Thread
So let's recap what happened the last few days:
J.K. Rowling used her sizeable platform to go after a trans youth charity (which she already had a hate on for over breast binders) by finding an inadvisable conference appearance by 1 trustee in 2011 when he was a PhD student. 🧵
J.K. Rowling used her sizeable platform to go after a trans youth charity (which she already had a hate on for over breast binders) by finding an inadvisable conference appearance by 1 trustee in 2011 when he was a PhD student. 🧵
She has also decided to demand the Discord messaging service be shut down or meaningfully reduced, because 4 twelve year olds were talking to bad people on it, even though Discord's minimum ToS age is 13. (Of course, this is after the charity she hates moved some comms to Discord
J. K. Rowling's stans go nuts. They begin forging excerpts from the trustee's vanity press book to make him seem like an active, modern day supporter of pedophilia. (I had to read that damned thing to discover this. My brain.)
Rowling has previously actively opposed cancel culture, bemoaning her own cancellations, and insisting that Donald Trump even deserves free speech, despite Rowling thinking that Trump is responsible for some of the worst modern day misogyny.
Rowling has also clearly stated on her blog that she believes that trans rights constitute a potential threat to the "safeguarding" of children. These are all just facts. They're on her own personal blog.
So I comment. I point out her reversal on cancel culture, and ask "would you like to be judged by something you wrote 10 years ago?"
This, too, got turned into pedophilia apologia by J. K. Rowling stans.
This, too, got turned into pedophilia apologia by J. K. Rowling stans.
Of course, me being me, I point out that Rowling's own books contain a teacher grooming the main character to be a potential human sacrifice by teaching him that love means pain. She then retconned Dumbledore to be gay.
Rowling's compatriot, Maya Forstater, is going after libraries for bears reading books and a nonbinary cartoon alien. Rowling has also praised Matt Walsh's documentary, even though Walsh has publicly stated that he thinks knocking up teenagers is fine as long as you marry them.
Childrens hospitals, libraries, and some schools are being protested, swarmed, and getting bomb threats because of the charged invective by people like Walsh, Rowling, and Forstater. They have not stuck merely to real cases. They've gone after fiction too.
So it was telling how many people lost their shit when I gave Harry Potter the "groomer materials" treatment. But it's fact that Dumbledore is canonically gay, he was secretly plotting to send Harry off to his potential death, and he formed a bond with the boy over "love".
It's also fact that there are two sexual assaults of teen boys in Harry Potter. Moaning Myrtle leering at Harry, and Snape getting his pants pulled down in public by the marauders. Both of these are played for laughs.
So I just can't fathom how Rowling, on one hand, insists her work is fine, while being friends with someone who thinks a daddy bear reading to his kid is horrible and unnatural. Furthermore, I don't know why she's going after this Mermaids charity so hard.
There is an active investigation of Mermaids right now. It's fairly routine, and will likely result in nothing, but why go for blood when they're already under investigation? To bury them. To cancel them. This is a grudge.
I believe Mermaids when they say they never would have put said trustee on their board if they'd known he'd spoken at that conference. But this is where I go back to... it was 10 years ago, and he was a PhD student. PhD students are desperate for speaking spots.
I think about my own near misses with conferences. I was almost tricked into appearing at an MRA conference. See also: a radical feminist conference who had views that I don't share. If no one had warned me what they were really about, I wouldn't have known.
Again, since the modern "evidence" against this trustee was actively forged, is it right to hold someone to speech from over 10 years ago? Do people not have the benefit of doubt that they've changed? Are we all prepared to be held to the standard that nothing is ever forgiven?
I'm not prepared to live in that world. I'm also not prepared to cede ground to the idea that people must automatically believe every accusation regarding pedophilia. That trick has been used on too many Black and Brown people. (Though R. Kelly actually did it)
This whole thing, to me, looks like nothing more than J.K. Rowling once again attempting to draw a line between trans people and child abuse. It's a common theme of hers, and it is definitively transphobic, whether she realizes it's transphobic or not.
