Would people still hate J.K. Rowling if she wasn't a TERF?

Post Reply New Topic

Has she donated to the anti-trans bill? I didn't know that.

I don't really follow trans politics.

How do we determine someone is a TERF? Does someone just have to declare it? Is there a minimum standard? Fascinating

It would be fair she was subject to what is commonly referred to as a the "tall poppy" syndrome where people envious of her rapid success want to cut her down to size.

Another WP member mentioned that she never had to do the hard work most writers and novelists go through after years of slog. There is good evidence she has lifted many of her ideas/concepts from other authors/genres so that also adds to her being vilified as lacking integrity (not to mention originality/authenticity). Despite attempts to accuse her of plagiarism she seems to have withstood the court cases/accusations.

On the matter of representation of her characters and their caricatures of real life, that is a matter of conjecture. The goblins reflecting jewish stereotypes is valid as much as Star wars trade federation resembling east Asian stereotypes or Gungins resembling African American stereotypes. However are they offensive?

The casting in Harry Potter and Magical beasts has also been bought up. When Harry Potter was first written in the early 1990s it was during a time when fictional TV dramas like Made about You, Just Shoot Me, Seinfeld, X-Files and Friends was largely devoid (almost entirely) of diversity.

Are they trans-exclusionary? That seems to be the primary criteria.

What does this mean please?

It feels like an ambiguity. Do you just say its trans-exclusionary? Is it asking questions? Denying existence?

As we discuss needing full breakdown of instructions to complete tasks can you provide a version of this to not be trans-exclusionary?

I might be asking for a recipe where there isn't one but my aspergers manifests in a way that I struggle to accept things at face value and need things explaining more.

Being candid and connecting this the trans politics thing really confuses me as a result. I want to understand and to do so I need to ask questions but asking questions can be seen as "TERF"? I don't know

I would say, strictly speaking TERF is a synonym of gender-critical feminism. In widespread use people often lump other fellow travellers in with them, when really all they share is the trans-exclusionary part.

Gender-critical feminism rejects the idea of gender existing as a social construct, distinct from biological sex. This invariably means rejecting the idea of transwomen being women (or of transmen being men, but generally with far less emphasis on this part).

GCFs often espouse a lot of hostility towards transwomen, attacking them as imposters and treating them as an inherent threat to women.

Before all of this came to light, the main criticism people had was that she had a tendency to write after the fact.

She also had a tendency to not think through her analogies. For instance, the whole 'werewolves are a stand in for the stigmatisation of those with AIDS'. That doesn't really work when most of the werewolves in the series are evil and enjoy targeting children. Some accidental unfortunate implications there.

I mean, the whole werewolf thing would have been fine without the analogy. So it came across as very much a second thought.

Also the whole 'the sorting hat only made two mistakes' thing. It's fine to regret what you've written and wish that you'd done it differently, but it came across as unnecessary backpedalling to blame the magic hat.

Then there was Hermione. When the cursed child came out, there was a black actress playing Hermione. So, when the Internet complained, she tried to claim that she'd always written Hermione to be racially ambiguous in skin tone. Which is false. In the books, she is described as looking pale and that her face turned white / the colour drained from her face. To which she tried to claim that was just a way of showing that Hermione was shocked - but, no, even so you wouldn't describe a person who possibly has a dark skin tone looking shocked that way.

Frankly I think she should have just agreed that yes, Hermione is pale in the books but that sometimes details change when dealing with adaptations and wished the actors and actresses well.

Then there's the timeline inconsistencies but let's not get into all that.

Oh, and in the half-blood prince there's a line where Slughorn is speaking and it's written as (dialogue) - Slughorn ejaculated. Which, I mean there was a whole petition to get that changed. Personally I found it hilarious. But uh, yeah, sometimes it's better to just use the word said. I don't think the petition was successful. Surprised the editor allowed it.

JK Rowling did actually address this in an interview
Rowling said: “I had a bunch of racists telling me that because Hermione ‘turned white’ – that is, lost colour from her face after a shock – that she must be a white woman, which I have a great deal of difficulty with. But I decided not to get too agitated about it and simply state quite firmly that Hermione can be a black woman with my absolute blessing and enthusiasm.”
https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2016/ ... k-hermione

I've seen the theatre production in Melbourne and the actress playing Hermoine, Noma Dumezweni was the stand out performance. She was head and shoulders above the other cast.

The question of canon was also addressed - Rowling has pointed out that there is no reason why Hermione should be white. Therefore casting for the role was open to women of all backgrounds. After the casting call, Dumezwemi was the best candidate for the role.

I believe the same happened when casting for the role of Ariel in Disney's Little Mermaid. Disney went with Haile Bailey for the same reason. she was the most talented candidate and her singing voice went perfectly with a "Disney princess:" like Ariel would sound like. Even the most ardent critics of her casting never dared say anything about her singing.

There's also something about her writing of the goblins being an antisemetic dog whistle, but I don't know much about that tbh

I also have not read any of the Harry Potter books

I recommend reading her books, they are very readable.

They are however >3 War and Peaces long, so bear that in mind before starting the series.

I recommend instead watching the movies. I think her writing is terrible but her story is really good.

I think I'd need them recut into a season of TV before I could muster the attention span to make it through the whole series.

Harry Potter books are actually highly entertaining and have a rich tapestry with deep character development you don't get from the movies. I'm not a writer by any stretch of the imagination but Rowling's writing is very readable and once I started I couldn't put it down.

In stark contrast, Tolkien's original books for LOTR and George RR Martin's books for GOT are horrible to read. Tolkien's language is dated and Martin writes like a medieval Chaucer that comes across like Middle English which my brain can't process. For those stories the movies are a better option.

It comes down to personal taste and the fact that we all enjoy different things. I think the LotR trilogy is fantastic to read! They are some of my favorite books of all time. I enjoyed reading the Harry Potter series too, but it might help to remember that those books were intended for children/young adults.

Neither Martin or Tolkien’s work is remotely close to ME. I read The Canterbury Tales and other works by Chaucer in ME in college where I majored in English literature. I even presented a paper on Chaucer’s “Tristan and Isolde” at an undergrad conference. Reading quotes in ME aloud was scary.

Last edited by TwilightPrincess on 10 Jan 2024, 6:50 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Yes but their writing style isn't modern. For my it was an acquired taste and as I said, my brain couldn't process the writing. JK Rowling is a little like George Lucas. They were both inspired by other writers (In Lucas's case it was the Seven Samurai by legendary Japanese director Akira Kurosawa). But they both put their own twist which made their stories so readable.