"Dumbledore is Gay" sez Rowling

There was nothing hilarious about it, Abbott. In fact, his early-college discovery of the simple learning disabilities that had made him struggle in high school was precisely what made him decide to major in education, so he could help kids like himself find ways to

I'm sorry, I'm getting a little misty, one second

wait you guys don't know anyone named harry? i have THREE friends named harry.

I have never known a person named Harry that was younger than 60.

nice of jkr to make the reveal after she's already ended the series and sold 15 gajillion books. woo yay and all, but also kind of having yr cock and eating it too.

prince harry

Now this raises all kinds of interesting questions.

1) Does what Rowling think matters?

lol subject-verb agreement

my little dog is called harry, he is like a tiny old-fashioned travelling salesman who breezes into town and makes hearts flutter.

in the remaining films, dumbledore will now be played by ian mckellen

because he's gay!!

it would be funny if michael gambon took a cue from this and just really queened it up in the next couple movies.

s1ocki have you heard his rationale for why he played magneto and the lotr dumbledore

Harry has definitely come back into fashion as a kids name, like George and Alfie, but Ron is really dated. Plenty of people with east Asian ethnicity have English names in the UK, not sure how different it is to the US though.

My best mate is called Harry, but then he was named after a man born in 1907.

two of my harry friends are jews, which makes some sort of sense to me, at least. they're both around 23?
the other is more peripheral, and he is (surprise) Japanese.

lol @ LAMAR SINGLETON

Every time I see this thread title I want it to say "'Dumbledore is Mad Gay' sez Rowling".

ya rly xpost

nice of jkr to make the reveal after she's already ended the series and sold 15 gajillion books. woo yay and all, but also kind of having yr cock and eating it too.

OTM. I find it hard to believe she's really like, "Oh, he's always been gay, I just didn't bother to mention it before."

ppl get *christened* harry?

the fuck, people.

it's like christening your kid dave.

'christened' to troll tuomas; insert whatever equiv you might want.

What?

To troll me how?

no other thread

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/15/books/a-detective-storys-famous-author-is-unmasked.html?smid=tw-share

That is one of the coolest things ever. It must have been really gratifying for her to get reviews minus all the usual "for grown ups, Harry Potter, mature, change of direction, blah blah" BS.

yeah gonna buy this to see what the fuss is all about

Don't expect a trans retcon in the Potterverse:

https://www.out.com/transgender/2019/12/19/harry-potter-author-jk-rowling-comes-out-terf

Yeah she’s been a fucking mess on this for years. Think I read somewhere she’s friends with W1ngs 0f Sc0tland?

That seems unlikely as she's anti Scottish independence.

You’re right but I am sure there’s some weird connection between them and some really objectionable people? Let me check this out

They both live in Dorset perhaps?

jk rowling has been a terf for years. she is also very friendly on twitter with "brian spanner" a unionist troll account that has tweeted at multiple female snp msps calling them cunts

don't want to link to wings over scotland but he details her literally @ing the brian spanner account 200 times.

xp ok thank you, that’s who I meant!

Here we have positive proof, if any were needed, that writing a series of wildly popular and lucrative children's books does not guarantee one has the ability to think sensibly about every issue that arises in a society. Other than her being rich as Scrooge McDuck, why would anyone regard her opinion about this as worth repeating?

That's Twitter for you.

now fantasy fans can have the same crushing disenchantment and disappointment in their authors that sci-fi fans have had to deal with since forever.

to me it seems unlikely that an angry entitled millionaire soft Tory would be a terf

sister is watching the TV adaptations of her detective books and dear god do i hate Rowling on a near visceral level

this is a brief interruption to my "more positivity" resolution, she pushed me into it

I've almost finished the last book with my kids

- She refuses to use the present subjunctive, which is infuriating

- She has a remarkably small stock of ideas

- Her conception of what magic is, and what wizards and witches are, and what they’re for, is weirdly stunted/unarticulated. She starts from a base of adorable cliches i.e. cauldrons, broomsticks, wands, but they never turn into anything interesting. They’re trappings. There’s a bank, a prison, a series of schools with terribly important exams but.. what are these wizards actually expected to do with these powers?

- Technically she’s quite good imo. Good sentences. The language flows. It’s extremely easy and satisfying to read aloud. And she always gives a clue as to what sort of voice to use i.e. Flitwick’s “squeaky voice” etc

- I don't buy Hermione and Ron at all. Ridiculous

- Harry and Ginny I do buy, depressingly. Harry supposedly cares about her deeply then manages to spend the entire last book without her. Would have served him right if she'd ended up among the dead

- They did Hagrid dirty. He starts as this cool big old gamekeeper who takes a shine to Harry. quite quickly he becomes The Crying Guy. oh he’s huge and rough- but he has a sensitive side! he’s just a big old softie! who’d a thunk it??? if i have to read one more time about the large tears rolling down Hagrid’s cheeks, each big enough to fill a teacup etc I’m hurling the book out the window

- speaking of, I never, ever need to read about Harry’s scar throbbing ever again. twice, three times- it’s enough. when he wakes up in the white mist-world talking to dead Dumbledore and he reaches up and doesn’t have a scar i was like 🎶 HALLELUJAH

can’t wait for my wee girl to be old enough to want to read these and then spend years trying not to yell about how all harry does is defend his elite private school and the horrible racist status quo it supports from having to make any sort of change and then grows up to be a cop so he can do it some more

and also that rowling is a blairite terf

I read all the books and enjoyed them but nothing stopped JK's horrible politics and generally shitty world-view soaking thru. She did one of her usual Twitter "body-shaming women is bad" things a couple of months ago which a friend approvingly shared and I bit my lip because I didn't wanna be that guy but I was gagging to shout about how she wrote seven books where one of the marks of the Dursleys's wickedness is "lol they fat"

She is a fucking mare, don't start me on this detective shite.

https://i.imgur.com/1AlWxfi.jpg

lol

lol

(for the record, gender is real)

if j.k. rowling tried to make an album based on the harry potter novels it would be so fucking awful

btw I didn't get into all the house elf / snape's hooked nose etc stuff because I figure it's all been hashed out plenty; ditto everyone being straight; but yes it is EXTREMELY PROBLEMATIC.

lol when dobby dies and rowling tries to make it into a Big Moment and has harry really drinking in his grief, it all rings so fucking hollow.

I'm still mad about Hermione and Ron btw - there is absolutely NOTHING between them for like four books. Ron's an idiot. it comes from nowhere. no little clues, no key moment where Ron does something unexpectedly gallant, nothing. it's like jkr really doesn't know her characters. Hermione and George I could see. Ron and Parvati. we're starting to get into that second tier of jkr character now though, the characters with no personalities of their own. God knows how I ever managed to differentiate the voices of Dean and Seamus.

I don't think it's that weird that there's nothing between them at ages 11-14, but then as teens they couple up. All the couplings in Harry Potter seemed as stupid as inconsequential as teenage love so often is. And then at the end it turns out they all married and stayed together forever, and that's when it became shitty...

yes, THAT’s when it became shitty, otm

look it isn't the place of fiction to explore characters' motivations or give them any kind of internal consistency

i didn't follow the olympics closely and i usually make fun of "explainers" but i've been confused about the whole boxing thing, this provided a good overview and wow this is even more fucking stupid than i thought it would be, rowling is evil

https://www.vox.com/sports/364856/olympics-boxing-imane-khelif-angela-carini

haven't read that yet, but I started a podcast about the history of sex-testing in sports, called Tested, that seems good/deeply infuriating so far (1.5 eps in)

i didn't follow the olympics closely and i usually make fun of "explainers" but i've been confused about the whole boxing thing, this provided a good overview and wow this is even more fucking stupid than i thought it would be, rowling is evil

https://www.vox.com/sports/364856/olympics-boxing-imane-khelif-angela-carini

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown)

i'm really grateful for people and outlets that do the work to explain things like these in a clear and lucid manner. most people i talk to just aren't informed on exactly how unhinged and bigoted rowling really is. just blatant lies like saying that trans people weren't targeted by the nazis.

of course, there are lots of people who are bigots and recognized as such... rowling, though, still "passes" to a lot of people as a feminist, someone who supports "women's rights". i'm a descriptivist, not a prescriptivist, but some people take her being described as a "TERF" as indicating that she's a feminist, and to me, that claim just doesn't stand up to scrutiny.

the question for me comes back to that question "gender critical" transphobes love to ask: what is a woman? i don't have a coherent, consistent answer to that. i don't feel like i need one. to rowling, to any other "gender critical" transphobe, though, the question seems to be critical, and there's one answer they seem to land on, over and over again. women are, as rowling phrases it, "large gamete producers". i do not believe that defining women solely in terms of their reproductive capacity is compatible with feminism.

i also appreciate that the explainer points out the links between transphobia and racism. there are many, many different sorts of women. when transphobes create norms for womanhood in an attempt to exclude trans women, those norms are invariably centered around white cis women. those norms invariably lead to declarations that cis women of color are "men". people attempting to "objectively" determine womanhood will do things like examine facial bone structure. you may or may not recognize this as the basis of phrenology, a 19th century racist pseudoscience.

i also appreciated this last paragraph:

“Trans issues in particular challenge … biblical concepts of gender,” Sophie Bjork-James, a Vanderbilt University anthropologist who studies the religious right, previously told Vox. “Evangelicals tend to believe that men and women have very different qualities that are innate in us. I think there’s a huge interest in maintaining a gender binary because it really does provide a foundation for their theology and their everyday lives.”

bjork-james is polite. i am less polite. where she says "biblical concepts of gender", i say patriarchy. there is evidence for this. if you read transphobic ideas, you will invariably come across somebody, at some point, talk about "gender ideology". this is a specific term with a specific origin. it is a theological concept created and promulgated by the roman catholic church, which is quite literally a patriarchy. biblical ideas of gender state that men should have dominion over women, that this is the divinely ordained natural order.

now, maybe rowling does not personally believe this. i don't know. if "gender critical" transphobes reject the patriarchal framing of "gender ideology", i do not know in what ways they reject it, what they believe instead. they also, at every step, make common cause with the patriarchal forces that seek to stamp out "gender ideology". their attempts to "advocate for women" lead, solely and inevitably, to actively working towards effecting patriarchal power over other people's bodily autonomy.

it is no longer possible for one to oppose trans rights and have a legitimate claim to "feminism", if it ever was. (i'm not interested in litigating the past.) transphobic beliefs are inherently patriarchal, homophobic, and racist. full stop.

Thanks for sharing, ums - I had little context or knowledge around this BS and had largely avoided it. Summed things up quite well and it's crazy how once again this shit ties back to Russia:

Exactly what led to the (2023 IBA disqualification) statement is unclear. The IBA did not disclose documentation at the time or reveal what tests were conducted. Questions were also raised because the organization, which was led by Russian official Umar Kremlev, did not disqualify Khelif until after she had already beaten a Russian boxer.

Like JFC... Also I don't feel enough heat is being pushed on Carini for stoking these flames of hate with her reaction in the ring.

Carini issued an apology a few days later I believe, don't think this is mentioned in the article, or by the transphobes of course.

most people i talk to just aren't informed on exactly how unhinged and bigoted rowling really is.

It's almost like being a billionaire is its own "mind virus"

xp The article mentioned it, but that initial reaction she made was a choice, and not a sportsmanlike one. I feel this would not have been nearly as big of a deal if she hadn't made the statements she did and simply just lost the match via KO or something. There was a clear axe to grind and the damage is already done. Maybe I'm out of line but I feel a simple apology now is a bit weak given the results of her actions.

(xp) It's an old article but...

Following the attention on this week’s match, Carini has said she’d like to apologize to Khelif: “If the I.O.C. said she can fight, I respect that decision.”

I think the fact that Imane Khelif is a huge national hero in Algeria, a Muslim country, speaks volumes. Meanwhile in the West...

the thing about Carini is, it could have been as simple as sour grapes over getting rocked so early into the match, it could have been more sinister...it's not clear. I can see a read on "I've never been hit that hard before" that is meant to dog whistle "because I usually fight WOMEN", but...I don't know.

the knowledge about Khelif's IBC disqualification was already known by transphobes/creepy conservatives and Carini's reaction gave them the rocket fuel to use her reaction to confirm what they already believed. I do think Carini tried to apologize and say "that's not what i meant by my reaction" but there are things you can't put back in the bag.

the right's gross obsession with their rigid, incorrect views of gender/sexuality is harder and harder to stomach. attacks on Khelif put a huge damper on the Olympics for me, what a dour, toxic thing to happen

now their pivot is "we're not transphobic, we're saying she is ACTUALLY A MAN" and not understanding that all of these behaviors and statements clearly emanate from transphobic thinking even if the person in question isn't actually trans...the hate comes from the same water spout

Later on there were also some other boxers doing this, which seems a lot more calculated, and which has been taken up enthusiastically by the TERFs.

https://i.imgur.com/SnVhJfJ.png

I missed that and was glad for not knowing about it :/

Matt Bernstein and Natalie Wynn had a pretty good convo about Rowling and the weird obsession of transvestigating, getting into the bizarre implications that the moral panic is generating;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiczrQtzlBc

https://open.spotify.com/episode/6LNBA8hk4YNOMQrOXIT0Yx?si=94HEEF85T8iDp-QJoVf36w

it's sort of an ouroboros, I think (xp to Neanderthal). as I alluded to in my first post and Kate just articulated in much more depth, transphobia stems from misogyny and sexism: policing what women are, what they can do, who they get to be, what claims they can make about themselves, and who controls these determinations is fundamental to transphobia.

it's why they think "can you define a woman?" is a steel rhetorical trap and not "can you define a man?" -- men can be whatever they want; masculinity imposes limits but it's a far cry from femininity. of course that doesn't make them not transphobic towards trans men, as transphobia has become its own force and policing the gender binary follows its destructive logic.

and yeah, this is the poisonous irony of "terfness" -- a powerful, prominent woman waving a flag that says feminism on it while viciously attacking another woman for failing to conform to a stereotypical, restrictive conception of womanhood. I'm having trouble finding details about this, but last summer I read something about whichever federation regulates pro chess wanting to start doing sex verification -- that kind of blew my mind.

I really do recommend that Tested podcast, hearing the details of why and how athletic sex-testing is done (it started in the 1920s!) and how ludicrously unscientific it is is pretty wild

Matt Bernstein and Natalie Wynn had a pretty good convo about Rowling and the weird obsession of transvestigating, getting into the bizarre implications that the moral panic is generating;

― Glower, Disruption & Pies (kingfish)

mia mulder did a video about transvestigation a while back, utterly insane. also insanely racist... the whole thing stems from that fox news bit where someone accused michelle obama of actually being a "man" and people just picked that up and ran with it. it gets pretty crazy. like, you have these "transvestigators" claiming that elliot page is a man. which he is. to be clear, he is, he is a man, but what they're saying is that he's a _cis man_ who transitioned to beng a woman and then transitioned _back_ to being a man because... shit, i don't know. brainworms all around.

it's sort of an ouroboros, I think (xp to Neanderthal). as I alluded to in my first post and Kate just articulated in much more depth, transphobia stems from misogyny and sexism: policing what women are, what they can do, who they get to be, what claims they can make about themselves, and who controls these determinations is fundamental to transphobia.

well, to clarify, this might seem like a minor distinction, but to me it's an important distinction... i don't think it's necessarily rooted in misogyny so much as patriarchy. patriarchy is an ideology - it's not something that's promulgated entirely by men or something that is entirely directed at women. anybody can promote it, and everybody suffers from it, in different ways. i wasn't ever a man, but living as a man among men, i became very aware of the ways in which masculinity is policed, the ways patriarchy hurts men.

if you ask me, the reason transphobes ask how to define a woman and not to define a man is because "man" is an "unmarked" category - it is the "normal" from which everything else deviates. there's a certain amount of privilege to that, but the price of that is that you have to conform pretty strictly to those norms. women wearing trousers is accepted now (it wasn't always), but men wearing skirts and dresses is still _heavily_ stigmatized. those sumptuary codes, they are double-edged swords - you can be completely invisible as long as you're conforming to it, but once you deviate you become hypervisible. and the fascinating thing is that, i mean, there are slurs for trans women, but people don't call us those slurs on the street. when they call us slurs, they always call us the same slur: faggot. to me, this suggests that their objections aren't simply about gender at all. they're opposed to _queerness_. look at, for instance, all these bans on drag. it's not that they don't know the _difference_ between trans women and men in drag - they don't care. this whole idea some people have that you can be lgb-affirming but not trans-affirming, it doesn't hold up when you look at the reality of how these things are put into place. these days it's always, always done in a way that reinforces heteronormativity.

it's why they think "can you define a woman?" is a steel rhetorical trap and not "can you define a man?" -- men can be whatever they want; masculinity imposes limits but it's a far cry from femininity. of course that doesn't make them not transphobic towards trans men, as transphobia has become its own force and policing the gender binary follows its destructive logic.

― rob

well i mean it is fascinating, and this is one of the key reasons i say "patriarchy" and not "misogyny" - because the transphobes will say "we're not transphobic, we recognize trans men as women." i'm sorry, what? what the fuck did you just say? it's just such a _staggering_ insult to me. they say "you're a woman, you can present however you like, you can wear pants, you can be 'butch'". yes, in fact, women _can_ be butch. i think that's good, i support that, i defend that. and men can also be trans men. it's like that old story of queen victoria refusing to acknowledge that it was _possible_ to be a lesbian. they just don't understand transmasculinity on a basic conceptual level. they look at the things trans guys do and they're like "don't do that, you're defiling your own womanhood" like excuse me? i thought they were just saying "women" can do anything they want? but now they're arguing against mastectomies and hormones and _hysterectomies_ for people they insist on saying are "women".

i'm sorry what how the fuck are you a feminist when you're saying someone can't get a hysterectomy. i see transphobes making fun of us all the time for saying women can have penises, but what the fuck are they saying here, you can have a hysterectomy if you're a woman, but not if you're a man? is that the "logic" here? what the actual fuck?

there's no coherent argument for that as "feminist". that's patriarchy. plain and simple.

It's almost like being a billionaire is its own "mind virus"

― octobeard

even by billionaire standards the stuff she's saying is utterly bonkers. i mean, jennifer pritzker is a billionaire, as any number of conspiracy theorists will never stop telling you.

Matt Bernstein and Natalie Wynn had a pretty good convo about Rowling and the weird obsession of transvestigating, getting into the bizarre implications that the moral panic is generating;

Just been watching this, it's the third of his videos I've seen this week and I like them a lot, really good to have Natalie just chatting and not under pressure to produce another masterpiece, but also I'm afraid I hate his host-read ads, they just seem tonally jarring.