I attended a Folklore and Feminism talk in The Glee Club in Cardiff last evening. I was slightly regretting booking it as anticipated something related to gender identity etc. would come up.
Get to the end of the talk and feel relieved, it's been an interesting discussion of the portrayal of women in folklore, female collectors and writers of stories and an exploration of how the suffragist movement used Folklore and history as symbols e.g. Use of the image of Boudicca.
But then, the Q and A starts. There's a long tedious, incoherent and meandering question about the difference between Celtic Folklore and English folklore which ends with a point on the supreme court deciding what a woman is and the questioner thinking this is a bad decision. I roll my eyes so far back in my head it's painful.
The presenter answers and part of her answer is a cringing apology of the fact that there is a chapter of her forthcoming book about Harry Potter and folklore and she's 'really regretting ' being so uncritical of the Harry Potter universe as it's so tainted by that awful J K Rowling who wrote it.
I sit there silently raging. I work in a university and deal constantly with pish like this and people constantly whacking you round the head with their gender identity crap and marinating in their own sense of moral progressiveness like a warm bath.
Particularly annoyed on 2 main points
- Presenter of course doesn't provide specific examples of J K Rowling's supposed bad behaviour as that would have required her to critically engage with the 'J K Rowling is anti trans and hurty menz feelings ' attitude prevalent with so many people
- if she's that bothered by so called 'anti-trans' views J K has been very open on her views on women's rights and the challenges they face from gender identity crap since 2020. The book will have been written since then. Why such craven caving to the 'J K is terrible ' warbling now?
I was so annoyed I couldn't really sleep. I went to a female- focused talk and of course this issue would come up wouldn't it, I feel that woman can't have anything for ourselves without this nefarious nonsense rearing its loathsome head. The cognitive dissonance of some women being proudly feminist yet believing in something which so actively undermines their own interests baffles me.