"Why doesn't she get all made up like this when she's boxing? Only looks like this when she's out of the ring and going to events? No other women put on tons of makeup to look their best when they go out. Clearly faking it."
What she is really saying is, "How dare she not gender conform in the way I see right an appropriate, also even if she did I can never be wrong so she did something wrong."
"I once wrote outstandingly successful books that were pretty popular before some woke minded peopled dared to attack the narrative because of some of my conservative and outdated attitudes shimmering through an entertaining story.
But now the story is finished and I'm rich, but I really miss the level of attention I once had as an author. So instead of creating relevant books, I try to be relevant by showing engagement in an emotional topic, where I use my former fame and my financial independence to speak so loud and clear, that I can't be ignored. At least I hope so and so far it works.
I see myself as a hero and by getting harsher towards my critics, I can slay the imagined dragon of wokeness day by day before breakfast. Like Harry I don't fear to say what others regard as unspeakable. I'm sooo proud of myself and I rub it into your face, just for reassuring myself."
It’s disappointing how Harry Potter taught generations of kids to be inclusive and the fandom started as a safe space for all the weirdos and outcasts only for JK to out herself as a bigot.
As I already wrote: search for "Shaun" and "Harry" on youtube and you will be well entertained but also astounded, what was already in her books. I still like them, but I was also a bit shocked what I didn't question when I was reading them long ago.
You get everything explained in the source I mentioned. No prior knowledge needed. Short version is: morality is lacking in many layers of the Harry Potter books. It's not so much about what you do as a character (mobbing, having slaves) more about if you belong to the one team or to the other. Rowling introduces threads in her narrative, that simply appear and disappear, wich is funny in parts (timeturner topic), but also anoying in other parts (single persons recive help, others in the same situation not / stability of the system, even if it is a bad system rules, and so even systemical problems don't get adressed, only persons in positions within the system get exchanged). Shaun ponders the question, if this is due to her lazyness, or also because she wants to send a pretty conservative message and even wants to send out f*ck off messages to annoyed readers. He tends to believe the second option, being fair in his argumentation, but also critical. Listen to the podcast episode, if you want to know more, but in the end many character tendencies she shows today in social media, were already heralded by her Harry Potter books and also by the ones she wrote afterwards.
I didn’t have the words to explain it before but that’s exactly it, thank you. It’s not just not famous anymore celebrities either, I know several people in real life who do exactly this. Except they were never relevant but are just desperate for attention.
As much as I think she's showing herself to be a spiteful hateful person, I doubt she cares what us poor people think, I don't think she's in her mansion or w/e drying her tears with $100 bills as she reads people comments about what people think of her or she probably would have stopped by now. She might be siting in a gold tub filled to the brim with the reheated tears of all the people she's hurt while sipping 100 year old wine doing what ever totally not evil things she's planning on doing next.
She wrote a screenplay where a magic deer picking the next head of state was treated as a more valid form of government than elections. I feel like that reflects her genuine worldview…
Success needs a wide audiance. And people tend to like what they know with an additional twist.
So you are absolutely right: she wasn't that innovative at all. She was just the one author, that by talent or chance somehow used the right formula and right ingredients at that time, to be flooded with cash.
A exquisite wine is likely far better than Pepsi or Coke. But the latter sell more.
Has she even written any other books besides Harry Potter and that one unnamed addition to it? I know I could just google the answer, but I genuinely don't know, and I'm curious if other people do either.
"I once wrote outstandingly successful books that were pretty popular before some woke minded peopled dared to attack the narrative because of some of my conservative and outdated attitudes shimmering through an entertaining story."
Not that it really matters, but she is still pretty active in writing, having written a successful series of crime novels under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith, which a successful television show based on the books ran for 5 seasons.
She can't write relevant books. I love Harry Potter but there is so much evidence that she stole books 1-7. People think the only one she actually wrote herself without influence is the last book and it was the weakest one.
I just think, that she is not into the topic of gender in the first place. She just needs the attention she got used to. And since her old sources ran dry, she now took that gender-train from platform 9 3/4.
I think she is just to desperate to stop that shitty behaviour of attacking more liberal minded people instead of leaving them alone and solving her own problems in a more constructive and meaningful way.
Now you can decide if you want to readjust your like. But thanks for upvoting in a case of temporary doubt. That doesn't seem to happen very often on Reddit. 🙂
I don’t downvote once I’ve upvoted. It’s like Indian giving. We’re adults we can disagree.
But I don’t think she was ever in the public eye as much in America she was basically unknown to us until like the 3rd movie and she never seemed like a spotlight chaser. I remember when a lot of fans got mad at her about making dumbledore gay. Then the fans she seemed to be championing turned on her for her other beliefs. I read her tweets from that exchange and in my objective opinion she stated her opinion which I don’t know enough to really comment about but the the fact that biological women are different from transitioned women isn’t necessarily an opinion, by that I mean the other part of what she said, that’s an objective fact. I understand that it upsets some people to acknowledge it or have it mentioned but it doesn’t make it different because you want it to be.
She seemed to me at that time to give a respectful if not rather churlish response. Then she was demonized and vilified. People thought the words she said were justification enough to send her address out, where her family was…I honestly have a live and let live mentality and I think some people took her comments out of context then because they wanted to be offended and make an example of her. But dropping location on her family home? That’s more than words, they could have all been killed. Is a difference of opinion or of how you want facts presented worth that?
I respect several of your attitudes a lot, without agreeing with everything you said, but ... as you wrote ... we are adults and that's more than fine. Same about Rowling: I don't expect her to have the same opinions like me, but I ask myself, if she really wants to contribute to a social discussion in a way that helps sorting things out, or in a way that just adresses her own needs in the first place, no matter the colateral damage she creates. Same with Musk and his public statements about his trans daughter.
Yes, there are differences between trans women and non trans women in my eyes. Like there are differences between Asian and African people. Or between Men an Women. Between people from rural places or urban areas. But there are also similarities between these groups and differences within each person, related to time and circumstances. And the big question is, how we discuss both, differences and similarities, without loosing contact to reality but also without deforming it by overemphasising certain aspects. And what is the goal? What the cost? What the benefit of such statements?
I wouldn't claim that she always searched the mass media spotlight. But I'm pretty sure, that she felt important, even if not everybody who liked the books had a strong opinion about her from the beginning. Like I'm pretty sure Dick Cheney felt quite important without being in the front row all the time. And to know you have written one of the most successful book series ever, that millions of readers crave to know what will happen next while you are (the pretty conservative) decision maker (listen to 'Shaun' on youtube about it, if you like) in this world, while people speculate if you own more money than the Queen of England, must be quite thrilling. And that's fine.
But after being in such a position, especially when the initial success fades and can not be simply turned on by pressing the light switch again, many people would look for a new option to get that kind of ressonance or personal feeling back again. And she had so many options to get that. Charity for example. Pushing young authors. What so ever.
But she decided to go into mud wrestling and use her big name, to rub her private positions into other peoples faces. Often in a harmful way or at least in a harmful experienced one. And if she didn't wanted to create such reactions, she could have simply learned and stopped and focus on something else. But it seems like she searches that situations again and again. Commenting without obvious personal need, no matter the possible consequences for others. And that looks pretty selfish to me.
I might be wrong. But from my POV she just decides to go into battles with people, who didn't ask for her opinion or that battle experience. With people who are often more vulnerable than her. And I don't like that. I can't stop her. But I can say, that this is not the role model behaviour that I (like millions of other people) like to see in our societies. It's not about cancelling her. It's about questioning a very loud voice that made her point but decides to continue shouting. And to give reassurance to those, who might feel threatened by loudspeakers like her.
I agree with you on several points for instance she doesn’t have to engage in mudslinging or peddling her views on twitter. She could be contributing to society in way more beneficial ways. But on the same token so could we, yet we are engaging in this discourse which probably won’t contribute to the public good. As a person who isn’t a billionaire I’d say it’s more detrimental to society for me to spend my time in this particular arena than her, considering that my gross contribution to said society is demonstrably less than hers by any metric you could use. Another point, I don’t know that she isn’t a charitable individual who is doing just that, contributing. Because I don’t know her, she writes under a pen name now, maybe she makes charitable contributions the same way. I don’t know, but I refuse to assume the worst because of my lack of knowledge.
Another point is the way that Elon or JKR or whoever feel about trans people or anyone isn’t actually hurting anyone physically. Which is kind of the point. I she and he have their opinions. When you hear a loud minority of people become essentially rabid to point that they can handily dismiss the objective reality, that the words they say as long they aren’t purposefully inciting violence against or riots to the effect of causing harm to people in those group which to my understanding, they aren’t. They aren’t causing harm by voicing an opinion. Saying that they are in order to make a more compelling case for silencing them in tantamount to lunacy if not being unconstitutional to the degree that if it were another country you’d say that it’s a human right violation. You can’t invent violence in order to control people speaking their minds. It’s wrong.
Third, you seem to be basing a lot of your arguments against her speaking about specific topics either on assumptions as to her character or your lived experience. I also think that she doesn’t care what a lot people say because she’s rich. I don’t agree that she is chasing the limelight. Because she’s still really famous and has a lot of power. Also a lot of Hp media is incoming. Like the series on hbo max and the game that’s coming out. She retains full creative control. But I think that because that’s how I’d feel. I’m basing that on my liver experience and my personality. Not hers. I don’t know her so I can only speculate. Which I believe is fine. It’s fine until you present and opinion based on something she wrote ( it’s hard to determine content or humor from text) online.
I want you to know I hold you in the highest respect.
This is simply my opinion on the cause of a lot of the dissenting opinions on this lady who at the end of the day is a human being. Just like us, and she’s essentially touted as an effigy and crucified at will as an example of what will happen if you don’t conform to popular opinion.
Thanks for the time and energy you invest to share your POV with me and others in a place, where you easily can get some negative feedback for taking a position outside the local main stream. And doing this in calm and good faith always deserves bonus points in my opinion.
So I will keep considering some of your thoughts troughout my day.
Just in one point I'm pretty sure, that I will not agree to: Responsibility for potential harmful action, especially as celebrity.
When somebody like Musks expresses his pain about developments within his own family by publicly framing it as death of his son, caused by a woke mind virus, he comes pretty close to patterns of igniting a kind of rage, that we have plenty of bad historical experience with.
Like something attacking/destroying innocent children/women. Something, that is not human. Something that is contagious. Invisible, deadly, sneaky, potentially everywhere. Something that must be fought with utter vengence. Something that must be exterminated for the protection of our loved ones or the weak ones, who need us as their dragonslayers.
Don't you fear that such narrative patters, told to millions of people and so also to at least some hundreds who might already be pre-radicalized in their thinking or behaviour, couldn't ignite or seemingly legitimize even more extreme actions? At least normalize ways of thinking, that should be rather contained in a civilized society? If so, then they take a great risk by uttering such personal judgements.
Again: it's not about taking personal experiences away from Rowling or Musk or others. They are humans like us in many ways. Including the shiny and shady parts. But if they promote certain views in a certain ways, they might become more easily co-responsible for bad developments or extreme behaviour of others, than if you or I talk like that on the social media. In these seems to be a relevant topic for me. More, than a waste of time. And no matter how much they have contributed to society in other areas.
They enjoy more power and freedom than us and that's ok. But they have also more responsibility about how to wield those tools/weapons. And with Rowling, Musk and some others I have my doubts about their capacities to restrict themselves a bit more or at least questioning their own motivation enough to let them position their views in public without people putting their disagreement next to it.
'Member when she said she supported the trans community? Wasn't even that long ago. Oh and even Musky Husky says she should talk about something OTHER than trans issues.
If you want to find out, why it's not her books on the one side and her character on the other, than search for "Shaun" and "Harry" on youtube. It's quite entertaining to realize how much of her character was already visible in the way she wrote the books.
"That didn't happen.
And if it did, it wasn't that bad.
And if it was, that's not a big deal.
And if it is, that's not my fault.
And if it was, I didn't mean it.
And if I did, you deserved it."
Just like no evidence of Obama's birth certificate was ever enough. JK doesn't want to be wrong. She will move the goal posts as far as she needs to to not be wrong
Another interpretation could be "I am concerned at the normalizing of situations where people who were not born female are able to take advantage of their physicality over other athletes who were born female in athletic competition". Why this view is attacked so harshly is quite worrying in all honesty.
7.2k
u/IanTheMagus Aug 23 '24
"Why doesn't she get all made up like this when she's boxing? Only looks like this when she's out of the ring and going to events? No other women put on tons of makeup to look their best when they go out. Clearly faking it."
-This moron