this post was submitted on 16 Aug 2024
994 points (100.0% liked)
196
16238 readers
1874 users here now
Be sure to follow the rule before you head out.
Rule: You must post before you leave.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
They joke, but I legitimately know people whose parents were the super Christian "any book about controversial topics is the devil and so are video games and TV" to the point where when she found out her daughter had Harry potter book, she burned every book of hers that wasn't directly religious.
Well guess who decided to "give them a try" since "the author clearly has the right ideas about life" since all her children are out of the house and the only ones who bother visiting are the two with kids (who would never admit it but they're only there for free babysitting and future help) and one who just doubled down into the religion despite witnessing the same bullshit as her siblings....
So yeah, this may have been intended as a joke, but they're closer to the truth than they might know.
The best satire is rooted in reality. The issue the onion is facing is that right wing nuts are genuinely beyond parody at this point.
The cultural left is against her for being very visibly transphobic (along other things). Additionally religious reactionaries historically don't like the fact her books are inspired by historical witchcraft practices, as pointed out in the meme.
To quote wikipedia's summery:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_views_of_J._K._Rowling#Transgender_issues
She's a huge bigot...
I don't think you can categorise into right or left. I know right-wing people who are gay as an example (they're conservative, but they're not MAGA/Trump/nazi's).
It's really better to categorise as "people who want the community to be better and want everyone to be treated well", and "people who want people to receive different treatment".
JK Rowling is the latter. Trump is the latter too. In general though, in US and Australia, extreme right wing people seem to fit more into the latter.. Minorities can also fit into either category too quite easily
Ok. Since you have clearly been living under a rock for the past 10 years, here's the deal with Rowling. It's not really a political divide here, it's an age divide.
Harry Potter was a formative experience for almost all of Millenials and Gen Z. That's 40 years worth of kids right there. A lot if Gen X parents were fans as well. There's a lot of gay/trans people who credit Harry Potter for helping them figure out their identity and come out to their friends and family. And Rowling is a master of cultivating a fandom; ask anyone between the ages of 40 and 12 what their house was, and I'm pretty sure you'll get an answer. My point is, there are a lot of people (people who are adults now) who have formed their identity around Harry Potter, and Rowling made sure that it was seen as normal to get so invested in her books.
Problem is, Rowling is a Blairite Conservative, and you can see this all over her writing. As kids, we didn't pick up on details like how the plot bends over backwards to not have any change happen in the world, how few girls there and how all the bad ones are ugly, the house elf slaves, etc. So when Rowling started to be more loudly TERF-y, we collectively went through a few phases of realization about how wrong we were about her:
To address another thing that might confuse you, I know that I've been using TERF and conservative somewhat interchangeably. To define my terms, when I say "conservative" I mean Rowling thinks the world was perfect at some point when she was a young adult and any attempt to change how the world works from that point is Evil and Bad. The Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist movement was seen as progressive in the 80s and 90s but has remained almost exactly as it was back then, so now it only contains "moderate" conservatives. To be fair, her political beliefs are pretty in line with most members of the Democratic party in the U.S., so I understand if you thought she was left-wing. But she is very clearly a conservative, and more importantly her whole fanbase was at minimum progressive liberals and many are much farther left because, you know, millenials and gen z have on average only been moving further left as they get older. Another thing exaggerating this is a fun little statistic that 67% of all book readers are girls, and guess which subset of Gen Z is most likely to be anticapitalist?
If she had just stayed quiet about hating trans people, I think Harry Potter might have been remembered as one of the most world-changing works of fiction, at least up until Gen Alpha gets old enough to enter academia. But she just had to use her platform to try to spread her beliefs, and now she's so hated by her own fandom that attaching her name to a project is sure to make that project never sell, and any actually successful Potter-related project has to constantly reassure potential fans that they do not hate trans people, they are not associated with Rowling, Rowling has no involvement in their project, and a portion of our profits will be donated to a nonprofit that helps Trans kids. For example, Hogwarts Legacy did all of these things, and despite its good sales and despite most fans enjoying it there was an abstract dread looming over the project as if the fans expected Rowling to interfere with their enjoyment at any moment. It honestly just makes me sad that there are so many adults that feel so wounded and betrayed by their favorite author.
The way I reacted to this was to stop joining fandoms altogether, and I still feel icky when something I like has a fanbase. I don't think this is healthy. Maybe I will work through this someday.
nobody on the left would ever say that someone who does one cool thing is automatically a good person. There's been plenty of asshole artists and overall thing makers in history that have made amazing things
Calling someone born and raised as a woman a man. Truly a free thinker.
Let's let her speak for herself.
Maybe they'll learn something. Despite the authors current opinions, the books messages are about tolerance.
With the Gringotts bankers being grotesque antisemitic stereotypes, the only black character being named Shacklebolt, and the only character who's against slavery being laughed at by everyone else and then dropping the subject forever, sure!
Knowing all that along with how much of a bigot she is IRL, it requires a HIGH bullshit tolerance to be able to stomach it all.
That's what you meant by tolerance, right?
Two Indians named Patel. Black kid named brown. You'll never guess the heritage of Seamus Finnegan. She just has stereotypes and nothing else.
Related:
I think that's only in the movies.
I don't get Your point. Your last name usually reflects where Your family comes from. I'm Polish, and half of the people I ever knew had last names ending in "ski".
I will name a character pierogi polanski in your honor.
And also. Pleas explain me, how are Rowlngs goblins a Jewish stereotype, but Tolkiens dwarves aren't? And what about the Doppler in The Witcher?
So you're saying that 3 wrongs make a right?
For all his brilliance, Tolkien was a first half of the 20th century devout Catholic, so yeah, he was also a bigot. See also the "dark-skinned savages" from the south with the oliphants.
As for The Witcher, same thing: the author is from Poland, the most Catholic country in the world and one of the whitest so yeah, it's predictable that he'd be kinda bigoted too. Not justified at all, though, just to be clear.
Rowling, on the other hand, doesn't even have the flimsy non-excuse of growing up in a time and place where bigotry is still normalized. She's just a bigot for no other reason than her own ignorance and prejudices.
I don't agree. The only thing about goblins is that they are bankers. If you hear bankers, and think Jews, that may be that You are stereotyping. Shacklebolt and Cho Chang I consider just poorly though through names. As for the elves being slaves, that has depth. It's not just, elves want to be slaves so we keep them as slaves. The characters in the books ask them, if they like what they are doing. They like it, they talk about it, we see the point of view of elves. It may be my childhood innocence talking, but I never took it as malicious writing. Maybe unconscious stereotyping. But it was the 90s, she didn't know better. But all in all now she is a shit human being and I despise her views.
That's categorically NOT true.
Or maybe the fact that you see figures modeled after a Nazi stereotype of Jewish people and think "just bankers" is a You ignoring the obvious to defend the indefensible thing.
Nobody forced her to give them racist names. That she did so anyway is lazy stereotyping at best, intentional racist belittling at worst.
Here we go with the slavery apologia..
Just because they've been institutionalized to think that slavery is the only way of life for them doesn't make it ok.
She could easily NOT have had slaves in a world where everything they're forced to do can be accomplished with magic. But no, she CHOSE for there to be slaves and then endorse slavery by making the slaves "want it"
Definitely you missing it at first, yes. Which is understandable for a child. You should know better than to defend it now, though.
That's bullshit. She had full control of an entire magical world and CHOSE to inject unchallenged and lampshaded bigotry into it.
Whether the 1990s or the fucking 1890s, it's her job to know better and do better.
Thanks for the comments, Man. I appreciate the fact, that You want to talk about it. If You let me, I Will respond later, as now I'm after a night shift and drunk. Would You be willing to tell me Your age? I think that is an important thing in analysing HP and the authors views. I was born in 87,but I'm polish, so the books got to me a little bit later than most st of the world.
Sure, enjoy your night lol
I'm 41 but didn't read them as they came out but rather well into my twenties.
Embarrassingly, I missed a lot of the more problematic stuff back then in spite of not being a child, but I thought harder about it later when learning from others spelling it out for me heh
Maybe, but I'm not holding my breath.
The one who originally had the HP books came out a few years ago and her mother disowned her.
Her dad doesn't seem to care as long as she's happy, but he is standing by his wife's shitty decision. I can only hope he's trying to talk sense into her behind the scenes instead of being totally hands-off.
when a character starts being an abolitionist about literal slavery, it becomes a running joke. the goblins are antisemitic stereotypes, up to and including being bankers, and all the characters who aren't white are named in ways that would have been considered 'kinda racist' a century earlier.