DJWGibson t1_j7pqd7r wrote on February 8, 2023 at 3:17 PM

Reply to comment by roscid in Witch Hunt For Hogwarts Legacy Content Creators Ongoing by windowhihi

>At the end of the day, nothing can convince me that individual people choosing not to buy a game that supports someone who dehumanizes trans people is morally equivalent to shoplifting or making game creators homeless. I'm sorry, but that is just an absurd equivalency to draw.

But the point I'm making is it doesn't support her. She's supported by a wealth of other revenue streams. She makes a few bucks every time someone reads or listens to one of her best selling books or watches one of her hit movies. And her new detective books continue to sell.

This game would be a tiny, tiny, tiny drop in the bucket that doesn't affect her but affects the people at the game studio who will need to find another job at a video game company... in England. That pays as well as a AAA studio.

>I also think you're making Rowling out to be a lot more innocent than she is. Twitter manipulates and exploits our feelings, sure, but to act like Rowling has no agency in this process and just "had no choice" but to become an extreme bigot because angry people on the internet called her out on her bullshit just absolves her of all responsibility for her actions.

She didn't have agency. No one chooses to be radicalized. She didn't sit down and make a rational decision. This is all primal, reactive lizard brain stuff. She was clearly victimized at some point in her life and this is triggering all those emotions of being attacks and hurt. Fight/ flight is kicking in and she'd going with the former.

Attacking her didn't work then. It's not going to work now. Doing the same thing again and again and expecting different results is... well, y'know.

>I don't feel sorry that people aren't universally celebrating her anymore. Just because it doesn't hurt her finances much doesn't mean it is meaningless. Publicly naming and shaming people who spread hate and say intolerable things helps to strip them of their power and influence. At the very least, she no longer has an underserved squeaky clean image in the public eye. Maybe that doesn't matter to you, but it matters to the people whose rights and dignity Rowling feels are negotiable.

And she's being stripped of her power and influence... how?

All this has done has made her double down AND given the TERF community a rallying figure to platform and praise.

I've lost all respect for her. I'm not buying any of her books again. (And I work in an elementary school library.) But I also care about the end results and the actual cause and what we're currently doing... isn't fucking working.

What we're doing now isn't working. It's making her more vocal. She's doing more with her money out of spite. And as she intensifies, so does the mob who are attacking and harming other people.

It's a vicious cycle. And you can win in a vicious cycle. We can't win by out hating her. We can't despise her into submission.
And even if the mob does somehow win and bully her into being silent... is that how we want to win? Emotional violence?

roscid t1_j7ptt9d wrote on February 8, 2023 at 3:41 PM

> She didn't have agency. No one chooses to be radicalized. She didn't sit down and make a rational decision. This is all primal, reactive lizard brain stuff. She was clearly victimized at some point in her life and this is triggering all those emotions of being attacks and hurt. Fight/ flight is kicking in and she'd going with the former.

If we afford Rowling that level of sympathy, then we must also extent it to the people hurt most by her words. And if we don't extend that same sympathy to them, then Rowling doesn't deserve it either. She can't have it both ways. Either everyone is responsible for their own words and deeds, or no one is.

If Rowling is justified in indulging her base instincts, then she should be prepared to accept the backlash from people doing the same. I think we could all do better, though. I'm all for compassion, let's just not put the onus entirely on one side.

> And she's being stripped of her power and influence... how?

Well...

> I've lost all respect for her. I'm not buying any of her books again. (And I work in an elementary school library.)

Seems to have worked with you and I, at least.

> What we're doing now isn't working. It's making her more vocal. She's doing more with her money out of spite. And as she intensifies, so does the mob who are attacking and harming other people.

> It's a vicious cycle. And you can win in a vicious cycle. We can't win by out hating her. We can't despise her into submission. And even if the mob does somehow win and bully her into being silent... is that how we want to win? Emotional violence?

Again, you make a lot of valid points! This is the discussion we should be having! We should be discussing how to effectively protest someone, not whether or not we should even be doing it at all.

We shouldn't be spending time defending someone who actively works against our common goals, regardless of the specifics of how she gets paid or whether or not she was involuntarily radicalized. We shouldn't be guilted into not boycotting a game to a prop up a fundamentally broken system, and we shouldn't equivocate the act of not buying a video game with destroying livelihoods.

I already stated a few comments back that I condemn the sort of attacks that actively hurt innocent bystanders, so you don't have to keep trying to convince me that that is a bad thing. I already agree with you there. I'm just saying don't conflate peaceful protest with aimless harassment.

By the way, I don't even personally care if someone plays Hogwarts Legacy, especially if they are simply ignorant or misinformed about he surrounding controversy. We all are victims of propaganda, and I am personally more concerned with going after the figureheads who influence a great number of people rather than chasing down their individual followers. I just don't think there is necessarily anything wrong with publicly boycotting the game and spreading the word about JKR's views.