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politalysis · 3 years
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# What has happened to JK Rowling?
Growing up in the early 2000s immediately made Harry Potter a huge part of your childhood. Even if you never read the books or watched the films, you can probably name the three main characters. Even if you weren’t interested in Harry Potter in the slightest, you probably know your Hogwarts house. It’s incredible what Harry Potter did for our generation all over the world. Children would stay up on their eleventh birthdays anxiously awaiting a Hogwarts acceptance letter, knowing full well that owl was never going to come. Our imagination kept the dream of going to Hogwarts and learning magic alive anyway. Even now at the age of 23, I can for the most part keep a conversation flowing with anyone who has read the books or even just watched the films. You could even go as far as to say it was our generation’s Lord of the Rings.
JK Rowling came from very humble beginnings. She suffered with depression in her childhood and early teens, and lost her mother to multiple sclerosis in 1990. These struggles inspired her a lot when writing Harry Potter. She channeled her grief and pain into her writing. In 1992, she married a man she had met whilst living in Portugal, but Rowling suffered domestic abuse at his hands and the couple separated a year later. She lost her job and moved to Edinburgh in Scotland, where she had to sign up for welfare benefits, which left her a poor and depressed single mother spending her time writing in coffee shops. When she finished writing Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, twelve publishers rejected the opportunity to publish the book. Once someone finally agreed to publish the book, it became the best selling children’s book of the year.
We all know how the story goes from there. Rowling wrote six more Harry Potter books, eight films were made, and Rowling went from a poor vulnerable single mother to a multi millionaire in the space of a few short years. Harry Potter is now a global brand estimated to be worth about $15 billion. The last four books have each consecutively set the record for the fastest selling book in history. Rowling is now the richest author in the world, with a net worth of $92 million. But as well as money, JK Rowling has over 14 million followers on Twitter. This gives her massive influence as well as money. Rowling seemed to initially use this influence for good, spreading mental health awareness, LGBT inclusivity, interacting with fans and creating a website for all us Harry Potter fans to determine our houses and let our wands choose us.
I remember being 8 years old when Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince was released, and I was attending a religious school where some parents complained and called to ban Harry Potter over the controversial decision JK Rowling made regarding Dumbledore’s sexuality. Rowling had made the claim that Dumbledore was gay. Looking back, the controversy was ridiculous and I can only imagine how embarrassed some of those parents must be. I also remember as I got older, re-reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows I noticed more that the emotion behind Dumbledore’s relationship with Grindelwald was one he held with a romantic love. So years later, when several members of the LGBT community attacked Rowling for only deciding Dumbledore’s sexuality after the books were written, I publicly defended her with my knowledge that that simply wasn’t true. I had this image of Rowling in my mind, that she had always been on the right side of this debate. She had always been inclusive and supportive of LGBT people as far as I could see, and I just didn’t understand the issue. Rowling had always expressed a centre-left political perspective, and although I didn’t agree with all her views, they seemed relatively uncontroversial.
When Harry Potter and the Cursed Child was released, I hated it. It was a literary disaster, completely disrespectful of the original book series, the characters were a shell of the characters we had grown up with, the plot was almost deliberately ridiculous and overly elaborate and I immediately dismissed it as not canon. I have never forgiven JK Rowling for publicly stating the book was canon. She almost destroyed a whole two decades of her own hard work and the franchise that she’d built that had been like a home for a whole generation. All because she wanted to grab a few extra quid for a terrible book she didn’t even write. To this day I can’t help but wonder if she has even read the book. If I had written the masterpiece that is Harry Potter, I would view the Cursed Child as an insult. Perhaps I’ll even write a review one day, just for fun. Rowling also annoyed me by going back on her story, regretting pairing Ron and Hermione together and not pairing Hermione with Harry. Ron and Hermione are my favourite couple from the story, and their relationship had so much meaning. I couldn’t believe that the author who wrote such a clever and consistent relationship between two beloved characters could ever regret it. At this point in my life, I was beginning to wonder if perhaps Rowling was losing her mind. It was almost like she was trying to destroy her legacy.
As more years passed, the Fantastic Beasts films were released. The first film looked promising, but the second film was yet another disaster. Again, it was inconsistent with the franchise as we knew it, for some reason Hogwarts was full of people wearing 3 piece suits instead of the robes they wore in the Harry Potter series and Minerva McGonigall appeared as a teacher despite the fact that canonically there is no way she could have been old enough. The film was a disaster with both fans and critics hating it. Amongst this mess came controversy in December 2019. Rowling lost all respect she had once held amongst the transgender community when she made a public statement supporting Maya Forstater, a British woman who lost her employment tribunal case against her employer who fired her over transphobic comments. Six months later on June 6 2020, Rowling criticised the term “people who menstruate” and stated: "If sex isn’t real, the lived reality of women globally is erased. I know and love trans people, but erasing the concept of sex removes the ability of many to meaningfully discuss their lives." Rowling’s views on these issues were heavily criticised by GLAAD and even by the actors from the Harry Potter movies including lead actors Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint and Emma Watson.
Rowling published a 3,600 word essay in response to the mass criticism of her views four days later. The essay did her no favours, as she wrote: “When you throw open the doors of bathrooms and changing rooms to any man who believes or feels he’s a woman then you open the door to any and all men who wish to come inside.” She seemed to be suggesting that trans women are often just men disguised as women in order to trick or even harm other women. This obviously angered the transgender community even more, and women’s refuge shelters that allow trans women were reporting no rise in violence as a result, children’s charities that support gender non conforming children were criticising Rowling, she was being made to give back awards and ultimately Rowling was labelled a Trans exclusionary radical feminist, a term often abbreviated to TERF.
JK Rowling is the perfect example of how money and influence can make someone forget their roots so easily. For someone who survived poverty, domestic abuse and sexual assault, she is so lacking in self awareness and how the things she has said and done can be harmful to transgender people. It is widely reported that transgender women are at more risk of harm in female restrooms than cisgender women. With acceptance becoming the norm, transgender people are feeling more safe to come out now than ever before, and so the rise in numbers of the community is huge, especially amongst our generation who grew up with Harry Potter. For a young transgender teenager to grow up wondering how Hogwarts would accommodate them, only to hear the author who gave us Hogwarts in the first place disapprove of equal rights for transgender people, must be very disheartening. However, JK Rowling has proven that she has no idea how powerful the legacy her books created really is. She was tasked with following up the Harry Potter series, and what she gave us was inconsistent and very poorly written screenplays. I have read better sequels on tumblr. Lots of them. Hogwarts doesn’t belong to JK Rowling, it belongs to the fandom. And I’ll be willing to bet my last penny that if Professor McGonigall witnessed any bullying of transgender students in her classroom (or indeed the girls bathroom!) she’d absolutely defend the victim without a moment’s hesitation. Hermione would decorate the Gryffindor common room with little blue, pink and white flags in support of a transgender first year who’d just been sorted into Gryffindor. Luna Lovegood would sit and befriend any trans student who looked lonely, and Ginny would dish out a bat bogey hex to anyone who dared pick on them. No matter what JK Rowling thinks, Hogwarts is not hers to ruin. It is ours. Regardless of what makes us different, Hogwarts is our home.
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politalysis · 3 years
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# Immigration, Politics and Culture
The year is 1959. Britain has never had a black MP before. There were three mixed race upper class MPs about a century ago, one of them a former slave owner who opposed abolition in 1833, but such a radical idea as a black MP in the House of Commons is absurd. An African immigrant named Dr David Pitt stands as the Labour Party’s only black candidate. Standing for the seat of Hampstead, Labour are expected to win and Pitt is expected to become the only black member of the UK Parliament. 90 years after the USA achieved the milestone of their first black politician, Britain is fighting for it’s life to prevent the same thing from happening on their own soil. The Conservative Party and the more radical and racist far right parties are doing everything they can to stop this madness.
Oswald Mosley is now the most infamous British fascist in history. A man who supported Adolf Hitler’s rise to power and attempted a fascist uprising in Britain based on the one that had taken place in Germany. During Pitt’s political campaign, Mosley was a figurehead of the ‘White Defence League’, and so when a black man had the audacity to stand as the Labour candidate for Hampstead in the 1959 general election, Mosley and his supporters were outraged. Mosley’s supporters successfully disrupted meetings and violent protests accompanied by the chant “Keep Britain white” forced Pitt to seek police support as threats and abuse made his life uncomfortable and difficult. Pitt did not win the seat, but he didn’t give up on his efforts to introduce racially diverse political ideologies into Britain, such as more black police officers and an end to the stigma of black immigration. Pitt was a founder member of the Campaign Against Racial Discrimination (CARD) who pushed for legislation in race relations to be changed drastically or newly introduced. His continued hard work as a councillor gained him recognition and in 1970, Pitt ran again in the safe Labour seat of Clapham.
After his failure in 1959, Pitt knew what he’d be up against. The colour of his skin would be his largest obstacle to overcome, and sure enough, the National Front and the more radical Tories had a lot to say about the idea of electing a black man. In 1968, Enoch Powell made the controversial claim that in 15-20 years time, the black man will have the whip hand over the white man. All the evidence shows that white working class people were listening to Enoch Powell, they chanted his name in the streets and harassed immigrants of colour in his name. Newspapers point out that Powell’s ideas for stopping immigration would have prevented Pitt from ever making it onto British shores. An anonymous leaflet circulates in Clapham that reads: “If you desire a coloured for your neighbour, vote Labour. If you are already burdened with one, vote Tory.” Conservative Party leader Edward Heath decides it would be best for him to distance himself from this racism and particularly from Enoch Powell, since both he and Labour leader Harold Wilson saw Powell as a threat. The Conservatives won the election and Heath became Prime Minister, Labour were defeated heavily and David Pitt lost his fight for the seat of Clapham to the Conservative candidate William Shelton.
One of my favourite quotes around the issue of immigration is from David Pitt himself:
“Nobody in authority has the courage to tell the immigrant what his contribution is to the economic life of the country.”
This quote subtly highlights the institutional racism that Britain suffered back then and still suffers now. Immigrants are seen by a large section of white working class people as nothing more than a problem. Contributing to nothing more than overpopulation and a shortage of jobs. When we are struggling, we want to know who is to blame. The establishment classes and the media will always have people like Oswald Mosley and Enoch Powell. People who dedicate their careers to blaming someone else for the economic problems we face as a nation, all the while hoarding money they saved by not paying their fair share of taxes. The narrative that immigrants are a problem and nothing more is not just a poor excuse for economic problems, but it distracts us from what immigration really has given us.
Everyone cheered for Mo Farah winning the gold at the 2012 Olympics, a man who came to this country from Somalia and became a British icon. Raheem Sterling was born in Jamaica to Jamaican parents, and has represented England’s football team 61 times, scoring 14 goals. We all love a Kebab or a Chinese after a night out, or maybe you prefer to eat in at a restaurant for a chicken tikka masala or have a day out at a sushi bar. These are delicacies we would not have without immigration to Britain from Asia. Music genres such as reggae, hip hop, garage, jungle and grime could not exist without its creators who were inspired to create passionate and powerful art by their roots in Africa or the Caribbean and their history as descendants of immigrants, refugees and slaves. These music genres have come a long way over the past half a century, and now a culture exists around them in the UK. Everywhere you look, immigration and cultural diversity has given us something that we love and cherish as people who live here, and without it this wouldn’t be the country that we know.
David Pitt never ran in another general election, but in 1975, after Labour made it back into power, Harold Wilson recommended Pitt for a peerage in the House of Lords. As Baron Pitt of Hampstead, he successfully campaigned for the 1976 Race Relations Act which prevented discrimination against race in employment, education and the provision of services and goods. So he was never elected, he wasn’t the first black MP and his legacy is barely remembered in this country, but his principles and his dedication to ensuring people wouldn’t have to go through what he did to get to his position did succeed. It is thanks to the hard work and the stoic resilience of David Pitt and others like him that in 1987, Paul Boateng, Bernie Grant and Diane Abbott managed to become the first black MPs in the House of Commons. And it’s not just people of colour who benefit from diversity in authority. It’s you scoffing your kebab at 3am after a night out at a jungle rave, it’s you heading to the curry house for a birthday meal, it’s you celebrating when your favourite African footballer scores a last minute winner for your team, it’s you rapping along with your favourite grime artist. This country wasn’t just built by stiff upper lipped white men with cigars and monocles, it was built by all of us. Everyone that is here. Our National story has so many more pages than we’re ever really given, and there has never been a better time to give that story a read.
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politalysis · 3 years
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# THE GENDER PAY GAP
Ever since the dawn of time, women have had a place in society that is in some way disproportionate or even subordinate to men. From the history of the Middle Ages right through to the Victorian era, women were expected to be pretty, say little and give birth. Not much more. During the First World War, a vast majority of men were away on the battlefield, so it was women who stayed home and kept the economy moving. Whilst doing all the work, women mostly seemed to be payed less than men would have been, and women’s rights in the workplace were taken a lot less seriously. Out of this, the initially small women’s suffrage movement grew larger and larger, and the suffragettes fought with peaceful and violent protests, hunger strikes and some like Emily Davison even sacrificed their lives in protest, until women were eventually given the basic right to vote. In the years following, society’s attitude towards women’s roles would calm down too. No longer are women seen as damaged goods if they’ve been through a marriage or had a child outside of wedlock, no longer are women expected to find a husband before the age of 30 or face a life of poverty, and no longer are women looked down upon for using their basic rights to live life the way they choose. But just because things are better than they were, that doesn’t mean we are where we should be.
Ever since 1970, paying women less than you would a man for the same work has been illegal. So when we talk about the gender pay gap, we’re not talking about an actual gap in pay. The gap is actually in the average lifetime earnings of men and women. In the UK, the National Statistics office estimate that British women will earn £263,000 less than men in their lifetimes. Men can expect to earn £643,000 throughout their working life, whereas the average for women is £380,000. Women’s earnings only grew by 3% between 2004 and 2018, which shows just how slow the gap is closing. Why is this gap so high if women are not actually being paid less for the exact same job?
When you take into account that 90% of single parents in the U.K are women, the gap starts to make a lot of sense. Single parents need access to childcare if they want to spend time on their career. How can you work a 12 hour shift when you have a 6 year old child to raise all on your own? And consider the jobs that those men and women are doing. 99% of vehicle technicians and electricians are men, whereas 97% of nursery nurses are women. Vehicle technicians earn a yearly average of £32,000, but nursery nurses earn about £15,000. In fact, the jobs with the highest percentage of men are high paid manual jobs like carpentry, welding, metal works, plumbing, machine operation, forklift drivers, lorry drivers and construction. All of these jobs are over 90% men, and all earn an average yearly salary of over £20,000. The jobs with the highest percentage of women on the other hand are jobs that require much less hours and earn a lot less money. Jobs like child minders, teaching assistants, housekeepers and receptionists are over 90% women and all earn under £20,000 p.a.
So, what can we do to close the gender pay gap? The Conservative government have neglected the issue of childcare during the past decade, with nurseries closing down and childminders being put out of work. Investment into state funded childcare is crucial to closing the gender pay gap. Struggling single parents will have the freedom to focus on their careers and earn enough to provide for themselves and their children. There should also be more opportunities for women to get into work that is dominated mostly by men. The tradesman jobs that are almost entirely dominated by men are jobs that mostly require a large amount of training, which some women find to be intimidating and consider themselves outnumbered during this process. These workplaces need to be a safe environment for women.
Talking of safety in the workplace, another contributing factor to the gender pay gap is sexual harassment. One in three women say they have experienced some degree of sexual harassment in the workplace. The hospitality sector has the most balanced number of men and women in its workforce, and 9/10 women working in hospitality say they have been sexually harassed at work. These figures are far too high, and the only system we have in place to deal with sexual harassment is the law. Unfortunately the law has been failing victims of sexual harassment and sexual abuse ever since its invention. Of course victims of sexual harassment will be less keen to stay in their jobs, but there just isn’t much we can do except continue to support victims and encourage the legal system to progress with time.
The gender pay gap is one of the biggest injustices that women face today. In a way, it shows how far we have progressed in the last 100 years, given that back then women didn’t even have the right to vote. It is also something we can fix. Women can be provided with decent state funded childcare, workplace environments they feel safe in and opportunities to get into a different range of jobs. Hopefully, this injustice can soon be locked in the past where it belongs, and both men and women can earn what their hard work deserves.
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