15 votes

The Witch Trials of JK Rowling

20 comments

  1. [17]
    cfabbro
    Link
    Despite the title, this is not a defense of JKR... quite the opposite. p.s. Sorry for the monstrous tag spam, but this is a verrrrrrrrrrry long video, covers a ton of ground, talks about a lot of...

    Despite the title, this is not a defense of JKR... quite the opposite.

    p.s. Sorry for the monstrous tag spam, but this is a verrrrrrrrrrry long video, covers a ton of ground, talks about a lot of history (US & UK) and specific people, and I added the tags as I was watching it.

    11 votes
    1. [14]
      Akir
      Link Parent
      For those who read the comments first, the title is borrowed from a Bari Weiss produced podcast that is chocked full of apologia for Rowling's anti-trans ideas and behavior. Natalie was...

      For those who read the comments first, the title is borrowed from a Bari Weiss produced podcast that is chocked full of apologia for Rowling's anti-trans ideas and behavior. Natalie was interviewed for that podcast before she knew what form it would be in and has already disavowed it publicly. This is her deep dive into all of it.

      As a side note, I had no idea that Graham Linehan had fallen so far off the cliff these days. It's honestly really sad to see how he has ruined his life.

      6 votes
      1. Fiachra
        Link Parent
        Apparently it all started when one particular episode of the IT Crowd saw online backlash. Then he doubled down, tripled down, moralised his position, refused to ever let it go and just dug his...

        Apparently it all started when one particular episode of the IT Crowd saw online backlash. Then he doubled down, tripled down, moralised his position, refused to ever let it go and just dug his way to absolute bedrock.

        Honestly for me his story really drove home the importance of reassessing yourself during a conflict. A new perspective could have done him a lot of good but instead he spent hours per day on Twitter, must have been in a constant state of defensiveness for years.

        8 votes
      2. [12]
        NaraVara
        (edited )
        Link Parent
        I just finished listening to the podcast and honestly think that's an unfair characterization of it. It gives JKR a chance to speak in her own words, and after hearing her I came away with the...

        I just finished listening to the podcast and honestly think that's an unfair characterization of it. It gives JKR a chance to speak in her own words, and after hearing her I came away with the impression that she seems to be harboring some deeply misandrist viewpoints (understandably given her personal history) that seem to underpin and drive the trans-panic talking points she traffics in. It does argue a lot of the more febrile rhetoric and the fixation on her are unfair and overblown which I didn't think was the case before but started to come around on when the furore around the Hogwarts game coming out started to kick up.

        I didn't really like JKR or Harry Potter even before she started on this line of nonsense (for most of the reasons Ursula Le Guin outlined), so I was definitely not inclined to support her after. But everything around the release of that game gave me a sense that people seem to have lost the plot a bit and were more focused on expurgating demons than directing that energy towards the actual, real crisis points being advanced in state legislatures around the country. Once people started going after anodyne streamers like Girlfriend Reviews it's like "what are we even trying to accomplish here folks?" But I don't hold that against the movement itself, I think this sort of batshittery is just the condition of the modern internet. I hold it against Twitter and other social media. I just wish people didn't feel the need to defend of dismiss these noxious behaviors out of a sense of group loyalty. That's actually what makes it impossible to not have overheated and libelous rhetoric flying around any time these things come up.

        I think what Natalie Wynn was put off by was the evident invasiveness of Megan Phelps-Roper's (the podcast host) line of questioning, which does sound a bit out of bounds to hear Ms. Wynn tell it. But she put her twitter-thread on it up before the podcast even came out so I suspect she was jumping to conclusions a bit. The episode where she interviews Natalie also has an interview with a young trans boy, named Noah, that I thought made the best and most persuasive case for his position (being advocacy for trans rights) across everyone on the podcast. He really does a good job of humanizing the issue and fairly addressing the talking points that come out of the trans-panic side in a way that points them out as not being really well supported.

        Granted, that's one half of one episode of a 7 episode podcast so maybe others won't come away with the same view on it. (Especially since I was already primarily sympathetic to Noah's position going in.) But in the same way people watch Scarface and walk away thinking the being a drug kingpin is awesome, that's an indictment of the audience more than it is of Oliver Stone. Overall I'd say the podcast was a pretty fair take on the matter. A little more sympathetic to JKR than I would be, but definitely not "chocked full of apologia for anti-trans ideas."

        4 votes
        1. [11]
          Akir
          Link Parent
          It’s fair to say that my description of the podcast is uncharitable. I didn’t listen to it. To me it seemed that the description I gave it was pretty accurate given not only the description, but...

          It’s fair to say that my description of the podcast is uncharitable. I didn’t listen to it. To me it seemed that the description I gave it was pretty accurate given not only the description, but also a write-up that was made about it before it was released which was in itself chocked full of TERF apologia (and IIRC it was that write up that prompted Wynn to disavow it, but I am not terribly confident about that). The fact that Bari Weiss was producing it cinched the deal.

          Would you mind clarifying? It seems in one spot you say you listened to the entire podcast, and in another that you only listened to half an episode.

          I think most of the people familiar with JKR’s transphobia - or at least the people who saw the last Contrapoints video about her - were already aware of the roots of her behavior. And while knowing that does humanize her, it doesn’t really excuse her actions. This might sound a bit crazy, but when I hear her story (or Linehan’s, for that matter), I am reminded of Chris-chan. All of them have some personal issues they need to work out, but rather than take the time to introspect and heal, they externalize their problems and decide that the problem is the rest of the world. This isn’t a super rare phenomenon; I’ve seen it in many people, including my own father. But the thing that separates Rowling and Linehan from my father and Chris-chan is that the former are thought leaders while the latter are not. They are doing a lot more damage to society.

          To briefly address your comments about the protests against Hogwarts Legacy, I think the same principle applies; their motives are understandable but their actions still need to be accounted for. But that’s about all I can say because the whole situation is just kind of crazy and everything is too nebulous to fully grasp because there are too many moving parts.

          Honestly, I think the entire Twitter concept is poison at this point. People should subscribe to ideas, not to people. The fact that anyone can post whatever drivel they want and have millions of people read it is an open invitation to drama and it’s bad for society.

          3 votes
          1. [10]
            NaraVara
            Link Parent
            I listened to the whole thing. I said the Noah interview, which I really liked, is only half an episode so in terms of total run-time that's one half of an episode out of 7 episodes. This is...

            Would you mind clarifying? It seems in one spot you say you listened to the entire podcast, and in another that you only listened to half an episode.

            I listened to the whole thing. I said the Noah interview, which I really liked, is only half an episode so in terms of total run-time that's one half of an episode out of 7 episodes. This is related to my Scarface analogy. The movie is 2/3 how awesome this guy's rise to power are and then a third act where everything falls apart. A lot of people see the first 2/3 and love the big mansion and stuff, then the third act just kind of flies over their heads and they glorify the gangster life while ignoring the costs that hit him at the end.

            In other words, I can see how people might just gloss over the Noah interview even though I think it kind of dismantles most of the questions and concerns being brought up elsewhere.

            And while knowing that does humanize her, it doesn’t really excuse her actions.

            Like I said, I don't really care about excusing her actions. I literally don't like her on a personal level, and didn't like her even when reading Harry Potter. My point was more that I feel like the fixation on her, specifically, as some kind of exceptionally great evil or chief-TERF strikes me as weird. I can see that a lot of young people who grew up with the books and admiring her might feel a specific kind of hurt from feeling she turned her back on them. But on the scale of people who are actually, practically making trans kids' lives harder I don't see how she even rates. It really seems to come more out of a sense of vengeance for personal slight than a drive to protect or defend anyone.

            Honestly, I think the entire Twitter concept is poison at this point. People should subscribe to ideas, not to people. The fact that anyone can post whatever drivel they want and have millions of people read it is an open invitation to drama and it’s bad for society.

            Agreed. Basically since 2016 I've come to be of the appointment that this sort of distribution channel needs real controls on it.

            3 votes
            1. [2]
              Gaywallet
              Link Parent
              I think the issue is that she's got a lot of money and she's directing that money right at anti-trans legislation, and at elevating anti-trans rhetoric and voices. Kind of like how many queer...

              My point was more that I feel like the fixation on her, specifically, as some kind of exceptionally great evil or chief-TERF strikes me as weird.

              I think the issue is that she's got a lot of money and she's directing that money right at anti-trans legislation, and at elevating anti-trans rhetoric and voices. Kind of like how many queer folks have an outsized negative opinion on chik-fil-a. Keep in mind, of course, the effect of echo chambers - most cis/straight people aren't really paying a whole lot of attention to her, so you may have an outsized idea of how "fixated" people are.

              4 votes
              1. NaraVara
                Link Parent
                That's a good point. But I think it also sort of matches with what I'm saying. Like I don't pay much attention to her and I don't closely track the day-to-day arguments that go on about the issue....

                Keep in mind, of course, the effect of echo chambers - most cis/straight people aren't really paying a whole lot of attention to her, so you may have an outsized idea of how "fixated" people are.

                That's a good point. But I think it also sort of matches with what I'm saying. Like I don't pay much attention to her and I don't closely track the day-to-day arguments that go on about the issue. So most of the time the only times I ever hear about her or anything she says is when I randomly start seeing a bunch of people dunking on what seem to be fairly anodyne comments if you only see them in isolation without knowing anything about the context.

                1 vote
            2. [5]
              cfabbro
              (edited )
              Link Parent
              Natalie actually agrees with you. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EmT0i0xG6zg#t=1h47m19s But for the record, I don't entirely agree with that. JK Rowling has a massive audience on a massive...

              My point was more that I feel like the fixation on her, specifically, as some kind of exceptionally great evil or chief-TERF strikes me as weird. I can see that a lot of young people who grew up with the books and admiring her might feel a specific kind of hurt from feeling she turned her back on them. But on the scale of people who are actually, practically making trans kids' lives harder I don't see how she even rates.

              Natalie actually agrees with you.

              https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EmT0i0xG6zg#t=1h47m19s

              So to wrap this up, is the backlash against JK Rowling a Witch Hunt? Unequivocally no. It's well deserved. But I will say this, a movement can't get along without a devil, and across the whole political spectrum there is a misogynistic tendency to pick a female devil. Whether it's Anita Bryant, Hillary Clinton, Marie Antoinette, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, or JK Rowling. And there is always going to be people who seize on any opportunity to be misogynistic. So I would advise trans people and our allies to keep in mind that JK Rowling is not the final boss of transphobia. She's not our devil. The devil is the Republican party, the Conservative party. The devil is patriarchy. It's the right wing men who will be the ones to put gender critical theory into brutal practice. Anita Bryant, Posie Parker, and JK Rowling are, to borrow a term from TERFs, handmaidens. TERFs are the real handmaidens, they're useful idiots who put a concerned female face on the patriarchal violence against trans people, that will ultimately be enacted by right wing men. And Megan Phelps-Roper, and centrists like her, are wrong that civil conversation can resolve this:

              [Video of Gabrielle Clark, Rev FoXX USA founder] I call on men who consider themselves decent human beings to call out the deviants among them and eradicate these monsters from society.

              People like Michael Knowles, and Ron DeSantis, and Donald Trump cannot be persuaded. They have to be defeated.

              As for what to do about JK Rowling, honestly let's all just block her. Open up twitter right now, open her profile and block her. Problem solved. Like, don't harass her, that doesn't help. But also, I wouldn't wait for her to change.

              But for the record, I don't entirely agree with that. JK Rowling has a massive audience on a massive platform, and growing influence in UK politics. She isn't as dangerous to trans people as right wing politicians are, but she is still dangerous in much the same way that Anita Bryant was dangerous. They are the spokespeople for the bigoted causes of said right wing politicians. And simply ignoring her won't make her or the ideas she's espousing go away. It only lets their bigoted ideology spread even more, and help normalizes their abhorrent behavior and bigoted beliefs. They can't be "defeated" in the same way as politicians can, but they can be "cancelled" and deplatformed into irrelevance.

              2 votes
              1. [4]
                NaraVara
                Link Parent
                I guess where I'd worry there is that this isn't really an easily calibrated response mechanism. It kind of seems to go from 1, 2, 3 and then straight to 11. And then there doesn't seem to be much...

                And simply ignoring her won't make her or the ideas she's espousing go away. It only lets their bigoted ideology spread even more, and help normalizes their abhorrent behavior and bigoted beliefs. They can't be "defeated" in the same way as politicians can, but they can be "cancelled" and deplatformed into irrelevance.

                I guess where I'd worry there is that this isn't really an easily calibrated response mechanism. It kind of seems to go from 1, 2, 3 and then straight to 11. And then there doesn't seem to be much of a pathway for people to revise conclusions if it turns out there's more nuance to the point than the initial outbursts on social media painted things out to be.

                Like if we applied the same standard to Hillary Clinton on gay marriage in the aughts, I think she'd have been roundly condemned and turned into a pariah figure. There'd be no room for her to be a standard bearer for gay rights in 2016. She wasn't exactly the most compelling standard-bearer in that regard, but part of how the social change happens is that these middle-of-the-road centrists on the issue eventually get over their misgivings, decide it's not actually a very big deal, and come aboard. I guess I see Rowling's comments as more representative of the more conservative end of this "mushy middle" so I don't know if they can just be cancelled out in a fair way (as in, without resorting to strawmen, misrepresentations of the argument, etc.) But that stuff actually just builds sympathy for them instead of exiling them.

                1. [3]
                  cfabbro
                  (edited )
                  Link Parent
                  Then, TBH, I don't think you've been paying enough attention to her lately. IMO there is nothing "mushy middle" about the shit she has been saying and doing the last year+. E.g. She has been...

                  I guess I see Rowling's comments as more representative of the more conservative end of this "mushy middle" so I don't know if they can just be cancelled out in a fair way

                  Then, TBH, I don't think you've been paying enough attention to her lately. IMO there is nothing "mushy middle" about the shit she has been saying and doing the last year+. E.g. She has been practically non-stop tweeting about trans "predators" in hospitals, schools, and bathrooms, and retweeting people that there is absolutely no denying are transphobic hatemongers. She's clever enough not to say the quiet parts out loud, but her "concerns" and actions make it pretty clear what she actually believes and isn't likely to ever be convinced about otherwise.

                  5 votes
                  1. [2]
                    NaraVara
                    Link Parent
                    That's fair. I really haven't and the podcast itself mostly focuses on the initial handfuls of tweets she sent that first kicked off the shitstorm about her. Though I mentioned before (I think it...

                    That's fair. I really haven't and the podcast itself mostly focuses on the initial handfuls of tweets she sent that first kicked off the shitstorm about her. Though I mentioned before (I think it was in a thread about Gina Carano IIRC) that I think something about the nature of blowback celebs on Twitter get seems to have a way of sending them into radicalization spirals. So it is worth worrying about whether this isn't a monster of our own creation in a way.

                    1 vote
                    1. cfabbro
                      Link Parent
                      That's certainly a possibility, but I will never be silent about it or people like her. Harassment may be counterproductive, but silence is violence, complacency is complicity.

                      That's certainly a possibility, but I will never be silent about it or people like her. Harassment may be counterproductive, but silence is violence, complacency is complicity.

                      3 votes
            3. [2]
              Akir
              Link Parent
              I'm sure that at least part of the reason why people are upset at Rowling is because they feel betrayed. You don't have to have been a kid when they came out to have fallen in love with Harry...

              I'm sure that at least part of the reason why people are upset at Rowling is because they feel betrayed. You don't have to have been a kid when they came out to have fallen in love with Harry Potter; I actually know a woman from the boomer generation who was so enamored with them she still waxes about her time in the series fanfic community. And even if you weren't into HP at all, you could be upset because she holds many leftist positions but falls very short on this one specific issue. Heck, are even be people who are upset because, unlike Graham Linehan, She is still extremely successful and is making a lot of money off of her IP.

              But I don't think the fact that people are fixating on her is unusual for the simple reason that she is a hugely influential public figure and so the things she says have disproportional sway over people. All public figures should be held accountable for the statements they make, especially when they are broadcasting those statements to the public.

              1 vote
              1. NaraVara
                Link Parent
                I'd say that's fair, though there is always debatable space on what constitutes a reasonable level of "accountability." I think we're all kind of primed to assume bad faith in ways that make us...

                I'd say that's fair, though there is always debatable space on what constitutes a reasonable level of "accountability." I think we're all kind of primed to assume bad faith in ways that make us prone to overreaction on these things nowadays, which would make it hard to calibrate fair levels of accountability.

                1 vote
    2. [2]
      kfwyre
      Link Parent
      When I first clicked on the thread and saw the wall of tags, I assumed Tildes had some new auto-tagging feature that had run amok or something. Instead it was entirely a product of your diligence....

      When I first clicked on the thread and saw the wall of tags, I assumed Tildes had some new auto-tagging feature that had run amok or something.

      Instead it was entirely a product of your diligence. Nice job!

      6 votes
      1. cfabbro
        Link Parent
        Yesss..... my "diligence", not my obsessive compulsive behavior. I like the sound of that better. I'm just really really diligent! ;)

        Yesss..... my "diligence", not my obsessive compulsive behavior. I like the sound of that better. I'm just really really diligent! ;)

        3 votes
  2. Macil
    (edited )
    Link
    Great video. I love how the video counters the idea that "people in this progressive movement specifically take things too far, so we should oppose it entirely" by contextualizing it with past...

    Great video. I love how the video counters the idea that "people in this progressive movement specifically take things too far, so we should oppose it entirely" by contextualizing it with past movements.

    I also love how it emphasizes that a lot of anti-trans debate points are really about "should transphobia be acceptable?" or "should canceling ever be acceptable?", but obscured under word definition games that are far from what people directly care about. I like her talking about imagining the idea of asking an opponent "what would count as transphobia to you?". Productive disagreements should look like this where the opponents figure out what it is they agree on and try to zero-in on what they disagree about. It reminds me of the double-crux strategy: each party should figure out possible statements that if true or not would change their mind in the argument, and then look for any of these cruxes they have in common. The fact that many debates don't look like this shows how unproductive many are, often intentionally, which is kind of a point of hers.

    The segment about the year-old twitter beef with Vaush was a little weird though. I'm biased as an occasional Vaush watcher, but it felt surprisingly spiteful to represent a person who made an overly edgy joke (that he didn't actually post as a reply to JKR) as if he's comparable to the fully outright bigotry and laws that she's calling on JKR and TERFs to disavow. Especially when she's been present with him and friendly on his stream before, the clip she shows of his stream where he says "go shame her into agreeing with me" was a bad joke right after he talked for the nth time about how great she was and how twitter mobs keep trying to shame her into things, the clip where he mentions her substance abuse is after he was sympathetically talking about a video of hers to the stream chat and he's clarifying it's not part of the twitter discussion, and she's not a stranger to making edgy jokes (though maybe wisely kept in two hour videos instead of context-light tweets). I get the broader point she's going at, that many on both sides don't necessarily agree with a lot that happens for their side, but it felt a bit like some interpersonal drama she forced in because she had a grudge from a twitter argument.

    It is interesting that two prominent anti-trans figures in the video, JKR and Graham Linehan, both have been spurred on significantly by being spurned in twitter arguments. I like twitter well enough but it makes you wonder if there's some sharp edge about it that we're not psychologically fit to deal with. Maybe it makes it too easy to stake everything in an argument and quickly enter into a large public sunk cost.

    5 votes
  3. kfwyre
    Link
    One of the best parts of the video for me is when she links the motte and bailey argument strategy to "the birthday boy argument" (link, timestamp 38:30-41:00). It's something I've long witnessed,...

    One of the best parts of the video for me is when she links the motte and bailey argument strategy to "the birthday boy argument" (link, timestamp 38:30-41:00). It's something I've long witnessed, but I was never able to distill it down into something nameable like Natalie did.

    5 votes
  4. vektor
    Link
    Timestamp 1:02:00 for me right now, and I want to talk. Up until here, generally strong agreement from my side. This is about the Sam Harris quote (0:58:00 ish) and how Natalie handles it. Now,...

    Timestamp 1:02:00 for me right now, and I want to talk. Up until here, generally strong agreement from my side.

    This is about the Sam Harris quote (0:58:00 ish) and how Natalie handles it. Now, caveats apply, in particular that I don't know whether Sam's podcast, or Sam himself is worthy of any kind of defense. I simply don't know. I also haven't listened to it, so I don't know if further context would change my views. That out of the way...

    Sam Harris identifies "a fair degree of mental instability and mental illness in the activist community, really in all activist communities. The level of viciousness and hysteria, it's hard to know what to compare it to." and.... in a way, I agree. Another caveat that hysteria is an unfortunate word to use here because of its sexist connotations, but I can well enough divorce the wording from the phenomenon here and say that this 'hysteria' applies just as well to cis male activists. Substitute a better fitting word of your choice if you please. (Edit: Similar notions apply to mental illness I suppose, and how trans identities are explained away by bigots as just mental illness. I'm assuming he does not mean that. I'd expect you'd come to different conclusions here if you do assume that.)

    And the reason I find this statement not per se problematic (wording aside!) is that it's literally all activists, even those who are not advocating for their basic inclusion in society. ("Is it really hysteria to react with strong emotions when your basic inclusion in society is up for debate?") Go to /r/conservative, if you like. Are they arguing for their own inclusion in society? Nah. Is the tone of the general debate 'hysterical'? Hell yeah. Go debate something as removed from our individual rights as energy policy. People will agree that fossil fuels are bad and still get 'hysterical' arguing nuclear vs. renewables.

    It's from that stance that I'm reading Sam Harris' quote. In a lot of channels, our debates as societies have devolved into complete 'hysteria'. Sometimes, as Natalie argues, justifiably so. And within the context of debates about trans rights, Natalie is of course right and her argument works. I'm just not convinced her argument is sound per se from the beginning, at least with how I'm reading Sam's quote. Maybe more context would fix that, and the "repairing" (as in 'reparative reading') I did here certainly fixes it as well, by rescoping Natalie's argument as pertaining to the special case of trans rights activists, as opposed to all activists.

    And to make another thing clear here, I'm not at all arguing for oppressed minorities to shut up and take it. If you're oppressed, you get to inconvenience the rest of us until we fix it. That's fine. I'm also not defending Sam Harris - he might well be a bigot - but merely state that the quoted bit does not, in my mind, provide evidence either way. I guess if anything, that is my thesis here: From the quoted bit and Natalie's argument, you might take away that Sam Harris is a bigot, but I'm not convinced at all by that, hence this exercise in critical thinking. More research (lateral reading) is needed.

    I hope I've thrown enough caveats in here to ensure this does not read as something it is not. Before anyone reads any malice towards minorities into this that isn't there, please just check for a second whether I might just be clumsy with words or something. Trans rights are human rights.

    3 votes