www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/news/jk-rowling-david-tennant-trans-kemi-badenoch-b2570909.html
JK Rowling says David Tennant is part of ‘gender Taliban’ after trans rights support
...I'm sorry the term "gender Taliban" is so funny I cannot believe a person with a functional mind would use it seriously.
But being serious for a moment, any comparison between trans rights and the Taliban - a group that shoots women for wanting education - is extremely crass. Imagine being someone who has worked in Afghanistan, being trans or knowing trans people, and hearing this woman think you should be compared to the Taliban. It's a horrifyingly extreme position to take and she's lost the plot to the point of genuine derangement. She's tipping hard into Graham Linehan territory over this and it's just pathetic.
Rowling? Being crass?
I'll have you know that this is the woman who named a Chinese student Cho Chang and a black character Kingsley Shacklebolt.
Hey, let's have a wizard bank run by goblins, but what will the goblins look like? Big old nose.
Edit.
I wasn't trying to say that JK is antisemitic, much like I don't think calling an Asian character cho chang means that she's racist, or pro slavery because of her depictions of house elves.
I think JK prioritises the story she wants to tell over the wider world building, that all results in unfortunate implications for the wider world building and I imagine plays havok with people trying to build upon her world.
All made worse by Potter more, an attempt at world building that then has unfortunate implications on the stories (see the toilet thing, that messed with the chamber of secrets [a conflict with an incredibly minor plot point...that is the entrance of the chamber] and had to be further added on to correct the mistake of the initial lore addition).
This is all to say, if I was JK, and had just finished the Harry Potter series, I'd STFU and live the rest of my incredibly wealthy life in obscurity and hire a team to overtake the expansion of the franchise
A species synonymous with a hook nose and being green, portrayed as having a big ol' hook nose and some green-ish colouration..
Do you want to know why goblins are portrayed that way?
Hint: Antisemitism
I appreciate that it's the origin of their aesthetic, but I think it's safe to say that most people designing goblins that way nowadays aren't being antisemitic. It's been "the look" for goblins for so long now that in a modern context they just look like goblins.
Having them run the bank though, completely agree there.
I'm not sure. The designs for LOTR moved away from the hooked nose type imagery quite a lot, as has stuff like Dnd. There seems to be a steady shift away - although obviously that's today, and not when JK was writing the books.
I googled "goblin" and all the pictures have big noses and pointy ears except for the ones that are a handsome Korean man...
I honestly think this is reaching and I don't even like Rowling. I feel it's more fair to judge her for what she says rather than this sort of thing that feels like a stretch...
Goblins are ugly and an easy way to make something ugly is to give it a big crooked nose.
LOTR Goblins don't have big noses, but Tolkien already suffered a fair bit of judgement for making his orcs have "sallow skin" and similar comparisons between his Dwarves and Jewish people.
I think she deserves criticism but this doesn't seem fair to me. It seems like an unintentional coincidence like how the films made Séamus blow stuff up all the time and people said it was a reference to the IRA.
And she chose to have them run the banks, yes.
Yeah but then why make them bankers? That's entirely her invention.
Whatever one’s opinion on Rowling - and TBC I believe she’s gone right off the fucking hook - I’ve always found this criticism specifically to be a bit week. I believe she’s merely tapping in to a very old European cultural trope here: that’s just what goblins tend to look like in our literature.
Now, it may well be that there is a degree of anti-Semitism to that trope - I’m ashamed to say that I can’t speak with any authority on that - but if there is there’s no reason for us to assume that this aspect is what drove Rowling to depict goblins as she has. People seem to have written her off as a bigoted demon and are fully confident when accusing her of any and all forms of bigotry - the gloves are off and anything goes - and while of course it’s possible that everything she’s done has been to showcase her bigotry and advance her bigoted causes, in this case I think it’s much more likely that she described goblins in that way because… that’s how goblins are typically depicted in the European canon.
And an Irish student who constantly blows things up?
Ah, good old Carbomb McPotatofamine.
I mean Shamus Finnigan isn't far from that , unless it was o'finnigan
But also let's be real, basically every teenage boy likes blowing stuff up if they get the chance.
It's Seamus, and his 2 most defining traits were that he kept blowing stuff up and trying to turn drinks into alcohol. As a little kid in Northern Ireland reading those books and lived through many a bomb scare, that always made me feel a little awkward and mocked. It's not the same as "little boys like messing about" at all.
Does he blow anything up in the books?
Nope, that's a film thing.
who named a Chinese student Cho Chang
This isn't a great example. The internet loves to claim that it's not a real Chinese name but it absolutely is a fine name for a Chinese person.
I used to argue the same point, but when you factor in the other low hanging fruit she threw in there I do start to wonder if it's just an easy jab.
Rowling seems to live in that twilight zone where anyone thing she does can be written off but once you look at the wider picture question marks start appearing.
The wizarding world has genetically engrained slavery in the form of house elves and the only person to remotely think that's maybe a little bit fucked is basically painted as an earnest but still an over the top do-gooder who winds up being the subject of some ridicule for her beliefs.
House elves were just a rip-off of the old Brownie's from British mythology, right down to giving them a piece of clothing causing them to leave, most of JK Rowlings work is just slightly adjusted stuff from mythology or other works of fantasy.
It's like being mad that someone's called Parvati Patel...
Real name.
What's wrong with the name Cho Chang?
Yet if you call her transphobic she'll sue you.
She used to be a massive Labour supporter. She would talk about the importance of benefits because they supported her when she was unemployed and writing Harry Potter.
All gone now, none of that matters, it only matters that 0.4% of the population can go into different toilets now.
The toilet thing confuses the shit of of me. I'm like 99% sure there is no legal mechanism in which a male or female is prevented from using the opposite gendered facilities or that this has been the case in my lifetime.
I have on occasion used the women's to change my daughters nappies. It's only recently that parent rooms have become a thing, and they are still often just part of the women's facilities.
Any pearl clutchers who that makes uncomfortable, i apologise, but i think we should be criminalising people based on actus rea and mens rea, rather than what's dangling between their legs when stood in a certain location, absent of mal intent.
Yep
Plus even if it was illegal, surely people don't think that would prevent someone going into the 'wrong' toilet if they wanted to?
The whole debate is fucking nonsense perpetuated in malice to bring along people who apply zero thought to the matter
People do try though, I've seen butch lesbians being told they're men and to leave the bathroom. Lots of yelling at them and all sorts.
Which is partly a result of this nonsense.
100%
Excuse me folks.
I'm part of the TOILET POLICE.
I need to see your genitals before I let you in the girls bathroom, I promise you I am not a pervert getting put into a position where I get to examine female genitals.
Now let me tell you more scary stories about trans people whilst I sexually assault you.
They apply thought, it’s just malicious thought.
And just ignore the transmen having to go in women’s bathrooms side of it all.
And just ignore the transmen having to go in women’s bathrooms side of it all
They ignore it because it's not convenient to the argument.
Forcing trans men into women's bathrooms means people presenting as male in the women's toilets.
This means a cisgender man intent on assaulting someone can just walk in and say they're a trans man. If anything it makes it easier for a potential abuser to gain access.
More like they just don't want any trans people to dare use any public toilets. The fact it won't make any difference to actual creeps doesn't matter, but it will make a huge difference for trans folks who don't want to break the law and/or get yelled at or creeped on when they go to the bathroom matching their assigned gender at birth. And that's exactly what these people want, to not have to see us or acknowledge we exist.
More like they just don't want any trans people to dare use any public toilets
That's definitely it, but it harms their perception if they just come out and say that, so they mask it in concerns about women's safety, because it's more palatable to the general public who don't know their actual views.
Didn’t you know if it’s illegal you can’t do it that’s what I told the mugger who tried to rob me
"I was going to sexually assault that woman, but she went into the women's bathroom and I physically cannot pass this barrier! Curses, foiled again!"
This is what their brainrot has them believe. That somehow the risk is mitigated if you just make life harder for trans people
Thing is, they don't believe it. They know it's insane, they just want to criminalise transgender people. That's all that matters
The toilet thing confuses the shit of of me. I'm like 99% sure there is no legal mechanism in which a male or female is prevented from using the opposite gendered facilities or that this has been the case in my lifetime.
There are not. The weirder part is the almost unspoken implication that comes from these arguments that somehow being 'allowed' into a toilet facility gives you some sort of licence to do crimes there. Indecent exposure, sexual harassment etc. are just as illegal inside a public toilet as outside a public toilet, and people of any gender can be prosecuted for them.
Or that someone who wants to commit a sex crime is going to be phased by.............a sign on a door
Indeed.
Thing is, the people pushing for these sorts of measures aren't going to be phased by these sorts of arguments, because the point isn't to protect women, it's to criminalise trans people. If they can make a situation where trans people who use the toilets that are appropriate (and, in almost all cases, much safer) for them to use can be arrested and charged with sex crimes simply for going to the toilet then it would be a powerful move in pushing trans people out of public life, and would help to build a self reinforcing narrative ("did you know that rates of sex crimes are 10x higher in the trans population? We need to ban cross-sex HRT.")
The most ardent transphobes think that most trans people only became trans because of 'social contagion' or 'confusion', so if they can remove the rest to prison or inpatient psychiatric units by various means of pathologisation and criminalisation, and various other ways of pushing trans people to the margins of society (driving them off social media with bullying campaigns, complaining if they appear on television, banning them from playing sports and games, removing education about trans lives from schools, hounding trans people out of the professions, barring trans people from getting aid from charities, etc.) the entire thing will blow over.
This is a really important point about how all the little things that seem to be self-contained issues add up to pushing existing trans people out of all aspects of public life and being seen as worthy of respect from others.
I have non-trans lesbian friends who have been harassed in bathrooms by people accusing them of being 'men' (read: trans women). This is for having short hair and dressing butch. I think people like JK Rowling need to admit what they REALLY believe. Only feminine women are allowed to shit.
Quiet a few of the major transphobes have said they are fine with GNC women being harassed to achieve their goal of making trans peoples lives worse.
How dare you be so reasonable!
The whole point of the debate is to polarise people and force them to turn against one another. Being reasonable makes that impossible.
To me, a toilet is a place to get rid of human waste. Get in there, get rid, get cleaned up and get out. I don't get the idea that it's a safe space at all. The only difference between male and female toilets is the presence of urinals. If it were up to me, I'd get rid of gendered toilets altogether, and mandate a group of single person facilities with a toilet, sink, hand dryer and mirror, with some or all having disability equipment and/or baby changing facilities.
What's crazy to me is that for the entire duration of her fame trans people have had the same rights in this country.
The whole thing smacks of her happening to never meet a trans person until 2015 or so and then immediately assuming that person sprang into existence solely to persecute her.
Nah, I think what happens with most TERFs (Linehan is the most extreme example I can think of) is that they begin from a motive of protecting women’s rights, get criticised for putting cis women over trans people, and then double down.
At that point it becomes a battle not a conversation where they retaliate against criticism and get reinforced by all praise. They lock themselves into an echo chamber and self-radicalise.
Tbf Rowling started this off by accidentally liking a tweet on her main account calling trans women men in dresses and the essay where she first took her position she started by praising a woman who was best known for calling trans women blackface actors, it's fair to say in recent years this pattern is reinforcing her behaviour, but the way she presented herself initially as simply being concerned for women's rights always struck me as more a way to build a narrative than what she actually believed.
I just remember in that essay one of her points referred to an article about "people who menstruate" being used as a term, erasing the word "woman".
But if you actually look at the article in question it was quite literally specifically about menstruation, and healthcare requirements relating to it in developing nations. Using the word "women" would absolutely be wrong because not all women menstruate, and not all people who menstruate are old enough to typically be called a woman.
And she somehow made it a transgender issue in the developed world. Her position was surface level from the start, she was never trying to protect anyone.
The article also used the words "women", "woman", and "girl" multiples times throughout the text. The headline spoke about menstruation because, you know, the point of the headline is to concisely convey what the article is about.
Why JK Rowling, with her university education and decades-long career as a professional writer, didn't bother to read a fairly brief article before stirring up outrage on twitter, we can only speculate.
This is exactly why the right wing pushes the trans stuff so hard. It is a wedge issue that allows them to persuade people who previously disagreed with 95% of their agenda that, unfortunately, they need to now vote for some whacko right wing nut jobs because otherwise womens toilets will be full of male rapists.
It is utterly bonkers, but it seems to play well.
wedge issue
And the aspect that unfortunately a lot of people don’t seem to be aware of is that even if they get their way on persecuting trans people they ain’t going to stop there. Gay/bi folk are probably next on list. The end game is to push social mores back to some sort of idealised 1950’s - if not something more like The Handmaids Tale.
For those who find that implausible it’s worth taking a look at who funds a lot of the anti-trans groups. It often turns out to be the same sources who funded anti gay groups and/or religious right groups in the USA. And of course Russia.
Gay/bi folk are probably next on list.
And they won’t stop there either.
Jews, People with disabilities, people of even vaguely non-white ethnicity, they will always, always have a target for their hatred.
Cause they can’t allow their voters to be happy or content, as a content voter won’t vote for them. There will ALWAYS need to be a next group of boogeymen on the list to scare and anger their followers.
First they came for…
Absolutely. They need you as allies to get their project going. Once they are in charge, you won't be allies any more.
This also applies to women, the working class, the poor, the elderly, etc.
it only matters that 0.4% of the population can go into different toilets now.
And probably worth noting, they still are not allowed to be in the same toilet as her.
Toilets are meant to be private rooms, it frankly shouldnt matter who the people using them are.
Before twitter she might have believed it but it might not have mattered that much to her. It's like she's been radicalised by it
I've never been great at maths, but say that 0.4% of the population of trans people are split evenly between trans men and trans women, does that mean the likelihood of her being in a public toilet at the same time as a trans woman is 1/500?
Not that her argument makes sense anyway.
Exactly - but also what eventuality are they more concerned about? A trans woman coming into a women's toilet block or a trans man coming in?
A huge proportion of trans people appear as the gender they have transitioned to, so a trans woman walking into a women's toilet block wouldn't turn any heads at all. And with private cubicles you're never going to see what their genitals look like. On the other hand, a trans man, with a deep voice and a beard, looking like a cis man, wanders in? What happens then? Is he forced to say "oh hey, don't worry, I still have a vulva"? And then do the cis women around him go "oh thank God, I was worried for a second there!" The whole thing is just crazy.
Is their argument that they want both trans men and trans women to use the men's toilets?
Some of them want all men and all trans to use the mens. Seriously self centred shit thinking that way.
Some of them don’t care, they just don’t want trans people to exist at all. These transphobes are the worst of the worst.
A lot of the anti-trans arguments fall apart when you factor in trans men, so anti-trans people tend to just ignore that they exist.
I love the end-point of their argument, where there's burly men with big bushy beards using the women's because they were AFAB while transwomen are thrown to the wolves in the men's, because apparently men are unstoppable, slavering rape machines who would be prepared to disguise themselves as women in order to sexually assault them in the bog.
Their narrative is extremely centered around trans women because it's linked to how they view men. In their eyes, a trans woman can only have bad intentions because they were born a man and must be transitioning for predatory reasons because men are predatory, but a trans man is fine. In fact, much of the time it's hard to even find transphobes talking about trans men at all, they talk about it like trans people and trans women are interchangeable. I think if you asked them about trans men they'd get very confused
I think it is practically certain that Rowling has never been in a situation where a trans woman behaved inappropriately in a public toilet with her.
I hope Labour stop sucking up to her. You can clearly see that nothing short of trans genocide will appease Joanne. She's given so much benefit of the doubt and platform because she made some very popular books over a decade ago. It's time to let her go.
And people still try to pretend that she's not transphobic.
It's her whole identity at this point
It's very simple - those people don't believe that being trans is real, so naturally transphobia isn't real either. They don't believe trans people exist, so when Rowling calls them "rapist men in wigs", to them she's just stating a fact.
Also, David Tennant is being more inclusive and she is being less inclusive. The Taliban are on the less inclusive end of the spectrum, putting it very lightly.
The Taliban are on the less inclusive end of the spectrum
That may be the most impressive use of understatement I’ve encountered for years!
It's not just crass... it's lacking in self awareness. The Taliban oppress and deny rights based on gender criteria. Who is doing that in this parallel? The people fighting for trans rights or those actively denying them at every opportunity?
No no, it makes perfect sense. It's the Gender Taliban because she wants the government to drone strike us, you see
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8d
It’s funny isn’t it? They love comparing us to violent groups. The gay mafia, queer ISIS, the trans Taliban. But how often do they compare them to us to make them look worse? I can’t think of a single example. Almost as if they know that would be absurd.
Funny how all the worst groups they can think of to use for their silly comparisons are all homophobic and transphobic.
What's more, due to her profession you would expect a degree of eloquence
Well, for being a writer, she also lacks media literacy, having recently called Lolita a “love story”.
Unless she has brought it up again recently, that was in the year 2000 but I can't forget it either. It's horrendous.
For anyone who hasn't heard it before.
But, most surprisingly, the single-mother chose Vladimir Nabakov's Lolita, the controversial tale of a paedophile's love for a 12-year-old girl whose life he ruins through abuse, as one of her favourite novels.
Speaking in a rare interview for a new Radio 4 series about famous people's favourite books, she confides: "There are two books whose final lines make me cry without fail, irrespective of how many times I read them, and one is Lolita. There is so much I could say about this book. There just isn't enough time to discuss how a plot that could have been the most worthless pornography becomes, in Nabakov's hands, a great and tragic love story, and I could exhaust my reservoir of superlatives trying to describe the quality of the writing."
I hate to even remotely seem like I'm defending her, but Lolita really is a fantastic novel that's beautifully written. I absolutely wouldn't ever call it a "great and tragic love story" though.
The prose is stunning and I have no issue whatsoever with people who love the book. I understand and respect what Nabokov was doing when he wrote it and I'm absolutely not trying to start up that old conversation about what subjects should and should not be acceptable in literature.
I do have an issue with people who miss the point that badly and still somehow approve of it - especially if they go on to make 'think of the children' style arguments to prop up their political arguments and prejudices.
Didn’t realise the creator of IT Crowd was this vile scumbag :(
Yeah it's a bit of a tragedy that somebody as talented as Graham Lineham should turn out to be such an unbearable piece of shit.
As a Trans woman who absolutely loved IT Criwd and Father Ted it was very disheartening indeed,
He really took criticism of that 1 IT Crowd episode personally and went full mask off bigot after it.
I'm pretty sure the gender Taliban already exists, it's just called "the Taliban" and it largely aligns with enforcing traditional gender categories.
She really has made this her entire personality. It’s a mental illness.
I know right?! And people accuse trans people of making our transness our 'entire identity'
The thing is, we'd likely never even mention it if we didn't have to keep defending ourselves from the likes of JK.
Absolutely, I have 4 irl trans friends. Their collective annual social media output on trans rights doesn't come close to how much she posts in a week.
And even the trans people who post a lot about it would probably have little to say if others stopped making it such a big deal
The only times I post about trans stuff on social media is when I'm trying to bring awareness to how royally screwed over we are. The worse the situation is getting, the more I have to post! If we were just left alone to live life normally, I wouldn't have much to say about it.
Yeah aside from commenting on the occasional coming out post or maybe sharing a petition for something or other I couldn't see why I'd ever need to post about it. The people whining about having it shoved down their throats are generally inflicting it upon themselves
I mean, even Elon Musk suggested she cool it a bit.
Just like Glinner she posts over 50 times a day constantly about trans people and how she's constantly the victim and apparently constantly begin silenced.
Remember the car crash interview on news-night where Glinner compared transpeople and doctors to Nazi's? Exact same shit, Now Transpeople are the Taliban. They are both on the same trajectory it's eerie, You could almost convince me there is a new parasite or prion disease rampant Transphobia and cognitive decline are symptoms.
It's only upsetting that appeasing the opinions of these frothing lunatics is actually a mainstream political position of both major parties and they both encourage discrimination accordingly for their support. It really shows us what a disgrace this country is.
You could almost convince me there is a new parasite or prion disease rampant Transphobia and cognitive decline are symptoms.
It's called Twitter
100%. It's really depressing how you can watch in real time a lot of really kind and bright people slowly over time become hateful and conspiratorial as they spend time on there. Human brains just aren't designed to be able to handle it.
Naomi Klein's book Doppelganger has a very good section on why things like Gender Critical transphobia are largely ways to allow privileged people to feel like they are the victims.
I bring it up a lot in threads like this, but the recent radicalisation of 'gender critical feminists' does reflect the last grasps of Second Wave Feminists to maintain relevance.
In the 1970s Second Wave Feminism developed, reflecting the recognition that despite women (broadly) having legal equality, they did not possess social equality. But the leadership of this movement was largely white, straight, upper- and middle-class women. So black women, and gay women, and working-class women began to question how representative this leadership was. Does a middle-class white woman arguing for better gender equality in offices reflect the concerns of a working-class black woman who simply doesn't have access to the systems of education to apply for those positions in the first place? It was in this context that Third Wave Feminism developed, recognising the importance of intersectionality and how different women experience society differently depending on their race and class and sexuality.
Because of how staunchly misogynistic politics and society were in America, a lot of Second Wave Feminists had to earnestly engage with this critique and recognised the need for a more intersectional approach. In Britain, however, our political establishment has generally been less explicitly hostile to the integration of women (the fact that the first sitting female sitting MP and first female PM were both Tories reflects the ability of our political establishment to make minor concessions like this). Prominent Second Wave Feminists were able to find some level of acceptance within our political and social establishment, getting positions in political parties and academia. And some of them reached a level of economic privilege through this.
But in recent years, and especially since the MeToo Movement, a lot of younger women are questioning their elders. Does some wealthy Second Wave Feminist who's spent the last 20 years writing cushy articles for the Observer (but turning a blind eye to Nick Cohen sexually harassing his colleagues) represent the concerns of young women who are up to their eyeballs in debt and won't accept that level of casual workplace sexual harassment? But instead of engaging with this earnestly and questioning their own positions, these privileged Second Wave Feminists have instead overwhelmingly tried to present themselves as victims. And the other who they've decided to paint as their oppressor is trans people. It's a desperate attempt to side-step critiques of themselves and their privilege and instead demand all women band together... under their leadership of course.
It's why the vast majority of 'gender critical feminists' are straight, white, upper- and middle-class women. They're overwhelmingly Second Wave Feminists who outright refuse to engage with Third Wave critiques.
Haven't read that books but going on the summary from the guardian and what you said I'm assuming she's describing the attitude of "phantasmic thinking" mentioned by Derrida and then later others in philosophy.
It allows you to take contradictory thoughts and actions without encountering dissonance.The original example given "I'd love a nice funeral once I'm gone." The Phantasmal lie in the mind... Your both... enjoying your funeral but are also gone?
For gender crits.
I'm supporting far right Misogynist political movements and attacking women for not performing gender to my satisfaction,
but I'm also a feminist fighting for women's rights and I'm actually the perfect female victim (Passive, Silent, Demure).
Elon even recently told her on Twitter to talk about something else haha
which is funny coming from Mr "My daughter won't speak to me so I altered the moderation rules on twitter to make 'cis' a slur that will trigger the offensive language filter"
She was incredibly mild in her reaction to that. One of the people who she can't intimidate with her money, fame, followers, or legal threats.
What is it with these people?
Graham Linehan and JK are/were very talented writers but they've just fallen right off the cliff edge.
At this point you have to assume that they’ve started eating their money or some other kind of rich people food that has high levels of mercury, lead or forever chemicals, right?
If she wrote Harry Potter today Voldemort would be Trans 100%
In one of her more recent books the villain is a man who dressed as a woman to murder them, unsurprisingly.
If I had Rowlings money, you would never hear from me again. I'd be off fucking around in the world, seeing all the weird and beautiful places, exploring all the cultures I can.
And this moron sits on fucking twitter. It's laughable.
Imagine having succeeded in your life and still being so unhappy that you need to validate you musing to the Internet.
JK Rowling talks more about trans issues than trans people do.
Way more. I don't think most of us even have a reason to talk about it most days.
And half the time if there is a reason, the reason is JK tweeting something.
For me it's usually the Tories coming up with some new excuse to try to ban us from going outside.
The saying "nobody thinks about gay dick more than a homophobe" goes well here.
Most transphobes do. Being this transphobic actually makes you more mentally ill than the people they claim to be. Normal people don't think this much about such an marginally small section of the population.
Keir Starmer thinks this woman is worth attempting to engage with in good faith but wants David Tennant to be more "respectful"
David Tennant's child is non-binary. His public statements effectively amount to being a protective dad.
His public statements were there before he had kids.. he has been an active ally since people were aware he existed.
That just makes him even more of a national treasure.
Jo would sooner have Tennant kill his own kid than accept his support for trans people
this woman who barely even makes public appearances and who communicates with the world exclusively via one website has opinions that are treated like they came from the mouth of Jesus
Not sure I agree. Keir was surprisingly pro trans rights in the debate the other night and this was after his meeting with Rowling.
I would hope he came away from that meeting thinking she is off her rocker.
I hope so.
I am non binary. I don't think I've ever bothered to mention it on Reddit, because who the fuck cares and who wants the static?
I mention it now, because yesterday I got an election pamphlet from the 'party of women' declaring I didn't exist and it fucked me right off. They want all legal protections for trans and nonbinary folk revoked. I would imagine some of Rowling's money has gone towards this hateful shit.
Keir was surprisingly pro trans rights in the debate the other night and this was after his meeting with Rowling
Starmer will do whatever he thinks will benefit him in the moment, he's a man almost entirely driven by focus group results.
Place him in front of Rowling and her pals and he'll be hitting out with exactly the same rhetoric she does.
I’m hoping he realises that the anti-trans rights crowd cannot be satiated with one or two policies.
If you try and engage with them I good faith, offer a compromise, they’ll take it, then demand more, and more, and more… and the moment you say “no more” they’ll denounce you as having been “secretly pro-trans” all along (or more likely, brand you an enabler of the corruption of children, or whatever their current lie about trans people is).
They will always move the line until you refuse to cross it, then you’ll be their enemy. May as well tell them “no” now, and at least you haven’t made life more difficult for trans people in the hopes of winning one pressure group’s support
Rowling is an almost-billionaire. Tennant is not.
Potential party donations is why he wants to appease her.
Rich person who never has to work again expresses personal opinion.
More like... powerful rich person used to getting her own way and being fêted doesn't like it when she comes across people who don't share her opinion.
I definitely think there's an element whereby she is very used to being seen as a worthy, infallible voice on politics and culture, due to being a beloved figure throughout the New Labour period. I think when you look at Graham Linehan's history on Twitter, even before he got obsessed with trans people, he has never ever liked the fact that Twitter turned him from an untouchable award-winning comedy icon into just another person on the same level as everyone else. Somebody you can speak to directly to disagree with or criticise. They're so used to being exalted that it's driven them mad to find themselves questioned.
Somebody you can speak to directly to disagree with or criticise. They're so used to being exalted that it's driven them mad to find themselves questioned.
This is really crystal clear with Glinner especially, where you can pretty much trace his entire obsession with transphobia back to him being unable to either ignore or shrug off criticism of that one episode of the IT Crowd.
Well, she did get rich writing stories about a boy being bullied and mistreated for who he is, and finally arriving in a better fantasy world where everyone is like him and accepts him.
And that featured as a major theme: it’s not who someone is born, but who they grow up to be…
He was born a wizard. He just didn't know it until Hagrid cracked his egg.
But didn't you know? She once lived destitute and homeless and completely impoverished on benefits whilst living with her wealthy brother and writing Harry Potter sitting in coffee shops all day. God it must have been tough.
The feminist compares trans rights to the fucking Taliban.
She's not a feminist, she's a terf.
Yup. TERFs have abandoned womens rights. They actually have started supporting anti-feminists on the basis that they also hate trans people
I disagree that she's not a feminist- that's a classic "No True Scotsman" issue. She still subscribes to patriarchy theory and has an interest specifically in women's issues and experiences, ergo, is a feminist, just a different kind. Aside from her obvious transphobia, which is in-part informed by a misandrist view on men and sex crimes (not uncommon in a variety of feminist circles), several of her core tenets will be agreeable to feminists in general. Feminism isn't a monolith and has many different aspects and angles. There are feminists who welcome trans people, feminists who don't, and feminists who are ambiguous. Not uncommonly, when feminists disavow TERFs, it seems to be more about trying to protect the privileged image or lustre of feminism rather than criticising a person's transphobia, a sort of "she's not one of us, don't criticise us" move, as if to shy away from the legitimate criticisms of such a broad, widespread, and well-established movement.
What's interesting is, rather than go "oh shit, transphobia is widespread, and some of what she's saying is also misandrist", the focus too often appears to be on "this person isn't a feminist, don't criticise feminists". These problems will continue to persist while other feminists fail to acknowledge this issue.
Myself, I'm an egalitarian who just wants everyone to be treated with dignity, respect, and equal rights. Women, Men, cis, trans.
With all that time and money she could have done wonders for women's rights, freedoms and safety. Instead she has campaigned to reduce the rights of all trans people, for the real but massively overblown fear that a tiny number of people could be exploited as a result.
She is not a feminist.
She's also contributing wildly to the danger of women being attacked for not being 'feminine' enough.
Oh, certainly. Definitely doing far more harm than good on every level
The trans population of the UK is only around 0.5% I cannot believe so much hated and political football is being used to target such a tiny amount of people
It's because it's such a tiny portion of the population they get targeted so much.
When politics needs something to rally people against normally it's minorities that get targeted. This means they aren't targeting a large part of the population but getting a sizable chunk fired up against them.
And only half of that 0.5% would be trans women, which is the only type of trans person that people seem to be enraged about. I wonder how often transphobes have actually even met a trans woman, let alone how often they've met one in a bathroom.
I honestly wish people would stop using that argiment on both sides, 0.5% is not that small.
Statistically speaking someone in your apartment complex is trans. Someone on a packed bus is trans. Multiple people in a school are trans.
Other populations that are less then 1% include teachers, jews, people with type 1 diabetes, twins, etc.
Anyone who loves David Tennant even more now, you should definitely watch Good Omens on Amazon. I only just discovered it and it's really rather good.
It is.
"What did he say that's got everyone so worked up?"
"Be kind to each other"
"Oh yeah, that'd do it"
Same deal for Graham Norton saying perhaps we ought to ask and listen to trans people instead of speaking for them.
Hounded off twitter.
That bugged me, because the full clip showed him getting asked a question, and him responding about how he hated the media's tendency to fish for that so they can make some "Graham Norton SLAMS JK Rowling" headlines. He said they shouldn't be asking celebrities at all, they should be talking to trans people. The media heard that and promptly reported about it with headlines like "Graham Norton SLAMS JK Rowling"
David Tennant is beloved, based and talented. You’d be a fool to publicly pick a fight with him.
First an MP and now JK Rowling have disagreed with him over his speech and they both went nuts in their replies.
What a king
Daniel Radcliffe too. Most of the Harry Potter cast are pretty based on trans rights which was really nice to see when JK's bullshit started, but him especially since he's a longtime partner of The Trevor Project
Oh yes. Crowley is non binary goals for sure.
The funniest thing about calling anyone who suppprts trans rights the “Gender Taliban” is that the Actual Taliban tortures, gang rapes, enslaves and disappears trans people. Wait laughing about trans people being brutalised by the state in the worst ways imaginable isn’t actually funny, is it Jk?
I suppose it’s hard to maintain contact with reality and a hand on what is and isn’t funny when you’re a billionaire, dunno what other people who use the phrase’s excuse is though.
https://8am.media/eng/under-the-taliban-rule-transgender-individuals-treated-as-sexual-slaves/
I would also like to point out Joanne once said liked "at least the Taliban know what a woman is"...
So is she pro Taliban or not? Or is she only against the Taliban that isn't a Taliban, but pro Taliban that is Taliban
Edit: she didn't write it herself, she liked it, fixed as per u/rhodie114
Jesus I’d forgotten she’d said that that 🤮
she's abhorrent. every piece of news I read about her just makes me like her less and less.
Meanwhile the taliban: Oppress and subjugate women entirely, trap them in their homes, completely restrict their autonomy and self determination, don't allow them to be educated, sell and trade them into forced marriages and reproductive coersion...
Jesus fucking christ Joanne.
I genuinely find Rowlings obsession with trans people very fucking weird at this point.
Was going to say the same thing. It's gotten to the point where my work colleagues, who are largely neutral on trans-related issues, had a discussion the other day where they basically all concluded her levels of obsession on trans and non-binary people is bizarre and nonsensical.
Even Elon Musk, known transphobe, tweeted at her that she was being too negative and asked her to please tweet about anything else.
Why can’t people just disagree agreeably
‘I don’t think David fully understands the perspective of a woman and these are my views….I understand his view point but this is why I think they’re wrong….’
But no….
‘Taliban!’
It’s hard to express a rational argument for an irrational view.
Hold on now, let's not pretend JK Rowling speaks for all women.
Polling consistently shows that more women support trans people than do not. The latter are just louder.
Because if you were agreeable you wouldn't have those views.
How she tries to silence Tenant for just having a viewpoint, while claiming she’s being silenced is just pathetic. Isn’t she self aware?
She's such a horrible person, I can't believe her transphobic nonsense is getting this much attention.
I guess that's the plan though, to make trans people the new target and scapegoat.
Going to be funny when she finally reaches the bottom of the slide she launched herself down.
Don't you miss the days when her worst behaviour was going all George Lucas over Harry Potter canon?
the glory days of ‘wizards canonically shit themselves all the time’ giving way to her losing her own shit (and marbles) on twitter constantly
Wizards shitting on the floor is just more evidence that JK is obsessed with toilets.
The toilet ghost who perves on boys in the bath was pretty weird too.
Also the entrance to the chamber of secrets was in the girls toilets. Does she think trans women are trying to release a basilisk?
One could argue shes been there for a while and this is the bottom, she's been singling out, Insulting and creating mobs at random trans people who haven't done anything for being trans for a while now (i.e the labour councillor last week or that football manager woman) and the bottom was just going to be when she did the exact same thing against someone who wasn't an acceptable target for being powerless and so the press stops aggressively downplaying everything she says so her insults sound like she's just walking up to some trans person and going "I respectfully disagree with you about what prison you should go to if you commit a crime" and not the screaming "fucking man" at them in all caps that happens in reality.
Maybe we should double-check the policies of the Taliban when it comes to trans rights. Something tells me they much more align with JK Rowling then David Tennant.
Imagine being on the side that wants to repress someone’s rights and then referring to someone who disagrees with you as “taliban” famously know for repressing rights.
I give it a year before she goes full Nazi because the government has not banned trans people from existing.
She already denied part of the holocaust
And sued someone for pointing out that what she was doing was Holocaust denial.
She's already prepared to retweet and share people who push anti-semitic conspiracy crap about the so called trans lobby. Weird how she gets away with that and gets to have meetings with senior Labour figures.
JK you are not more popular than David Tennant and you are 1000% going to lose if you pick this fight
What a rational and well thought out argument. I'm so glad this is the level of the national discourse, and that the press covers it so rigorously.
JK Rowling tried to deny parts of the Holocaust happened. Take from that what you will.
I'm joining the war on the Gender Taliban
on the side of the Gender Taliban
She's actually lost the fucking plot, this gender shite must consume her every waking moment.
She's turning into everyone racist old uncle at Christmas, are we sure she's not just on the tonic wine 24/7?
JK Rowling is to women's rights as what Nigel Farage is to politics.
Same pish, different topic. At least Farage stood for his position.
Their problem is they dont view Trans people as real. Therefore they dont see them as being worthy of the right to defend themselves. As a parent of a non binary child David has an absolute right to tell Badenoch and Rowling to shut up. As a member of the LGBTQ community i have an absolute right to defend other members of that community. This is massively amplified by the media who seem to round up a GC mouthpiece for every trans story but rarely get an actual trans person on.
See, she's obsessed with trans women, and specifically where and how they piss, but I don't imagine JK Rowling ever debases herself by using something as common as a public toilet these days. It seems like ever since people realised that she's actually quite a shit author, her increasing irrelevance doesn't feed the narcissist in her anymore so she has to do something to get attention.
There’s only one extremist out of those two and it ain’t David.
J Keyboard Warrior Rowling needs to go touch some grass.
What next, is she going to jump out of a bush and throw a custard pie in David Attenborough’s face.
What a clown
I heard Rowling referred to as Enoch Blyton and frankly that's chef's kiss
The house is on fire. Stop the distractions. Leave the gays alone. Stop stupid discussions.
There are 300,000 homeless people in the UK.
Gender Taliban is an oxymoron. It also is highly offensive to those who have suffered at the hands of the actual Taliban considering they are violent extremists.
David tennant is defending the right of his own child and others like them. It’s sick that she is trying to twist this into a narrative that he hates women.
David Tennant is such a wonderful person, if you're on the opposite side of a debate from him, you should re-evaluate your position.
Why is this her whole personality. We know your trans position, now go and get a fucking hobby, or sit on a beach and chill the fuck out with your millions
My mother was low key like her. "Feminist" that didn't like any women. "Ally" that didn't actually like LGBT+ people. "Woke" that didn't like Black people. Truth is, she had a fucked up life, abused her children, HATED being a woman, and never took accountability for her own actions. I'm glad she died before all this shit hit the fan. She was a giant HP fan and I shudder to think of her TERFing with Joanne.
Rowling is gatekeeping a gender she doesn't seem to like being, that she seems to understand based on a male-centric view. It's weird. My mom wanted to be an androgynous boy, she told me often. She never shook that woman=victim mentality. I wonder if JKkk Rowling feels the same.
Thanks for letting me visit, cheers Brits!
J k Rowling. The answer to the question, "what happens when mental illness meets twitter and has more money than god"
Imagine having this much money and being such a miserable shrew?
Comparing LGBTQIA campaigners to a terrorist organisation whose ideals are about 2000 years out of date would be laughable if it wasn’t so egregious.
Fuck off Rowling. Just fuck off.
"Gender Taliban" is fucking rich coming from someone courting neo-nazis. Fuck you JKR.
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