JK Rowling Backlash

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

You know, looking back on it as I kid, I really thought even then JKR had... kind of a warped way of looking at the world. Not just her humor, but... in some ways, HP is basically glorified fanfiction. Animorphs has a much higher level of sophistication - that sadly gets overshadowed by Potter. I mean, there's the stuff with Aberforth and his goats, there's Hagrid's parents (don't try and visualize that, you'll burn your corneas out and have nightmares for the rest of your life!), there's the fact the Weasley twins are smuggling in date-rape drugs, and there's almost kind of a... pro-feminine bent? And not in a good way. It's very minor a lot of the time, but in other areas, it's hard to ignore. Like the aforementioned date-rape drugs that everyone is totally okay with the girls using on boys, which is horrifying. Played for laughs on Ron. Hell, look at Ron running out on them AGAIN in the seventh book. And for all their preaching to equality and treating Muggles better, they are condescending right to the end. If they had had support from the Air Force, or set up a decent minefield, the so-called "Battle of Hogwarts" would have last five effing minutes. These are not Kryptonians or Jedi or Saiyans or Time Lords or something else. These are mostly squishy wizards barely distinguishable from humans. Point being, JKR hasn't been relevant in years. And HP is still mostly relevant in terms of crossover fanfiction material. That's about it.

Oh, these books are horrific if any sort of Fridge Logic is applied. Did she mean them to be? Maybe.

Speaking of a feminine bent, remember how girls can enter the boys dorms but not the reverse? And the stated explanation for it is lame. Honestly i think Rowling was secretly going down the every man and boy is a potential rapist route.

It's still an issue of Patriarchy though.

[Darth Wedgius]

You're going to probably think I'm being flippant, but, objectively, would someone be able to self-identify racially too? Rachel Dolezal could get surgery and treatments to pass for black, couldn't she? And if it makes the world a happier place, what's the harm?

Honestly, you could answer this yeah or nay, but if you have logic behind your answer I'd be curious about the reasoning either way.

If the answer is just "No, that's different because it isn't the same," that's fine, too.

The oversimplified answer is basically that Race, as a category, is inseparable from historical and present oppression/othering/discrimination, so it really is something where what you're born to and how you grew up is paramount.
Put another way is Dolezal feels closer to the black community and wishes to change her presentation to better fit with her chosen community, that's between her and them, but that's more a matter of ethnicity than race. Think of converting to Judaism, where ultimately if the community accepts you as sincere then they have a set of prescribed rules to do so, but that still doesn't mean you experience antisemitism directly.

Gender based discrimination is certainly a thing that exists historically and in modern times, and that does create a rift between trans folk and their cis peers, but it also encompasses a bunch of other stuff that doesn't change much based on assigned sex.

Doesn't race-based discrimination also encompass "a bunch of other stuff?" And I'm curious as to why that is a barrier. Couldn't someone identify with all that? It's true that they haven't experienced it, but a transwoman hasn't experienced much of what it is to grow up female.

I guess, in a nutshell, what's special about "historical and present oppression/othering/discrimination" that makes it an insurmountable barrier vs., say, having a Y chromosome, or gender discrimination?

[Yukaphile]

@clearspira Holy shit, that's something I'd thought of just the other day, but forgot about it. Can you blame me? I mean... yeah. Don't get me wrong, I loved 'em as a kid, but now... eh. They deserve far more criticism. Especially stuff like JKR insisting there's only 11 magical schools worldwide... puh-lease. Even for a magical population of 10,000,000 and let's be generous and say that's the limit given the figures we had for the World Cup (since can you see 1% of the human race being obsessed with sports?), even though it is likely higher... 11 schools cannot sustain that. And how about Russian and Chinese sorcerers? What, do you REALLY expect them to wanna go to a magical school in fucking JAPAN? With all those different cultural customs? 11 magical schools is simply not sustainable. Besides, the visual novels of Fate/Stay Night are a FAR superior read, anyway.

[clearspira]

@clearspira Holy shit, that's something I'd thought of just the other day, but forgot about it. Can you blame me? I mean... yeah. Don't get me wrong, I loved 'em as a kid, but now... eh. They deserve far more criticism. Especially stuff like JKR insisting there's only 11 magical schools worldwide... puh-lease. Even for a magical population of 10,000,000 and let's be generous and say that's the limit given the figures we had for the World Cup (since can you see 1% of the human race being obsessed with sports?), even though it is likely higher... 11 schools cannot sustain that. And how about Russian and Chinese sorcerers? What, do you REALLY expect them to wanna go to a magical school in fucking JAPAN? With all those different cultural customs? 11 magical schools is simply not sustainable. Besides, the visual novels of Fate/Stay Night are a FAR superior read, anyway.

Rowling gets a lot of credit for worldbuilding that she flat out does not deserve. How about the fact that you have to catch a train to get to Hogwarts? Because here is something that I want to know: can muggles see the tracks? It seems that they cant if they cannot see the train either. Are you seriously telling me though that you can lay a couple of hundred miles of invisible track through a densely populated yet rather small country and not have anyone, say, try and build a house on it or build a road through it? Wizards oblivate that many people do they?

And if muggles can see these tracks, why doesn't anyone ever wonder why no trains ever use it and why they seem to lead nowhere? Even the idea that muggles see Hogwarts as a condemned building is pretty stupid.

Wizards are proper scummy when you think about it. Casual mind rape as norm.

[Yukaphile]

Yeah, in a sense, Harry Potter is just glorified fanfiction. Not even dissing Harry Potter. The older EU books were fanfiction (fans were writing them), though I'd say in both cases that Harry Potter and the EU were merely a higher grade of fanfiction. Again, I'd say Animorphs is the superior children's book series, so it's very telling which one our pop culture chose to accept.

[AlucardNoir]

(Both answers here are also ignoring that the more accurate answer gets into the ways a binary gender model is simply inadequate and most of the modern language around trans issues is simply a best fit way of building out from that flawed model, but that's a whole other topic.)

You keep saying that and yet biology tends to disagree with you. Any human born with fewer then 46 chromosomes, as well as those born with more tend to have health and developmental problems. Genetically there are only genetic males, genetic females and gene mutations and chromosomal abnormalities. Other examples of intersex people include genetic males with Androgen insensitivity syndrome that in the worse cases are completely sterile.

There's a reason we consider these mutations disorders, because the individuals that carry them tend to be less fit to survive or reproduce. Hell, in some cases fertilized eggs carrying such mutations end up as miscarriages because the egg lacks the genes necessary to develop past the egg state.

When progressives say there are more then two genders what they are saying is that we shouldn't recognize any deleterious gene mutation or chromosomal combination as such and that is just not how medicine or biology works.

Genetically the binary gender model is more then adequate, at least when it comes to Homo Sapiens Sapiens.

Biologically... well, it's also adequate since your physiology is an expression of your genes and the model is genetically more then adequate.

Linguistically? I'd say yes, you no. I say yes because language is supposed to help us comunicate and a language that does not reflect observable reality does not do that. You say no because you realize reality is more complex then black and white, which is why we I'd say we have words like intersex and transsexual, and older cultures had similar words.

Intersex and transsexual individuals represent a very small minority and in truth are words that merely describe a plethora of actual conditions and in the case of transsexuals people self identifying as what they are not genetically and biologically.

In the case of intersex people the only real question is if the conditions that are covered under intersex should continue to be viewed as medical conditions or not? and in the opinion of most medical profesional the answer seems to be yes. I agree, but I'm not a medical professional so my opinion shouldn't matter when it comes to health.

In the case of transsexuals the real question if whether the condition is indeed just psychological - ie gender dysphoria, or if there is more to it. If transsexuals do not suffer from treatable psychological condition then they should be treated like homosexuals... assuming you're not in the through them from the roofs kind of person. We know there are people that identify as animals or fictional creatures, and in some cases with objects, we know they ask for similar status to that of transsexuals, my question wasn't ignoring anything, it was pointing out a flaw in your "take them at their word" reasoning.

I disagree with you and other liberal progressives that claim that there are more then two genders. Someone who is sterile isn't a third gender. Someone who willingly undergoes sterilization isn't mentally sound. There is at least one study that found transitioning to not be the silver bullet sites like wikipedia make it be: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0016885

A newer study that contradicts the one wikipedia is using to claim suicide rates in transsexual are lower after transitioning.

The question where you and I disagree in one of language. Man and woman, are words whose core meaning stems from observable biological reality. Doctors do not advocate for intersex rights because they see the conditions that give birth to intersex as deleterious when compared to the rest of humanity. Transsexuals are even in more of a bind because there are those that are just content identifying with the opposite genre without transitioning and then there are those that want to transition... to the opposite biological genre, which is the final nail in your coffin.

Saying there are more then two genders when it comes to humans is an oversimplification worthy of an eight year old.

[AlucardNoir]

Yeah, in a sense, Harry Potter is just glorified fanfiction.

Might I suggest you go look up the definition of the word fanfiction. Or, you know, just say you don't like it without trying to look smart while insulting it.

[Yukaphile]

It is written in the same vein as some fanfiction I have read. I WRITE fanfiction, dude. Yet JKR strikes me as being on the same level as, say, the Twilight novels. I dunno, maybe since I became an adult, too much logical gaps have dragged down the story for me. I guess it would be an insult to call it fanfiction, but really, there's the poorly-executed ships, there's loads of material that is NOT thought out (like the joke being that Hermione is trying to free slaves - what the hell?), and many more I could mention. That was what I was addressing.

[AlucardNoir]

It is written in the same vein as some fanfiction I have read. I WRITE fanfiction, dude. Yet JKR strikes me as being on the same level as, say, the Twilight novels. I dunno, maybe since I became an adult, too much logical gaps have dragged down the story for me. I guess it would be an insult to call it fanfiction, but really, there's the poorly-executed ships, there's loads of material that is NOT thought out (like the joke being that Hermione is trying to free slaves - what the hell?), and many more I could mention. That was what I was addressing.

Badly written or not to your liking are not synonymous with fanfiction. Twilight was not fanfiction. Even if I don't like the fact that vampires sparkle in that book, even if I don't like the prose all that much, that doesn't mean Twilight was fanfiction. It might be as bad as some fanfiction, but it's still not fanfiction.

Also, for someone who not long ago was arguing Rey can't be a Marry Sue because no female author was projecting with her and that's what the original Marry Sue did you sure seem to have changed your tune as to how words can be used.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Self-ID is the only ethical public policy. The possibility of abuse beyond the scope of things that are already illegal anyway are both remote and not worth the trade-off of making it possible to exclude the majority of trans people from accessing transition.

You're going to probably think I'm being flippant, but, objectively, would someone be able to self-identify racially too? Rachel Dolezal could get surgery and treatments to pass for black, couldn't she? And if it makes the world a happier place, what's the harm?

Honestly, you could answer this yeah or nay, but if you have logic behind your answer I'd be curious about the reasoning either way.

If the answer is just "No, that's different because it isn't the same," that's fine, too.

I see no difference between choosing your sex and choosing your race.

You guys are talking about two distinct demographics. The social binding between people and the issues surrounding their identity aren't supposed to react the same way to someone adopting an identity simply because they're both demographics.

It goes to say that nothing is inherently wrong with crossing *demographic*. There are though complications that can arise for different reasons among different peoples.