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The thing I find really frustrating with people's reactions to Rowling going mask-off on transphobia is how people in mild denial approach the subject with this very easily debunked assumption that because they personally only started seeing this stuff from her, she can't be that
far gone yet.
Presumably this comes from projection, where people think, "well, the first time I ever heard anything about trans people, I had no clue what was a trustworthy source, so I'd have said some terrible things I'd just have needed someone to correct me about politely."
Presumably this comes from projection, where people think, "well, the first time I ever heard anything about trans people, I had no clue what was a trustworthy source, so I'd have said some terrible things I'd just have needed someone to correct me about politely."
And like... I don't know how to convey to people how very far in the last the day was where she was still a clueless innocent who'd just gotten some bad information was.
Just to attempt to begin here... about 2 years ago now there was an incident where people noticed she had hit
Just to attempt to begin here... about 2 years ago now there was an incident where people noticed she had hit
that little heart button on a pretty blatantly bigoted post from someone whose account produced nothing but: https://www.indy100.com/article/jk-rowling-tweet-transphobic-men-dresses-harry-potter-8268111
Nobody went jumping to attack her at the time. There was a hell of a lot of "hey I don't know how this post made it onto your feed, but apparently
Nobody went jumping to attack her at the time. There was a hell of a lot of "hey I don't know how this post made it onto your feed, but apparently
you hit fav on this without realizing that this person is saying gross things about trans women," which blew over after a PR statement about her having a "clumsy, middle-aged moment."
But see, AT THAT POINT, 2 years ago, she was already all the way down the rabbit hole of hate.
But see, AT THAT POINT, 2 years ago, she was already all the way down the rabbit hole of hate.
The vast majority of people just kinda nodded along at the nice plausible excuse of "huh, must have been some sort of accident," but a few people checked if that excuse held water, and others just kinda... paid attention to see if there was more, and yeah: https://medium.com/@Phaylen/jk-rowling-confirms-stance-against-transgender-women-9bd83f7ca623
There are WAY too many recent articles flooding out search results to find the documentation I was really looking for here, but somewhere around when one of the above two stories was written, a few trans people were suggesting people just take a look at just who she was following
to see just how this hate speech she kept "accidentally approving of" was coming from and it was a real "finding bodies in the basement" moment. Out of only 700 or so people she was following, there were DOZENS of hardcore dedicated transphobia accounts. And I'm not talking about
people like Graham Linehan who once upon a time had a career and then just kinda spiraled into posting hateful garbage. I mean the sort of accounts that don't have a person's name attached to them and are just aggregators for the most absolutely vile shit.
And by THAT I mean the
And by THAT I mean the
ones that just spit out links to KF pages on individual trans girls so people can be better armed to individually stalk them and cause harm, weird manifestos about killing us all, weird fantasies about "bloody stumps" and "breast milk sack implants" and wishing rape on us. Horror
And when people confronted her about all THAT, she doubled down and followed like half a dozen more, with even more blatantly hate-filled names.
Incidentally, aside from those which have since been banned, she still follows these. And freaking James Cantor. And this real gem.
Incidentally, aside from those which have since been banned, she still follows these. And freaking James Cantor. And this real gem.
So, yeah. She has very demonstrably been willingly stewing for many many years now in the most concentrated, vile, shameless, totally unmasked hate. Just dedicated transphobes and plenty of people who don't seem particularly afraid to let their antisemetism fly pretty high too.
So it quite plainly isn't a case where like, we're all gasping in horror at the bite marks on her neck and we all need to come together and hang garlic and crucifixes around her bed before the vampire can finish turning her. She's got her own coffin surrounded by dead victims.
Also, the moment where she stopped trying to hide it didn't come after some plausibly deniable passing around of a petition about bathroom bills or women in sports or lying about what "self-ID law" refers to, as people who can't be bothered to read one article assume. It was THIS
I'm going to assume if you take a moment to reread that post, you are going to be at a complete loss as to who "Wolf" is in this context, and you're probably thinking that's because you don't really keep up on the day to day course of trans legal matters.
But, no. You don't know
But, no. You don't know
who "Wolf" is because you aren't the sort of bloodthirsty bigot who obsess over finding a spin to rationalize how the victims of hate crimes totally deserved it 3 years after the fact. I mean, hell, I needed extra context to work out who "Wolf" referred to https://twitter.com/SecretGamerGrrl/status/909346515805704192
Why am I linking to a 3 year old thread there? Because "Wolf" refers to one Tara Wolf, the name (or at least the name bigots use?) of the person the hatemonger featured there pressed assault charges against after just walking up to a group of trans people and violently assaulting
one of them with zero provocation while her friends filmed it to gloat about later on social media.
I don't want to compare this to if Rowling had accidentally pasted something from Stormfront trying to vilify Trayvon Martin because he was actually killed and is still brought up
I don't want to compare this to if Rowling had accidentally pasted something from Stormfront trying to vilify Trayvon Martin because he was actually killed and is still brought up
in conversations about this sort of violence motivated by pure bigotry some 8 years later, while this is a personal vendetta bigots are pursuing against a still-living person who is a complete unknown to anyone beyond that group of hatemongers. You have to really dig for that.
So, again. It's not that she's throwing out all the transphobia because she made a mistake and keeps doubling down. She's at the point she is because she realized the plausible deniability her celebrity offered her for years doesn't cover the real serious in-the-weeds bigotry she
let slip, and she's making the best of it by amplifying all the hate speech she has on tap through her giant megaphone until it is inevitably pried out of her hands.
Please stop slapping away the hands of those attempting to do that much-needed prying away.
Please stop slapping away the hands of those attempting to do that much-needed prying away.
