#but also in general
out of curiosity, does everyone have a certain type of character they get attached to or are urs random
I spent a solid week trying to figure out what Lucretia Adventurezone and Stede Bonnet had in common. (there’s some earlier obsessions that are probably worth examining at some point)
And y'all the moment when I hit on “strong sense of responsibility” and “doesn’t think that other people will listen to them”
Whew.
(on a less “and then I talked to my therapist about it” note, I do appreciate a weird sense of humor and a dramatic sense of style)
I KNOW I do. In HS it was the sexy bishonen type (Kurama, Yuki, etc) and now I think it’s evolved to where I love, like… exasperated characters. The straight man (who’s never straight, not always a man) who puts up with shenanigans.
Also tragic backstory and self-hate. That seems to be a theme. Hm.
What I’m saying is that JKR, like so many average people, very likely started off in a place of well-meaning ignorance. Then she started exploring new and different ideas being shared online. Some ideas resonated deeply with her experiences as an abuse survivor, so she began exploring them deeper. Then, wham, public backlash. Her trauma is triggered - but so is her curiosity. After all, if something she did or said set people off, maybe she’s onto something. So she starts exploring more. Starts asking more questions. And when she does this in public, there is always backlash. Meanwhile, however, in private, her new friends are telling her “See? This is proof we’re right. This is proof that the world wants us silenced, because they’re scared of the truth, and they really hate women that much.” And what do you know, what they’re telling her starts sounding more and more reasonable, especially since the outside world is becoming more and more hostile.
Well…
People keep searching for ways to argue that JK Rowling has always been a horrible person deep down as a way of explaining her recent behaviour.
But here’s the thing: that’s probably not true at all.
Pretending it is discounts the harsher, scarier truth: that even decent, well-meaning people can be radicalised by dangerous, hateful, predatory groups, and given enough time they can become truly hideous versions of their former selves.
It can happen to me. It can happen to you. It can happen to any of us, given the right mix of circumstances. And over the past few years, we’ve seen it happen to one of the most famous children’s authors of our age.
Nobody is immune.
So you’re saying that The Clown wasn’t always… outright evil?
No one is born evil
Good point, but prejudice is best installed at a young age. Why is why I assumed the said Clown was just evil since some early part of their life.
And round and round it goes, until you have a radical.
This is absolutely how radicalization works. I started out “I could never be a feminist, they hate kinksters” (yes, this was a massive oversimplification) and within, oh, i think two years? i was saying “well, i don’t like the overtones of ‘radical feminist’ but what’s so wrong with saying you’re a radical AND a feminist? we need to make sure there’s space for traumatized women who really do legitimately hate and fear men.”
When you become an extremist, you become UNRECOGNIZABLE even to YOURSELF.There is also this….revisionist tendency to say that JKR has always been a closet bigot and conservative and right-wing since she got famous, but that’s not even entirely true. One of her first major political stirrups was criticising Tory austerity measures and David Cameron, (she also once said “people who send their children to boarding schools seem to feel that I’m on their side. I’m not.”), donating to Labourandbeing openly supportive of the British welfare state.She has, in at least one interview (from 2000) self-proclaimed to be left-wing.As early as 2003, she claimed that one of her biggest writing influences was a Jessica Mitford, who Rowling described as a “self-taught socialist”.
This isn’t to apologise for her behaviour or rehabilitate her into some former activist who is still worthy of saving; it’s to contextualise her recent descent into TERFdom compared to her previous political stances she’s openly held. She was probably never going to be a staunch ally for equality and diversity, and yes, a lot of the HP series were very problematic in retrospect, but she could very easily have gone the other way and at the very least turned out to be less of a bigoted shitbag she is now. The fact that her politics in late 2000′s/early 2010′s were similar to so many people who are now activists and organisers for queer, BIPOC and vulnerable communities should tell us to be all the more careful about radfem ideology and transphobia in progressive spaces.
It’s comforting to say “we should have known in hindsight that she was always going to become a TERF, the early signs were all there!” but that’s also not true. We have to recognise that the toxic ideology, the active harm she chooses to participate in, was a deliberate choice; this was a path she chose to go down, not one that was pre-determined for her. It’s also an easy way to separate ourselves from being critical of radfem influence; “JKR was always a right-wing bigot and that’s why she became indoctrinated with radfem bullshit. I’m not a right-wing bigot, therefore unlike her, I will never fall for radfem bullshit.”
People who become radicalised, including those to become radfems, were not always irredeemable right-winger proto-Conservatives doomed for extremism and hatred, and that’s the point. The revisionist idea that she was always beyond salvaging erases how TERFs recruit people (especially vulnerable, impressionable people) in queer, progressive and liberal circles and how easily their dogwhistles can go undetected. The idea that JKR was already a closet right-winger from the get-go and therefore could never have been a good person is ultimately unhelpful because all it does it separate from the reality of how radfem doctrine spreads. TERFs sell their own toxic, harmful views packaged as progressive ideas as part of their strategy and that’s why their ideology is dangerous and requires constant vigilance to drive out.
All of this.
I know that for me JKR’s terfdom came out of nowhere. I was honestly shocked by her liking Tweets made by TERFs but wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt…like “maybe she doesn’t really understand”, etc, like that time Stephen King accidentally liked a Tweet of hers and then walked it back after people explained to him how harmful it was (Stephen King was a huge fan/advocate of the Harry Potter series). But then she got worse instead of better.
This ideology is very insidious and can sneak up on you, and TERFs in particular like to target vulnerable people, especially women who are abuse/assault survivors who might be in a place where they’d rather not interact with men until they’re feeling stronger. TERFs take those women and make sure those women never heal and get to a place where they can love and enjoy men’s company again. And it goes from misandry and snowballs into..well, we all know.
It’s important to recognized dogwhistles such as someone describing themselves as an Adult Human Female, Real Life Genetic Woman, Actual Woman, etc. or talking of how women are being “erased”. Rational Wiki has a whole glossary of terms and such that TERFs like to use, and it’s a very good study.
Yes. And this is why screaming at people who begin to display “problematic” behavior does more harm than good. Anger leads to more anger, and the “other side” will find ways to make use of that.
It’s not my place to tell discriminated people what to do or not to do. But some topics that directly concern me - sexism, anti-vaxx conspiracy bullshit, and professionally, ableism - make me very angry indeed. I don’t feel like patiently explaining to men why sexism ist wrong.
And yet, if we don’t do that, if we answer with aggression to the slightest provocation that may result from ignorance - it’s well within our rights, but it will make things worse.
I’m not saying we should back down. I’m not saying we should be nice to JKR. If someone continues to behave like an asshole even after the assholery of said behavior has been explained and understood - well then, there’s a limit to everyone’s patience. But if someone gets screamed at for something they didn’t even know was wrong, they’ll probably listen to those who say “you didn’t deserve to be screamed at, you were right!”
Basic psychology, I’m afraid. ATM I’m valiantly trying not to scream at anti-vaxxers who appear like they may still see reason at some point. The other side though, neonazis and conspiracy ideologists? They try to broaden the gulf. They deliberately try to isolate those people from the rest of society, which is easy because the rest of society is angry, and then say “Look? The others don’t take you seriously. They laugh at your fears. They hurt you! But we understand. We’re your true friends!”
It’s a trap.
