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WeDriftEternal t1_jaag4r9 wrote

JK Rowling has said some statements regarding trans people that some people consider disparaging.

Thats it. Thats all.

She's a massive celebrity's, so the story just keeps going anytime anyone mentions Harry Potter or trans people its a super easy narrative for any media org or person just to toss out her name.

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Chief_B33f OP t1_jaaij1n wrote

What specifically has she said? What was the context?

Edit: Sorry, not playing dumb here I just literally knew nothing about this. I thought this was something new but apparently this has been ongoing? I guess it just started showing up again because of the release of the new Harry Potter video game. I don't really care for the Harry Potter series and I don't follow celebrities on social media

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Rhwyo t1_jaamktl wrote

It's not just a couple of comments, it's been going on for years. She published a huge rant about trans people on her website. She has taken part in numerous events run by anti-trans campaign groups, and has repeatedly endorsed others, in some cases confirming that she has given money to them. She accidentally copied and pasted some text from an extreme anti-trans blog post (that she had presumably been reading) into the middle of a tweet aimed at a child. She then lied about this situation and claimed that trans people were angry at her just because she praised a child's drawing. She gets incredibly defensive and angry at anyone who disagrees with her. For example, Graham Norton was asked about her, and he very politely said that he thought the media should talk to trans people and medical experts instead of celebrities - she responded by accusing him of supporting rape threats and death threats (this is a common theme - she has received some rape threats and death threats, and therefore anyone who disagrees with her is essentially a rapist murderer).

On top of all of that, people have pointed to several questionable depictions of trans people (or characters who seem like they might be trans) in her novels. In one of her detective novels, the hero threatens to get a trans woman locked up in a men's prison, where he suggests that she will probably be raped. Some of the others are more of a stretch - there is a minor villain in Harry Potter who is a woman who seems to have very masculine traits. Some people think that one is a coincidence, but some people think the character lines up perfectly with how she views trans people.

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TheBananaKing t1_jaaljwi wrote

I strongly recomend you watch Contrapoints on the topic - she goes into a wealth of detail.

When the fuss first blew up a few years back, I assumed it was just your standard thoughtlessly-insensitive old person with outdated ideas but no particular malice.

I was wrong. Holy hell.

JK doubled down again and again and again on her hatred for trans people, to a jaw-dropping degree. She is raving batshit insane on the topic.

And once you've watched through that, check out the Shaun video on her ethics and political stance. Again, it goes into detail, and it's not pretty.

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pinkandroid420 t1_jaaisak wrote

She said trans people deserve genocide except with a bunch of tweets and stuff

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Rhwyo t1_jaakvq6 wrote

> JK Rowling has said some statements regarding trans people that some people consider disparaging.

She's been loudly campaigning against trans people for years. She has repeatedly said very overtly disparaging stuff about them or anyone who defends them, and has openly given money to anti-trans groups. Not to mention that there are several unpleasant depictions of trans people in her novels; for example, in one of her detective novels, the hero threatens to have a trans woman sent to a men's prison if she doesn't cooperate, and jokes about how the other inmates would probably rape her.

> Thats it. Thats all.

Are you being deliberately dishonest or do you literally just not know anything about the situation?

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BlueTeale t1_jaao632 wrote

  • JKR is anti-trans and vocal about it.

  • Hogwarts Legacy just came out.

  • people talk about the first point when the 2nd is a topic

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mindful-bed-slug t1_jaak825 wrote

Lots of people who felt like underdogs, including LGBTQ+ people, fell in love with Harry Potter.

And now the author is basically saying that transgender women are a dangerous threat.

This encourages violence against transgender women. And it encourages assholes who think that transgender women shouldn't be allowed to use public bathrooms. Which, followed to its logical conclusion, basically means that they can't go out in public. Because humans need potty breaks.

Transgender women have long lived lives on the margins of society. Often with no possibility of finding work or making a living other than by prostitution. Often murdered in the streets and no police even bothering to look for a killer.

The suicide rate among transgender people was as high as 50%. Think about that. It can be so stressful to be forced to inhabit a gender role and a body that don't fit, and to have no one see you, that people end their lives. Imagine if you were forced, for the rest of your life, to dress and act as the opposite to your gender and even your own family went along with it. Imagine looking down at your body and its all wrong. And if you even make the tiniest protest, they call you crazy. It is too much for so many humans. Those who managed to get through it and make a good life for themselves are heroes.

Finally, with medical advances, where endocrinologists and psychologists came to agree that transgender people are not only perfectly sane, but that they can often be identified in childhood, and just raised in their actual gender with the potential to use hormones to make their bodies match their minds. It revolutionized things. Suddenly we have extensive medical literature on how to identify these kids and how to treat them, and the treated kids almost all grow up and are healthy and stable. Whereas before, half of them would die.

We were on the cusp of a world where transgender people could just get the care they need to actually be comfortable in their bodies. Where they could have non-discrimination laws that let them get and keep good jobs. Where their families would see them and support them.

It's such a difference to see these confident young kids and to contrast it with the battered and traumatized people who managed to survive in previous generations. It's night and day. And people like me want more day. More happy innocent kids who worry about what college they'll go to instead of living (and dying) on the streets.

And then JK Rowling starts using her bully pulpit to promote these hateful, medically inaccurate, myths. And the hate that gets frothed up results in politicians cutting off medical care for transgender kids, pretending to care about the complex medical decisions parents make for their kids, pretending to understand or care about the state of the art in this tiny field of endocrinology. (You don't see politicians getting involved in the chemotherapy drugs of teens-- even though those can cause sterility, and future cancer risk, and brain damage. Why doesn't the news cover all those pediatric cancer doctors with the same skepticism as the pediatric endocrinologist at the same hospitals?)

It's bull. I'm a biologist with 15 years of lab experience and I can tell you: gender is a spectrum. There have always been humans that don't fall into the two main categories. Transgender people, intersex people, people with all manner of genetic differences that make them medically NOT ordinary men or women. And those people have been studied (and not always respectfully) ever since medicine was invented. They are real, and they don't want to be hidden away or turned into side-show freaks. They want to live their lives and get their damned medicine.

People like Rowling can take their bigotry and stuff it!

So that's me, one person in the LGBTQ+ community, on why Rowling is a big deal.

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Phage0070 t1_jaatt17 wrote

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