Alice Walker supports JK Rowling

There is an interesting essay: Dostoevsky and the Pleasure of Taking Offense

There's a good quotation from the Karamazov novel (said by Father Zosima):

“A man who lies to himself is the first to take offense. It sometimes feels very good to take offense, doesn’t it? And surely he knows that no one has offended him, and that he himself has invented the offense and told lies just for the beauty of it, that he has exaggerated for the sake of effect, that he has picked on a word and made a mountain out of a pea—he knows all that, and still he is the first to take offense, he likes feeling offended, it gives him great pleasure, and thus he reaches the point of real hostility.”

And there's a nice discussion of this.

A scholar of Russian literature named Gary Saul Morson recently responded to such questions when talking of The Brothers Karamazov. “We appreciate that people, far from maximizing their own advantage, sometimes deliberately make victims of themselves in order, for example, to feel morally superior.” In this sense, taking offense can transform humiliation into the pride of victimhood, thus embodying the contradictory commixture we all experience, at least minimally, of self-importance and the feeling of inadequacy around others who appear to have an advantage. Offense-taking invigorates a righteous indignation in which disgrace and self-importance are merged into a false victory. To react with indignation suggests an inviolable personal center that, by the sheer magnitude of the outburst, seems to demonstrate its own validity. In this way, offense-taking can manifest the inward inconsistencies and the quiet lies we tell ourselves.

quillette.com/2022/06/17/the-duelist-mentalityon-the-allures-of-taking-offense/

Oh, that's good! Thanks, RethinkingLife.

Amazing post, really perfectly captures the state of things!

The use of “guy” for both male and female eroded the ability of children to easily feel confident in which gender they were.

Personally have always really disliked the term 'guys' when applied to mixed sex groups. As far as I'm concerned it is a male term of reference and I always feel irked when it is used. Its use feels almost ubiquitous now

Thanks so much for posting this @ArabellaScott !
Can today possibly get any better?

OMG Alice Walker! fantastic.

"In 1967, Walker married Melvyn Rosenman Leventhal, a Jewish civil rights lawyer and the couple became the first legally married interracial couple in Mississippi. The couple had a daughter before divorcing in 1976."

Google is your friend. If Alice Walker's an anti-semite then I'm the Duchess of Cornwall and my pronouns are ma'am, one and your royal highness.

In fairness, having read her book The Chicken Chronicles, Walker is a little bit batshit these days. There is some weird magical thinking going on in her head. I was very, very strange and nothing like her incredible writing in the past.

Still, nice to see someone supporting JKR, who deserves so much more support from fellow authors.

Walker has expressed support forand recommendedDavid Icke's bizarre and unquestionably antisemitic work: www.theguardian.com/books/2018/dec/17/alice-walker-antisemitic-david-icke-book

If the use of "guys" is problematic it would seem there should be even more rejection of the sex binary historically when the term "men" was the universal substitute for "human."

Yes I've been reading about the David Icke stuff today as obviously Twitter is coming hard to paint her as an anti semite for extra evil terf points. I didn't know anything about it.

She has had a lot of flack for just admitting to reading him, which of course is at the heart of everything going on. She's Reading the Wrong Books. Also, look how often they try to tar JKR as an anti semite.

As I try to find out more you can see there a blatant agenda of the media that has written about it (on both sides). I am really not sure what to make of it.

She also wrote a very unpleasant "poem" about reading the Talmud that claims some pretty damned unpleasant stuff. It was written "to" her Jewish ex-husband:

Are Goyim (us) meant to be slaves of Jews, and not only
That, but to enjoy it?
Are three year old (and a day) girls eligible for marriage and intercourse?
Are young boys fair game for rape?
Must even the best of the Goyim (us, again) be killed?

alicewalkersgarden.com/2017/11/it-is-our-frightful-duty-to-study-the-talmud/

I know the ancient texts of all religions have some bloody dodgy stuff in them (Lot offering up his daughters for gang rape to distract the mob from the visitors, anyone?) so yes, it's easy to find heinous stuff in a religious text.

But yes, Alice Walker is now anti-semitic - probably very influenced by the disgraceful racist treatment of her by her ex-husband's family when they were married.

Brilliant!

Agree, incredibly difficult read. Also covered the fact that fgm occurred in western "WASP" Victorian society.

It would be v hard to spend so much time writing so eloquently about such awful abuse of women's bodies without drawing parallels with what gender ideology wants to do to the bodies of children and young women in particular it seems.

I don't disagree, but it's now pretty common to tell people with family members, spouses, and kids of a different race that they are racist. So, this might not mean much to people who think that way. Years ago I had a black boyfriend I was quite serious about, and some idiot woman in a class I was in decided I was a racist because I didn't like affirmative action schemes which we were discussing. According to her my relationship was almost certainly objectifying on my part. Cause, obviously.

The headline may claim she recommended it, but the text of linked article merely says it is on her nightstand. Books currently on my nightstand include a who's who of motoring writers. I don't endorse it, I've never even opened it, and nobody in the house gives 2 hoots about motoring.

I also have a book (not on my nightstand) with an introduction by Goebbels. I don't want it, but I can't work out how to get rid of it. I don't want to sell it, because who would buy it? But I can't throw it away because it's a book - and of historical interest.

There may well be other examples of her views that actually mean something, but you can't condemn book people for having books. And the more you have, the more likely some are to be weird.

Yes, beautiful and human.

re 'guys'
in probably about 1972 we had a visiting PE teacher who was American. She frequently addressed us (girls aged about 13) as 'guys' as in...
'gee, I don't know, some of you guys seem to have a period EVERY week'
I have to say that not only did we think it strange to be addressed as guys, but we completely missed that she was being sarcastic.

It is possible to be an anti-Semite and also support JKR.

The two are not mutually exclusive.

Oh wow!!

Although I did find my milk had gone off today and I suspect she soured it. She definitely will have done if she read a wrong book.

I'm a militant atheist and before campaigning to uphold the sex-based rights of women got all my attention, I spent quite some time opposing the religious indoctrination of (my) children in Scottish state schools.

So, years ago I read with interest a book called "God hates you, hate him back". Which goes into detail on the terrible ideas in the three big monotheistic religions and their main texts, how these are justified today or explained away. I could have written a poem like that, not that I have AW's talent, but disliking - and massively so - a religion (which I do with all three) doesn’t equate with hating believers of that religion.

So I'd like to see more than criticisms of Judaism before that label of anti-semitic is thrown at someone. And the definition of these -isms and -phobias is usually based on having no reason to dislike/fear/hate something. I reckon growing to dislike the culture of your husband after he treated you badly rather falls under the heading of may just possibly have a reason to do so in my book.

As a young woman, I devoured Alice Walker's books. The gave me a sense of empathy and solidarity with other women, irrespective of background or race.

'In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens' has got to be the most evocative of titles ever written. Title never fails to remind me of my mother's roses and dahlias. Whatever is going on in the world, mothers are a bulwark against the ugliness.

Nice reminder to dig them out, or get afresh on kindle.

Thank you for sharing, I'm really pleased to see this.

Fanbloodytastic.

Only just seen this. Thanks for sharing Arabella. When I read your OP I felt quite emotional.