#please excuse typos I'm on mobile and my hand is broken

[nientedal]

So, the JKR bullshit.

She has published one book with a dangerous, unstable trans lady trying to kill the protagonist. Now she has announced another book, this one featuring a serial killer cis man who dresses as a (muslim!) woman in order to stalk his victims.

(What the fuck muslims have to do with all this, I don't know. The scenario wasn't fucked enough so she added Islamophobia to the mix, I guess? Hey, great job, JK. Really knocked this one out of the park.)

But like, she's been going on for a while about this whole "trans women are scary - oh I mean, er, men? in dresses? men in dresses are scary! Trans women are cool though, totally, except I don't actually think they're women at all even if they are trans and not just confused." And I have been sitting here sort of vibrating with rage about this, but... I've also been very confused about just how hard she seems to be pushing. She's obsessed. I don't get it. How does one person go this hard on their hatred whole still denying they hate anyone? How does that not cause any cognitive dissonance?

Well, I went back and read the essay she posted back in January, and a few things jumped out at me, but what I think everything boils down to is: "I'm scared of men due to past trauma and I believe my fear is justified. Also, I don't think people can be trusted to know their own realities." (but I think the latter point may be a red herring; or, if genuine, it takes a serious back seat.)

She mentions an "avalanche of emails and letters...which were positive, grateful and supportive...from a cross-section of kind, empathetic and intelligent people...who’re all deeply concerned about...dangers to young people, gay people and about the erosion of women’s and girl’s rights" after and while the Twitter stuff went down. Also, she says one of her early "cancellations" was due to her following (and contacting) Magdalen Berns, a terminally ill lesbian feminist and "a great believer in the importance of biological sex, [who] didn’t believe lesbians should be called bigots for not dating trans women with penises."

So basically - she was already casually bigoted on a bunch of fronts (that much has been evident for a while), but on trans issues specifically...she opened herself intentionally to the TERF community, and they supported and empathized with her in a time when she was being harassed and re-traumatized on Twitter. She said in her essay that she believes we're living in a more misogynistic time than ever before. It's evident that she feels her fears are being confirmed everywhere she turns, and instead of asking "am I right to be afraid?" she's saying "because I am afraid, there is something to be afraid of."

This passage is, I think, the meat of it:

She tips her hand when she says "any man who believes or feels he's a woman" instead of "anyone who says they're a woman." She claims to fear cis men who lie & take advantage, but she does not think trans women can be trusted, either.

Lack of trust is a running theme throughout the essay, by the way: she believes that without a long and arduous pre-transition vetting process, no one - not even trans people - can really be sure a person is transgender. They'll want to detransition, they'll regret their decision, lose their dysphoria, they're autistic and confused, they're girls who want to be boys to escape misogyny. Blah blah blah trans people can't be trusted to know their experiences and shouldn't be allowed to decide what kind of care they need.

And I'm pissed.

But yeah, this is where that book is coming from. And the really hilarious (read: infuriating) thing about this is, she has completely fucking ignored the fact that if a cis man wanted to hunt women while dressing as one, there was already nothing stopping him. He could do that in the 1960s, the 1880s, 600CE, 5700BCE, whenever. No one is standing at the bathroom door checking to see who's got a vulva and who doesn't. Men can and do assault women in bathrooms already, without ever dressing up as one. Jo? Hey, Jo? Men don't need to dress up in order to hurt women. You absolute goddamned moron.

Anyway. She's scared and trying to justify it, and I get that, I really do, but it's not helpful or rational and writing this nonsense is not going to make her feel any better. It's only going to hurt people. I know she has been abused and assaulted and that maybe makes her vulnerable to her fear and to the suggestion that she's right to be afraid, but - wow, I'm ever so fucking sorry - I do not give a rat's patoot. She has preemptively burned every ounce of goodwill she might otherwise have received from me. She didn't deserve what happened to her, but she needs to reevaluate her trauma and get better therapy; she is holding the world responsible for the fear that lives inside her, the fear she can't let go of, and she is hurting people. In this case, she was met with what she saw as abuse and instead of just saying "I don't deserve this level of vitriol, but wow I seem to have pissed off an awful lot of people; maybe I'm missing something," she ran to look for why she might not deserve it (no one deserves abuse, ever, full stop; looking for a reason you don't deserve it only implies that circumstances exist under which you would deserve it) and why everyone yelling at her might be Wrong and Bad and Abusive. And then, just to be sure, she invented a reason that fit her fear and wrote a book about it to prove her fear was real and rational.

Her fear is real, book or no book. But it is not rational. If a man wants to prey on women in bathrooms, he can do so right now. If someone begins to transition and goes "hey wait this isn't for me," that's on them. That's nobody else's lookout. That is not her fucking responsibility to worry about or gatekeep.

And let's get something straight: I'm not saying this is Twitter's fault for yelling at her. I am not saying she deserves sympathy and a free pass. I'm making an observation about what I think she saw and reacted to. Twitter didn't give her that reaction; she reacted all by herself; she's a racist transphobe who refuses to entertain the merest notion that she might be a racist transphobe, and that is on her!!! She's fucked up and she's bound and determined to fuck everyone else up, too. I am ALSO not saying this is a recent development or totally unforeseeable; she wrote plenty of shitty shit into Harry Potter too, including but not limited to:

Cho Chang's name

Someone infected with a thinly-veiled metaphor for HIV intentionally infecting children with it

House elves: slaves who enjoy being enslaved

The Gringotts goblins

The entire Wizarding world treating sentient non-humans as lesser beings and...never really questioning this. Some of the characters think that's a bit fucky, but the narration is just kinda fine with it.

So like, I am absolutely not defending her or calling for sympathy towards her! She was already merrily skipping in this direction with her fingers in her ears, chanting la-la-la, and has been for a while. But the above points could be examples of unthinking, unquestioning biases and prejudices, if only because they aren't the point of those novels the way "men r scary!" seems to be the point of this one.

I don't think she was radicalized then the way she seems to be, now. I guess that's what I'm trying to say.

Unfortunately the one thing JKR has been consistently good at over the years is never admitting fault, ever; I am CERTAIN people tried to talk to her about those things, and I am certain she did not and does not care. Also, her pen-name, Robert Galbraith, is a direct reference to Robert Galbraith Heath, one of the fathers of conversion therapy; she is not acting in good faith, here.

But yeah. If you're wondering where the hell all this particular nonsense is coming from - here it is. My take, anyway. It is coming from her fear of men, plus her total inability to entertain the idea that she might be wrong about something. She's scared of men who want to hurt women and she sees them everywhere she turns, and she sees trans women as an opportunity for wolves to wear sheep's clothing. And she will never, no matter how polite we are, revise that or turn away from the comfortable world she lives in, where she's afraid but always right.

So we might as well just keep screaming. The louder you are, the harder it is for bigots to talk over you, and speaking softly to bullies has never stopped any bully I've ever met. And I do not know what to call someone who picks Robert Fucking Galbraith as their pseudonym except a bully and a bigot.

As for what else to do about it...I don't know. I don't know that there's anything that will actually get results. Writing to her publishers and distributors might help. I saw one post that suggested we all hype this book up so the publishers print more copies, and then we don't buy them, causing a giant loss. That makes sense enough to me but I'm not sure how to swing it.

I really don't know. I'm just angry and throwing my two cents into the void, here. I was angry and confused before, so I went looking for answers, and now I'm just fucking angry. I don't know if that's better, but it is what it is.

#jkr #jkr cw #panic! at the discourse #quiet dal nobody asked you #dal is a rage demon #i am also Tired #in addition to Angry #please excuse typos I'm on mobile and my hand is broken #always be open to the possibility that you might be wrong #but also always be willing to stick to your guns #this is how you strike a balance between ''too close-minded'' and ''too suggestible'' #also don't let other people tell you what guns to stick to #add transcript later