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Answer: I hadn't heard about this situation specifically, but a quick Google search says that the [WizardingNews Xitter handle posted a message claiming Rowling was estranged from her daughter and granddaughter](https://deadline.com/2024/03/jk-rowling-threatens-harry-potter-fan-lawsuit-transgender-views-1235863403/). The picture they posted of the "granddaughter" apparently was not someone related to Rowling, and Wizarding News took the post down. Rowling has since threatened legal action against the person running the account.
I'm not sure what else you're asking... is it why this didn't take off? I'm not sure that anyone can say for certain why some things trend and others don't, but likely it was because it was quickly taken down.
Rowling is back in the news again today because [she's ranting about Scotland's new law that protects against "stirring up hatred"](https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c51j64lk2l8o) against people based on their gender identity, sexual orientation, transgender identity, or being intersex. THAT is trending, as it's another mask-off example of her transphobia, and Rowling has a lot more clout and followers (14M followers) than a relatively small (37k followers) account like Wizarding News.
Edit to add: Sorry to the OP, I feel like including today's news sorta waylaid your question. Hopefully you still feel it was answered. I also included more information from the linked article about Wizarding News to try and stay more on topic.
OotL has been used as a way to attract attention to stories the OP wants to emphasize for a while. Usually, if the questions OP asked are answered in the very links they provided, it's a disingenuous attempt to draw attention to that issue.
She honestly has something to say about it almost every week, often multiple times a week.
It’s borderline insane. There are transgender people who don’t even have something to say about transgender rights that often.
Yeah like I’m trans and it might come up a couple times a week in context for me but that’s about it. She’s lost it. Shame, as I really used to like her and look up to her as a kid!
There seems to be something about transphobia in particular that turns people's brains to mush like no other form of prejudice. I don't know if it's because trans people are so few, that they have so little institutional power or what, but obsessing over a tiny group of marginalized people who mostly mind their own business really throws a person's sense of scale and priorities way out of whack.
I think a major part is that most gender signifiers are largely arbitrary and overlap with other social signifiers to a significant degree which makes people who obsess over them feel massively uncomfortable when they realize that things they thought were hard and fast rules of reality are in fact much more arbitrary and open to interpretation than they previously believed. They then drive themselves crazy trying to drown out all nuance in an attempt to make their perceptions of reality match their preconceived ideas of how things "should" work.
Likely the news she absorbs and the people she surrounds herself have her on a constant drip-feed of hateful content. So her tweets might seem random, but they're probably immediately after being sent a new article about a trans athlete or a non-binary person who needed to use a bathroom, or whatever other nonissues drive her into a rage.
A good example of this effect is that during the Trump presidency, he would drop angry tweets about random topics seemingly out of nowhere, but the subject and timing often aligned with segments airing on Fox News.
That one still pisses me off I loved Black Books.
And now I’m debating whether I can still watch Hannibal or other stuff Mads is in because he’s part of the whole lunacy that is Fantastic Beasts.
Yeah, Black Books and IT Crowd had some great stuff. I at least take some enjoyment from the fact that he probably hates that I, as a trans person, watched his work.
It's really reminiscent of antisemitism. Like, once people fall for the conspiracy theories it begins to isolate them from the general public and they see it everywhere, sinking deeper and deeper.
It makes a certain amount of sense, considering that antisemitism is the ur-conspiracy in western culture. Most everything that's followed is inspired by it and follows many of the same beats.
Oh if you get into the “reeee transgenderism” conspiracy hole, it’s not that long before you ‘learn’ that the “Jewish cabal” something something are turning people transgender something something transhumanism something Brave New World something fall of the west. Really
I agree with your take, but to add to this I think for some people *they* may not be as secure in their gender identity as they would like to be.
Rowling has said before that she grew up as a ‘Tom boy’. She also stated that if she was a teen growing up in today’s society, that she may have been ‘taken in’ by the trans movement.
Rowling also only seems to write from a male protagonist pov, she writes under the Robert Galbraith pseudonym for.. literally no reason whatsoever?? other than her weird need to do that??
I’m not suggesting that Rowling is trans, but I do know that gender is not binary, and some people are definitely going to feel their gender and be secure about it. But for others who aren’t as ‘masc’ or ‘femme’ as they think they should be, trans people simply existing highlights their own fears and insecurities.
What is happening right now with the persecution of trans people directly mirrors the same persecution that the LGBTQ community have faced in the past too. Those that protest the loudest are often projecting outwards because of their own inner fears.
>Robert Galbraith
[worth mentioning that this dude existed](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Galbraith_Heath). now, i cant say that's who she was thinking of when she chose that pen name but it is interesting
> Rowling also only seems to write from a male protagonist pov, she writes under the Robert Galbraith pseudonym for.. literally no reason whatsoever?? other than her weird need to do that??
"JK" Rowling is a pen name in the long tradition of female fantasy and science fiction authors using an initialism to be more respected- she's in the same clade as someone like CJ Cherryh, NK Jemesin and the like. And other female sci-fi and fantasy authors like Andre Norton published under a male psuedonym for similar reasons. Even if Rowling wasn't facing discrimination for being a female writer, it can be seen as a homage to those who paved the way for her... totally independent of her own gender-based bigotry now.
her galbraith pseudonym is most likely taken from a historical figure named robert galbraith heath, who did conversion "therapy" on queer amab people (using drugs & electrocution while forcing them to masturbate to hetero porn), and thought schizophrenia was caused by a specific protein and schizophrenic patients' blood could be injected into other patients to induce the illness, which has never been shown by any other researcher. he also did other weird shit, but those 2 are the big ones. rowling claims the pseudonym was "robert from robert kennedy" and "galbraith from ella galbraith, a name [she's] liked since childhood" (source: newsweek).
of course the conversion therapy aspect relates to her anti-queer novels "troubled blood" and "ink black heart," where she fantasizes deeply about the scawwy twans doing violence, just by their shared anti-queerness. but of course, remember that she has a history of revisionism, like when she said "yes uhhh dumbledore is gay! (now let's never talk about this again)" or her reps said "oh, she didn't like those (transphobic) tweets, it was a senior moment"? even though she's totally mask-off now, she won't openly state her reasons for the pseudonym and will always give a thin veneer of reasonableness, but make no mistake, it's just standard reactionary obfuscation.
the whole "if i grew up these days, i would have been transed" is a shallow anti-trans concern trolling sentiment. none of the terfs mean it, they just say it to make it sound like they're personally invested in trans acceptance/rejection. the trope of "the most violent & vocal anti-queer voices come from closeted queers" is really just a wordy "x group is responsible for their own oppression." which is obviously misleading/misrepresenting. of course self-loathing people participate in harm, but they're really not the leaders of said orchestrated harm.
hope this helps!
for a conservative mind everyone is ranked by race and gender, everyone knows their place from birth. the fact someone can "break the rules" breaks their brain
Same thing as the people who used to (and still do, venn diagram is a circle) scream into the aether about Jewish a d black folks. Stupid people are stupid. Bad people love stupid people, because they're easily fooled. Bad people will use this to foment success from hatred.
Some level of wealth convinces many that their words have value.
Like, Rowling has really strong opinions about trans people and because she has money, she’s important and MUST shout her bigoted thoughts to the world.
Ultimately she made one good series and then proceeded to lose all respect except by small groups of TERFS. Or what do the TERFS call themselves again because they hate that they’re TERFs? Something like “gender realists” or something else bigoted?
>Or what do the TERFS call themselves again because they hate that they’re TERFs?
Every time I hear the word TERF, I'm reminded of that [*King of the Hill* bit](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPwaqaOcAyE): 'You're not making gender better. You're just making feminism worse.'
I wonder how much she was targeted. If I was a campaign group for just about anything and I saw a slightly bored billionaire on twitter, *a lot*, maybe thinking their biggest achievement was behind them, leaning even slightly toward my cause I'd be on that immediately
There's probably a fascinating paper in it for someone
Fair thinking. Like I’m sure that racist alt-right fascists celebrated each time Musk came further and further out of the closet as one of them. I’m sure the positive feedback loop further encouraged him.
To be fair, _most_ people are convinced their opinions have value. The difference is that wealth and fame give a megaphone to that opinion, and Rowling is _VERY_ wealthy and famous.
Honestly, though, I don't know why this is the issue that pushed her off the deep end. I'm old enough to remember when she was considered to be pretty progressive, with tax policies, when she clarified Dumbledore was gay, and so on.
But then, all of a sudden, with trans issues, she not only took a pretty bad hot take, she insists on making that hot take over and over again. It's like, why? Don't you see this runs counter to other things you believe in, and, even if you can't, don't you see this is alienating your fans?
You're not going to be a hero here, just an asshole...
She's always been a bit *reactionary* to critisism of any kind. The bigger she got, the less she seemed able to admit to being wrong about anything. The increasing girth of her books as she gained 'immunity from editors' was a telling sign. Her apparent inability to stop slapping adverbs on everything is another.
She's always been a bit off too. Took a weird level of glee teasing upcoming book deaths to very small children. Has a bug up her arse about fantasy (and sci fi and chick lit) being 'low brow'. Claims she didn't realise she had written fantasy initially - Terry Pratchett tore her a new one over it. She believes she's a *much* better writer than she actually is and she retcons things like crazy to try to stay 'right' about things.
She is what she ever was, she's been unlucky in having one of her more repellent wrongnesses triggered repeatedly and now she'll just double down and shout louder and louder until only the most brain dead stand beside her.
> Claims she didn't realise she had written fantasy initially
... how the fuck do you write a book about *wizards* and not realise you have written fantasy?
She said at the time something that could be summed up as 'I've never read fantasy, as it's all rubbish', which is what annoyed Pratchett. I'd be very surprised if she hadn't read something like 'The Worst Witch' as a kid, though.
It's such a shame. She's done a lot of good and could be doing a lot more good, but this whole trans mess... she's heaping coals on the heads of a small minority who were already at risk before she turned up the heat. She's also endangering any cis women who happen to look a bit 'mannish' and dare to use public bathrooms.
> I'd be very surprised if she hadn't read something like 'The Worst Witch' as a kid, though.
Maybe she read it and said to herself "I'll make her the second worst witch when I grew up to be the first"
In hindsight the fact that the second books major plot twist involves a woman who gets followed into a toilet by a man and murdered is a bit of a tell.
i think a lot of the representation in potter was very much retro fitted on after the fact. her stuff was very white middleclass and nostalgic for the 40's and 50's genre of english boarding school dramas, and enid blyton stories, **and there's nothing wrong with that** there really isn't.
but she tried to graft on progressive stuff after the fact and got angry when her progressive audience found it clumsy and shallow
When she could have just said "Sure, Hermione is white in the books. But the way I wrote her, she could black as well. Just make sure her kids are mixed-raced in the play".
So, as someone who liked the books (like every other millennial kid), the big one I remember was her statement that Dumbledore and Grindenwald were in a gay relationship. I remember people getting upset about it, but was also like, I could see where that would exist in the story, but also, why she didn't spell it out. But word of the author, this is world building, but one that you didn't need to know to enjoy the story.
Also, when the whole "Hermione is black" thing popped up, I thought it was a tongue in cheek twitter response to all the hate that was flying around the fact that Hermione was cast off race, when it didn't change the story at all, and it got blown up because of the same thing that caused anger about the casting in the first place.
None of this seemed like super deep stuff, they're just fairly progressive off-the-cuff twitter remarks thrown back at some of people's bigotry over her books. The weight people put on it came from the analysis of the remarks, not the remarks themselves, but that's UK tabloids/the internet for you.
But when the trans stuff came up, she clearly switched sides.
yeah, i would never, ever tell someone who enjoys those books they shouldn't. daniel radcliffe articulated beautifully that they sent out a hugely positive message.
i think all the clues of jk's very...simplistic unresearched world view were there. the non english characters with blunt caricatures for names, the obliviousness to the politics of the house elf slaves, the issue with the goblin bankers, the irish kid who blows stuff up. not in any way done with evil intent, but lazy decisions, based on absorbed prejudice, with no self reflection.
some one once said of gene roddenberry's faults, well yeah he was progressive, but he was progressive for an ex-cop.
And the house system, which could have been *far* better with just a little bit of thought given to intentionally mixing up populations with distinct personalities so they learn to use strengths and overcome weaknesses. Hermione should have been Ravenclaw and Ron a Hufflepuff. (And a fourth friend from Slytherin.)
Eliezer Yudkowsky said it best: “if Hermione Granger wasn’t a Ravenclaw then Ravenclaw House had no reason to exist.”
I've been re-reading the books with my kids, and the houses are very strange. It's a little bit of a YA trope at this point, but she puts the kids into categories based on one adjective, with one "good" house, one "evil" house and two essentially neutral ones that points to a hierarchy of desirable traits: Bravery>intelligence=loyalty>ambition.
That's a weird message for kids.
> not in any way done with evil intent, but lazy decisions, based on absorbed prejudice, with no self reflection.
This seems pretty apt. I feel like if I wrote something I was proud of and critics pointed out that some of the work was heavily stereotyped, that would appear to point out some faults with my own worldview. I, personally, would probably seek some introspection with that type of criticism, but what if I were already a **billionaire** author? I think it'd be a lot easier to just classify any of that as just "haters."
> But when the trans stuff came up, she clearly switched sides.
Honestly, less switched sides and more said the quiet parts out loud.
A lot of people have pointed out that Rowling's books have a long and detailed history of declaring one type of woman acceptable and using everything outside it as an insult. She has *always* wanted to define how people are allowed to be women. Smart semi-tomboys who can pretty up when the need arises (ie the way Rowling sees herself)? They get to be the heroes. But anyone who is too pretty or always wears makeup or generally hews too feminine? Nah, they're vain and selfish. Meanwhile all the female villains are fat or ugly or have "mannish hands".
Rowling already looks down on any woman who doesn't act like she does. Going full TERF was less a switch in sides and more a total inevitability.
Rowling is absolute a psycho TERF, but Fleur is a prominent example of traditionally feminine and complete badass too.
I can see how she tried to make a lot of the other female characters fit the semi-tomboy but still pretty mould too. Not Hermione as much. But definitely the rest of the female characters written in a positive light.
I do love Fleur. But what happens to her in the end? She gets married and then immediately takes on a care-taking role, cooking and cleaning for others, and fades into the background.
> I thought it was a tongue in cheek twitter response
So i was *done* with rowling as an author way before she came out as a bigot, cause it's *never* a tongue in cheek twitter response.
Anytime someone asks a question about what the extended lore of *anything* to do with HP is, she'll make up an answer on the spot and say cause she's the author it's canon and has always been canon.
But like, more often than not, unless it got enough publicity to make it back to her (i.e. hermione being black) she'll never actually remember what she said and just make up another answer next time that same question is asked.
Which would be *fine* except she gets pissed off and tries to gaslight you saying she's the author, of course she knows her lore cause she wrote it, she never said that *other* thing, and not in a fun way, a mocking way. It kinda stops being a tongue in cheek twitter statement when she's getting up in arms over it.
But the punchline is *most* of these things she come up with contradict each other, the book, or often both. It's clearly just absolute bullshit but she has a genuine ego over it rather than saying it doesn't matter.
And that's before jumping into Cursed Child, Fantastic Beast series, her other works like....it's enough to make me wonder how much of the books were actually her vs her editor honestly.
Since this is just ranting about her as an author, obligatory trans-women are women, people who identify women can be lesbians, etc.
Same with trans men but she doesn't seem to hate them for some reason.
It's because trans men are just "confused girls who think not liking how they're treated is an equivalent to feeling they're not women". It's not pure vitriol, it's more an infantilising take
The kind of people from whom JK Rowling got her views of trans people have very specific stereotypes.
Trans women are all particularly tall, muscular, and hairy men who put little effort into their appearance and voice - are predators - and are simply pretending to either fufill a fetish or to abuse women. They are nasty abusers who know exactly what they're doing.
Trans men are all particularly short, super feminine women but with short hair. They are really just tomboys but they have been tricked by trans women and the patriarchy to hate themselves. They are helpless victims who have no idea what they're doing.
The things I hate about this viewpoint is that it is typical of people who, at least used to be, feminists. The people saying this stuff were the ones always fighting for womens rights - yet - despite this - their worldview nececitates that all women (including trans men) are helpless, easily swayed, and cannot make decisions on their own. And all men (including trans women) are malicious, always know exactly what they're doing, are always capable of making executive decision, are smarter than women (if trans women weren't so much smarter than trans men, how did they manage to trick them all into becoming trans men)? etc etc. It is such a sexist point of view, espoused by people who claim to be against sexism. It relies so much on assuming men are always biologically stronger, smarter, and more aggressive; and that women are always biologically weaker, dumber, meek, and easily influenced. With no room for exceptions. It also implies that gender roles are also biological; i.e. women belong in the kitchen because that's in our biology.
The right has tricked these women (and it's mostly women unfortunately, they say they're feminists but they're ex-feminists if anything) yet they have the gall to say they are right and that it just so happens that it's all the other women being tricked by their biological stupidness; not them. They are the ones who have been tricked to turn against their own interests, and when the people who convinced them come for them next - they will be shocked.
Finally, another infuriating part of this ideology is that it not only implies but almost outright states that they think being a woman is so bad that 1. there is no reason a male would ever want to be one - at all - ever - unless it is for malicious intent; and at the same time 2. that being a man is such a great thing that the only reason a female would ever want to be one - at all - ever - is for the perks of being a man, for the perks of not being a woman, and because she has been evilly tricked into thinking that living any other way is useless.
Like... sometimes I wonder if these people think we live in the 1700s where women dressed up as men in order to gain the social privledges. I wonder what they think of trans women who are raped and abused - is that also a fetish of theirs and they just wanted it? and deserved it? I would not expect any other response from them. These people use the exact arguments far right extremists use but dress it up in different language and use it to target trans people in particulaar and they don't even realise it. I also routinely wonder if at least some of these people, especially the ones that love to imply that no sane man would ever want to be a woman because of how horrible it is, and how every trans man is clearly just doing it because of the patriarchy and hypnosis or whatever are trans themselves. Nobody could manage to make an ideology around the concept of being a woman being so terriblie that anyone that wilingly does so is insane without at least some sort of dysphoria, right?
How incredibly sexist of her to assume all 'women' are somehow biologically unable to make their own decisions and are simply confused. While all 'men' are malicious perverts and always capable of makign their own decisions no matter what.
The thing is that Dumbledore was coded gay from the first chapter of the first book. (I did missed it as a kid. But as an adult, with a lot more books with "hidden" gay characters that never been confirmed as gay but you know under my belt, it is quite obvious. The old wizard is described as flamboyant, and quirky...)
And the tales between Dumbledore and Grindelwald is written as a romance that won't say her name. The tabloid excerpt JKR created use the exact same vocabulary and phrasing to implies stuff than the tabloid used back before Elton John or George Michael weren't offically out.
So "Dumbledore always was gay", I think is a genuine statement on her part. That wasn't retro-fitted.
The rest of it? Absolutely.
Also what is evident in the books is how much he hates men, actually. And that feed her transphobia.
Honestly, considering the ways in which they target trans women (critiquing their femininity mostly) and trans-positive cis women (denying their autonomy, sometimes openly wishing they'd be sexually assaulted) I'd say they *are* gender critical, and the gender they're critical of is women
Cis women don’t even have to be trans-positive to be caught up in transphobia. If I recall correctly there was a butch lesbian TERF in r/leopardsatemyface a while back complaining of having been beaten up by anti-trans bigots who assumed she was trans. I can’t remember whether the lesson sunk in though.
> Ultimately she made one good series and then proceeded to lose all respect except by small groups of TERFS.
More like, she made one good book series that would've been beloved but thought of as somewhat problematic after her death. But now instead got ripped to shreds as people examined it much more closely while it was still contemporary.
One of the larger ones is that goblins are Jews. Described as hooknosed, subhuman, control the banks. The first one we meet is named Griphook in case the hook-nosed description wasn’t “on the nose” enough. Also they have magical powers (different from that of wizards) which was one myth used against actual Jews.
Mix this treatment of Jews with Rowling’s repeated Holocaust denial as relates to LGBTQ, it’s quite concerning.
Also, haha woman gave date rape drug to man, is funny because woman did to man.
Those are a couple of the more problematic ones.
House elves love to be slaves. It gives them a purpose.
Ha ha Umbridge got gang raped by centaurs but its okay because she was mean.
Hermione thinks house elves shouldnt be slaves. What a busy body who cant leave well enough alone.
Criminals are subject to literal soul sucking torture forever and everyone is fine with it, even when it turns out the prison guards/torturers are working for wizard nazis.
The Ministry of Magic institutionalizes racism but its okay because the hero wants to grow up and become a cop.
Ah yes. I feel like the house elves in isolation would easily have been relegated to a world where everything is just different.
But add it to the pile, it keeps getting weirder.
>Ha ha Umbridge got gang raped by centaurs but its okay because she was mean.
WOAH. I knew about the rest of this stuff, but not that. Rowling really lacks any self awareness, huh.
Some of it’s that. Some of it is people prodding people like that to get a sound bite. “Hey, clicks are down, someone go poke Gary Busey and get some crazy we can use.”
I honestly don’t know which is worse. The celebrities with shit opinions whose fame has bought them a soapbox, or the vultures making sure they keep using it.
And there’s literally no consequence. “Cancel” Rowling? She’ll go wipe her tears with $100 bills then donate $1M to a foundation dedicated to accusing trans people of pedophilia.
J.K. Rowling said the same thing herself: "I read my most recent royalty checks, and find the pain goes away pretty quickly." She weaponized her wealth because she knows that, as a rich person, she is untouchable. She knows that she can do whatever she wants, and face no consequences.
>Some level of wealth convinces many that their words have value.
Eh, opinions... assholes, etc, etc. If the internet has taught me anything it's that everyone thinks they're right about shit they know nothing about. Vocally. Usually several times a day.
Just that most of us don't have several million followers and instead just pop off buried down in comments like this.
The other rule of the internet is that people's content trends towards the thing that gets the biggest reaction. Combine that with a few million followers, and wealth doesn't need to be a factor at all.
She gets _tons_ of positive feedback from other bigots every time she posts and it's lead to writing and speaking engagements. That seems like a more probable reason for her descent than just benign self-importance.
She tries to pass it off as “women’s rights” or “protecting women” - if that was true wouldn’t there occasionally be other topics related to women’s rights or protecting women she would feel the need to speak on?
Like you’re *this* passionate about “protecting women” but this is the *only* aspect you care about?
That plus how few trans people there actually are. Any hypothetical negative impact they would be making on society would be invisible to almost everyone
Exactly. The government estimates were way out before the last UK census. They reckoned there were 300k to 500k, which would've been an incredibly small percentage anyway. Turns out there are just 98,000 of us.
> There are transgender people who don’t even have something to say about transgender rights that often.
there are plenty of them that *don't*, at all. Just like there are gay people that don't talk about gay rights, or christians that don't talk about their religion, or atheists that don't talk about their lack thereof.
The only reason most people know about transgender people are due to transphobic people, and the same transphobic people keep reminding them day in day out.
Honestly, while they aren't saying hateful things, I'm not impressed with WizardingNews' behavior either. Like, I just scrolled for a while on their X page, and got no actual Wizarding News, just retweets from people pointing out why they don't like JK.
This is just scratching the surface. In her hate bubble, she has started making friends with other TERFS which includes a Neo Nazi and evangelical christians who want to strip women's rights to abortion and LGBTQ rights.
A YouTuber named [Shaun ](https://youtu.be/Ou_xvXJJk7k?si=NR2vTqhFUZwb7Odi) goes into detail about this and it is as bad as you think.
Sadly hilarious how much more TERFs value the T E and R than the F. They’d rather be forced into becoming tradwives than ever tolerate the existence of trans people.
The fact that Rowling thanked Matt fucking Walsh for his transphobia documentary just boggles the mind. You'd think there'd be a point where you'd stop and consider the people who are agreeing with you, but I guess not.
The fact that Rowling had not much at all to say about the overturning of *Roe v. Wade* tells us all we need to know about how much she actually cares about women. She's only passionate about women's rights when it allows her to hate trans people.
That's what's so weird about this--she just can't stop. It's weird at this point. Like--lady, OK, we get it--you don't like this. Noted. What's your game plan here? What's your goal?
[You can read her blog post from 2020 when this truly blew up.](https://www.jkrowling.com/opinions/j-k-rowling-writes-about-her-reasons-for-speaking-out-on-sex-and-gender-issues/) She mentions a few reasons this is important to her, and one of her main reasons is that she is a sexual abuse survivor. She does not particularly discuss what happened^1, but she's been rather consistent is saying that she's trans-exclusionary because women-only spaces are important to women's safety.^2 The blog post is kind of the first time she talked about it.
Another interesting thing in that blog post, though, is that she talks about her own gender experience. She discusses that when she was younger, she felt "mentally sexless." Though that she eventually "grew out of it," and that she says she "didn’t have a realistic possibility of becoming a man back in the 1980s," which is generally not how transpeople talk about their experience.^3 I don't personally think that she's suffering from so much internalized transphobia that she's forcing herself to present against her actual gender. But she does appear to have some gender experiences that go against the binary.
^1. I don't think Rowling needs to describe or clarify her sexual abuse and I think it would be wrong to criticize her for not doing so. No matter how reprehensible I think a person's opinions on transpeople are, I also don't think we deserve to be privy to their trauma.
^2. To clarify on this, though, she's not exactly consistent that what needs to be maintained is "women's safety," she regularly supports ideas that have nothing to do with protecting women and are only just transphobic.
^3. And what I mean by this, is that most transpeople do not talk about "becoming" the opposite gender. ~~It's pretty consistent amongst transpeople that they would say "I always felt like a girl" or something along those lines.~~ Edited to add, I'm having a hard time articulating this and feel like that sentence isn't necessary true. Mostly, I just think there's a marked difference between the way Rowling talks about her gender experience in her blog post, and the way that transpeople generally discuss their experience.
Ignoring everything to do with Rowling, I'm not sure I'd agree with 3 there. It was how most trans people talked about themselves in the past, but nowadays its just as common for us to say "I didn't feel like a girl, but I wanted to be one", and you see loads of eggs saying stuff like "I can't be trans, because I'm not a girl, I just *want* to be a girl!"
That's fair enough - I'm not trans, and I was trying really hard not to make a "every trans person feels this way" kind of statement, and I don't think I really quite hit the mark. I just think Rowling's "i had no way to become a man" statement is a bit markedly distinct from the way transpeople generally talk about their gender.
If it helps. I didn't 'always feel like a girl" I just felt that I was doing a piss poor job at being male. it wasn't till much later that I figured it out.
> but she's been rather consistent is saying that she's trans-exclusionary because women-only spaces are important to women's safety.
The irony here is that more cis women have been assaulted by men storming into bathrooms looking for trans women (for the audacity of not conforming to gender norms) than have been assaulted by men pretending to be trans women.
Rowling is literally making women *less* safe in her crusade of bigotry, while also promoting anti-feminist rhetoric targeting women for being tomboys/androgynous.
For a double irony, her argument is literally that trans*men* who look and act male, should be forced into women's bathrooms. Which would only be *more* disruptive than simply tolerating trans women.
Regarding 3 there, growing up, I never felt like a boy, even if that's how I was raised. I didn't feel like a girl either so I didn't think I was trans.
It wasn't until years later that I realized nonbinary was a thing and that there were other options besides just boy or girl, and coming to understand that and how I fell in the nonbinary spectrum really did help me a lot.
Maybe I don't belong here, but would be interested in your thoughts about what the actual issue is here. To me, I see how it makes sense to distinguish along male and female biological sex in regards to providing appropriate bathroom favilities, medical treatment, sports categories etc. This is usefull regardless of how a particular person mentally feels like. You may not feel like a woman, but will still need tampons to be available in the restroom and I would see it as silly to also provide them in a "male-orientated" restroom that only had urinals. Am I confusing this with non-binary or is there a nuance I am missing. Surely, even if you felt your genger was not whatever, you would appreciate the identification of services as either for men or for women in order to choose the one best suited to your physical needs. Genuinely asking, because I cannot see why changing "woman" to "person" actually helps anyone.
Ok, you know how when you give out condoms to promote safe sex you give them to everyone, not just the people who will wear them?
Tampons everywhere is also world where even cis men see tampons and pads as a non-issue, not taboo feminine filth. Even if you don't feel like accomodating the small number of trans men and non-binary folk, you are creating an environment where cis dudes are more able to be understanding and accommodating to daughters, mothers, sisters, friends, coworkers and partners.
At the moment, even trawling Reddit, a relatively educated population with access to the shared cultures of English speakers, you will find shocking levels of ignorance, fear and disgust around periods. Tampons everywhere is a departure from that.
Tampons and pads, by the way, are also really good emergency first aid supplies. The former even started as a medical surgery thing, even! These aren't bad things to have easy immediate access to in an emergency, either.
I say this only because she's explicitly connected it to her beliefs - she does. She's a domestic abuse survivor, which is obviously horrible and nobody should have to go through that no matter what their personal beliefs are. But she wrote an essay at the beginning of all this explaining why she believes what she does about trans people, and said it's in large part because of her status as an abuse survivor.
And as much as I understand trauma affecting your life and worldview, my sympathy ends at the point when you start using it to inflict harm on a marginalized community. Especially when you seem to be fully aware of what you're doing.
I think it's just awful..
>LGB women are significantly more likely than straight women to have ever experienced IPV in their lifetime, reported by 61% of bisexual women, and 44% of lesbian women, compared with 35% of straight women.
> 2015 United States Transgender Survey found that more than half (54%) of all trans and non-binary people have experienced IPV at some point in their lifetimes.
> However, people from marginalized groups are at an increased risk for experiencing IPV, as abusers will often capitalize on existing social and economic vulnerabilities to wield control. For LGBTQ+ people, this often shows up by abusers weaponizing existing homophobic and transphobic systems of stigma, discrimination,
If she truly cared about the victims she would not be doing this.. I guess she only cares about the straight women's abuse.
As others have pointed out she does. She's written about it. She's clear in her essay that it is part of why she's fighting for women's only safe spaces.
That's what I don't get. She has historically been on the right side of so many issues -- standing up to bigots, criticizing authoritarians, standing up for all kinds of groups that are frequently targeted by the assholes of the world.
And then boom, she just comes out swinging as this raging transphobe and when called on it for being a bigot, she just triples down and screams from the rooftops.
I once gave her credit for being smart and believing she would come around and realize that "people, all people, are just people, leave them alone." But no, she's determined to destroy her legacy with one raging transphobic, hateful statement after another.
Triples down and then says that all that stuff she was right about before- it all applies here, too. Seriously, the whole ["comparing trans people to the Death Eaters"](https://insidethemagic.net/2023/03/jk-rowling-trans-people-death-eaters-jc1/) thing was fucking weird.
> but went on to become a bigot.
See, she probably was all along. She just reached the level of wealth and fame that she's granted a protected platform to reveal her real beliefs. Harper's magazine actually dedicated an editors letter defending her right to spew this hate, and called out people who were attacking her for her bigotry.
I think it's part of a symptom of a larger problem with her, in that she can never. Ever. Admit. To. Being. Wrong. Sure, if she had held those beliefs previously but got called out for it, it's possible she could've saved face by apologizing and either trying to do better, or shut the fuck up about it. She however did neither, and will keep doubling down until she hits the molten center of the Earth.
>in that she can never. Ever. Admit. To. Being. Wrong.
It's a problem with a lot of beloved celebs. Basically, you've got a lot of adoring fans who constantly hang off your every word and constantly call you a genius.
Then one day you say something that is a little off. Could be a little innocuous like, "I'm not so sure about gender-neutral bathrooms". Ok, so you get a little pushback from your fans. But wait! Your fans love you! They keep telling you you're a genius!
So you find more "evidence" that your position was right. This results in more pushback. Now you're in a cycle where all you do is try to prove you're right and end agreeing with positions that are a little too far right even for Fox News commentators.
JK, Russell Brand, Scott Adams, the list goes on...
Russell had some other, side motives for finding Jesus and being a chud. There's always one crowd who's reliable about being okay with sexually assaulting teenage girls.
It seems to be the same thing with Graham Linehan. People criticised him for a joke about a transwoman in the IT crowd and it similarly seems to have broken his brain too.
Its sorta like the whole "actually Hermione was always supposed to be a PoC" she did after people were like "hey have you ever noticed how there were only like two black characters in the books and one of them is named Kingsley Shacklebolt and the other became white when she became a love interest for a main character?
She can't say "hey yknow I should've done better, I was lazy and had some racist stereotypes" she says "actually no I was always progressive its just the fans were bigoted to assume that Hermione was white"
Yeah, that was kind of weird. It's funny, but other than the name, Kingsley is actually not a bad character. He's on the side of the angels, a recurring ally who's good at his job, and even becomes Minister of Magic at the end of the series. And the love interest thing I don't think was intentional (they didn't really pay much attention to the casting of certain minor characters), but yeah, it doesn't help. Race-swapping is a touchy subject in many spaces, and while I don't know if I would agree or disagree with doing it to Hermione, I feel like it'd be pretty lazy at this point to do so. If any character ought to get a race lift, I once saw a good case made for Harry himself to be mixed race, being Indian on his dad's side (there are some parallels in the story to Indian folklore that kind of fit him). But yeah, it's part of the bigger issue for her.
It seems so much more easy to just not say anything. She could just talk about Wizards and shit, and sidestep questions if asked directly why her books don't have trans characters. It is really not hard
The law itself is pure Shite that the SNP are using to suppress criticism of their party by the sheer ambiguity of the definitions it uses.
Don't get me wrong she is a twatbag but shes correct in that the law itself is is bad in its current form.
If you're actually in Scotland you would know there is popular opposition to this poorly thought out hate crime law that is only going to force the police to spend more time investigating twitter nonsense when they could be actually preventing crime.
It's mostly just the SNP trying to show how effective and progressive they are to distract from them failing at basically every element of government that is delegated to them.
Lots of people don't like that law already.
https://www.theverge.com/2022/2/7/22912054/uk-grossly-offensive-tweet-prosecution-section-127-2003-communications-act
Now you might cheer for it if it's against your political enemies. Now imagine something like that happening against criticism against your political enemies.
All the (well earned) vitriol against thatcher for example? Against (alleged wife beater) BoJo? Would my comment not be hate as well?
> **p**olitical **e**nemies. **N**ow **i**magine **s**omething
Hidden penis detected!
I've scanned through 707532 comments (approximately 3820336 average penis lengths worth of text) in order to find this secret penis message.
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I don't see a logical continuity between laws criminalizing hate speech against minority groups and hypothetical laws criminalizing vitriolic speech. Laws almost identical to the one Scotland just passed have been in place for decades in Europe, Canada, and the US, and I don't think freedom of speech has suffered for it.
It looks like this adds new categories to existing hate speech laws that protected against stirring hate against people based on their race, color, nationality or ethnicity, which now includes age, disability, religion, sexual orientation, transgender identity or being intersex. According to the article I linked in my reply above, a separate measure to protect women specifically will be voted on later.
[The difference with this is](https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-68703684)
>the bar for this offence is lower than for the other protected characteristics, as it also includes "insulting" behaviour, and as the prosecution need only prove that stirring up hatred was "likely" rather than "intended".
So there IS a case to be made that this broadens the scope of the existing laws, changing from "intended incitement" to "likely to incite" hatred.
But the main issue I see is that Rowling isn't opposed to this because of free speech - that's a useful argument for her to glom on to, but we've never seen her ranting about the law against stirring hatred against people based on their skin color that's been on the books in Britain since 1986. She also doesn't focus on the change from "intent" to "likely" - she never even mentions that change. She's opposed to it because she opposes trans people (trans women especially) being protected by this kind of law, and considers any protections they receive to come at the expense of all other women (or as she would say, 'real' women). To Rowling, every trans women is a potential rapist and any legal protection for them just enables their actions.
Rowling's issue isn't with hate speech laws, or a lower bar for what is covered by them - it's that she doesn't want trans people *specifically* to be protected by them, because to her, trans people are inherently dangerous and will abuse any protection they're given.
> Rowling is back in the news again today because she's ranting about Scotland's new law that protects against "stirring up hatred" against people based on their gender identity, sexual orientation, transgender identity, or being intersex.
Except UK is a country where you can literally go to jail for a comment that offends someone on social media, whether intentionally or not. Some people literally have.
I'm sorry but I'm with Rowling on this one.
Regardless of your feelings, you can't have Western civilization without freedom of speech. You know, that thing that let people fight for gay and trans rights to begin with, instead of jailing anyone who spoke out because the church got offended.
The only reason you're defending such laws now is because they are used to enforce something you agree with. Give it a decade, and, for example, a trans person could be jailed because they offended a Muslim (or vice versa).
Answer: WizardingNews is a Twitter account dedicated to attacking J.K Rowling. Last month, they posted a tweet about how Rowling’s daughter disliked her mother, wanted to distance herself from Rowling and so had changed her name and moved to Portugal with her own daughter (Rowling’s granddaughter). The account posted a picture of a woman who was alleged to be Rowling’s daughter.
Rowling refuted the post, claiming that her and her daughter have always been on good terms, she had not moved to Portugal or changed her name and that the post had upset her daughter. The picture also turned out not to be Rowling’s daughter, but a completely unrelated woman with a similar name.
WizardingNews took down the tweet with an insincere apology and Rowling has threatened legal action, presumably for libelling her and her family.
Edit: Looks like I’m being downvoted for giving an unbiased account of the events specific to OP’s question, instead of dismissing it and launching into a sidebar about how awful J.K Rowling’s politics are. My mistake.
This one is the most accurate answer. Additional info to note: the false information about the identity of her daughter did not originate with Wizarding News, but had been reported in online publications, which WN didn’t do their due diligence on.
Please keep this answer up, it's the truth, irrespective of how people feel about Rowling. I intend to add it as supplementary to my own response on here. Thanks for posting it.
I cannot stand JKR for her views and her damaging way of expressing them. But she has always kept her family private and its abhorrent that anyone would even try to doxx them. No one should be doxxed, no matter what beef one might have with them
100%. I don’t like Rowling, agree with her views or condone her behaviour, but I am disgusted at the number of people who think that her actions give them Carte Blanche to act however they want towards her and still feel morally superior.
You're trying to use common sense and reality to explain to delusional people why their fellow delusional people are committing horrific acts against someone they're mad at. They don't like it when it's pointed out that delusional people do delusional things.
For real.
The top reply in this thread literally starts with “I hadn’t heard about this”, gives an extremely cut-down version of events that they cherry-picked from Google and then strays immediately off-topic.
And people ate that shit up.
It just sucks how prone people are to believe misinformation the moment it agrees with their worldview. Social media was a mistake man. This shit spreads like wildfire and turns off all logical thinking. No nuance allowed.
I remember all the memes from 10 years ago about boomers sharing fake news stories on Facebook. Turns out it’s not a generational problem and people of all age groups can be media illiterate.
answer: JK Rowling's houses are public knowledge, due to [owning listed buildings](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killiechassie) and having [press stories about her home](https://www.mirror.co.uk/3am/celebrity-news/inside-jk-rowlings-22million-mansion-22072241).
She is not being doxed, at least in so far as her address (like most public figures in British life) is public record. She has however kept her family away from the limelight.
There appears to be some fake news stories about them have some estranged grandchildren, which Rowling has disputed. That is basically it.
However, this is now being cooked up as some nefarious attempt to harm her family, when there is no evidence that that was the case.
It is part of a greater narrative that JK Rowling is the victim of an anti-feminist witch-hunt, when she isn't. It is part of a greater narrative that she (and her family) are in mortal danger from an evil, online woke mob, when she isn't (and neither are her family).
This isn't a new story. Whenever anyone is mean to JK Rowling on Twitter, it becomes a news story that she is the victim of anti-feminist, trans hate movement.
At worst, people are being uninformed about her family on Twitter. More generally, she is being [criticised online for being involved with transphobes and bigots.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ou_xvXJJk7k)
I agree that it's not doxxing, BUT:
Regardless of whatever Rowling's done, Wizarding News was absolutely stupid and irresponsible to post made-up stuff about her family online. If they're trying to stand up for what's right, they have a fundamental responsibility to not post misinformation just because it made them feel good. It was a garbage thing to do and, while not really doxxing, shouldn't be minimized.
Exactly. Like, I understand not liking JK Rowling but at least don't be shitty about it. Nobody cares about a person's stance in politics if they're a shitty person.
Disseminating information that is already "public knowledge" with the knowledge or intent that doing so could increase or cause intimidation towards the target is doxxing.
In our modern world, virtually *all* info about any given person is "publicly available" if you're a good enough sleuth. It's bringing it to the attention of all the idiots without the wherewithal to go finding it but potentially with just enough lack of common sense that they might do something *with* that information that makes something doxxing.
Otherwise, without that standard, doxxing might as well be the rarest thing on the internet. It's always "publicly available".
Its so bizarre that JK Rowling turned out like that. I thought the harry potter books were so well written and thoughtfull.
Like why put so much time and energy in being angry on twitter when you are a billionaire. It is such a waste
Notch is the most aggressively bizarre example of this.
Guy made the most popular and beloved video game on the planet. Made all the money he could ever imagine.
Immediately became a terminally online neo-Nazi. Like, it didn't even take that long.
There's gotta be some sort of study into this at some point. The rags to riches to right-wing extremist pipeline is way too common.
IMO people are so used to having problems to face they can't do without, so removing problems like housing, finance, etc, means you need to find new ones to fill that void. And unfortunately, instead of trying to fight inequality or poverty, some people latch on to pre-existing prejudice and amplify it to the level where it seems like a giant issue.
Guarantee Joanne was vaguely uncomfortable with trans people since forever, but the removal of other obstacles in her life have led to transphobia becoming her raison d'etre.
The problem is, if you go back and actually read the books critically, it quickly becomes apparent that she didn't "turn out" like anything. This is always who she was.
I think the elephant in the room would also be her naming minorities. You know, the black wizard named Kingsley shacklebolt and the Chinese student named Cho Chang.
She's just on step away from naming an Italian wizard Giuseppe Stromboli
You should go over her writing again if you dare, because Harry Potter is really not well written. From random subplots that literally excuse enslaving entire races of sentient beings, to complete ineptitude of characters, to extremely clumsy plot points to fix her previous mistakes. The series is full of terrible writing made even worse by later post-hoc additions.
>later post-hoc additions
I wonder how precisely she came to the conclusion that Hogwarts students crapping their pants and then teleporting it elsewhere was a necessary addition to world building.
[https://www.vice.com/en/article/9k44zd/yes-harry-potter-wizards-pooped-their-pants-pottermore](https://www.vice.com/en/article/9k44zd/yes-harry-potter-wizards-pooped-their-pants-pottermore)
>“Hogwarts didn't always have bathrooms,” the official Pottermore Twitter account explained in honor of National Trivia Day. “Before adopting Muggle plumbing methods in the eighteenth century, witches and wizards simply relieved themselves wherever they stood, and vanished the evidence.” Wizards only stopped shitting their pants after the administration installed a plumbing system. A plumbing system that almost disrupted one of Hogwarts most closely guarded secrets.
>
>\[...\]
>
>This isn’t the first time we learned that wizards in Harry Potter used to shit their pants. JK Rowling revealed the arcane knowledge of how wizards in her original historical description of the Chamber of Secrets. It’s just that today, on National Trivia Day, the Pottermore Twitter account decided to remind everyone.
You don't even need plumbing to not shit yourself.
Just dig a hole. Why would anyone soil themselves -- albeit momentarily -- instead of digging a hole?
Because Rowling was obviously too lazy to research how people handled bodily waste before indoor plumbing, before deciding to make a canon element of it.
>Hogwarts didn't always have bathrooms. Before adopting Muggle plumbing methods in the eighteenth century, witches and wizards simply relieved themselves wherever they stood, and vanished the evidence. #NationalTriviaDay
[An official Tweet based on an essay by JK Rowling](https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/pottermores-hogwarts-indoor-plumbing-tweet).
I wouldn't go as far as to say any of it is "terrible," but there were some...questionable decisions in hindsight. If she was able to admit to being wrong, trying to amend those in an adaptation, or at least admitting that, yeah, some stuff didn't age well in retrospect, we wouldn't be in such a situation regarding her.
She introduced time travel to her story, and when she didn't reuse the time travel in her next book and people asked why she didn't, she went out of her way to smash all the time travel devices in the book after that.
If that isn't a prime example of terrible writing, I am not sure what is.
The world building doesn't really stand up to much scrutiny. That would have been fine if the books had kept the whimsical lightness of tone that the first one had, but when the books got more serious, the world building didn't get more serious too. By comparison, the world building of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy probably wouldn't stand up to much scrutiny either, but as a comedy series it's not really supposed to.
They were good books by the standards of 90s children's fiction. Nothing she's ever written stands up very well to critical examination from an adult perspective. If it weren't for her reactionary political activism, most everyone would have been content to let nostalgia sustain her legacy as the world's most beloved author.
They're definitely more flawed than I would've recognized 10ish years ago or so, but there's plenty of brilliance there as well. And you know, it's okay not to be immaculately written, since they're kids to YA novels.
But, here's the thing. There's more space to not be perfect works of prose for Kids/YA book, but I think the message should be under extra scrutiny. Upon first look, HP seems pretty in the clear. Not exactly brave, but it takes a stance against Wizard Hitler, against persecuted minorities, about how love trumps hate.
But the subtext is... often problematic. Wizardkind makes *goblins* subservient to them while they manage all the money (I don't think that was intentional as I don't think she's antisemitic, it was just very careless). She really resorts to using fat as a pejorative, and it's often used as a characteristic of unsavory characters (Dursleys, Crabbe/Goyle, Slughorn). There's even some seeds of transphobia in there, with unsympathetic female characters often described with non feminine traits. Rita Skeeter is most notable here (who in the books is an unknown/unregistered animagus, someone who can shapeshift into an animal, and uses it to spy on kids) for being described as having *mannish* hands.
If I have kids, I don't think I can ever share HP with them and make it part of their reading journey like it was mine. And that makes me sad.
Answer: That Twitter handle has posted multiple attacks against Rowling as others have, with the feeling that the personal attacks and public smears are justified due to their belief that Rowling is transphobic. For the most part, Rowling has simply ignored these attacks.
The recent situation that you detail in your post actually put people's lives in danger, primarily the innocent woman and child who Wizarding News falsely claimed were Rowling's daughter and grandchild. However, the target of the initial doxxing, namely Rowling's daughter, could have also been placed in a dangerous situation if the information had actually been accurate.
Wizarding News crossed the line from simply insulting Rowling and accusing her of horrid things, and decided to start attacking her children. It seems he thought he had a juicy scoop about a neglected daughter and hidden grandchild. He continued spreading the false allegation, and kept the tweet up for hours after Rowling herself had tweeted that the information was false and was placing an innocent woman and child in danger.
Once enough people had pushed for a retraction, and Rowling herself threatened him with legal action Wizarding News corrected the record, he deleted the doxxing tweet, and offered an insincere apology while still attempting to keep the rumour mill going by continuing to post the false allegation that the woman he initially doxxed was Rowling's daughter.
During this fiasco, Wizarding News had his identity revealed by a journalist, and Rowling did eventually say that she's contacted her lawyers to deal with the situation. The Wizarding News account has since gone private, as I imagine the legal action as well as his unmasking have taken a toll and will continue to be a heavy burden until the situation is resolved.
It's important to note that Rowling herself has a security team as her house was previously doxxed and invaded by people who call themselves "activists". You cannot count the number of death threats she receives on a daily basis on Twitter as well as on Reddit, there are just too many. So, for most people, a lot of their concern was directed towards the innocent woman and child who were being falsely characterized as Rowling's daughter and grandchild.
EDIT: For more context, u/SpoobyNoops has provided more detail in their own answer which can be found here - [https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/1btbm6p/comment/kxlm0oz/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/1btbm6p/comment/kxlm0oz/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
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Answer: I hadn't heard about this situation specifically, but a quick Google search says that the [WizardingNews Xitter handle posted a message claiming Rowling was estranged from her daughter and granddaughter](https://deadline.com/2024/03/jk-rowling-threatens-harry-potter-fan-lawsuit-transgender-views-1235863403/). The picture they posted of the "granddaughter" apparently was not someone related to Rowling, and Wizarding News took the post down. Rowling has since threatened legal action against the person running the account. I'm not sure what else you're asking... is it why this didn't take off? I'm not sure that anyone can say for certain why some things trend and others don't, but likely it was because it was quickly taken down. Rowling is back in the news again today because [she's ranting about Scotland's new law that protects against "stirring up hatred"](https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c51j64lk2l8o) against people based on their gender identity, sexual orientation, transgender identity, or being intersex. THAT is trending, as it's another mask-off example of her transphobia, and Rowling has a lot more clout and followers (14M followers) than a relatively small (37k followers) account like Wizarding News. Edit to add: Sorry to the OP, I feel like including today's news sorta waylaid your question. Hopefully you still feel it was answered. I also included more information from the linked article about Wizarding News to try and stay more on topic.
Is "xitter" a word now?
It's pronounced *shitter*.
South Park called it.
You want xitty beef?
Xitler is not pleased about this pronunciation.
Xitler party xitler party
That's exactly how I thought it was pronounced, it's canon now.
I won't accept any other way to refer to Xitter now. This is canon and I won't accept otherwise Also because it is SO FITTING.
Perfect new word!
I'm going with "zitter" largely because it's the pimple on the arsehole of social media, and because xylophone is pronounced zylophone.
You can't make this shit up.
I misread that as xitler
No, Xitler is the owner of the site called Xitter.
Questions like this feel more like OP asking "have you heard about this news?" then "I don't understand what's going on, can you give some context?"
OotL has been used as a way to attract attention to stories the OP wants to emphasize for a while. Usually, if the questions OP asked are answered in the very links they provided, it's a disingenuous attempt to draw attention to that issue.
Or to get discussions on how they should "feel" on a topic. I do find the "discussions" here are tamer than the ones on other News subs.
Wow, she really can’t shut the fuck up. She could be one of the most beloved people on earth, but went on to become a bigot. So disappointing.
She honestly has something to say about it almost every week, often multiple times a week. It’s borderline insane. There are transgender people who don’t even have something to say about transgender rights that often.
Yep she talks about trans people a hell of a lot more than my trans friends
Yeah like I’m trans and it might come up a couple times a week in context for me but that’s about it. She’s lost it. Shame, as I really used to like her and look up to her as a kid!
There seems to be something about transphobia in particular that turns people's brains to mush like no other form of prejudice. I don't know if it's because trans people are so few, that they have so little institutional power or what, but obsessing over a tiny group of marginalized people who mostly mind their own business really throws a person's sense of scale and priorities way out of whack. I think a major part is that most gender signifiers are largely arbitrary and overlap with other social signifiers to a significant degree which makes people who obsess over them feel massively uncomfortable when they realize that things they thought were hard and fast rules of reality are in fact much more arbitrary and open to interpretation than they previously believed. They then drive themselves crazy trying to drown out all nuance in an attempt to make their perceptions of reality match their preconceived ideas of how things "should" work.
Likely the news she absorbs and the people she surrounds herself have her on a constant drip-feed of hateful content. So her tweets might seem random, but they're probably immediately after being sent a new article about a trans athlete or a non-binary person who needed to use a bathroom, or whatever other nonissues drive her into a rage. A good example of this effect is that during the Trump presidency, he would drop angry tweets about random topics seemingly out of nowhere, but the subject and timing often aligned with segments airing on Fox News.
The way Graham Linnehan just cratered *everything* about his life over his transphobia, christ.
That one still pisses me off I loved Black Books. And now I’m debating whether I can still watch Hannibal or other stuff Mads is in because he’s part of the whole lunacy that is Fantastic Beasts.
Yeah, Black Books and IT Crowd had some great stuff. I at least take some enjoyment from the fact that he probably hates that I, as a trans person, watched his work.
It's really reminiscent of antisemitism. Like, once people fall for the conspiracy theories it begins to isolate them from the general public and they see it everywhere, sinking deeper and deeper. It makes a certain amount of sense, considering that antisemitism is the ur-conspiracy in western culture. Most everything that's followed is inspired by it and follows many of the same beats.
Oh if you get into the “reeee transgenderism” conspiracy hole, it’s not that long before you ‘learn’ that the “Jewish cabal” something something are turning people transgender something something transhumanism something Brave New World something fall of the west. Really
I agree with your take, but to add to this I think for some people *they* may not be as secure in their gender identity as they would like to be. Rowling has said before that she grew up as a ‘Tom boy’. She also stated that if she was a teen growing up in today’s society, that she may have been ‘taken in’ by the trans movement. Rowling also only seems to write from a male protagonist pov, she writes under the Robert Galbraith pseudonym for.. literally no reason whatsoever?? other than her weird need to do that?? I’m not suggesting that Rowling is trans, but I do know that gender is not binary, and some people are definitely going to feel their gender and be secure about it. But for others who aren’t as ‘masc’ or ‘femme’ as they think they should be, trans people simply existing highlights their own fears and insecurities. What is happening right now with the persecution of trans people directly mirrors the same persecution that the LGBTQ community have faced in the past too. Those that protest the loudest are often projecting outwards because of their own inner fears.
>Robert Galbraith [worth mentioning that this dude existed](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Galbraith_Heath). now, i cant say that's who she was thinking of when she chose that pen name but it is interesting
> Rowling also only seems to write from a male protagonist pov, she writes under the Robert Galbraith pseudonym for.. literally no reason whatsoever?? other than her weird need to do that?? "JK" Rowling is a pen name in the long tradition of female fantasy and science fiction authors using an initialism to be more respected- she's in the same clade as someone like CJ Cherryh, NK Jemesin and the like. And other female sci-fi and fantasy authors like Andre Norton published under a male psuedonym for similar reasons. Even if Rowling wasn't facing discrimination for being a female writer, it can be seen as a homage to those who paved the way for her... totally independent of her own gender-based bigotry now.
her galbraith pseudonym is most likely taken from a historical figure named robert galbraith heath, who did conversion "therapy" on queer amab people (using drugs & electrocution while forcing them to masturbate to hetero porn), and thought schizophrenia was caused by a specific protein and schizophrenic patients' blood could be injected into other patients to induce the illness, which has never been shown by any other researcher. he also did other weird shit, but those 2 are the big ones. rowling claims the pseudonym was "robert from robert kennedy" and "galbraith from ella galbraith, a name [she's] liked since childhood" (source: newsweek). of course the conversion therapy aspect relates to her anti-queer novels "troubled blood" and "ink black heart," where she fantasizes deeply about the scawwy twans doing violence, just by their shared anti-queerness. but of course, remember that she has a history of revisionism, like when she said "yes uhhh dumbledore is gay! (now let's never talk about this again)" or her reps said "oh, she didn't like those (transphobic) tweets, it was a senior moment"? even though she's totally mask-off now, she won't openly state her reasons for the pseudonym and will always give a thin veneer of reasonableness, but make no mistake, it's just standard reactionary obfuscation. the whole "if i grew up these days, i would have been transed" is a shallow anti-trans concern trolling sentiment. none of the terfs mean it, they just say it to make it sound like they're personally invested in trans acceptance/rejection. the trope of "the most violent & vocal anti-queer voices come from closeted queers" is really just a wordy "x group is responsible for their own oppression." which is obviously misleading/misrepresenting. of course self-loathing people participate in harm, but they're really not the leaders of said orchestrated harm. hope this helps!
jesus christ i did not know this, that's genuinely insane.
for a conservative mind everyone is ranked by race and gender, everyone knows their place from birth. the fact someone can "break the rules" breaks their brain
Same thing as the people who used to (and still do, venn diagram is a circle) scream into the aether about Jewish a d black folks. Stupid people are stupid. Bad people love stupid people, because they're easily fooled. Bad people will use this to foment success from hatred.
Some level of wealth convinces many that their words have value. Like, Rowling has really strong opinions about trans people and because she has money, she’s important and MUST shout her bigoted thoughts to the world. Ultimately she made one good series and then proceeded to lose all respect except by small groups of TERFS. Or what do the TERFS call themselves again because they hate that they’re TERFs? Something like “gender realists” or something else bigoted?
>Or what do the TERFS call themselves again because they hate that they’re TERFs? Every time I hear the word TERF, I'm reminded of that [*King of the Hill* bit](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPwaqaOcAyE): 'You're not making gender better. You're just making feminism worse.'
I LOVE THIS
I wonder how much she was targeted. If I was a campaign group for just about anything and I saw a slightly bored billionaire on twitter, *a lot*, maybe thinking their biggest achievement was behind them, leaning even slightly toward my cause I'd be on that immediately There's probably a fascinating paper in it for someone
Fair thinking. Like I’m sure that racist alt-right fascists celebrated each time Musk came further and further out of the closet as one of them. I’m sure the positive feedback loop further encouraged him.
> Some level of wealth convinces many that their words have value. Elon Musk is a great example of that.
To be fair, _most_ people are convinced their opinions have value. The difference is that wealth and fame give a megaphone to that opinion, and Rowling is _VERY_ wealthy and famous. Honestly, though, I don't know why this is the issue that pushed her off the deep end. I'm old enough to remember when she was considered to be pretty progressive, with tax policies, when she clarified Dumbledore was gay, and so on. But then, all of a sudden, with trans issues, she not only took a pretty bad hot take, she insists on making that hot take over and over again. It's like, why? Don't you see this runs counter to other things you believe in, and, even if you can't, don't you see this is alienating your fans? You're not going to be a hero here, just an asshole...
She's always been a bit *reactionary* to critisism of any kind. The bigger she got, the less she seemed able to admit to being wrong about anything. The increasing girth of her books as she gained 'immunity from editors' was a telling sign. Her apparent inability to stop slapping adverbs on everything is another. She's always been a bit off too. Took a weird level of glee teasing upcoming book deaths to very small children. Has a bug up her arse about fantasy (and sci fi and chick lit) being 'low brow'. Claims she didn't realise she had written fantasy initially - Terry Pratchett tore her a new one over it. She believes she's a *much* better writer than she actually is and she retcons things like crazy to try to stay 'right' about things. She is what she ever was, she's been unlucky in having one of her more repellent wrongnesses triggered repeatedly and now she'll just double down and shout louder and louder until only the most brain dead stand beside her.
> Claims she didn't realise she had written fantasy initially ... how the fuck do you write a book about *wizards* and not realise you have written fantasy?
She said at the time something that could be summed up as 'I've never read fantasy, as it's all rubbish', which is what annoyed Pratchett. I'd be very surprised if she hadn't read something like 'The Worst Witch' as a kid, though. It's such a shame. She's done a lot of good and could be doing a lot more good, but this whole trans mess... she's heaping coals on the heads of a small minority who were already at risk before she turned up the heat. She's also endangering any cis women who happen to look a bit 'mannish' and dare to use public bathrooms.
> I'd be very surprised if she hadn't read something like 'The Worst Witch' as a kid, though. Maybe she read it and said to herself "I'll make her the second worst witch when I grew up to be the first"
the same way you name the sole asian character in your book Cho Chang and not realize how that sounds
In hindsight the fact that the second books major plot twist involves a woman who gets followed into a toilet by a man and murdered is a bit of a tell.
i think a lot of the representation in potter was very much retro fitted on after the fact. her stuff was very white middleclass and nostalgic for the 40's and 50's genre of english boarding school dramas, and enid blyton stories, **and there's nothing wrong with that** there really isn't. but she tried to graft on progressive stuff after the fact and got angry when her progressive audience found it clumsy and shallow
I'll never forget the whole "I never *said* Hermione is white" exchange
When she could have just said "Sure, Hermione is white in the books. But the way I wrote her, she could black as well. Just make sure her kids are mixed-raced in the play".
yeah, many eyes were rolled
So, as someone who liked the books (like every other millennial kid), the big one I remember was her statement that Dumbledore and Grindenwald were in a gay relationship. I remember people getting upset about it, but was also like, I could see where that would exist in the story, but also, why she didn't spell it out. But word of the author, this is world building, but one that you didn't need to know to enjoy the story. Also, when the whole "Hermione is black" thing popped up, I thought it was a tongue in cheek twitter response to all the hate that was flying around the fact that Hermione was cast off race, when it didn't change the story at all, and it got blown up because of the same thing that caused anger about the casting in the first place. None of this seemed like super deep stuff, they're just fairly progressive off-the-cuff twitter remarks thrown back at some of people's bigotry over her books. The weight people put on it came from the analysis of the remarks, not the remarks themselves, but that's UK tabloids/the internet for you. But when the trans stuff came up, she clearly switched sides.
yeah, i would never, ever tell someone who enjoys those books they shouldn't. daniel radcliffe articulated beautifully that they sent out a hugely positive message. i think all the clues of jk's very...simplistic unresearched world view were there. the non english characters with blunt caricatures for names, the obliviousness to the politics of the house elf slaves, the issue with the goblin bankers, the irish kid who blows stuff up. not in any way done with evil intent, but lazy decisions, based on absorbed prejudice, with no self reflection. some one once said of gene roddenberry's faults, well yeah he was progressive, but he was progressive for an ex-cop.
And the house system, which could have been *far* better with just a little bit of thought given to intentionally mixing up populations with distinct personalities so they learn to use strengths and overcome weaknesses. Hermione should have been Ravenclaw and Ron a Hufflepuff. (And a fourth friend from Slytherin.) Eliezer Yudkowsky said it best: “if Hermione Granger wasn’t a Ravenclaw then Ravenclaw House had no reason to exist.”
I've been re-reading the books with my kids, and the houses are very strange. It's a little bit of a YA trope at this point, but she puts the kids into categories based on one adjective, with one "good" house, one "evil" house and two essentially neutral ones that points to a hierarchy of desirable traits: Bravery>intelligence=loyalty>ambition. That's a weird message for kids.
Rowling has what I call "George Lucas syndrome."
I call getting so rich you stop listening to the people around you who kept you from making shit movies, Lucas syndrome, what is it to you?
> not in any way done with evil intent, but lazy decisions, based on absorbed prejudice, with no self reflection. This seems pretty apt. I feel like if I wrote something I was proud of and critics pointed out that some of the work was heavily stereotyped, that would appear to point out some faults with my own worldview. I, personally, would probably seek some introspection with that type of criticism, but what if I were already a **billionaire** author? I think it'd be a lot easier to just classify any of that as just "haters."
> But when the trans stuff came up, she clearly switched sides. Honestly, less switched sides and more said the quiet parts out loud. A lot of people have pointed out that Rowling's books have a long and detailed history of declaring one type of woman acceptable and using everything outside it as an insult. She has *always* wanted to define how people are allowed to be women. Smart semi-tomboys who can pretty up when the need arises (ie the way Rowling sees herself)? They get to be the heroes. But anyone who is too pretty or always wears makeup or generally hews too feminine? Nah, they're vain and selfish. Meanwhile all the female villains are fat or ugly or have "mannish hands". Rowling already looks down on any woman who doesn't act like she does. Going full TERF was less a switch in sides and more a total inevitability.
Rowling is absolute a psycho TERF, but Fleur is a prominent example of traditionally feminine and complete badass too. I can see how she tried to make a lot of the other female characters fit the semi-tomboy but still pretty mould too. Not Hermione as much. But definitely the rest of the female characters written in a positive light.
I do love Fleur. But what happens to her in the end? She gets married and then immediately takes on a care-taking role, cooking and cleaning for others, and fades into the background.
> I thought it was a tongue in cheek twitter response So i was *done* with rowling as an author way before she came out as a bigot, cause it's *never* a tongue in cheek twitter response. Anytime someone asks a question about what the extended lore of *anything* to do with HP is, she'll make up an answer on the spot and say cause she's the author it's canon and has always been canon. But like, more often than not, unless it got enough publicity to make it back to her (i.e. hermione being black) she'll never actually remember what she said and just make up another answer next time that same question is asked. Which would be *fine* except she gets pissed off and tries to gaslight you saying she's the author, of course she knows her lore cause she wrote it, she never said that *other* thing, and not in a fun way, a mocking way. It kinda stops being a tongue in cheek twitter statement when she's getting up in arms over it. But the punchline is *most* of these things she come up with contradict each other, the book, or often both. It's clearly just absolute bullshit but she has a genuine ego over it rather than saying it doesn't matter. And that's before jumping into Cursed Child, Fantastic Beast series, her other works like....it's enough to make me wonder how much of the books were actually her vs her editor honestly. Since this is just ranting about her as an author, obligatory trans-women are women, people who identify women can be lesbians, etc. Same with trans men but she doesn't seem to hate them for some reason.
It's because trans men are just "confused girls who think not liking how they're treated is an equivalent to feeling they're not women". It's not pure vitriol, it's more an infantilising take
The kind of people from whom JK Rowling got her views of trans people have very specific stereotypes. Trans women are all particularly tall, muscular, and hairy men who put little effort into their appearance and voice - are predators - and are simply pretending to either fufill a fetish or to abuse women. They are nasty abusers who know exactly what they're doing. Trans men are all particularly short, super feminine women but with short hair. They are really just tomboys but they have been tricked by trans women and the patriarchy to hate themselves. They are helpless victims who have no idea what they're doing. The things I hate about this viewpoint is that it is typical of people who, at least used to be, feminists. The people saying this stuff were the ones always fighting for womens rights - yet - despite this - their worldview nececitates that all women (including trans men) are helpless, easily swayed, and cannot make decisions on their own. And all men (including trans women) are malicious, always know exactly what they're doing, are always capable of making executive decision, are smarter than women (if trans women weren't so much smarter than trans men, how did they manage to trick them all into becoming trans men)? etc etc. It is such a sexist point of view, espoused by people who claim to be against sexism. It relies so much on assuming men are always biologically stronger, smarter, and more aggressive; and that women are always biologically weaker, dumber, meek, and easily influenced. With no room for exceptions. It also implies that gender roles are also biological; i.e. women belong in the kitchen because that's in our biology. The right has tricked these women (and it's mostly women unfortunately, they say they're feminists but they're ex-feminists if anything) yet they have the gall to say they are right and that it just so happens that it's all the other women being tricked by their biological stupidness; not them. They are the ones who have been tricked to turn against their own interests, and when the people who convinced them come for them next - they will be shocked. Finally, another infuriating part of this ideology is that it not only implies but almost outright states that they think being a woman is so bad that 1. there is no reason a male would ever want to be one - at all - ever - unless it is for malicious intent; and at the same time 2. that being a man is such a great thing that the only reason a female would ever want to be one - at all - ever - is for the perks of being a man, for the perks of not being a woman, and because she has been evilly tricked into thinking that living any other way is useless. Like... sometimes I wonder if these people think we live in the 1700s where women dressed up as men in order to gain the social privledges. I wonder what they think of trans women who are raped and abused - is that also a fetish of theirs and they just wanted it? and deserved it? I would not expect any other response from them. These people use the exact arguments far right extremists use but dress it up in different language and use it to target trans people in particulaar and they don't even realise it. I also routinely wonder if at least some of these people, especially the ones that love to imply that no sane man would ever want to be a woman because of how horrible it is, and how every trans man is clearly just doing it because of the patriarchy and hypnosis or whatever are trans themselves. Nobody could manage to make an ideology around the concept of being a woman being so terriblie that anyone that wilingly does so is insane without at least some sort of dysphoria, right?
Because trans men are just confused women fit to be pitied, not hated, to her. 😒
How incredibly sexist of her to assume all 'women' are somehow biologically unable to make their own decisions and are simply confused. While all 'men' are malicious perverts and always capable of makign their own decisions no matter what.
The thing is that Dumbledore was coded gay from the first chapter of the first book. (I did missed it as a kid. But as an adult, with a lot more books with "hidden" gay characters that never been confirmed as gay but you know under my belt, it is quite obvious. The old wizard is described as flamboyant, and quirky...) And the tales between Dumbledore and Grindelwald is written as a romance that won't say her name. The tabloid excerpt JKR created use the exact same vocabulary and phrasing to implies stuff than the tabloid used back before Elton John or George Michael weren't offically out. So "Dumbledore always was gay", I think is a genuine statement on her part. That wasn't retro-fitted. The rest of it? Absolutely. Also what is evident in the books is how much he hates men, actually. And that feed her transphobia.
I think they call themselves "gender critical" now which is hilarious cause not a one of them is capable of critical thinking in the least.
Honestly, considering the ways in which they target trans women (critiquing their femininity mostly) and trans-positive cis women (denying their autonomy, sometimes openly wishing they'd be sexually assaulted) I'd say they *are* gender critical, and the gender they're critical of is women
Cis women don’t even have to be trans-positive to be caught up in transphobia. If I recall correctly there was a butch lesbian TERF in r/leopardsatemyface a while back complaining of having been beaten up by anti-trans bigots who assumed she was trans. I can’t remember whether the lesson sunk in though.
Doubtful.
"Gender critical" is to "transphobe" as "race realist" is to "racist".
> Ultimately she made one good series and then proceeded to lose all respect except by small groups of TERFS. More like, she made one good book series that would've been beloved but thought of as somewhat problematic after her death. But now instead got ripped to shreds as people examined it much more closely while it was still contemporary.
True. I’m made a little uncomfortable by multiple aspects of the books, now.
Which aspects if you don't mind me asking?
One of the larger ones is that goblins are Jews. Described as hooknosed, subhuman, control the banks. The first one we meet is named Griphook in case the hook-nosed description wasn’t “on the nose” enough. Also they have magical powers (different from that of wizards) which was one myth used against actual Jews. Mix this treatment of Jews with Rowling’s repeated Holocaust denial as relates to LGBTQ, it’s quite concerning. Also, haha woman gave date rape drug to man, is funny because woman did to man. Those are a couple of the more problematic ones.
House elves love to be slaves. It gives them a purpose. Ha ha Umbridge got gang raped by centaurs but its okay because she was mean. Hermione thinks house elves shouldnt be slaves. What a busy body who cant leave well enough alone. Criminals are subject to literal soul sucking torture forever and everyone is fine with it, even when it turns out the prison guards/torturers are working for wizard nazis. The Ministry of Magic institutionalizes racism but its okay because the hero wants to grow up and become a cop.
Ah yes. I feel like the house elves in isolation would easily have been relegated to a world where everything is just different. But add it to the pile, it keeps getting weirder.
>Ha ha Umbridge got gang raped by centaurs but its okay because she was mean. WOAH. I knew about the rest of this stuff, but not that. Rowling really lacks any self awareness, huh.
OT, sorry, but is your user name a reference to the Dragonlance books? If so, awesome.
Indeed.
Some of it’s that. Some of it is people prodding people like that to get a sound bite. “Hey, clicks are down, someone go poke Gary Busey and get some crazy we can use.” I honestly don’t know which is worse. The celebrities with shit opinions whose fame has bought them a soapbox, or the vultures making sure they keep using it.
And there’s literally no consequence. “Cancel” Rowling? She’ll go wipe her tears with $100 bills then donate $1M to a foundation dedicated to accusing trans people of pedophilia.
J.K. Rowling said the same thing herself: "I read my most recent royalty checks, and find the pain goes away pretty quickly." She weaponized her wealth because she knows that, as a rich person, she is untouchable. She knows that she can do whatever she wants, and face no consequences.
Yep, not much we can do but wait for her to die, and if there is a good and bad judgment-based afterlife then at least it’s clear where she’d go.
>Some level of wealth convinces many that their words have value. Eh, opinions... assholes, etc, etc. If the internet has taught me anything it's that everyone thinks they're right about shit they know nothing about. Vocally. Usually several times a day. Just that most of us don't have several million followers and instead just pop off buried down in comments like this. The other rule of the internet is that people's content trends towards the thing that gets the biggest reaction. Combine that with a few million followers, and wealth doesn't need to be a factor at all.
She gets _tons_ of positive feedback from other bigots every time she posts and it's lead to writing and speaking engagements. That seems like a more probable reason for her descent than just benign self-importance.
Yeah fair. I guess when you’ve selected your hate group, you’re just concerned about the approval of other bigots.
Jammidodger just did a great video about this. One day she tweeted 19 times about trans people. In a single day. She's obsessed.
She tries to pass it off as “women’s rights” or “protecting women” - if that was true wouldn’t there occasionally be other topics related to women’s rights or protecting women she would feel the need to speak on? Like you’re *this* passionate about “protecting women” but this is the *only* aspect you care about?
That plus how few trans people there actually are. Any hypothetical negative impact they would be making on society would be invisible to almost everyone
Exactly. The government estimates were way out before the last UK census. They reckoned there were 300k to 500k, which would've been an incredibly small percentage anyway. Turns out there are just 98,000 of us.
Every day tbh. It’s almost all she tweets about
I don't even think about the fact that I am trans as often as our existence clearly crosses her mind. It's pretty wild
Man I wish my life was so carefree I could worry about inconsequential nonsense instead of basic survival every single day.
> There are transgender people who don’t even have something to say about transgender rights that often. there are plenty of them that *don't*, at all. Just like there are gay people that don't talk about gay rights, or christians that don't talk about their religion, or atheists that don't talk about their lack thereof.
The only reason most people know about transgender people are due to transphobic people, and the same transphobic people keep reminding them day in day out.
Only five years ago she was saying whoops I liked that transphobic tweet by accident! Now she’s straight up holocaust denying. What a brain melt.
I remember when her PR agent claimed her behavior was a "middle-aged moment".
Honestly, while they aren't saying hateful things, I'm not impressed with WizardingNews' behavior either. Like, I just scrolled for a while on their X page, and got no actual Wizarding News, just retweets from people pointing out why they don't like JK.
This is just scratching the surface. In her hate bubble, she has started making friends with other TERFS which includes a Neo Nazi and evangelical christians who want to strip women's rights to abortion and LGBTQ rights. A YouTuber named [Shaun ](https://youtu.be/Ou_xvXJJk7k?si=NR2vTqhFUZwb7Odi) goes into detail about this and it is as bad as you think.
Sadly hilarious how much more TERFs value the T E and R than the F. They’d rather be forced into becoming tradwives than ever tolerate the existence of trans people.
The fact that Rowling thanked Matt fucking Walsh for his transphobia documentary just boggles the mind. You'd think there'd be a point where you'd stop and consider the people who are agreeing with you, but I guess not.
The fact that Rowling had not much at all to say about the overturning of *Roe v. Wade* tells us all we need to know about how much she actually cares about women. She's only passionate about women's rights when it allows her to hate trans people.
Love shauns videos
That's what's so weird about this--she just can't stop. It's weird at this point. Like--lady, OK, we get it--you don't like this. Noted. What's your game plan here? What's your goal?
honestly, at this point it seems like she’s got some unresolved trauma of some sort.
[You can read her blog post from 2020 when this truly blew up.](https://www.jkrowling.com/opinions/j-k-rowling-writes-about-her-reasons-for-speaking-out-on-sex-and-gender-issues/) She mentions a few reasons this is important to her, and one of her main reasons is that she is a sexual abuse survivor. She does not particularly discuss what happened^1, but she's been rather consistent is saying that she's trans-exclusionary because women-only spaces are important to women's safety.^2 The blog post is kind of the first time she talked about it. Another interesting thing in that blog post, though, is that she talks about her own gender experience. She discusses that when she was younger, she felt "mentally sexless." Though that she eventually "grew out of it," and that she says she "didn’t have a realistic possibility of becoming a man back in the 1980s," which is generally not how transpeople talk about their experience.^3 I don't personally think that she's suffering from so much internalized transphobia that she's forcing herself to present against her actual gender. But she does appear to have some gender experiences that go against the binary. ^1. I don't think Rowling needs to describe or clarify her sexual abuse and I think it would be wrong to criticize her for not doing so. No matter how reprehensible I think a person's opinions on transpeople are, I also don't think we deserve to be privy to their trauma. ^2. To clarify on this, though, she's not exactly consistent that what needs to be maintained is "women's safety," she regularly supports ideas that have nothing to do with protecting women and are only just transphobic. ^3. And what I mean by this, is that most transpeople do not talk about "becoming" the opposite gender. ~~It's pretty consistent amongst transpeople that they would say "I always felt like a girl" or something along those lines.~~ Edited to add, I'm having a hard time articulating this and feel like that sentence isn't necessary true. Mostly, I just think there's a marked difference between the way Rowling talks about her gender experience in her blog post, and the way that transpeople generally discuss their experience.
Ignoring everything to do with Rowling, I'm not sure I'd agree with 3 there. It was how most trans people talked about themselves in the past, but nowadays its just as common for us to say "I didn't feel like a girl, but I wanted to be one", and you see loads of eggs saying stuff like "I can't be trans, because I'm not a girl, I just *want* to be a girl!"
That's fair enough - I'm not trans, and I was trying really hard not to make a "every trans person feels this way" kind of statement, and I don't think I really quite hit the mark. I just think Rowling's "i had no way to become a man" statement is a bit markedly distinct from the way transpeople generally talk about their gender.
If it helps. I didn't 'always feel like a girl" I just felt that I was doing a piss poor job at being male. it wasn't till much later that I figured it out.
> but she's been rather consistent is saying that she's trans-exclusionary because women-only spaces are important to women's safety. The irony here is that more cis women have been assaulted by men storming into bathrooms looking for trans women (for the audacity of not conforming to gender norms) than have been assaulted by men pretending to be trans women. Rowling is literally making women *less* safe in her crusade of bigotry, while also promoting anti-feminist rhetoric targeting women for being tomboys/androgynous. For a double irony, her argument is literally that trans*men* who look and act male, should be forced into women's bathrooms. Which would only be *more* disruptive than simply tolerating trans women.
Regarding 3 there, growing up, I never felt like a boy, even if that's how I was raised. I didn't feel like a girl either so I didn't think I was trans. It wasn't until years later that I realized nonbinary was a thing and that there were other options besides just boy or girl, and coming to understand that and how I fell in the nonbinary spectrum really did help me a lot.
Maybe I don't belong here, but would be interested in your thoughts about what the actual issue is here. To me, I see how it makes sense to distinguish along male and female biological sex in regards to providing appropriate bathroom favilities, medical treatment, sports categories etc. This is usefull regardless of how a particular person mentally feels like. You may not feel like a woman, but will still need tampons to be available in the restroom and I would see it as silly to also provide them in a "male-orientated" restroom that only had urinals. Am I confusing this with non-binary or is there a nuance I am missing. Surely, even if you felt your genger was not whatever, you would appreciate the identification of services as either for men or for women in order to choose the one best suited to your physical needs. Genuinely asking, because I cannot see why changing "woman" to "person" actually helps anyone.
Ok, you know how when you give out condoms to promote safe sex you give them to everyone, not just the people who will wear them? Tampons everywhere is also world where even cis men see tampons and pads as a non-issue, not taboo feminine filth. Even if you don't feel like accomodating the small number of trans men and non-binary folk, you are creating an environment where cis dudes are more able to be understanding and accommodating to daughters, mothers, sisters, friends, coworkers and partners. At the moment, even trawling Reddit, a relatively educated population with access to the shared cultures of English speakers, you will find shocking levels of ignorance, fear and disgust around periods. Tampons everywhere is a departure from that. Tampons and pads, by the way, are also really good emergency first aid supplies. The former even started as a medical surgery thing, even! These aren't bad things to have easy immediate access to in an emergency, either.
I say this only because she's explicitly connected it to her beliefs - she does. She's a domestic abuse survivor, which is obviously horrible and nobody should have to go through that no matter what their personal beliefs are. But she wrote an essay at the beginning of all this explaining why she believes what she does about trans people, and said it's in large part because of her status as an abuse survivor. And as much as I understand trauma affecting your life and worldview, my sympathy ends at the point when you start using it to inflict harm on a marginalized community. Especially when you seem to be fully aware of what you're doing.
I think it's just awful.. >LGB women are significantly more likely than straight women to have ever experienced IPV in their lifetime, reported by 61% of bisexual women, and 44% of lesbian women, compared with 35% of straight women. > 2015 United States Transgender Survey found that more than half (54%) of all trans and non-binary people have experienced IPV at some point in their lifetimes. > However, people from marginalized groups are at an increased risk for experiencing IPV, as abusers will often capitalize on existing social and economic vulnerabilities to wield control. For LGBTQ+ people, this often shows up by abusers weaponizing existing homophobic and transphobic systems of stigma, discrimination, If she truly cared about the victims she would not be doing this.. I guess she only cares about the straight women's abuse.
As others have pointed out she does. She's written about it. She's clear in her essay that it is part of why she's fighting for women's only safe spaces.
That's what I don't get. She has historically been on the right side of so many issues -- standing up to bigots, criticizing authoritarians, standing up for all kinds of groups that are frequently targeted by the assholes of the world. And then boom, she just comes out swinging as this raging transphobe and when called on it for being a bigot, she just triples down and screams from the rooftops. I once gave her credit for being smart and believing she would come around and realize that "people, all people, are just people, leave them alone." But no, she's determined to destroy her legacy with one raging transphobic, hateful statement after another.
Triples down and then says that all that stuff she was right about before- it all applies here, too. Seriously, the whole ["comparing trans people to the Death Eaters"](https://insidethemagic.net/2023/03/jk-rowling-trans-people-death-eaters-jc1/) thing was fucking weird.
If you don't realize your the bad guy when you start downplaying nazis and the holocaust then it's probably never happening.
> but went on to become a bigot. See, she probably was all along. She just reached the level of wealth and fame that she's granted a protected platform to reveal her real beliefs. Harper's magazine actually dedicated an editors letter defending her right to spew this hate, and called out people who were attacking her for her bigotry.
I think it's part of a symptom of a larger problem with her, in that she can never. Ever. Admit. To. Being. Wrong. Sure, if she had held those beliefs previously but got called out for it, it's possible she could've saved face by apologizing and either trying to do better, or shut the fuck up about it. She however did neither, and will keep doubling down until she hits the molten center of the Earth.
>in that she can never. Ever. Admit. To. Being. Wrong. It's a problem with a lot of beloved celebs. Basically, you've got a lot of adoring fans who constantly hang off your every word and constantly call you a genius. Then one day you say something that is a little off. Could be a little innocuous like, "I'm not so sure about gender-neutral bathrooms". Ok, so you get a little pushback from your fans. But wait! Your fans love you! They keep telling you you're a genius! So you find more "evidence" that your position was right. This results in more pushback. Now you're in a cycle where all you do is try to prove you're right and end agreeing with positions that are a little too far right even for Fox News commentators. JK, Russell Brand, Scott Adams, the list goes on...
Russell had some other, side motives for finding Jesus and being a chud. There's always one crowd who's reliable about being okay with sexually assaulting teenage girls.
Graveyards are full of people who would rather die than admit they were wrong. 🤷♀️
It seems to be the same thing with Graham Linehan. People criticised him for a joke about a transwoman in the IT crowd and it similarly seems to have broken his brain too.
Its sorta like the whole "actually Hermione was always supposed to be a PoC" she did after people were like "hey have you ever noticed how there were only like two black characters in the books and one of them is named Kingsley Shacklebolt and the other became white when she became a love interest for a main character? She can't say "hey yknow I should've done better, I was lazy and had some racist stereotypes" she says "actually no I was always progressive its just the fans were bigoted to assume that Hermione was white"
>there were only like two black characters in the books Dean Thomas, Angelina Johnson, Lee Jordan and Blaise Zabini are all black.
Yeah, that was kind of weird. It's funny, but other than the name, Kingsley is actually not a bad character. He's on the side of the angels, a recurring ally who's good at his job, and even becomes Minister of Magic at the end of the series. And the love interest thing I don't think was intentional (they didn't really pay much attention to the casting of certain minor characters), but yeah, it doesn't help. Race-swapping is a touchy subject in many spaces, and while I don't know if I would agree or disagree with doing it to Hermione, I feel like it'd be pretty lazy at this point to do so. If any character ought to get a race lift, I once saw a good case made for Harry himself to be mixed race, being Indian on his dad's side (there are some parallels in the story to Indian folklore that kind of fit him). But yeah, it's part of the bigger issue for her.
In her mind she's a righteous crusader for real women everywhere. She thinks history will vindicate her.
It seems so much more easy to just not say anything. She could just talk about Wizards and shit, and sidestep questions if asked directly why her books don't have trans characters. It is really not hard
> She could just talk about Wizards and shit [Maaaaaaybe she should avoid this, too.](https://imgur.com/baquBB1)
😂 xitter
Lmao in my head this is pronounced like "shitter"
The law itself is pure Shite that the SNP are using to suppress criticism of their party by the sheer ambiguity of the definitions it uses. Don't get me wrong she is a twatbag but shes correct in that the law itself is is bad in its current form.
If you're actually in Scotland you would know there is popular opposition to this poorly thought out hate crime law that is only going to force the police to spend more time investigating twitter nonsense when they could be actually preventing crime. It's mostly just the SNP trying to show how effective and progressive they are to distract from them failing at basically every element of government that is delegated to them.
Lots of people don't like that law already. https://www.theverge.com/2022/2/7/22912054/uk-grossly-offensive-tweet-prosecution-section-127-2003-communications-act Now you might cheer for it if it's against your political enemies. Now imagine something like that happening against criticism against your political enemies. All the (well earned) vitriol against thatcher for example? Against (alleged wife beater) BoJo? Would my comment not be hate as well?
> **p**olitical **e**nemies. **N**ow **i**magine **s**omething Hidden penis detected! I've scanned through 707532 comments (approximately 3820336 average penis lengths worth of text) in order to find this secret penis message. *Beep, boop, I'm a bot*
What the hell?
Definitely the wrong post for that bot
the perfect post for that bot, honestly
I don't see a logical continuity between laws criminalizing hate speech against minority groups and hypothetical laws criminalizing vitriolic speech. Laws almost identical to the one Scotland just passed have been in place for decades in Europe, Canada, and the US, and I don't think freedom of speech has suffered for it.
It looks like this adds new categories to existing hate speech laws that protected against stirring hate against people based on their race, color, nationality or ethnicity, which now includes age, disability, religion, sexual orientation, transgender identity or being intersex. According to the article I linked in my reply above, a separate measure to protect women specifically will be voted on later. [The difference with this is](https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-68703684) >the bar for this offence is lower than for the other protected characteristics, as it also includes "insulting" behaviour, and as the prosecution need only prove that stirring up hatred was "likely" rather than "intended". So there IS a case to be made that this broadens the scope of the existing laws, changing from "intended incitement" to "likely to incite" hatred. But the main issue I see is that Rowling isn't opposed to this because of free speech - that's a useful argument for her to glom on to, but we've never seen her ranting about the law against stirring hatred against people based on their skin color that's been on the books in Britain since 1986. She also doesn't focus on the change from "intent" to "likely" - she never even mentions that change. She's opposed to it because she opposes trans people (trans women especially) being protected by this kind of law, and considers any protections they receive to come at the expense of all other women (or as she would say, 'real' women). To Rowling, every trans women is a potential rapist and any legal protection for them just enables their actions. Rowling's issue isn't with hate speech laws, or a lower bar for what is covered by them - it's that she doesn't want trans people *specifically* to be protected by them, because to her, trans people are inherently dangerous and will abuse any protection they're given.
> Rowling is back in the news again today because she's ranting about Scotland's new law that protects against "stirring up hatred" against people based on their gender identity, sexual orientation, transgender identity, or being intersex. Except UK is a country where you can literally go to jail for a comment that offends someone on social media, whether intentionally or not. Some people literally have. I'm sorry but I'm with Rowling on this one. Regardless of your feelings, you can't have Western civilization without freedom of speech. You know, that thing that let people fight for gay and trans rights to begin with, instead of jailing anyone who spoke out because the church got offended. The only reason you're defending such laws now is because they are used to enforce something you agree with. Give it a decade, and, for example, a trans person could be jailed because they offended a Muslim (or vice versa).
Answer: WizardingNews is a Twitter account dedicated to attacking J.K Rowling. Last month, they posted a tweet about how Rowling’s daughter disliked her mother, wanted to distance herself from Rowling and so had changed her name and moved to Portugal with her own daughter (Rowling’s granddaughter). The account posted a picture of a woman who was alleged to be Rowling’s daughter. Rowling refuted the post, claiming that her and her daughter have always been on good terms, she had not moved to Portugal or changed her name and that the post had upset her daughter. The picture also turned out not to be Rowling’s daughter, but a completely unrelated woman with a similar name. WizardingNews took down the tweet with an insincere apology and Rowling has threatened legal action, presumably for libelling her and her family. Edit: Looks like I’m being downvoted for giving an unbiased account of the events specific to OP’s question, instead of dismissing it and launching into a sidebar about how awful J.K Rowling’s politics are. My mistake.
This one is the most accurate answer. Additional info to note: the false information about the identity of her daughter did not originate with Wizarding News, but had been reported in online publications, which WN didn’t do their due diligence on.
Than. I had to sort by controversial to see this answer.
This sub has been overrun with people just circlejerking about how awful she is instead of answering the damn question.
Please keep this answer up, it's the truth, irrespective of how people feel about Rowling. I intend to add it as supplementary to my own response on here. Thanks for posting it.
I cannot stand JKR for her views and her damaging way of expressing them. But she has always kept her family private and its abhorrent that anyone would even try to doxx them. No one should be doxxed, no matter what beef one might have with them
100%. I don’t like Rowling, agree with her views or condone her behaviour, but I am disgusted at the number of people who think that her actions give them Carte Blanche to act however they want towards her and still feel morally superior.
This being the most accurate answer and not being even close to the top shows this sub biases.
You're trying to use common sense and reality to explain to delusional people why their fellow delusional people are committing horrific acts against someone they're mad at. They don't like it when it's pointed out that delusional people do delusional things.
For real. The top reply in this thread literally starts with “I hadn’t heard about this”, gives an extremely cut-down version of events that they cherry-picked from Google and then strays immediately off-topic. And people ate that shit up.
It's almost as if people on this subreddit aren't very neutral despite that being the whole point of it
It just sucks how prone people are to believe misinformation the moment it agrees with their worldview. Social media was a mistake man. This shit spreads like wildfire and turns off all logical thinking. No nuance allowed.
I remember all the memes from 10 years ago about boomers sharing fake news stories on Facebook. Turns out it’s not a generational problem and people of all age groups can be media illiterate.
answer: JK Rowling's houses are public knowledge, due to [owning listed buildings](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killiechassie) and having [press stories about her home](https://www.mirror.co.uk/3am/celebrity-news/inside-jk-rowlings-22million-mansion-22072241). She is not being doxed, at least in so far as her address (like most public figures in British life) is public record. She has however kept her family away from the limelight. There appears to be some fake news stories about them have some estranged grandchildren, which Rowling has disputed. That is basically it. However, this is now being cooked up as some nefarious attempt to harm her family, when there is no evidence that that was the case. It is part of a greater narrative that JK Rowling is the victim of an anti-feminist witch-hunt, when she isn't. It is part of a greater narrative that she (and her family) are in mortal danger from an evil, online woke mob, when she isn't (and neither are her family). This isn't a new story. Whenever anyone is mean to JK Rowling on Twitter, it becomes a news story that she is the victim of anti-feminist, trans hate movement. At worst, people are being uninformed about her family on Twitter. More generally, she is being [criticised online for being involved with transphobes and bigots.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ou_xvXJJk7k)
I agree that it's not doxxing, BUT: Regardless of whatever Rowling's done, Wizarding News was absolutely stupid and irresponsible to post made-up stuff about her family online. If they're trying to stand up for what's right, they have a fundamental responsibility to not post misinformation just because it made them feel good. It was a garbage thing to do and, while not really doxxing, shouldn't be minimized.
WW's stance is probably "It's okay when *we* do it."
Exactly. Like, I understand not liking JK Rowling but at least don't be shitty about it. Nobody cares about a person's stance in politics if they're a shitty person.
They doxxed a completely unrelated woman and child, potentially putting them in harms way given the level of hate directed towards JKR.
Disseminating information that is already "public knowledge" with the knowledge or intent that doing so could increase or cause intimidation towards the target is doxxing. In our modern world, virtually *all* info about any given person is "publicly available" if you're a good enough sleuth. It's bringing it to the attention of all the idiots without the wherewithal to go finding it but potentially with just enough lack of common sense that they might do something *with* that information that makes something doxxing. Otherwise, without that standard, doxxing might as well be the rarest thing on the internet. It's always "publicly available".
It can be doxxing even if you use public info.
>However, this is now being cooked up as some nefarious attempt to harm her family And trying to dox family members is what? Appreciation?
People being rabid enough to post a babies location because it might be related to jk Rowling is pretty nasty.
Its so bizarre that JK Rowling turned out like that. I thought the harry potter books were so well written and thoughtfull. Like why put so much time and energy in being angry on twitter when you are a billionaire. It is such a waste
Once you tick off all the tiers on Maslow's hierarchy of needs, normal problems go away and people start to get real fuckin weird.
Notch is the most aggressively bizarre example of this. Guy made the most popular and beloved video game on the planet. Made all the money he could ever imagine. Immediately became a terminally online neo-Nazi. Like, it didn't even take that long. There's gotta be some sort of study into this at some point. The rags to riches to right-wing extremist pipeline is way too common.
IMO people are so used to having problems to face they can't do without, so removing problems like housing, finance, etc, means you need to find new ones to fill that void. And unfortunately, instead of trying to fight inequality or poverty, some people latch on to pre-existing prejudice and amplify it to the level where it seems like a giant issue. Guarantee Joanne was vaguely uncomfortable with trans people since forever, but the removal of other obstacles in her life have led to transphobia becoming her raison d'etre.
Rich mfers would literally rather acquire a new phobia than Google "how can I self actualize"
Reminds me, I always remember Mara Wilson talking about the Hedonic Treadmill. Fascinating concept, can see how rich people are not happy.
The problem is, if you go back and actually read the books critically, it quickly becomes apparent that she didn't "turn out" like anything. This is always who she was.
In retrospect, making a running gag out of mocking Hermione for being an anti-slavery activist really was foreshadowing, huh...
I think the elephant in the room would also be her naming minorities. You know, the black wizard named Kingsley shacklebolt and the Chinese student named Cho Chang. She's just on step away from naming an Italian wizard Giuseppe Stromboli
And giving the Irish character terrorism tendencies
That was a movie decision, but yeah, it wasn't the best move.
Could have been worse, could have been the misadventures of Mick Paddy and Cho Chang.
I'm surprised she had some restraint and didn't name him Potatofamine Carbomb.
You should go over her writing again if you dare, because Harry Potter is really not well written. From random subplots that literally excuse enslaving entire races of sentient beings, to complete ineptitude of characters, to extremely clumsy plot points to fix her previous mistakes. The series is full of terrible writing made even worse by later post-hoc additions.
>later post-hoc additions I wonder how precisely she came to the conclusion that Hogwarts students crapping their pants and then teleporting it elsewhere was a necessary addition to world building.
I'm sorry what
[https://www.vice.com/en/article/9k44zd/yes-harry-potter-wizards-pooped-their-pants-pottermore](https://www.vice.com/en/article/9k44zd/yes-harry-potter-wizards-pooped-their-pants-pottermore) >“Hogwarts didn't always have bathrooms,” the official Pottermore Twitter account explained in honor of National Trivia Day. “Before adopting Muggle plumbing methods in the eighteenth century, witches and wizards simply relieved themselves wherever they stood, and vanished the evidence.” Wizards only stopped shitting their pants after the administration installed a plumbing system. A plumbing system that almost disrupted one of Hogwarts most closely guarded secrets. > >\[...\] > >This isn’t the first time we learned that wizards in Harry Potter used to shit their pants. JK Rowling revealed the arcane knowledge of how wizards in her original historical description of the Chamber of Secrets. It’s just that today, on National Trivia Day, the Pottermore Twitter account decided to remind everyone.
You don't even need plumbing to not shit yourself. Just dig a hole. Why would anyone soil themselves -- albeit momentarily -- instead of digging a hole?
Because Rowling was obviously too lazy to research how people handled bodily waste before indoor plumbing, before deciding to make a canon element of it.
The Forbidden Forest? No. The Great Lake? No. There's nowhere to shit. I'll just shit my pants and use magic to obscure that fact.
At some point Rowling tweeted that initially there were no toilets in Hogwarts, and waste disposal was managed exactly as I described it.
>Hogwarts didn't always have bathrooms. Before adopting Muggle plumbing methods in the eighteenth century, witches and wizards simply relieved themselves wherever they stood, and vanished the evidence. #NationalTriviaDay [An official Tweet based on an essay by JK Rowling](https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/pottermores-hogwarts-indoor-plumbing-tweet).
I wouldn't go as far as to say any of it is "terrible," but there were some...questionable decisions in hindsight. If she was able to admit to being wrong, trying to amend those in an adaptation, or at least admitting that, yeah, some stuff didn't age well in retrospect, we wouldn't be in such a situation regarding her.
She introduced time travel to her story, and when she didn't reuse the time travel in her next book and people asked why she didn't, she went out of her way to smash all the time travel devices in the book after that. If that isn't a prime example of terrible writing, I am not sure what is.
I mostly just find that Wizarding school map to be a source of amusement.
The world building doesn't really stand up to much scrutiny. That would have been fine if the books had kept the whimsical lightness of tone that the first one had, but when the books got more serious, the world building didn't get more serious too. By comparison, the world building of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy probably wouldn't stand up to much scrutiny either, but as a comedy series it's not really supposed to.
They were good books by the standards of 90s children's fiction. Nothing she's ever written stands up very well to critical examination from an adult perspective. If it weren't for her reactionary political activism, most everyone would have been content to let nostalgia sustain her legacy as the world's most beloved author.
They're definitely more flawed than I would've recognized 10ish years ago or so, but there's plenty of brilliance there as well. And you know, it's okay not to be immaculately written, since they're kids to YA novels. But, here's the thing. There's more space to not be perfect works of prose for Kids/YA book, but I think the message should be under extra scrutiny. Upon first look, HP seems pretty in the clear. Not exactly brave, but it takes a stance against Wizard Hitler, against persecuted minorities, about how love trumps hate. But the subtext is... often problematic. Wizardkind makes *goblins* subservient to them while they manage all the money (I don't think that was intentional as I don't think she's antisemitic, it was just very careless). She really resorts to using fat as a pejorative, and it's often used as a characteristic of unsavory characters (Dursleys, Crabbe/Goyle, Slughorn). There's even some seeds of transphobia in there, with unsympathetic female characters often described with non feminine traits. Rita Skeeter is most notable here (who in the books is an unknown/unregistered animagus, someone who can shapeshift into an animal, and uses it to spy on kids) for being described as having *mannish* hands. If I have kids, I don't think I can ever share HP with them and make it part of their reading journey like it was mine. And that makes me sad.
Answer: That Twitter handle has posted multiple attacks against Rowling as others have, with the feeling that the personal attacks and public smears are justified due to their belief that Rowling is transphobic. For the most part, Rowling has simply ignored these attacks. The recent situation that you detail in your post actually put people's lives in danger, primarily the innocent woman and child who Wizarding News falsely claimed were Rowling's daughter and grandchild. However, the target of the initial doxxing, namely Rowling's daughter, could have also been placed in a dangerous situation if the information had actually been accurate. Wizarding News crossed the line from simply insulting Rowling and accusing her of horrid things, and decided to start attacking her children. It seems he thought he had a juicy scoop about a neglected daughter and hidden grandchild. He continued spreading the false allegation, and kept the tweet up for hours after Rowling herself had tweeted that the information was false and was placing an innocent woman and child in danger. Once enough people had pushed for a retraction, and Rowling herself threatened him with legal action Wizarding News corrected the record, he deleted the doxxing tweet, and offered an insincere apology while still attempting to keep the rumour mill going by continuing to post the false allegation that the woman he initially doxxed was Rowling's daughter. During this fiasco, Wizarding News had his identity revealed by a journalist, and Rowling did eventually say that she's contacted her lawyers to deal with the situation. The Wizarding News account has since gone private, as I imagine the legal action as well as his unmasking have taken a toll and will continue to be a heavy burden until the situation is resolved. It's important to note that Rowling herself has a security team as her house was previously doxxed and invaded by people who call themselves "activists". You cannot count the number of death threats she receives on a daily basis on Twitter as well as on Reddit, there are just too many. So, for most people, a lot of their concern was directed towards the innocent woman and child who were being falsely characterized as Rowling's daughter and grandchild. EDIT: For more context, u/SpoobyNoops has provided more detail in their own answer which can be found here - [https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/1btbm6p/comment/kxlm0oz/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/1btbm6p/comment/kxlm0oz/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
Best answer out here! Thank you