Controversy over transphobia in J.K Rowling's new book

[polishgenius]

1 hour ago, Ran said:

I tend to agree that she had very limited conscious political commentary embedded in the HP novels, and a number of the ones people seem to see are more a matter of the choice of setting than deliberate messaging.

Yeah and one problem she has is that there are quite a few instances where the surface messages that there are clash with the sub-surface coding in the books. As LS and others mentioned, the way muggles (and squibs!) are treated and the general presence they have are totally at odds with the 'anyone can be a hero' theme. Likewise, we're told Slitherins can be good and indeed we see one of them kind of is (even though he's still a complete bastard) and one manages to not be totally evil for a brief second at the end, but the general writing of the houses simply contradicts that on every level. We're told Reeta Skeeter is sensationalist and a liar, but iirc we never actually see her writing anything that she doesn't have a direct source for (the sources are lying, but that's a different question) and her most grevious offence in the eyes of the characters is not in fact the false bits but her ability to get true stories they don't want out there by being a beetle (something Hermione, champion of freedom, then spends several books blackmailing her over).

Similarly and this is why I referred to classism earlier our band of heroes are meant to be relatable everyman underdogs, socially, but every single person codes as middle class at least. Harry grows up in a cupboard under the stairs, yes, but within a few pages of the first book he's a millionaire. I get it's wish-fulfillment escapism but it's also playing hard into the idea that you can't get places without money. Even the Weasleys (and this is the bit that kinda bothers me because the rest is just a consequence of setting and the aim of the story but this one is a deliberate misrepresentation)- we're told they're poor, but their dad is a govermnent minister and they live in a massive house on its own land. They don't read poor, they read like a fun imitation of what poor is like. I'm not expecting incisive social commentary from HP, and the private-school setting made it intrinsically harder anyway, but there's not a hint of working-class in Harry Potter, not a sniff. Fucking LotR does better and that thinks the ideal deportment of the working class is devoted loyalty to their land-owing masters (I'm not knocking Sam he is the best but the way other characters treat him especially at the beginning is arggh).

 

5 hours ago, Lightsnake said:

I think PG hit the nail well on the head. Yeah, wizard society is fucked up, but in a lot of ways, we're just supposed to accept 'muggles' are lesser beings. Like, Hermione erases her parents' memories of her, wizards screw with the minds of non magical beings...we're supposed to buy they see them as people worthy of respect on their own?

Have you been reading Hal Duncan's recent megathread on this, where he starts off detailing the problem then, rather fanfickily, suggests how he as a book doctor would have tried to fix things?

 

 

11 minutes ago, HoodedCrow said:

If she had written Dumbledore( who is goofy but plot demands him not talking fully to Harry) as gay in a book that desperately avoids significant sex, well, it would have been a spectacular failure.

She doesn't have to have written a full-frontal sex scene to write him as gay ffs. There's an incredible amount of snogging so the idea that the books avoids situations you could imply sexuality with is just false, but you don't even need that. All you needed really was a husband or ex-husband mentioned for Dumbledore.

 

[HoodedCrow]

There is snogging but no sex,which is not believable, but it’s a children’s series. There is also no masterbating, or even an erection. There is attraction in very vague terms. She was probably answering the wrong question, which is “could Hermione be black as newly portrayed”and the answer is yes. The other question is did I imagine Hermione is black? Probably not? She talks about Hermione as being like herself. Did she lie? She’s a fantasy writer, so it’s all lies. Are there any spotless people, ever, in real life. No, that would be a fantasy. Is it crappy? Yes. Do we need to talk about it? I think so.

There is a lot of classism in HP. The slitherins probably think of the Weasleys as poor and degraded. Hagrid is a working class type character, methinks, but point taken. It is a private school.

[john]

1 hour ago, Ran said:

She incorrectly claimed that the text did not specify Hermione’s skin color, as I noted. That she clearly concieved the character as white, wrote her as such, and then essentially gaslit her readers by claiming she never did is the thing that seems self-aggrandizing. 

Nobody really needed textual evidence to tell us Hermione is supposed to be white. But perhaps some people welcomed authorial support for the idea that Hermione could, by whatever means necessary, whatever tortured logic (even at the risk of self aggrandisement) also be black in the books.

[Lightsnake]

have a link to that thread, PG?

[AverageGuy]

People see the book burning tiktok? https://www.newsweek.com/jk-rowling-books-burned-tiktok-transgender-issues-1532330

I feel like do not feed the yeard applies here. Hope they didn't spend money on those books.

Rowling herself has pointed that out one of the other times someone's burned her books though: https://time.com/4657055/j-k-rowling-twitter-harry-potter-book-burning/

 

[karaddin]

Yeah I agree with PG - there are a lot of potentially interesting angles of commentary that is set up by what we're shown in the text but those aren't actually backed up by the actual tone of the text. It's like she was doing "show, don't tell" but then told us the opposite of what she's showing.

With the example of Arthur's muggle obsession - if it had gone anywhere then you could think there was meant to be a deeper point behind it, but I think it's actually just meant to be a bit of endearing quirky characterisation. If Arthur or even Molly had used muggle technology to get a surprise avantage in the climactic battle then it would have gone somewhere, but nope.

[Varysblackfyre321]

On 9/18/2020 at 9:11 AM, karaddin said:

TERFs are also hitting the point of pivoting to open slather homophobia generally and I'd expect them to picking up other far right bigotries too. Highlight I saw recently was one of them unironically saying "the only other people saying what we're saying are nazis". And she actually used the word Nazis, that's her honesty not my interpretation.

 

I've seen talk Terfs attack bisexuals basically make gays and lesbians dissociate with bisexuals.

I realize it's an attempt to simply fracture the community so ultra conservatives conservative agenda to screw all of them.

 

[polishgenius]

5 hours ago, Lightsnake said:

have a link to that thread, PG?

Here it is on threadreader. It really is gargantuan, but the relevant analysis of the books themselves is early on.

[SeanF]

15 hours ago, dog-days said:

I think that's actually one of the most successful aspects of the HP series - it shows how even people from Muggle families start to buy into the values and worldview of the elite group that they are half-in, half-out of. No one ever stops and says, "You know what, Bob, we wizards have been treating Muggles like toys for centuries and This Is Definitely A Bad Thing." The dismissive/humorous attitude stemming from a mixture of power and fear is there right the way through (think of Arthur Weasley, his slightly condescending enthusiasm Muggle technology, and the way a load of his colleagues treat him for it). GoF starts with the bad guys - the main antagonists for the next four books - torturing Muggles for a drunken lark, and the reader is pretty clearly meant to be appalled and scared, and by DH at the latest Hermione is occupying a place on the same spectrum. 

I remember being pretty cross when DH was released and the epilogue finished All Was Well or something like that because I reckoned it very much wasn't well, in that while Harry was alive, an ally of the nice(r) victorious party, and had a family, so much was wrong that it would just be a matter of time until the next evil maniac came along: the house system was intact, there wasn't anything about reform of the ministry or changes to how wizards related to other groups etc.  But I still find it hard to believe that the woman who wrote GoF and OotP wasn't aware she was describing a really messed up group of people. The shift to conservatism at the end can partly be ascribed to the epilogue predating most of the books by some years. It was the end to the story she was telling in Philosopher's Stone, not the other books. (Nothing really excuses Dobby dying and Kreacher continuing in happy servitude though). 

With increasing age and jaundice, I kind of get that being alive with loving family and friends is about the most people can expect to get, so in that sense for Harry, all really was well. A closed society in a perpetual state of emergency isn't going to take a deep look at itself and change in one year, or seven. 

Wizarding society was dystopian, but I don't think Rowling realised quite how dystopian it was.

Take for example Merope drugging/placingTom Riddle Senior under the Imperius curse, so she could have sex with him.  Viewed objectively, it was a form of rape.  Tom Riddle was not a nice man, but he had done nothing to deserve that.  But, when Harry and Dumbledore are discussing it, their sympathies are all with Merope - and I think the author is inviting us to sympathise with her as well. 

Or Hermione wiping her parents' memories.  It may have been well-intentioned, but it was a pretty dreadful act to transform their personalities in that way without discussing it with them.  It would be like a doctor performing transformative surgery on a patient, without discussing it with the patient.  Hermione is Rowling's alter ego in the story, and again, I think she expects us to see this as a good act.  

Then, the extinction of souls by dementors is considered a legitimate form of punishment in this world.  Given that it's canon that wizards and witches possess immortal souls, and can look forward to various forms of afterlife, it's a much worse punishment than execution of the body.  I think even Hitler's or Stalin's executioners might have drawn the line at this point.  Yet, it's something that the "good guys" have been doing for centuries.  You'd think that the very idea would provoke horror and disgust among sympathetic characters in this world.

[The Marquis de Leech]

On 9/19/2020 at 3:23 AM, Ormond said:

I think Rowling's views on transgender issues are horrible, but I think it should be pointed out that she seems to be coming at that from the "TERF" (trans-excluding radical feminist) perspective and so otherwise her politics are not "rightwing".  She seems to definitely be a supporter of the Labour Party in the UK, which of course would definitely make her leftist in terms of US politics.

I'd categorise her as a TELF (trans-excluding liberal feminist). She's the sort of person who adopted their views in the 1980s and 1990s, and hasn't shifted since.

(On other issues, she detests Jeremy Corbyn, is fiercely pro-Remain on Brexit, and dislikes Scottish nationalists. Which adds up to Centre-Left Establishment Politics).

[SeanF]

A review here from Nick Cohen.

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/j-k-rowling-s-latest-novel-isn-t-transphobic-

2 minutes ago, The Marquis de Leech said:

I'd categorise her as a TELF (trans-excluding liberal feminist). She's the sort of person who adopted their views in the 1980s and 1990s, and hasn't shifted since.

(On other issues, she detests Jeremy Corbyn, is fiercely pro-Remain on Brexit, and dislikes Scottish nationalists. Which adds up to Centre-Left Establishment Politics).

Very representative of the Labour Party, pre-Corbyn.

[IlyaP]

2 hours ago, Varysblackfyre321 said:

I've seen talk Terfs attack bisexuals basically make gays and lesbians dissociate with bisexuals.

Wait, *what*?

[Heartofice]

15 minutes ago, SeanF said:

A review here from Nick Cohen.

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/j-k-rowling-s-latest-novel-isn-t-transphobic-

I would guess it really would be better that anyone commenting on the book should in fact actually read the book first. Who'd have thought that would be a debatable concept!

[Kyll.Ing.]

11 hours ago, polishgenius said:

Similarly and this is why I referred to classism earlier our band of heroes are meant to be relatable everyman underdogs, socially, but every single person codes as middle class at least. Harry grows up in a cupboard under the stairs, yes, but within a few pages of the first book he's a millionaire. I get it's wish-fulfillment escapism but it's also playing hard into the idea that you can't get places without money. Even the Weasleys (and this is the bit that kinda bothers me because the rest is just a consequence of setting and the aim of the story but this one is a deliberate misrepresentation)- we're told they're poor, but their dad is a govermnent minister and they live in a massive house on its own land. They don't read poor, they read like a fun imitation of what poor is like. I'm not expecting incisive social commentary from HP, and the private-school setting made it intrinsically harder anyway, but there's not a hint of working-class in Harry Potter, not a sniff.

On the other hand, what would actual poverty look like in the Harry Potter universe? Given that everything but food can be conjured out of nowhere, any wizard with any source of income should be able to do pretty well for themselves. The rules of the setting make actual poverty, well, not impossible, but rare enough that the protagonists wouldn't be likely to come across it.

That being said, from what we see of young Snape's life, it doesn't look like his parents were flush with cash. He grew up in a cramped apartment in a derelict industrial area. The Gaunt family was also living on a sustenance minimum, or so it seemed - then again, none of them had a job. And if you want working class, look no further than Argus Filch, whom somebody somehow saw fit to do cleaning and maintenance of an enormous castle housing hundreds of kids, on his own, without the aid of magic. There's an implication there that he wouldn't be able to find work otherwise, so he has to stick with a job he hates. Not sure where Hagrid is on that spectrum. It appears he enjoys being groundskeeper, but he has to live in a single-room hut on school property and appears to be shunned by most people. Then there's also Lupin, who has to use the student train to travel to Hogwarts (by the way: why? Every new book appears to show a new mode of transport that would be much more convenient for him), wears only very worn clothes, and isn't shown to have more belongings than he can carry (then again, magical suitcases are very roomy).

Overall I'd say it's a bigger problem that none of the poor people portrayed in Harry Potter are shown as any form of sympathetic. Snape is an ass (and so were his parents), the Gaunts border on insane (poverty = insanity, that's a problematic portrayal), and Filch is disliked by everybody for good reason. Even the good guys with money issues seem to have got there by spending their money irresponsibly. Hagrid buys copious amounts of alcohol and occasionally a dangerous magical creature. Mr. Weasley fills his garage with trinkets and doodads while his kids all wear hand-me-downs. There's also a scene in Chamber of Secrets where Mrs. Weasley counts coins to make sure her kids can afford all the required curriculum books, while Mr. Weasley casually suggests getting a drink at the Leaky Cauldron with Hermione's parents. Lupin seems to be the exeption, as it's made explicit that he has problems finding a job due to his lycanthropy, and presumably lives by himself quite far away from other people.

A counterpoint is the question of whether there'd be room to depict actual poverty in the Harry Potter books. We spend all the time with Harry, who's either at boarding school or with the Weasleys. And while the Weasleys could have been shown in actual poverty - a couple of Squibs trying to raise nine children in some cramped apartment in a downtrodden industrial city, or something - their purpose in the story is also showing Harry (and by extension, the reader) what everyday life in a wizarding family looks like. To extensively portray anything but this middle-class life would require that Harry spent a lot of time with another family. We can assume that legitimate, non-self-inflicted poverty exists in the Harry Potter universe (again, to the degree that the setting allows), but there isn't really much time to openly show it.

[Varysblackfyre321]

13 minutes ago, IlyaP said:

Wait, *what*?

Sorry I've seen some Terfs specifically gay ones rail against bisexuals as really just pretending.

[IlyaP]

Just now, Varysblackfyre321 said:

Sorry I've seen some Terfs specifically gay ones rail against bisexuals as really just pretending.

Engaging in biphobia attacks as part of the TERFian manifesto? That's a new one. It's like people forget there's a B in LGBTQIPA/LGBT+.

[Heartofice]

4 minutes ago, Varysblackfyre321 said:

Sorry I've seen some Terfs specifically gay ones rail against bisexuals as really just pretending.

I don't think there is anything specific to Terfs about that opinion. My gay friends often say the same thing, maybe in jest but I think quite seriously. 

[karaddin]

5 minutes ago, IlyaP said:

Engaging in biphobia attacks as part of the TERFian manifesto? That's a new one. It's like people forget there's a B in LGBTQIPA/LGBT+.

Biphobia and Transphobia dovetail quite well in their philosophy, and unfortunately both are the easier targets for intra community exclusion. There has sure as hell been a lot of success in the online space of trying to rile up fighting between Lesbians and Bisexual women that's resulting in a ton of shit I hate from both sides. Of LGB people, bisexuals often have the worst mental health outcomes due to having a harder time fitting into both straight and queer communities due to exclusion and discrimination from both, and bisexual women have a crazy high level of abuse against them in relationships.

[IlyaP]

7 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

I don't think there is anything specific to Terfs about that opinion. My gay friends often say the same thing, maybe in jest but I think quite seriously. 

*sigh*

It's 2020 and they still say stupid shit like that. Unfuckingbelievable.

[Varysblackfyre321]

 

2 hours ago, Heartofice said:

I would guess it really would be better that anyone commenting on the book should in fact actually read the book first. Who'd have thought that would be a debatable concept!

It's really, kinda weird to seem to couch saying ”Rowling is transphobic” as slander.

You might as well say Pat Robertson is homophobic.

It's not because the great evil sock Justice warriors on twitter said so independent of Rowlings continued statements in regards to trans people.

1 hour ago, Heartofice said:

I don't think there is anything specific to Terfs about that opinion. My gay friends often say the same thing, maybe in jest but I think quite seriously. 

Of course it's not exclusive to terfs. 

Biphobia is a real problem.

Among the lgbt community unfortunately.

One that some of the far religious right try to exploit to drive wedges within the community the same way by trying to get gays to distance themselves from trans people.