Oh, I was going to say I'm surprised she actually did the right thing and gave back an award she doesn't deserve lol
-
Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.
-
We have made minor adjustments to how the search bar works on ResetEra. You can read about the changes here.
Oh, I was going to say I'm surprised she actually did the right thing and gave back an award she doesn't deserve lol
Aren't TERFs usually just shitty progressives in that their views outside of the trans stuff are tolerant or at least not backward?
In American-speak, more like a deeply problematic and horrible Democrat rather than a Republican.
She just keeps stepping further into this shit doesn't she? I strongly suspect in the next couple of years her publicly stated views on a variety of issues will only get more heinous and more outspoken.
I hope a silver lining to all this is more people will be exposed to trans issues (I myself was and am somewhat bereft of knowledge and this has helped teach me some things).
Beyond that let her be shunned and languish in obscurity until she passes away into nothingness
I hope a silver lining to all this is more people will be exposed to trans issues (I myself was and am somewhat bereft of knowledge and this has helped teach me some things).
Beyond that let her be shunned and languish in obscurity until she passes away into nothingness
Well, their TERFy thoughts kinda muck up the whole "progressive feminist" stance they want to pretend to have. By slinging the shit they do at trans/NB people, they're pretty insulting to cis-women. Can't imagine most women like to be reduced to their gentiles or how many babies they can pop out, which ends up happening when you throw a fit over people using more trans-inclusion language and other things. There's so much garbage JK said in her essay that makes her completely hypocritical to being an actual feminist. You can't have those kinds of beliefs while also thinking cis-women are equal to men, deserve dignity, deserve certain rights that would benefit them in a patriarchal society...
There was even one example that has nothing to do with being trans (I mean, it did in her stupid logic, but whatever), where she said doctors are pushing autistic diagnosis at women who, in her opinion, don't need them, yet I know in the autistic community women are fighting for more attention for their autism, and women being under-diagnosed in medicine is a centuries old problem you should be fighting against, not for. So yes, throw ableism and shaming the mental health of women on top of her transphobia.
And if she can't even get feminism right for cis-women (let alone for all those who need it), what other skeletons are in her closet? I mean we are talking about the woman who can't muster a single thought about BLM or the pandemic this year but needs to spew TERF garbage every two seconds. And there's certainly something to say about the dipictions of race in the Harry Potter series. Dumbledore has to be a chaste gay man for like almost a hundred years (fucker is old) cause he had a crush on Wizard Hitler as a teenager... SO PROGRESSIVE.
Her hatred of trans people/belief in her own righteousness. Same thing that causes people to dig their heels into the sand in regards to any type of bigotry.
Yeah, but why? What happened to her to make her this way?
TERFs inevitably end up sliding into fascistic bullshit because their dedication to their anti-trans bigotry ends up superseding every single one of their other values. Practically every high-profile transphobe who was otherwise liberal before the dissent into TERFism fits this description. People like Grant Linnehan and Rowling end up dedicating literally all of their free time, platform, and resources to the bigotry to the point of allying themselves with conservatives to fuck over trans people.
British culture is particularly transphobic, to the degree that it has developed the moniker "TERF island" in online discourse. Transphobia is so readily platformed by both the right-wing and the center-left in the country that it has swayed a ton of people into becoming anti-trans bigots. There are also a lot of British feminists who are stuck in the 2nd wave ideals and never moved beyond that into 3rd wave/intersectional feminism. Mainstream British feminism is dominated by White Feminism, i.e. feminism that is only concerned with the rights of cis white women.
It must suck to realize that your hatred has become more important to you than your humanity.
At least I hope it sucks. I hope people like this realize that about themselves on some level and that it eats at them for the remainder of their days. It's the only justice over-privileged people like Rowling will ever face.
At least I hope it sucks. I hope people like this realize that about themselves on some level and that it eats at them for the remainder of their days. It's the only justice over-privileged people like Rowling will ever face.
From what I can tell, her POV is that cis women tend to have a history of sexual harassment and abuse that doesn't present itself in AMAB trans women as much because their assigned sex at the time implicitly protects them from this kind of gendered harassment. So she feels trans women shouldn't be allowed into cis women's safe spaces, because they don't have that common history of being harassment/abuse targets due to their different upbringing.
(Disclaimer: Above is not my opinion, just my summation of JKR's, so don't bother arguing the points with me unless you think I'm misrepresenting her.)
Obviously the above is completely invalidated by the huge continuing amounts of abuse that trans people get on a daily basis, and obviously it makes sense for cis and trans women (and/or victims of abuse in general) to come together based on a common thread of harassment, no matter where it comes from.
She says she herself was a victim of harassment and sexual abuse, so I suspect this is the core reason for her TERFy views. She's essentially boiling it down to "these people don't have the specific history of abuse that I have, so I'm not comfortable having them in this space". And this gateway drug into TERFness led her down a slippery slope that's ended up where we are now, where she's pushing quack medical journalism about the dangers of "transitioning too early" or whatever.
It's a very narrow-minded view of things that is probably easy to have when you're very rich and don't have to engage with people around you apart from over the internet.
I'm seeing this happen in realtime with a friend of mine, a young gay uni professor who has now constructed a big part of his identity around this shit, listens to podcasts by hip 'cancelled' people (Blocked and Reported) and veers more right by the day.
Gender isn't binary. This isn't a "view", it's a fact. One that Rowling is in denial of, because she, like every other god-forsaken TERF on this planet, is a colossal piece of shit.
It's also bullshit because trans people experience higher rates of harassment and abuse than cis white women. Similarly, being male-presenting also doesn't exempt you from sexual harassment and abuse, I'm a cis man and I was sexually abused as a teenager and I've experienced pretty severe workplace sexual harassment. 20% of men experience sexual abuse/sexual assault, and even more than that experience sexual harassment. The rates are higher for women obviously but they are still high for men/male-presenting people.
So trans women potentially experience sexual harassment and abuse prior to transition/coming out when they are still male-presenting, then experience trans specific harassment prior to transition, during transition, and post transition. Then trans women experience sexual harassment and abuse as women post transition (I wanna be clear here that by 'transition' I just mean presenting as a woman, I don't mean only medical transitioning. It's not necessary for a trans woman to medically transition in order to receive harassment and abuse targeted at women, simply presenting outwardly as their gender will cause that). Rowling's position is complete fucking garbage because it completely denies the high levels of abuse both male/male-presenting people experience AND the extremely high levels of abuse and harassment perpetrated against trans people (and trans women in particular). The entirety of her position is abuse and harassment denial of basically anyone who isn't a cis woman (cis men, trans people, non-binary people) and it's fucking abhorrent.
Not arguing the point with you, just expanding upon the point you already deftly made with your post.
Last edited:
I think the thing about progressivism is it kind of needs to come from an attitudinal approach to issues as they come up rather than being like, "oh, I support feminism, and then racial equality, and then LGB rights, but TRANS RIGHTS??? No siree Bob, that's where I draw the line." Like, there should be absolutely no reason to say all these other people deserve to be happy and to live their best lives, but then arbitrarily decide that trans people are not worthy of that privilege.
I understand this is sometimes a process for people to come around on certain issues, but the stuff that Rowling puts out there is so vile and hateful that it actively works to undermine her other views, which seem "fine" on a surface level. I fundamentally view progressives as empathetic, and that all stems from the same place. Rowling goes out of her way to ignore trans views and voices on this matter, to the point that she actually starts excluding cis women from her increasingly strained definition of womanhood, casualties of proving a point. "People who menstruate are just called women"? I'm not sure how feminist it is to suggest that cis women who don't menstruate (young girls, women who've been through menopause, women who simply don't due to any number of medical anomalies) aren't women for the sake of being sassy on Twitter.
Anyway, all this to say - the mask has slipped off. JK Rowling has never been a progressive and all the overtly progressive stuff she's pushed out is pure projection. It's like when a comedian gets caught whipping their dick out in front of unsuspecting women, and then suddenly their whole set is just about the evils of cancel culture. Like fuck you, you were never in this for anyone but yourself and were only an ally when it was convenient for you.
It's surreal. I've been listening to this podcast called Rabbit Hole which follows someone recounting his journey though becoming alt-right radicalised, and how recommendation algorithms on the internet (in this case, YouTube) are practically designed to push you further down that rabbit hole. It really makes me pay attention to what I'm being recommended and whether these are pushing me into some sort of feedback loop, because it seems you stop noticing after a while.
Well he's constantly reinforcing the bigotry so that makes sense that he would descend further into it and it would begin to consume other parts of his identity. I honestly don't know why people end up developing transphobic/TERF bigotry outside of exposure to and then consistent, repeated reinforcement of those ideas in media, culture, and personal interactions.
I think the answer is that Rowling honestly doesn't care about intersectionality. She sees anyone that's not a cis white woman as a threat to her identity. Her position has led her to throw anyone under the bus who has experienced sexual abuse or harassment and isn't a cis woman (or even cis women who were abused/harassed by other women). It's led her to denying to womanhood of not just trans women, but also intersex women and cis women who do not menstruate. I'm quite sure her bigotry extends to non-binary folks as well, and I wouldn't be surprised to see it extend to racism and homophobia eventually.
It's so infuriating to see, he is (was?) one of the smartest people I know but this shit really spoke to his contrarian tendencies, and now it's ingrained.
Has she started making friends with Nazis yet? That seems to be the endpoint for bigots that at some point they're identifying and palling with Nazis after getting a taste of their first bigoted action.
Makes my blood boil and I'm glad Mermaids are lifting the veil on the actual impact it's having.
Gets to beyond vile when some smug, rich asshole on twitter can spew vile transphobic garbage for months, claim she doesn't hate trans people, sues people into silence/apology for suggesting she's harmful to children all while sending families into a whirlpool of suicide attempts and trauma.
Words failing to find a suitable impact.
She had a good stance on certain social issues, but then farted away all that goodwill and made it seem like she was just morally posturing with the recent transphobic comments.
She was one of the champagne socialists - those that supported Tony Blair and the Labour party in a very high profile way. Her political views are followed by the majority of people on this forum, which tends to be labour = good, conservative = scum view. So you can see how lots once considered her "good people" as you say, as her political views aligned well.
Unfortunately transphobia and hate are right across the political spectrum in the UK, its not done on party lines.
She is beyond redemption. There are few people i actually hate in the world. Really hate. She is one of them.
Others did also follow that line, Linehan famously. The UK broadcaster and borderline national treasure Jonathan Ross also went down this line of socialism and transphobia.
I've heard him make the argument that as a gay child he could have been misdiagnosed and forcefully reassigned. Just absurd shit and an obvious rationalisation.
I think that, more than anything, this stuff lined up nicely with his argumentative, contrarian tendencies. He's also weirdly resentful of his students being so open and forceful, if a bit clumsy, about trans and non-binary rights, which makes me think that a bit of generational envy may be at work, too.
Not yet but she already friended the woman who wrote the "we should hug nazis" article
Didn't she say something along the lines of "I had this trans landlord/coworker/something and he was really mean and abusive to me :(" as a way to excuse it?
Fuck you, JK Rowling.
Sorry, that's all I really have to contribute to this topic. I feel like there's nothing more to really say.
Good on the RFKHR for calling her out on her garbage tier views. She doesn't deserve that award. Period. As a huge fan of the Harry Potter series, I'm just disgusted with her.
Sorry, that's all I really have to contribute to this topic. I feel like there's nothing more to really say.
Good on the RFKHR for calling her out on her garbage tier views. She doesn't deserve that award. Period. As a huge fan of the Harry Potter series, I'm just disgusted with her.
Bethany Mandel
She literally wrote an article "we need to start befriending neo nazis"
Oh I remember her, and she posted an article about whining that now people think rightly rightly that she's a dumbass for trying to be kind to nazis and tone police protests against them. It's the height of white privilege, but she doesn't believe in that. Oh wait she's a conservative mother who homeschools her kids, buys guns to keep them safe, and is a Parkland massacre truther.
Actually taking it from her fits in with the "cancel culture" narrative, though.
Just criticizing her is the best play here.
apparently they did take it from her and she's trying to change the narrative 🤷‍♂️
Tricky one. She clearly enjoys all of 'this' so despite wanting everyone to constantly call her out, I also want her to just... fuck off.
Well, she's also a cantankerous bigot who seldom makes wise public maneuvers.