Trans People Launch High Street Protest Against Sale of Harry Potter Merchandise

[IwantToRetire]

Trans rights activists launched a peaceful protest outside Waterstones in Guildford this afternoon (May 16), chalking messages on the pavement to draw people’s attention to the company’s marketing of Harry Potter merchandise.

Protest group Defund Transphobes says Harry Potter author JK Rowling uses money from the sale of merchandise to fund what they describe as her “anti trans campaign”.

Continues at https://guildford-dragon.com/trans-people-launch-high-street-protest-against-sale-of-harry-potter-merchandise/

I misread that as "Spot being a Fury"!
That's because I was reading the other thread 😂

I always find it interesting that it’s the HP series that is the focus of the protests about JKR-as-author and never the Strike series.

It’s late at night so I’m not very articulate, but I’ve a half formed theory in my head. Something along the lines of the chalk protesters loved HP as children and are now rebelling against a figure they saw as mummy. Whereas Strike is real, set in the present (almost) with recognisable bits of the UK, and deals with some very adult ideas. I would postulate that not many of them have ever opened a Robert Galbraith book.

Their loss.

It’s an interesting character you’ve created. I’m trying to imagine a person who finds Harry Potter unsafe but football hooligans are just fine.

Add in that on another thread the person is talking about being keen to join the traveller community in order to find a ‘real man’. Perhaps I’m wrong but I’ve never got the impression that they’d eagerly fly the progress pride flag.

Have you any idea how idiotic this sounds? A bookshop being ‘unsafe’ for precious little trans flowers because it stocks popular children’s novels by an author you don’t like?

the burly piss-tossers

Oh I remember that very sane and adult protest! Nothing says “I’m a laydee” like peeing in a jar and throwing it around in the street. 🤣

A reading group with a list of banned authors sounds very open and progressive.😂

Yes, rather like Berlin 1936.

Afraid of a bookstore? I've heard it all now 😂

There is a £1 million prize for anyone who can find anything she has said or written that is transphobic.

They are such drama lamas, which is better than them being violent.

I challenged my cousin who was parroting Stonewall and said, "They can't use the men's toilet because they will get raped".

I asked if he had that little respect for men? A perfectly normal average guy who could be your DH, partner, son etc who has never assaulted anyone in their life but if a trans woman walks in to the toilet they suddenly turn in to rapists.

Dame Edna always claimed to be naturally wisteria.

Interestingly, the progressive Muslims are very critical of the calls for assassination, violence and censorship against Salman Rushdie - it is only the very ‘conservative’ Muslims (who support sharia law, covering up of women, child marriage, enacting their beliefs that women are half the value of a man in society) that don’t like what he said.

Well done to you and your reading group for siding with the most regressive and misogynist views on the planet. Your faith in the groups ‘progressive’ views is utterly misplaced. Maybe hang out on here a bit more and you’ll see that.

Progressive and Moderate Muslim Views
Condemnation of Violence: Many liberal and moderate Muslims strongly oppose calls for assassination and physical attacks, such as the 2022 stabbing that left Rushdie severely injured. They argue that violence has no place in responding to literature.
Critique of Extremism: Some ex-Muslims and progressive scholars within the community actively push back against the concept of apostasy laws and use platforms like the Reddit Ex-Muslim Community to voice solidarity with free speech and condemn fundamentalist backlash.

Thank you for this. It's very frustrating for ordinary, moderate Muslims to be lumped in with extremists who call for violence and murder.
This poster is colluding with that.

No I am not colliding with any extremists please don't put words in my mouth. Honestly the whole experience on this thread has been pretty hard to read, but even so, saying that I am just as bad as an extremist is one of the most hurtful things somebody has ever said about me.

I will go away and reflect on the matter. Thank you to the few people who took the time to message me support after the onslaught I received in this topic, your kindness has touched me ❤️

How can you ban books by any author when you haven't taken the time to read them? Why not read, and make your own mind up based on actual evidence and content, rather than believing people who have their own agenda?

Well, exactly.
Why not read the books and make your own mind up?
Why not read what JKR wrote and make your own mind up?
Perhaps that poster should go away and reflect on that.

Onslaught? Hardly. People are responding to your posts. No one forced you to post on here. And it’s not very kind to support an ideology that promotes the removal of hard won women’s rights so I really hope you do go away and reflect.

And reflect on the fact you think it's acceptable to speak for Muslims, assuming you are not one.

I mean, you could choose to apologise for calling me basically a Nazi?

Oh dont be ridiculous!
that would ruin the victim narrative

Nobody is saying you are as bad as an extremist. Just that by taking a side, without bothering to find out the actual facts of a situation (the Rushdie issue in this case), puts you inadvertently on a side with people you probably wouldn't want to support.

And to be fair, you did imply that someone was a Nazi on no evidence at all!

I think its partly that.

Maybe its that because HP is used a lot in fan fiction and their imagining of the characters is a million miles away from what they know JKR would write, her real life views delegitimise their fantasy?

More likely its that they dont want children to falling love with Potter. Then idealise JKR.

They need every generation of children to think anyone speaking out against gender ideology is evil.

Unbelievable.

The Satanic Verses was winning plaudits even in Iran until some idiot stirred things up and the notoriously murderous late Ayatollah issued a bounty on his head - inciting murder being illegal in most countries. Rushdie had to go into hiding for years, experienced multiple murder attempts and lost an eye when he was attacked. For being the author of a book similar in genre to The Master and Margarita or Good Omens, and perhaps more for daring to say he's an atheist who was once Muslim.

You'll go a long way to find a normal bookshop that doesn't stock Rushdie's award-winning work now, in spite of past fire bombings by lunatics who think it's OK to burn/censor books - people who agree with the author of Mein Kampf that it's good to eliminate books you think you don't like, even though you've not even bothered to read the precis or the history around the problem, let alone the author's actual work.

Isn't it curious how the loonies want to align themselves with the hard right anti gay US evangelicals in wanting to get rid of innocuous kids' books? They were the ones who had the Harry Potter books on proscribed reading lists for US schools in the 90s.

As ever, they can dish it out but can't take it.

Okay for them to hurl the slurs, receive even the mildest of criticism back and on go the victim clothes. Pathetic.

Know what makes me feel unsafe? Men pretending to be women and utilising female only spaces.