remember the woman who had her own dance company taken away from her.

And the singer (I think she was Irish but cant remember the name) who got hung out to dry.

So sdmirable as her bravery is, is it a pretty bad state of affairs that in the UK you have to be very right to speak honestly and stand up for women.

You only have to look at the craven labour women mps to see how those dependent on patronage dont speak up. (Yes i know there are a few honourable exceptions - who truely are brave as they are in the actually lived experience of the front line every day.)

Totally agree.

People who say “Cancel Culture isn’t real, look at JK Rowling, she’s still going!” ignore the most important point. Cancel Culture’s existence isn’t dependent on a a successful outcome all the time. It’s obvious that JKR is too big to cancel, but that doesn’t mean she’s too big for people to try. There is a wealth of people who would love for her to be “cancelled” and have tried their best to make it happen.

Cancel Culture is an existing culture within our society that means anyone whose opinions aren’t the True Opinions are deemed worthy of attack to take them down. Sometimes this won’t work. A lot of time it does.

It's not just the money she has that makes her 'too big to cancel'. It's the money she makes for others.

I'm sure there are Universal Orlando execs, people at the BBC, people in publishing, people at HBO Max etc. who disagree with her and would in other circumstances seek to 'cancel'. Then they look at the money she brings in and act accordingly.

I personally wouldn't accuse you of trolling. I think you post in good faith. However, IIRC your political position is that women (sex based meaning) do not have any moral right to female-only language, resources or political representation. That is useful context to your just happening to come across this x.com thread out of all the threads out there.

FWIW I think JKR isn't perfect. I have no doubt she (or her social media team) have at times liked tweets from people later shown to be dodgy or worse. I suspect even before the attempts to cancel her for gender apostasy, her experience of being vilified for promoting witchcraft made her likely to feel sympathy for anyone suffering trial by social media, especially celebrities she may have personally met.

And that means, precisely because she isn't choosing to high tail it away at the first sign of a pile on, sometimes she'll have got it wrong and supported a person who didn't deserve it.

But to assert, as your x-er does, that this is a pattern showing JKR is somehow more supportive of men who assault women than women who suffer assault from men, one needs much more than single digit examples cherry picked by someone trawling through over twenty years' of JKR's past of being a public figure active on social media. It needs to be put into context of her overall activity, when these examples happened, has she since condemned them, who else (people and causes) she was supporting and how does that level of support compare to the handful of tweets, and so on.

It is not just that she is too big to be cancelled.

The attempts to CANCEL her made her bigger. Because they keep her name on everyone's lips. It doesn't matter that a bunch of people online keep slagging her off. In fact it helps here. Every time they do it they make her more money and make her MORE powerful.

Hogwarts Legacy showed that - the TRAs and the computer review industry tried everything they could to stop the game being successful. Their attempts made the game bigger - it got way more publicity, more people buying, because they made a fairly decent game into a must buy - by making sure everyone was talking about it and playing it. They got it trending all over the internet. The result JKR must have made more than $200 million dollars from a game she did nothing to help with. She is earning about the same or more now than when Potter mania was at its height. No wonder she is makes jokes about her bank balance looking good.

That in turn really gave her confidence a boost after the relative failure of the Fantastic Beasts franchise. That along with Warner Brothers offering her ANYTHING she wants to get a HP TV series. Note she has got WAY more combative this last year. That is because she knows people love her stuff no matter what, AND every day shows more women and men and the science backs her position.

Time is on her side. Especially as the HP TV series is going to be wildly successful if Warner sticks to following the books.

Also the key thing is that the TRAs might be able to slag off JKR in groups etc, but outside the English speaking world their reach was not as big and is weakening. Harry Potter is a huge franchise in Asia.

The clock is ticking for them. The science is striking back, and the next few years will see loads of law suits in the US coming into court. Once the money taps are turned off the TRAs will lose support, because it was a profitable trend. The youngsters are getting bored of pronouns too. They are not going to get bored of Hogwarts.

It's ridiculous that she's seen by some as transphobic. Why can't people see the difference between not seeing trans women as women and disliking them or wishing them harm.

Because if you can associate women who see transwomen as men as being hate filled bigots as bad as actual Nazis you can be applauded for threatening to punch them in the face, rather than be despised as the misogynist prick you are.

Which is why the hyperbolic lies get trotted out. Not many people really think a woman should be punched in the face, attacked with a baseball bat or fired from her job because she doesn’t see a transwoman as a woman, but if she’s considered so awful she wants genocide, well, it’s a public service to stop this dangerous woman, isn’t it?

The accusation that JKR is 'stirring up trouble for troubles sake' is strange to say the least. It's DARVO really. She's just sticking to reality and pointing out the problem with an ideology that genuinely does nothing but 'stirring up trouble.' I'm curious to know why she's the one at fault for doing nothing wrong whatsoever - not sending death threats, not beating women up, not harming anyone, not trying to remove anyones rights, just not being cowed into silence. I also don't think a man would have the same accusation levelled at him.

I note that @Viviennemary and @Clarabell77 haven't articulated why they feel JKR is 'stirring up trouble', or what that 'trouble' is. Not really the sign of intelligent debate, is it?