Some artistic works age badly and I think it’s okay. It becomes a problem if artist themselves is aging badly and doubling down on things that could definitely be better about their works.
Exactly. If Rowling was willing to own up the problematic stuff in her books and grow from it, it wouldn’t be a big issue. If she even disappeared into her castle and lived her life quietly releasing bad additions to the universe, it’d just blend into the background and only be occasionally brought up. Instead, JK became a Nazi who reinforces patriarchy, strengthens fascism, and made life hell for so many trans people.
I don’t like this speculation. While it’s fair to say she has issues with her own relationship to femininity, claiming she’s a closeted man is going too far. It reeks too much of the whole “homophobes are closeted gays” trope, which is a kinda homophobic in how it blames queer people for their own oppression.
On top of all that, nobody can decide other people’s gender for them. It doesn’t matter if the person is a suspected egg or a transphobe who spites their own gender; do not invalidate the gender of others.
All that is true but I think we need to acknowledge how JK started off a fairly moderate TERF and only became what she is today because of the interaction of her stubbornness with the reaction she got. If the goal is fewer bigots, there are lessons there for how to deal with TERFs.
Nah, she was already in too deep to rescue by the time she got pushback. She was too socially entrenched with bigots for anyone reasonable to reach her. Twitter drama is not responsible; her wealth, power, and how that impacted her social circle were.
People often think these descents into fascism are ideological, but it’s been mostly interpersonal in every case I’ve witnessed. If someone is a rich white “feminist” with conservative tendencies, they can easily find friendship with people already deep in the brainrot. They then become so reliant on that social group that leaving becomes costly, and decide “Fuck those minorities anyways. They aren’t my friends, so why should I care?”
Don’t think of the detached internet as a space for recuperating fascists. Deprogramming cannot realistically happen there, not without more personal influence. It’s parasocial to think otherwise.
The thing I just dont get is how someone who considers themselves a feminist has chosen a crusade where her greatest allies are people that would kick her back into the kitchen. Like all the groups that are as vocal as her about trans rights that take her side seem to be incels, manosphere idiots, and forced-birth christofacists.
I imagine that a lot of the Nazi views influenced her, so she became more ok with being their friend. She basically allowed them into her “acceptable allies” club and became more sympathetic to them from there. Needless to say, she’s lost the plot and only really cares about transphobia anymore.
I dont want to believe its that easy, but then shes advocated taking pictures and video of people in womens bathrooms to catch the trans women. So maybe it is.
This is an interesting perspective. In the case of JK it contradicts my understanding of the timeline but I’m only remembering some account I heard ages ago…
I think there is a synthesis though, because I think your social entrenchment could quite happily take place offline or online or “parasocially” if you prefer. Someone with offline friends who are reinforcing their beliefs is unlikely to be deprogrammed by the internet, but someone who doesn’t have many of those offline friends can be influenced. (Or they could work in concert)
That’s true. In Rowlings case, she is documented as having hung out with notorious transphobes for a while before she went full mask off. That’s why I say that she was beyond the internet’s reach by the time she became vocal
If all it took to turn a terf into a bigot was to give the author some moderate criticisms about the systemic failings of their world building to turn them into a Nazi, I think the only solution is to prevent terfs from becoming authors.
Either that or we need to accept that this was always going to be the outcome of some privileged rich white idiot who can’t handle the slightest bit of pushback who’d rather cozy up to Nazis than admit that maybe her writing isn’t perfect.
I really disagree that twitter arguments are the same as “moderate criticism”. Even if every single person who criticises someone does so moderately and reasonably, which is already very unlikely, simply being moderately criticised by hundreds of thousands of people is not something the human mind is equipped to deal with in a healthy way.
I disagree with the idea that she needed to be on Twitter and engage in twitter arguments. There was moderate criticisms of her across the net, the fact she WILLINGLY chose to engage in an opinion cesspool that let her drown in shit is her own goddamned fault.
Plenty of other people hired someone to deal with their social media accounts because they didn’t want to subject themselves to socially-acceptable-4chan, she chose to chug sewage straight from the pipe despite having plenty of money and the connections to have it. Honestly, her not engaging with criticism with hostility would have done wonders for the whole situation.
I think you’re focusing on what she could have done differently, and I’m focusing on what I believe will inevitably happen to some people, even if individuals can choose differently. So I’m not saying that “she needed to be on Twitter and engage”. I’m not disagreeing that you can attribute blame to her for engaging in that way, besides blame for her initial opinions.
I’m saying that, from a practical perspective, you can think all of that, but still acknowledge that many people just are not good at disengaging from criticism, and that services like Twitter will inevitably attract people because they’re designed to attract people. So it would be a good idea to try and move away from ways of acting which tend to cause that.
Basically I think we can break down JK’s personality into three initial relevant features:
somewhat bigoted
the kind of person to want to use twitter
stubborn in the face of criticism
Of these, I think only the first is a true flaw and worthy of blame. The second would carry some blame nowadays but back then it wasn’t owned by a Nazi. The second and third both describe a huge portion of humanity. I use Mastodon and other social media, so I don’t feel like I can judge someone negatively for being the same, and I too can be stubborn in the face of criticism, as can many people I know, so same. But bigotry is clearly wrong.
All this means I really only feel like it’s valid to judge JK as if she were the somewhat bigoted person she originally was, rather than today’s turbo-Nazi version of her.
I don’t disagree with a lot of what you wrote, other than the end:
All this means I really only feel like it’s valid to judge JK as if she were the somewhat bigoted person she originally was, rather than today’s turbo-Nazi version of her.
I disagree, we can judge her on the choices she made that brought her to this point. She chose to engage with negative criticism with hostility and surrounded herself with people who validated the beliefs and behaviors that culminated in where we are today.
She could have chosen to remove herself from those situations instead of jumping in with both feet, but there would have been a social/ego cost to it, so she continued letting herself be radicalized into the hateful thing she has become.
And I judge her as someone having almost walked a similar path. I was on the alt-right pipeline over a decade ago when they were getting their feet underneath themselves, and I had a combination of self-awareness/shame that helped me come to my senses.
Some artistic works age badly and I think it’s okay. It becomes a problem if artist themselves is aging badly and doubling down on things that could definitely be better about their works.
Exactly. If Rowling was willing to own up the problematic stuff in her books and grow from it, it wouldn’t be a big issue. If she even disappeared into her castle and lived her life quietly releasing bad additions to the universe, it’d just blend into the background and only be occasionally brought up. Instead, JK became a Nazi who reinforces patriarchy, strengthens fascism, and made life hell for so many trans people.
The UK used to be trans friendly, it stopped being so mostly due to Joanne’s influence.
Btw, she hates it when you call her Joanne.
I have no idea why she never uses her full name: Joanne Kowling Rowling
Removed by mod
I don’t like this speculation. While it’s fair to say she has issues with her own relationship to femininity, claiming she’s a closeted man is going too far. It reeks too much of the whole “homophobes are closeted gays” trope, which is a kinda homophobic in how it blames queer people for their own oppression.
On top of all that, nobody can decide other people’s gender for them. It doesn’t matter if the person is a suspected egg or a transphobe who spites their own gender; do not invalidate the gender of others.
Removed by mod
All that is true but I think we need to acknowledge how JK started off a fairly moderate TERF and only became what she is today because of the interaction of her stubbornness with the reaction she got. If the goal is fewer bigots, there are lessons there for how to deal with TERFs.
Nah, she was already in too deep to rescue by the time she got pushback. She was too socially entrenched with bigots for anyone reasonable to reach her. Twitter drama is not responsible; her wealth, power, and how that impacted her social circle were.
People often think these descents into fascism are ideological, but it’s been mostly interpersonal in every case I’ve witnessed. If someone is a rich white “feminist” with conservative tendencies, they can easily find friendship with people already deep in the brainrot. They then become so reliant on that social group that leaving becomes costly, and decide “Fuck those minorities anyways. They aren’t my friends, so why should I care?”
Don’t think of the detached internet as a space for recuperating fascists. Deprogramming cannot realistically happen there, not without more personal influence. It’s parasocial to think otherwise.
edit: grammar
The thing I just dont get is how someone who considers themselves a feminist has chosen a crusade where her greatest allies are people that would kick her back into the kitchen. Like all the groups that are as vocal as her about trans rights that take her side seem to be incels, manosphere idiots, and forced-birth christofacists.
I imagine that a lot of the Nazi views influenced her, so she became more ok with being their friend. She basically allowed them into her “acceptable allies” club and became more sympathetic to them from there. Needless to say, she’s lost the plot and only really cares about transphobia anymore.
I dont want to believe its that easy, but then shes advocated taking pictures and video of people in womens bathrooms to catch the trans women. So maybe it is.
This is an interesting perspective. In the case of JK it contradicts my understanding of the timeline but I’m only remembering some account I heard ages ago…
I think there is a synthesis though, because I think your social entrenchment could quite happily take place offline or online or “parasocially” if you prefer. Someone with offline friends who are reinforcing their beliefs is unlikely to be deprogrammed by the internet, but someone who doesn’t have many of those offline friends can be influenced. (Or they could work in concert)
That’s true. In Rowlings case, she is documented as having hung out with notorious transphobes for a while before she went full mask off. That’s why I say that she was beyond the internet’s reach by the time she became vocal
Thanks, that’s not something I’d heard, I’ll see if I can find out more
If all it took to turn a terf into a bigot was to give the author some moderate criticisms about the systemic failings of their world building to turn them into a Nazi, I think the only solution is to prevent terfs from becoming authors.
Either that or we need to accept that this was always going to be the outcome of some privileged rich white idiot who can’t handle the slightest bit of pushback who’d rather cozy up to Nazis than admit that maybe her writing isn’t perfect.
I really disagree that twitter arguments are the same as “moderate criticism”. Even if every single person who criticises someone does so moderately and reasonably, which is already very unlikely, simply being moderately criticised by hundreds of thousands of people is not something the human mind is equipped to deal with in a healthy way.
I disagree with the idea that she needed to be on Twitter and engage in twitter arguments. There was moderate criticisms of her across the net, the fact she WILLINGLY chose to engage in an opinion cesspool that let her drown in shit is her own goddamned fault.
Plenty of other people hired someone to deal with their social media accounts because they didn’t want to subject themselves to socially-acceptable-4chan, she chose to chug sewage straight from the pipe despite having plenty of money and the connections to have it. Honestly, her not engaging with criticism with hostility would have done wonders for the whole situation.
I think you’re focusing on what she could have done differently, and I’m focusing on what I believe will inevitably happen to some people, even if individuals can choose differently. So I’m not saying that “she needed to be on Twitter and engage”. I’m not disagreeing that you can attribute blame to her for engaging in that way, besides blame for her initial opinions.
I’m saying that, from a practical perspective, you can think all of that, but still acknowledge that many people just are not good at disengaging from criticism, and that services like Twitter will inevitably attract people because they’re designed to attract people. So it would be a good idea to try and move away from ways of acting which tend to cause that.
Basically I think we can break down JK’s personality into three initial relevant features:
Of these, I think only the first is a true flaw and worthy of blame. The second would carry some blame nowadays but back then it wasn’t owned by a Nazi. The second and third both describe a huge portion of humanity. I use Mastodon and other social media, so I don’t feel like I can judge someone negatively for being the same, and I too can be stubborn in the face of criticism, as can many people I know, so same. But bigotry is clearly wrong.
All this means I really only feel like it’s valid to judge JK as if she were the somewhat bigoted person she originally was, rather than today’s turbo-Nazi version of her.
I don’t disagree with a lot of what you wrote, other than the end:
I disagree, we can judge her on the choices she made that brought her to this point. She chose to engage with negative criticism with hostility and surrounded herself with people who validated the beliefs and behaviors that culminated in where we are today.
She could have chosen to remove herself from those situations instead of jumping in with both feet, but there would have been a social/ego cost to it, so she continued letting herself be radicalized into the hateful thing she has become.
And I judge her as someone having almost walked a similar path. I was on the alt-right pipeline over a decade ago when they were getting their feet underneath themselves, and I had a combination of self-awareness/shame that helped me come to my senses.
She also paints a nasty picture of older women. Intolerant, hateful and unwavering in both. Shes a bad view from every angle.