This thread is specifically for people who think JK Rowling is awful so..

[CurlewKate]

If you don't think she is please don’t post. Please can you tell me specifically what she has said or done that is so bad. I promise that I will listen and not argue. If you could include links that would be great. If your inclination is to assume that I’m posting in bad faith and any reasonably well informed person must be stupid or bigoted not to know, then please just let the thread die.

That’s really interesting. I don’t actually blame him, that’s the way the world works in the age of social media. But it does make JKR’s generosity to causes that she cares about stand out.

Yes, it's very interesting, isn't it? Marcus Rashford has undoubtedly done a lot of good, and his specific motivation for doing so doesn't take away from that. But if his motivation was to cultivate a superhero reputation for himself, that does stand in stark contrast to JK quietly donating vast sums to various charitable causes every year and then spectacularly sacrificing her own reputation in front of the entire world on the altar of a cause she truly believes in (women's rights). She knew that huge numbers of people would turn on her in the most vicious way imaginable if she spoke out, and instead of doing what most people would do and keeping her mouth shut, she thought, "I'm one of the richest women in the world, I'd better take one for the team."

@martinirossi is the epitome of morality, has absolutely never, ever purchased anything from anywhere where they can’t trace the provenance back to the source, and it’s ALL completely ethical. You would hope that was the case given the moral high ground they appear to be sitting on.

Oh my goodness 🤦‍♀️

Thanks for the Rashford info; rather demonstrates, as with transgenderism, what lies beneath the surface is much more self centred and money driven than what we see.

The attempts at barrel scraping are quite something

This thread is funny.

Why do you dislike JKR?

Because she smoked a cigar and drank whiskey and I hate that photo
Cos she said all those transphobic things I can't find a quote for
Cos she hasn't done enough for charity or given away enough money
Cos she started talking about politicians being blind to all the hate they stir up and reminded everyone of their behaviour at Indie Ref
Cos she thrust totally a innocent transwoman into the spotlight, who didn't deserve it despite harassing her for years
Cos she's mean to India on Twitter when India isn't getting enough attention
Cos she's got obviously dyed hair and talks about the importance of words having meaning
Cos she dares to claim to be a feminist
Cos she stopped all debate in Scottish politics by wearing a t-shirt in protest at no debate and that's not eloquent or classy enough
Cos she's got too much money
Cos she's got too many political opinions and said them out loud.
Cos she's far right politically cos she's aligned with Trump and to the right of Nigel Farage
Cos she's compared someone saying that 14 year olds shouldnt be infantilised and are responsible for their bigotry with what creepy paedos say.
Cos she's excluded transwomen in her charity work - for setting up a women's only rape crisis centre
Cos she's helped to fund court cases defending women's rights and she should have spent the money better
Cos she's fallen out with all the Harry Potter cast apart from the old gits and the bloke who plays Malfoy
Cos she's guilty of child exploitation because some fast fashion chain might have had unethical factories illegally employing children and it's all her fault for creating Harry Potter
Cos she's responsible for Daniel Radcliffes addiction problems because he couldn't handle the fame of being an child actor. She should have recruited adults to the lead roles or insisted on never selling the movie rights because Hollywood exploits children. She's responsible for those children because movie executives and greedy parents are happy to use them.
Cos she's hateful and uses her power in a way that I don't approve of whilst simultaneously not doing enough with her power
Cos she's not done enough for children.
Cos she's responsible for global warming and plastic pollution because of Harry Potter merch.
Cos she's given too much business to China and that threatens global security
Cos she's over privileged and punches down. She weaponises rape and trauma of women against transwomen when she talks about her experience of domestic violence and poverty as a single parent. She shouldn't be allowed to talk about such things.
Cos she didn't support Glinner enough
Cos she doesn't treat transwomen as individual people who are just women and who should be treated just like women, whilst I can't define how women should be treated
Cos she challenged the Scottish hate crime laws and said she was willing to be arrested and we'd have no hate now if only those laws had passed
Cos she's 'dangerous' (sorry I can't actually find any reasoning or explanation of why she's dangerous)
Cos Nicola took her trying to hold power to account personally and thought it was vicious to challenge the political position of the First Minister of Scotland who had repeated refused to engage on the subject and had instead thrown accusations of bigotry about
Cos she publicly correctly sexed some males including some sex offenders when they identify as women thus embarrassing a bunch of politicians who were hoping you wouldn't notice and ask them difficult questions
Cos she challenged Peter Tatchell prove humans can change sex and said it was as likely as him surviving jumping off a building by flapping his arms and this is apparently wanting him to harm himself
Cos she thinks wombs are important and that's hateful cos that excludes all women without a womb.
Cos Harry Potter tourism is ruining some cities
Cos she's anti-science
Cos she swears and writes on perfectly good books
Cos she's rich and talks about luxury beliefs
Cos she's a hypocrite because she's written under a male name
Cos she didn't criticise Elon Musk for his Nazi salute
Cos she is racist for supporting Sandie Peggie
Cos she dehumanised medical professional Dr Upton by calling him a male and criticising him for saying he felt unsafe around a woman a foot shorter than him and saying sex is a nebulous dog whistle and that he was biologically female.
Cos she's been retweeted by some people we don't like
Cos she's an old dried up hag, whose has dinosaur views and I look better than her
Cos my Mum agrees with her
Cos transwomen are more oppressed and she should suck it up without question so they are mildly less marginalised
Cos she's no Marcus Rashford.

1. Women are responsible for what men do.
2. Women saying no to men is a hate crime.
3. Women speaking for themselves are exclusionary and selfish.
4. Women’s opinions are violence against men, thus male violence against women is justified
5. Women and Feminism must be useful to men or they are worthless.
6. Women who go around being female AT men by menstruating and breastfeeding babies deserve punishment.
7. Women should always be grateful to men for everything.
8. Men are whatever men say they are and women are whatever men say they are.
9. Men always know the “real reasons” for everything women do and say.

10. The worst thing about male violence is that it makes men look bad. 11. Whatever women suffer from, it is worse when it happens to men. 12. Women’s ability to recognize male behavior patterns is misandry. 13. Angry women are crazy. Angry men have trouble expressing themselves. 14. Women have all the rights they need: The right to remain silent. 15. Men are the default human. Women are strange subhuman others. 16. Everyone owns and controls women’s bodies except the women themselves. 17. Men are better at performing femininity than women are because they invented it and it gives them a boner.

HOUSE

Exactly.

Along with can you all put the same energies into fighting male violence against women and girls as you do into trying to tear down JKR and making things up about her because she calls a spade a spade and material reality bothers you.

Males commit 98% of the sexual and violent crime that occur after all.

That would be precious too 🥰.

She's donated tens of millions to the two major hospitals in Edinburgh. Both have new modern wings donated in memory of her mother who died of MS. Pretty worthwhile issue I’d have thought.

This is such a tiresome argument.
a) it's possible to try and reduce the harm of your consumption without being perfect
b) your average punter does not have the clout, platform and agency that JKR has with manufacturers. Though TBF she has lost some of it by burning up a lot of goodwill

How has she burned up a lot of goodwill?

I engaged in this thread in good faith on the basis of OP's opening post that a) asked JKR fans not to engage and b) said she'd listen and not argue. I've not said anything about her views, but given my honestly held opinion on the way she uses her social media platform, which I find off-putting as counter-productive. I say this as a person who broadly agrees with her position on trans issues. You are coming across as an intolerant echo chamber the equal of anything you'd find in Reddit.

By being spiky and unpleasant on her giant platform on social media.

Last reply from me for now, I have a meeting in a bit.

Spiky and unpleasant to those who give her rape threats for speaking facts. What a bitch! Why are you not speaking out on those who threaten her and are spiky and unpleasant to her?

Internalised misogyny, plain and simple.

A 'good faith' JKR slagging off session on MN FWR.

Righto

Totally sincere.

The truth is, and saying the following isn't a reflection of MN being an echo chamber, that JKRowling can't do right for doing wrong because she's a rich woman and she's therefore held to a much higher standard than any male AND she's dared to talk about politics which is totally unacceptable for a woman to do.

That's the bottom line.

She'd get more shit than her male peers without the existence of MN.

I personally don't particularly fan girl her as such. She's never going to get it right all the time and I'm not going to expect that.

However I find it absolutely hilarious watching so many misogynistic twerps imploding when she says something truthful or inconvenient to them. It's comedy gold watching so many people trying desperately to put the boot in and embarrassing themselves with their ignorance, ridiculous expectations that they wouldn't ask anyone else to have and the outrageous sexism.

Where is the anger at George Lucas? Why hasn't there been outrage at all the other footballers who are Marcus Rashford? Why hasn't Paul McCartney been singled out for his failure to address child labour in China for making fast fashion and mountains of merch that's thousands of teens across the world have bought? Why hasnt every actor (particularly the ones who has been a child actor) brought a class action against Hollywood studios and taken a petition to the Whitehouse demanding the end of all child acting?

When she's been targeted with such absolute fucking nonsense, and frankly at times nonce-sense, it all ceases to be utterly meaningless and easy to just dismiss as all being bad faith.

Because the majority of the time it actually is, including this entire thread.

Seeing it all written down in one place, just serves to highlight it's ridiculousness.

The fact you have engaged in that and haven't really noticed how absurd it is until someone puts it all together in a single post and goes 'have you actually stopped to look at how fucking stupid this is', says you probably should reflect on that rather than go lashing out at MN for being an echo chamber.

Honestly I'm howling at some of this, and I hope JKRowling does too, because frankly having a sense of humour is probably the only sane way to deal with the sheer magnitude of this utter utter bollocks.

It's like a state of actual madness some of this stuff.

This

Yep. Everyone should be kind, especially when you are the target of mass harassment, death threats, actual stalking and mass disinformation.

How very dare someone in her position tell people doing that to pipe the fuck down and stop being a dickhead. The horror.

It's not clear that she has.

It's likely that her new book will top the best seller list. The Harry Potter franchise is still alive and well.

I suspect many people are blissfully unaware of any controversy.

She has certainly caused upset in a sector of the HP fandom, but her Robert Galbraith books make clear her views on fandoms and she has made it very clear that she doesn't care about 'legacy'.

If she has burned 'goodwill', I don't think she attaches any value to that kind of goodwill.

She hasn't burned up the goodwill of anyone who matters.

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

'nonce-sense' - not heard this before

Ooh a woman being ‘spiky’ - how unbecoming of the female sex.
And unpleasant - how dreadful. Women should indeed be pleasant at all times, no matter what life throws at them.
Women need to be spiky to burst the bubbles of bullshit that float their way.

Books

In 1991 the population of UK was 94.5% white (it was 83% in 2021). For a private school in Scotland, Hogwarts was probably over represented by minorities, compared to the general population of Britain at the time.

JKR was groundbreaking in her representation at the time. Do you know how rare it was to find Asian and Black characters in children’s books at that time? Even in 2018, only 4% of children’s books had a minority character.

Padma and Parvati - there isn’t too much about Padma, but Parvati is awesome. She stands up to bullies in her first scene (flying lesson), she asks questions in classes that go to the heart of the issue Binns & Umbridge), she’s the first student to dispatch a boggart confidently and without support, she is a loyal and sensitive friend to Lavender (rabbit). Yes, divination is mocked but Parvati is passionate about the subject, she thinks (fake) Moody is a creep, she is compassionate about Trelawny, she joins the DA, she engages Dolohov in combat. You and I read different books if all you got out of them was Parvati was Indian and JKR had her like Divination and that so racist. I gotta say as a teen Asian girl myself, I loved the way she was portrayed.

I want you to find any reference in the books that describes the goblins in as anything other than goblins.

Cho Chang - there are lots of south east Asian descent who say it’s not racist name as there other people (mostly not SE Asian) saying it is. We see her and every other character through Harry’s eyes. Her crying is perfectly understandable, it’s Harry who feels awkward about it, because he’s a teenage boy!

Kingsley Shacklebolt. First name counts as well as the last name here, so he’s pretty regal. I’ve heard lots of theories on the last name, but I like the one where he is a Auror so he literally shackles suspects and prisoners (we know the Ministry uses chains). My point being you choose to interpret as racist (as with Cho Chang and Parvati) while I think there are other views.

Seamus - He sets fire to his feather and melts a cauldron in the first book. That’s it.

Luna - neighbour of the Weasleys down in south west England. No Irishness as far as we know.

Films
Full of crap that took liberties. JKR was not personally responsible for all the storytelling that was cut, the dialogue changes, the production decisions and the anything else - although she did want Alan Rickman as Snape - who was too old for the role. And Evanna Lynch to be sure, but I think they had corresponded prior to the casting and JKR knew of her.

ETA: Crap grammar & spelling. Have edited some, but not all.

I didn’t give my views about werewolves, I forgot and the post is already too long…

I think this thread, like so many other JK Rowling threads shows the double standards where she has to be ‘X’ times better than anyone else to escape censure. She has to absorb so much abuse and she will never be good enough to some people.

And anyone pointing this out is relegated to being ‘fan girls’ and such.

I've got up and made breakfast and I'm STILL chuckling at the idea that posters thought that a thread on FWR full of misogyny and bizarre unequal expectations of men v women in terms of morality and social responsibility would go unchallenged because of 'good faith' when it happens to be about JKRowling and FWR is 'just' a JKR fanclub!

Mate.....

.... we were here doing this feminist stuff centring women before JKRowling said owt about wombs.