one thing that occured to me on the matter about the doxxing and posting address to to twitter thing, isn’t her address publicly known and has been part of a tourism thing for international potter fans for a long time since it’s a historical building? Even if someone were to use that to claim if this invalidates the stance of it being ‘doxxing’ (and I am not for her being harassed, just so we are clear. In an ideal world I would love for people to say what they like and then, if they present something that can be debunked and challenged, we do so and move on. Sadly people are not that intelligent if we look at how we only need one charismatic speaker to incite all kinds of atrocities, and thus I do understand where some come from in terms of deplatformation as well), this is exactly the kind of reason that if I ever got my book out I would absolutely never want anyone to know where I live or who I am.
For reference, there’s a trans character in my book, and knowing how people are these days, someone may take offense at it not being the representation they wanted (because them being trans is not central to the character’s narrative, it’s actually used as a minor plot point very early and isn’t really a part of her arc). Just to be on the safe side if I ever did book signings or live talks, I’d be going full Daft Punk with a helmet and voice distortion just to retain my damn privacy.
I think that’s the best way to get trans people (or any minority demographic) to be accepted into mainstream media and beyond tokenism.
Both Marvel and D.C. have been doubling down on retconning characters as being gay and are starting to introduce trans characters as well. The characters then become focused around their sexuality and brings nothing to the overall lore (apart from wreck it). The writer’s are evidently doing this to tick boxes and to give themselves a pat on the back but the readers are seeing this for what it is and simply not buying the comics.
Anime and Manga however, have had more success with trans characters for years now. Some manga goes off the deep-end and fetishises trans people with Futa girls but many manga get it right. These characters are interesting people who happen to be trans, their actions define then rather than their gender. Their gender may be relevant at some point as it would with any human being but it doesn’t dominate the plot. This is both palatable for readers as it’s not lecturing them and it’s not treating trans people like mascots.
I watched Cyber City Odeo 808 a few weeks ago the character Benten is a great example. Complete badass.
Sort of. It think there is a normalcy bias that makes one side seem more extreme than the other.
Coming from a much more cosmopolitan society. Some of the dumb shit that is just seen as an acceptable part of society in the more biblical centers of the world is pretty amazing.
Precisely. Sadly, with the internet as it is, the loudest idiots reflect badly on the community.
You only need a group of 20 or so on multiple platforms and thats when you get ‘all christians hate gays, all (insert race) are X’ etc. And twitter and the anonymity of it all does not help, and news outlets thrive on maybe putting loosely related stories together with a sensationalist headline they know people will read and not bother scanning the article so they wont get caught out. This often hurts marginalized groups and causes them to scream louder to be heard, continuing the cycle indefinitely.
The white people holding the wealth is one of those narratives that Ive seen other ones, besides the old jewish one, I’ve heard china recently even then, it’s a headscratcher how these coexist.
And yeah, its almost like taking a very small sample size for a study isnt good to work with a full population. Imagine if the first person to have penicillin was allergic and we decided to not use it ever after that one go. What that would mean for humanity
We all know where QE2 lives, or Biden, or Trump, or any number of other public figures. Super-famous fiction writers can’t always afford round-the-clock military-grade protection.
(addendum) More importantly, why should they need to?
Seriously, I couldn’t give a flying fuck about this chick, but the argument is ‘sticks and stones may break my bones but words will BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD?’
Much of the anger here in the UK is that she has used her platform to spread the kind of fearmongering used by conservatives that lead to walk backs on trans-affirming healthcare and transphobia in the UK has been on a rise. Here, some see that as her actively making the lives of trans people worse. I hold no stance on the matter other than disagreeing with her stance.
Some are lgbtq+ potter fans who got into the wizarding world because feeling like an outsider, latched on to potter and then took this as a slap in the face. See my previous point about debunking and the like for more of my take
My point on it being known is that it may make it hard to call this doxing in the strictest sense, (which means finding the details out and posting them online, rather than looking up stuff that’s already been posted to public knowledge) not that it is right what’s happening.
I don’t feel sorry for her getting heat for some of the things she said, I do think how it’s happening is throwing oil on flames and completely inappropriate and will not lead to anything more than escalation.
It’s shit like this that makes me want to uphold my privacy as much as I can. Fucking anything can happen with people these days.
It doesn’t matter if people already know where she lives, doxxing is inherently hostile and provocative. It utterly undermines the motivations of the person doing the doxxing. The moral high-ground is lost.
She hasn’t attacked trans people, she’s attacked the bullshit pseudo-psychology and hijacking of language that continuously ham-strings the trans ‘movement’.
I say ‘movement’ because like all aspects of society, it’s a demographic that’s full of nuance and grey areas and she attacking one element of it, not all of it. She specifically attacked the more militant element which has been steadily destroying the identity of women and has been the worst thing to happen to feminism for probably decades. She’s quite rightly pissed off, but as usual the more aggressive side of the ‘movement’ is shouting the loudest and people tend to take that at face value.
This same ‘movement’ has threatened her with rape and pipebombs for stating facts that they happen to strongly disagree with. The militant element of the trans movement is the real enemy here, not Rowling.
I also dont think you read her letter or know the full history of the things shes been going on about and the scaremongering about people like us in her twitter posts and letter put out, but i suppose with the ‘normal trans people’ posts that I get the impression you come to this discussion with a bias towards a specific narrative, Kovacs.
Aspects of her work certainly read in a way that would support this reading, both to me and other trans people and allies I know, not helped that her other novel plays into old transphobic stereotypes of the ‘crossdressing serial killer’ which does not help support the idea her essay or ‘research’ on the topics are in good faith, rather than reinforcing a confirmation bias. It certainly feels like a play into the ‘trans woman = buffalo bill’ narrative that didn’t help trans women over the last few generations. Incidentally, this was pop culture when she was younger.
I refer you to Lindsey Ellis, James Somerston and Contrapoints (if you can stand long form breakdowns because there’s some history to go back through over the last couple of years to cover). Im currently on break at work but it ends soon, and breaking down every point by text in here would be mammoth. I believe much of the content she has put out comes from a place of fear, not necessarily malice.
Still, I see the usual ‘sex is real’ argument presented by her. That argument isn’t one I’ve seen trans people argue against often (in fact, I tend to find trans people I find online seem to concede a biological imperative to why they are trans in some factor), but I do see ‘sex is real,’ and if this strawman idea we are arguing otherwise is wrong, then that means ‘same sex attraction isn’t real’ used as a ‘if trans women are women and can be lesbians, then lesbians are erased’ dog whistle in some circles, typically used as cry to turn lesbians against trans women (which coincides to the ‘men transition only to invade women’s spaces to assault women’ narrative that her own novel reinforces). That’s not a good look.
Generally I find most trans ‘concerns’ come mostly from poor understanding of the matter, like her idea that transmasc individuals transition to ‘escape womanhood’ as a major factor in decision making.
As I have said prior, however, I feel the way people have responded to her arguments, be they good faith, malicious, misunderstanding etc, is not acceptable beyond simply debunking or giving her evidence to the contrary. I would argue she is flat out wrong on many of her takes, but she does not deserve harassment, threats etc.
I have read quite a bit of what Rowling has actually said or written about this matter.
I have not seen any scaremongering on her part towards the trans community.
However, I may say that because I have grown very used to the certain members of the feminist community, using language that is charged, often negatively towards males, and positively towards females.
So, if Rowling phraseology is scaremongering towards / about the trans community, than she and many feminists scaremonger towards / about males.
And if Rowling’s use of that language about males is fair game, than her use of such arguments about other communities she may feel are stepping on women’s roles, identity, and rights, must be fair game.
Put another way, some of the old guard feminists have been defending their identity, and who may define what their identity is, and going on the verbal offensive to males, and about males, for quite a long time.
They never stood, or allowed males to offer an opinion about anything related to femininity, and were and are generally very quick to label masculinity as toxic, abusive, and oppressive, if males opine.
I doubt very much, the old guard members who have taken such great delight in telling males off, and putting men in their place,
Are going to sit idly by, and be told how they must think or speak about what it means to be a woman, from any other group, except themselves,
Let alone from someone, anyone, born with a penis.
They never have before…
And recieving criticism for this is also fair game. And not seeing something you aren’t used to seeing used against you is probably why you haven’t noticed some of it, being fair.
We disagree on this, but I respect that we differ on this. You won’t see me turn up at your house on it at the very least.
Disagreements make conversations more fun, and more mutually informative.
They are even better when every one has their preferred drink in their hands,
and occasionally take turns toasting each other,
and laughing at their own selves.
So cheers, thank you for the conversation, and here’s to your good health!
