What did JK Rowling do wrong?

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As far as I can tell she just won't quit about transexuls. LIke idk she is an old woman I can see some reasons maybe she does not understand the trans community, but she does not need to keep harping on it. Like idk I don't hate her but like she just does not know when to tone it down.

Wow, it would be such a shame to be deprived of your concise and insightful posts.

Again though, maybe read those rules carefully and then read my posts closely, and notice that I'm scrupulously attacking the content of your posts and not you personally, which is completely within the rules here, particularly in PPR and particularly in a thread in which I'm the OP and have certain privileges concerning the tone and content. This might be a support site, but this is the politics section, you can't really claim that you just stumbled in here for emotional support for your poorly thought out opinions, particularly when your own posts are far from innocent underneath the Christmas tree patterns and odd sentence structures.

To be fair to her, she keeps being attacked; is she not allowed to explain and defend her opinions? Can you actually tell me what her offensive opinions are that should be toned down?

Maybe in a weird way this was why I never liked the Harry Potter movies or books, even though everyone I knew insisted I should have liked the franchise because of my love for 'witchy' things.

It's just like with Star Wars and the hot mess that the new movies have become.

It's like somehow I knew that these popular franchises loved around the world were destined for extreme political controversy someday.

Mostly she does not need to talk about trans people without even having any understanding. Like she can say she doesn't get it without giving a moral judgment about it. But she keeps trying to be like 'well you get the genitals you are dealt deal with it.' and idk if someone feels really uncomfortable with the sex that conflicts with the gender they feel, how does it really hurt JK if they go ahead and transition. But like she tries to talk like she knows better for those people and so idk why she cannot just leave it alone when she does not really know anything about trans people.

To be fair though no I do not know what all the controversy of her is about, I don't know what exactly she said because well I jjust have not given much thought to harry potter or its author since I was 12 so I haven't really been following it...from my perspective it just seems like she is picking a weird hill to die on.

I could easily have missed it, but I haven’t seen her accept anywhere that her words might have caused valid hurt. That is always when issues occur. Same as how the cover up is often worse than the crime. People should at least listen when someone says you hurt them, and offer to spend time learning your side.

If two members won’t stop fighting on the boards, various members are likely to get upset and feel its time for some moderation. Doesn’t matter who is involved, so I doubt it’s personal, but you are pretty good at hanging onto a conflict … as are a few others.

Harmful? Rude maybe, perhaps not what they want to hear, but harmful seems a stretch. It also goes both ways, "trans women are women" as a slogan is not only factually untrue (do natal women have prostates?), but is a form of thought control, as the demand is being made for other people to see them in a prescribed way and not as they might naturally come to. There is a difference between "treat me politely and with dignity" and "you must believe that I am what I tell you I am", the latter being an attempt to control the way that others think, which is not a reasonable demand.



Being skeptical of "inclusive language" doesn't deny anyone their existence or their experience, it's a pretty common and natural reaction to the imposition of top down language policing from our various institutions who've been ideologically captured by people with a strange belief system around issues of identity. Do you find phrases like "chest feeding", "people who menstruate", "front hole", "vulva owner", etc to be natural to use and pleasing to the ear? Do you really think that they're necessary to accommodate the vanishingly small number of actual trans people in society, the vast vast majority of whom are perfectly capable of hearing terms like "man" and "woman" without suffering a mental breakdown, or really any discomfort at all?



Try this on: The language stuff is stupid, it's a game they play to feel superior to everyone else, and it's been going on for decades on the academic left, writing banal thoughts in inscrutable language in order to claim that anyone who questions it simply isn't enlightened enough. It's a scam, don't fall for it. If I seem angry, it's not that I'm angry at you, I'm actually angry on your behalf, as I'm sure you're just trying to be a good "ally" and be sufficiently sensitive about these things, but from where I sit you're being taken for a ride by the ideological equivalent of one of those predatory telemarketers, it's genuinely infuriating to me.



Well, youth transition is a whole other can of worms, I might need to start another thread for that, but just off the top of my head:

Why do we forbid people from drinking and smoking until they're 21, yet allow 12 year olds to go on potentially life altering blockers and hormones with very little oversight? Double mastectomies at 15, just when teenage girls might normally be feeling uncomfortable with their bodies? Doesn't strike anyone as a bit odd?

Why is it commonly accepted that peer pressure and fads affect every facet of teenagers interests and passions, except for the possibility that dysphoria and gender identity might have a social contagion element?

Why do children need to be taught confusing and unproven theories of gender identity as young as kindergarten? I will embarrass anyone who claims this isn't happening, so consider yourselves forewarned.

Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, third time is enemy action. I watch the mod thread, I see who keeps reporting me and draw my own conclusions.

Lots of true things are hurtful, just look at the fellow who's so upset that I accurately characterized his posting style right in this thread. Again, it's perfectly valid to take someone's complaint, examine it, go "nope, they're just being ridiculous", and react accordingly, some people just like to complain, and some people use complaints as a weapon or means of control. It's like taking a dive in soccer trying to get the other guy penalized, and should be given the same amount of "respect".

For obvious reasons, you have no idea how much harm I managed to cause to my own daughter with words I used and assumptions I made, but I will say it now: the harm was real. She is not trans, but she is LGBTQ, and various things I innocently said during her growing up years drove a giant wedge between us. I watched her struggle with no idea how to help her. It was only being stuck together during shut downs that forced some difficult and very overdue conversations. So, yes, I not just believe, but know, that superimposing your personal beliefs of who people can or should be, over another person's view of who they actually are, causes harm. Whether or not you internally believe someone else's self-image, denying them ownership of their own image in conversation is more than rude.




I personally feel that some areas of controversy are less critical than others. The broader attempts to change language still seem unnecessary to me, and are not used nor advocated for by my daughter and her LGBTQ friends. They aren't definitive on this, either, but language about a body part is different in my eyes than language about sex or gender. I am a woman that has breasts, but whatever word you would use for that body part does not define who I am in the same way "woman" does. So I breastfed my kids and another parent may have chest fed theirs; I don't see how my usage has to have anything to do with them. There may well be medical situations, etc., where a more inclusive term is indicated. It's always wise to know your audience but, again, I think this is a much less critical area of consideration.



I'm not being taken for a ride. I hashed all of this out with my own daughter. Our conversations currently are definitely two-way streets; I can now challenge her, as she has finally integrated that I will love her no matter what regardless of how many choices she makes that I would never make myself. She is pushing her LGBTQ friends for more patience with the broader community as society tests out language et al, based on things she has learned from me; but there are also points I have learned from her, and that I will now push harder for on her and her friend's behalf. The paragraph I wrote earlier about recognizing everyone's right to their own identity is something I believe in because of things I have learned from my daughter.

I think I'll leave the transgender youth conversation with what I wrote. It is a can of worms, highly specific to each individual and family, and I feel I have no right to an opinion without knowing the specific individual and family. What I think is THAT open to change depending on facts and circumstances.

I'll be frank; this sounds like a hostage situation. Not that I blame you, it would be stupid to let ideology come between you and your child, but it does sort of color your thought process, doesn't it?

Oof, this hurt to read.

I'm still not seeing anything remotely offensive, she thinks the creepy "inclusive language" is stupid, as do most people, and that biological sex is a real thing, again, as do most people. The article spends most of its time reporting on other celebrities' outrage and their tweets (boy the Harry Potter cast are a bunch of ingrates), going out it the way to note that Emma Watson was criticized for *only* posting a black square online during George Floyd Summer and not adding anything else (horrors), which gives a taste of the editorial direction the piece is coming from.

Never said it might not be biased, but it seems to lay out a lot of the original sources. With receipts.

I thought most of the Harry Potter stars skirted potential personal controversy with JK pretty well, by simply stating what they believed. Not addressing directly JK's statements. We don't have to agree with everything said by people we like and care, but directly criticizing them in public would be pretty rough.

It isn't always bad to let someone else influence your thought process. People you know personally are going to be a lot more honest with you. Have I gotten honest information in a non-combative way that I might not have gotten otherwise? Yes. Is that going to skew my views in a harmful way? No. It is going to allow me actual empathy, and get me closer to knowing how to do right by that person. That is GOOD. We should each have ownership of our own identities, and no one's personal beliefs should be considered to be more important. Why would a right to express an opinion be more sacred than a right to be accepted as the person you were born as? I shared that story because you claimed it caused no harm, it was just manners, but I know it does cause harm. Because someone I care about was finally brave enough to tell me their full and unvarnished truth. It wasn't a sales pitch or manipulation. It wasn't being taken hostage. It's finally being let in for a visit so I could understand pain I knew existed but hadn't been able to understand.