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I don’t need a reason to boycott the new series. It looks like it’s going to be shiite anyway.
We can pick and choose boycotts. I don’t see everyone boycotting goods from China and America. Some do. Let people pick without shaming them
Fond memories of reading the books as a kid, ordering the first books from England before they made all the dates for release the same.
All my books are thrown out and I don’t touch that shit even pirate stuff because fuck her.
Just a few hours ago the social media algorithm gods decided to show me a video from an autistic woman who was basically saying exactly this. “Hey, my special interest is HP, but y’all need to understand that this isn’t a ‘Death of the Author’ situation, Rowling is literally funding anti-trans bigotry and we need to not be complicit in that. I don’t care if you pirate her stuff or buy second-hand or only read fanfiction, but don’t give her money.” Personally, I try to stay away even from secondhand consumption of her stuff because I just don’t care about it, and I think it’s at least best to avoid giving any positive or neutral (which to me includes any film/book review that isn’t primarily focused on highlighting Rowling’s bigotry, even if it’s largely negative on the storytelling, prose, or dialogue) attention to the media in her franchise, but I can understand some people have a much stronger attachment to it and want to minimise the harm they cause by continuing to watch through pirated means.
But it’s not really my place (as a cishet white dude) to say whether or not that’s the correct choice for other people to make, so I won’t judge any choice anyone makes that doesn’t involve giving her money through purchasing official products.
Worth noting that scalpers exist, and second hand isnt always guilt free. Piracy leads to free advertisement via word of mouth. Better to just find any other series about magic or high fantasy
i’d rather you pirate her stuff than buy it, but i would really prefer you shut the fuck up about consuming it, regardless. both to stop other people from engaging with it, and because i do not wanna fucking hear about it, as a trans person
(harsh tone not directed at you, OP, it’s in agreement, if anything)
Harry Potter is fascinating to me because the books have messages against bigotry in them, and you look at the author and wonder how the gap between reality and the story could possibly exist
I feel like, if you think about what the book does, the gap isn’t as big as you’d think.
“Hermione, don’t let being muggleborn get you down. You’re a powerful witch, and therefore have value. …Let’s just ignore how we treat Filch and act like his bitter attitude is his own fault, alright?”
“It is choices that matter, not circumstances. Like how the sorting hat chose for these people to be Slytherins, so they’re all evil and probably ugly.”
“Look at how heroic Harry is for freeing a slave. Now, we’re going to give him a slave and not think too hard about that. In fact, Hermione wanting to free other slaves is annoying and we should laugh at her because of it.”
Everyone’s pointing out the “slaves like being slaves, actually” messaging of the books, which…fair. But there’s so much more to it than that.
Extremely intelligent magical creatures like goblins and centaurs are treated pretty explicitly as second-class citizens. The Wizarding World is an apartheid state, and this is only barely given mention in the series.
There’s fatphobia and some very essentialist language, describing characters like Dudley as piggy.
There’s the much-discussed antisemitic tropes inherent in the way the greedy banker goblins are portrayed.
It has an insanely strong attribution bias. The exact same behaviour or physical attribute can be endearing or evil depending on how much Rowling herself likes the character. It’s why the incredibly creepy incel behaviour of Snape is ultimately portrayed as a positive because he did it in the name of the one-sided obsession that he (and Rowling) called love. It’s why Dudley’s fatness makes him a pig but Molly’s is warm and loving. Some degree of this is, in fairness, to be expected in a children’s series. But it doesn’t lessen as the books age up with their audience, and I think it’s harder to excuse with the behaviours than it is with the physical descriptions (which are, to be fair, from Harry’s PoV).
There’s one of like two black characters being named “Shacklebolt”, the one east Asian character being “Cho Chang”, and the Irish one being the one with a penchant for blowing things up.
Despite one of the strongest themes many of the books most ardent readers got out of the series being about self-acceptance for who you are, we get a fair few examples where people are made fun of for who they are, or are forced to change to fit in by the end of the story. Filch is a stand-in for squibs as a whole in this regard, and is not viewed with much respect. Tonks had strong queer/trans parallels, until at the end she decides to lean fully into her cishet femininity in order to win over a man.
But perhaps most importantly, our protagonist, and through him the narrative as a whole, only ever views things through an extremely liberal lens. The problem is the big bad evil wizard, and the single lazy incompetent Minister than enables him. It’s not a system of oppression and compliance, that starts from when children are sorted into “smart, brave, evil, or the leftovers” at age 11. It frames things as a world where leadership by the Good People like himself or Dumbledore must be a good thing, but if the Bad People are in charge, like the Malfoys or Voldemort, they are the problem. In the end, despite having been screwed over numerous times by the institutions of the magical world, Harry himself becomes a literal magic-world police officer.
And that’s without even getting in to the extended universe. Stuff like the entire continent of Africa having just one school despite the enormous range of languages and cultures. Or one in the Americas having a Latin name despite ostensibly having been founded before European contact. Just generally signs that Rowling really doesn’t care enough about cultural sensitivity to think through her worldbuilding.
TBF, the red flags are there.
Hermione gets moked for protesting. slavery is normalised but it’s ok, because one elf becomes free, no one cares about the rest…
And the rest of the house elves think he’s weird for wanting freedom…
I was an adult when I started reading them because my younger sister liked them, back when the movies first came out. I definitely had a few moments of ‘oh thats kinda wrong’ but I thought it was just crappy writing in a kids book and moved on.
And now I know better (well, for years now but you know what I mean).
A video essay I watched once made an interesting point, which was that JK named Hermione Hermione because she didn’t want any real young girls to her bullied because of the books. Basically, she thought Hermione was the worst, and made the boys only barely tolerate her because she was useful to them.
But then a bunch of Hermione-coded girls started absolutely loving the books because they saw themselves in it, and the movies cast a pretty girl instead of an “ugly” one, and suddenly JK’s “oh shit, uh, yeah… hero…” 😛
I think she still thinks she’s fighting against bigotry, she’s just lost the plot (if she ever had it in the first place). There’s lots of absolutely heinous people who fully believe that they’re the good guys.
Maybe the editors forced it to change?
wonder how the gap between reality and the story could possibly exist
This is because everyone can become an absolute bigoted POS like that terf if they really wish for it. But many of us decide that we don’t really give a crap about other people’s genitalia, let alone about what they do with it so we just live our lives as if that was none of our business. Because, you know, being a decent human being is not that hard and letting people live their lives as they want doesn’t make your life worse.
Yeah… The closer you look at the Harry Potter books, the more you wonder how we didn’t realise JK Rowling was a bigot sooner
Some artistic works age badly and I think it’s okay. It becomes a problem if artist themselves is aging badly and doubling down on things that could definitely be better about their works.
Exactly. If Rowling was willing to own up the problematic stuff in her books and grow from it, it wouldn’t be a big issue. If she even disappeared into her castle and lived her life quietly releasing bad additions to the universe, it’d just blend into the background and only be occasionally brought up. Instead, JK became a Nazi who reinforces patriarchy, strengthens fascism, and made life hell for so many trans people.
The UK used to be trans friendly, it stopped being so mostly due to Joanne’s influence.
Btw, she hates it when you call her Joanne.
I have no idea why she never uses her full name: Joanne Kowling Rowling
It’s because she really wants to be a man, and takes her (his?) aggression about penis envy out on trans people.
She prefers “JK” because it’s more masculine
The real reason Joanne hates trans women is because they’re giving up being a man, the thing JK wants most of all.
Edit: It is no accident that JK Rowling has never written a female POV character
I don’t like this speculation. While it’s fair to say she has issues with her own relationship to femininity, claiming she’s a closeted man is going too far. It reeks too much of the whole “homophobes are closeted gays” trope, which is a kinda homophobic in how it blames queer people for their own oppression.
On top of all that, nobody can decide other people’s gender for them. It doesn’t matter if the person is a suspected egg or a transphobe who spites their own gender; do not invalidate the gender of others.
Homophobes ARE closeted gays, you think it’s a concidence Grindr keeps crashing anytime there’s a Republican convention?
She also paints a nasty picture of older women. Intolerant, hateful and unwavering in both. Shes a bad view from every angle.
All that is true but I think we need to acknowledge how JK started off a fairly moderate TERF and only became what she is today because of the interaction of her stubbornness with the reaction she got. If the goal is fewer bigots, there are lessons there for how to deal with TERFs.
Nah, she was already in too deep to rescue by the time she got pushback. She was too socially entrenched with bigots for anyone reasonable to reach her. Twitter drama is not responsible; her wealth, power, and how that impacted her social circle were.
People often think these descents into fascism are ideological, but it’s been mostly interpersonal in every case I’ve witnessed. If someone is a rich white “feminist” with conservative tendencies, they can easily find friendship with people already deep in the brainrot. They then become so reliant on that social group that leaving becomes costly, and decide “Fuck those minorities anyways. They aren’t my friends, so why should I care?”
Don’t think of the detached internet as a space for recuperating fascists. Deprogramming cannot realistically happen there, not without more personal influence. It’s parasocial to think otherwise.
edit: grammar
The thing I just dont get is how someone who considers themselves a feminist has chosen a crusade where her greatest allies are people that would kick her back into the kitchen. Like all the groups that are as vocal as her about trans rights that take her side seem to be incels, manosphere idiots, and forced-birth christofacists.
I imagine that a lot of the Nazi views influenced her, so she became more ok with being their friend. She basically allowed them into her “acceptable allies” club and became more sympathetic to them from there. Needless to say, she’s lost the plot and only really cares about transphobia anymore.
I dont want to believe its that easy, but then shes advocated taking pictures and video of people in womens bathrooms to catch the trans women. So maybe it is.
This is an interesting perspective. In the case of JK it contradicts my understanding of the timeline but I’m only remembering some account I heard ages ago…
I think there is a synthesis though, because I think your social entrenchment could quite happily take place offline or online or “parasocially” if you prefer. Someone with offline friends who are reinforcing their beliefs is unlikely to be deprogrammed by the internet, but someone who doesn’t have many of those offline friends can be influenced. (Or they could work in concert)
That’s true. In Rowlings case, she is documented as having hung out with notorious transphobes for a while before she went full mask off. That’s why I say that she was beyond the internet’s reach by the time she became vocal
Thanks, that’s not something I’d heard, I’ll see if I can find out more
If all it took to turn a terf into a bigot was to give the author some moderate criticisms about the systemic failings of their world building to turn them into a Nazi, I think the only solution is to prevent terfs from becoming authors.
Either that or we need to accept that this was always going to be the outcome of some privileged rich white idiot who can’t handle the slightest bit of pushback who’d rather cozy up to Nazis than admit that maybe her writing isn’t perfect.
I really disagree that twitter arguments are the same as “moderate criticism”. Even if every single person who criticises someone does so moderately and reasonably, which is already very unlikely, simply being moderately criticised by hundreds of thousands of people is not something the human mind is equipped to deal with in a healthy way.
I disagree with the idea that she needed to be on Twitter and engage in twitter arguments. There was moderate criticisms of her across the net, the fact she WILLINGLY chose to engage in an opinion cesspool that let her drown in shit is her own goddamned fault.
Plenty of other people hired someone to deal with their social media accounts because they didn’t want to subject themselves to socially-acceptable-4chan, she chose to chug sewage straight from the pipe despite having plenty of money and the connections to have it. Honestly, her not engaging with criticism with hostility would have done wonders for the whole situation.
I think you’re focusing on what she could have done differently, and I’m focusing on what I believe will inevitably happen to some people, even if individuals can choose differently. So I’m not saying that “she needed to be on Twitter and engage”. I’m not disagreeing that you can attribute blame to her for engaging in that way, besides blame for her initial opinions.
I’m saying that, from a practical perspective, you can think all of that, but still acknowledge that many people just are not good at disengaging from criticism, and that services like Twitter will inevitably attract people because they’re designed to attract people. So it would be a good idea to try and move away from ways of acting which tend to cause that.
Basically I think we can break down JK’s personality into three initial relevant features:
- somewhat bigoted
- the kind of person to want to use twitter
- stubborn in the face of criticism
Of these, I think only the first is a true flaw and worthy of blame. The second would carry some blame nowadays but back then it wasn’t owned by a Nazi. The second and third both describe a huge portion of humanity. I use Mastodon and other social media, so I don’t feel like I can judge someone negatively for being the same, and I too can be stubborn in the face of criticism, as can many people I know, so same. But bigotry is clearly wrong.
All this means I really only feel like it’s valid to judge JK as if she were the somewhat bigoted person she originally was, rather than today’s turbo-Nazi version of her.
Because every one who read it was a kid?
I mean, I was an aspie kid who was fascinated by much of the mold’s writings but even I could notice some incredibly strange things:
- House elves being treated as slaves and none of the wizards finding it odd. And Hermione, the typical person whom I felt most normal, was put away as an annoying brat and nerd. C’mon!
- The suspiciously riches-obsessed and long-nosed kobolds
- The overt discrimination of wizards w/o wizard parents (being called Mudbloods; or those who are ‘too Muggle-obsessed’.)
- JK only wanting people from the UK to play, even though it wouldn’t always make sense. What about the Beauxbatons? The Durmstrang ones?
I disagree on 3 out of the 4 being particularly clear signs back then.
#1 and #3 always seemed like critiques of slavery and discrimination to me as a teen when reading those. I recall Hermione being the voice of reason that wizards ignored because slavery was convenient and the people who wanted “mudbloods” gone were shown as bad, with Voldemort in particular having no redeeming qualities.
#2 was pretty inexcusable back then but surprisingly enough is going to be found increasingly acceptable now that Israel has shown its true colours
#4 I don’t know the context but maybe she just didn’t want a bunch of Americans? Because the guy who played Krum is Bulgarian and Fleur’s actress was French. There was an actress from Bangladesh. To me that would make sense because the film industry is very America-centric.
Also before the entire TERFdom and now literal nazism saga, she said shit like “nowhere does it say Hermione has to be white” (which her own book disagreed with but this is an example of how she used to be more tolerant). She’s changed a lot and it can only be the money and the company people with money tend to keep (other people with money). Wealth cap starting to seem better by the day.
#1 and #3 always seemed like critiques of slavery and discrimination to me as a teen when reading those. I recall Hermione being the voice of reason that wizards ignored because slavery was convenient and the people who wanted “mudbloods” gone were shown as bad, with Voldemort in particular having no redeeming qualities.
#1 certainly looked like that was the setup, but the way it eventually played out sure looks like the author thought Hermione was just being stupid and annoying.
Also before the entire TERFdom and now literal nazism saga, she said shit like “nowhere does it say Hermione has to be white” (which her own book disagreed with but this is an example of how she used to be more tolerant).
I think this is an example of the author trying to gain “woke” clout without actually writing woke themes. Same with the “Dumbledore is gay” revelation, AFAIK it never appeared in any of the material she has written, certainly not in the HP books. That’s certainly better than going full nazi, but it always came off as insincere.
The overt discrimination of wizards w/o wizard parents (being called Mudbloods; or those who are ‘too Muggle-obsessed’.)
This is portrayed as a bad thing in the books, though. The discriminatory side went full Nazi and the main characters fought against them.
Probably part of the problem is that kids are not very principled.
The older I get, the more I realize I think I can pick up on things about a writer’s worldview, even if the work isn’t trying to make a point of the worldview details I might pick up on.
I’m pretty sure Ari Aster is ableist, Christopher Nolan and S Craig Zahler are republicans, and Todd Field did something heinous, but diligently oversees his own Wikipedia article and Google Alerts to a degree that ensures it’s hard to find/I’ve been too lazy to really dig into it.
Same, when I read through the Bobiverse series it was quite evident the author believes in biological determinism, great man theory, is at least somewhat sexist and feels squeamish around queer people. He doesn’t outright say those things but it comes out in which characters are focused on, their actions, and the consequences of them. It’s an entertaining series but for me it was hard to ignore the red flags.
Waitll you get to Star Wars Episode 1
I would approach this from a different direction:
There is not nearly enough trans harrpy potter rule34 content out there. There needs to be a looooot more
Nah, abandon the original ip for parody.
It might’ve been fun at first, but at this point the damage has been too extensive for that light hearted trolling
As an autistic, pansexual, cis male:
I bought and read the books a long time ago. I saw the movies a long time ago.
This transphobe excuse of a human being got my money a long time ago.
Nothing can change this. She already rich before she started to show the world who she really is.
But we still can take the narrative control away from this “person”.
And this is 196, so I think my idea is not completely out of place ;)
Like I said, it was a good idea before her toxic movement infiltrated the highest levels of governance and instituted policies. When Amnesty international revealed that her TERF orgs are funded by anti-choice Christian fascists, she sued them into silence. The policies she’s pushed have gotten countless people killed and made life incredibly difficult for so many people. And it’s not like the bigotry stays local; she exports it wherever it can take hold like a good hate activist.
She has done so much damage and hurt so many people that engaging in any way with her brand feels distasteful. HP will be tied to that evil woman forever, no matter how much we try and co-opt it. It doesn’t deserve to be made fun of anyone, it deserves to be left behind as a source of joy. There are other wonderful series that are more deserving of our respect.
Careful, those main characters are awfully young, and HP fans will tolerate it.
Ah ignore the main characters. It’s time for Lucille Malfoy and… I was gonna say Snape but I wouldn’t want to do that to the memory of Alan Rickman.
I only can see wins:
a) there are many adult’s also. And by now all characters are clearly adults. b) if the “community” shows to be a bunch of ni or “loving” perverts, that will ruin the franchise also for good.
No, just… no.
You don’t wanna read Trans Wizard Harriet Porber And The Bad Boy Parasaurolophus: An Adult Romance Novel by Hugo award finalist Chuck Tingle?
No, I want the franchise to wither and fucking die already. This is as gross to me as a suggestion for trans pornfic of “Elonia Musk”.
I think you misspelled “Hairy Frotter”
But no, I don’t. I want every HP venture from now on to lose so much money she has to pay out of her own pocket to keep it relevant and can’t afford to keep funding the other transphobes.
Intellectually I know we live in a post-satire world, and yet somehow I keep being surprised
Don’t let the G*mers see this
Pretty sure most community involved gamers are racist.
I casually enjoy the movies and books. I read or watch them once every several years.
I will also never give her a single penny in any way possible.
I got the bluray set from a thrift store probably a decade ago. Books I just downloaded from a torrent. Watched the whole series with a few friends recently and we just found a free site to stream it. We all went into it well aware of how garbage the author is
Even not giving her money is still supporting her. Piracy has a less oppositional relationship with promoting media than you might think. The best thing is to always just move on to less evil stuff
This, mind share is a powerful marketing tool. Which is also a big issue with the rule34 suggestion in one of the other comments
I remember seeing someone post recently that pirating Harry Potter is like stealing a confederate flag. It’s good you didn’t give them money, but you’re still showing your allegiance by having it at all.
I don’t think this is quite the case. There is no one alive who could possibly have formed an attachment to the confederate flag before it became a bad thing, but the same is not true of HP.
I think you can continue to enjoy things you already own - if you can - so long as you do it quietly, and I think that more or less applies to piracy as well.
I don’t give a shit when you formed an attachment to the confederacy, I care why it’s currently so important to you to have a confederate flag in your home. Even if you keep it in the basement, you still have it. Worse, you went out of your way to get a new one, fully knowing it’s evil.
There are people who liked the confederacy before you, and more than you, who have grown past it and given it up to protect others. Why won’t you?
So you are not able to get over it.
There’s very little to get over compared to the picture in the post. I don’t own any merch. I’m not part of the fandom. My life does not revolve around Harry Potter. I think about it once every few years basically. Very heavy emphasis on the “casually” enjoying it.
Before the recent watch with friends, it had probably been 5 to 8 years since I last watched or read any of the series.
We’re not gonna rake you over hot coals for it, but we’re also not gonna lie and say that it’s ok.
The Daily Tism
Read the harry poster series a lot as a kid. I think I read the phoenix one +7 times. Won’t stop me from punching j.k. bigot
Enjoyed the first four books when I was in middle school so prior to us knowing the author was a complete sack of shit. Haven’t interacted with the media since.
I wasn’t a fan, but still really liked the books and movies growing up. It was a phenomenon. However, all of those memories are tainted irrevocably by what she’s done
