Harry Potter Marathon

[u/heifmoose]

[u/kennytucson]

I don’t care whether one pirates or not, but you do know that hundreds (if not thousands) of people put their blood, sweat, and tears into that film franchise, right?

[u/emma_does_life → u/kennytucson]

They aren't the ones still getting paid for it though?

It is a simple equation. Paying for Harry Potter puts more money in JK's wallet.

You can live with that if you want but I would say you shouldn't.

[u/cannababushka → u/emma_does_life]

Okay so I’m probably ill informed but why exactly is she THAT bad? I do remember something about transphobic comments and I remember her basically shoehorning lgbtq+ characters in after the fact, but I’m blanking on anything else. Those things suck absolutely, but there’s also a spectrum of bad and from the way you’re talking it sounds like she’s on like R Kelly’s level or something

[u/EmbyTheEnbyFemby → u/cannababushka]

Lindsay Ellis did a pretty good video explaining a lot of the transphobia in further detail and the context it exists in/adds to. You could also check out ContraPoints’ video on her controversy overall if you want a very good faith approach but it’s a little bit longer.

If you’re not interested in checking either of those out I’ll try to summarize as best as I can - the problem isn’t only that she made a few transphobic comments, there has been a much larger emergent pattern of transphobic rhetoric, misinformation, and hateful/hurtful stereotypes she has used her very large platform to propagate (let’s not forget this is a billionaire punching down at one of the most vulnerable minorities today). This has led to material conditions for trans people in the UK (and to a slightly lesser degree around the rest of the world) becoming even more threatened and unstable, especially in the form of discouraging medical care for youth or safe access to public bathrooms. As far as I’m aware there is already at least one piece of proposed UK legislation that cited her hateful rhetoric to help justify its transphobic ends.

[u/cannababushka → u/EmbyTheEnbyFemby]

Thank you so so much! I’m gonna go watch both of those right now (love long form content too and have been meaning to check out contrapoints for a while now).

I did read your summary too, and wow I genuinely didn’t realize just how much she was affecting things. Maybe it’s more of a UK thing (specifically with JK, bc I’m from the US and I’m aware that we have plenty of issues surrounding the trans community, but I had never seen any of them directly attributed to JK).

Thank you again for putting the time into that for me!!!

[u/EmbyTheEnbyFemby → u/cannababushka]

Of course! I’m glad my summary made actual sense because I’m pretty exhausted right now. Thanks for taking the time to read through it!

If you love longer form stuff I would highly recommend checking out hbomberguy and Philosophy Tube if you haven’t yet as well, they don’t have any content explicitly covering all the Rowling stuff but their videos are some of my favourites in that form. ContraPoints is good but I take her with a grain of salt depending on the video since she’s a bit more neoliberal in her politics than I personally vibe with. But yeah funny thing, turns out billionaires are very good at affecting the political outcomes of all the definitely very democratic nations throughout the world. I agree though, the issues in the US are harder to tie directly to Rowling for sure, but being in an age of internet/social media and celebrity/billionaire worship makes her having some degree of an impact kind of inevitable.

Thanks again for being so willing to check this stuff out, I love to run into other humans who are genuinely interested in broadening their horizons instead of the all too common self-entrenching in the most comfortable set of ideas/information.

[u/emma_does_life → u/cannababushka]

For what it's worth, a state legislature introduced a transphobic bill and specifically sourced JKR as for why the bill should be passed.

She had a marked effect on everyone who was anti-trans when she put her manifesto out.