I’ve seen people talk about actors and artists that had a terrible time.
My own would be Anne Rice. She wrote Interview with the Vampire after her young daughter died of Leukemia. Then her husband suddenly died of a brain hemorrhage. I suspect her Christian, anti-fanfic phase was a result of mental illness and manipulation from the publishers, although I don’t think she ever apologized.
Controversial take, but I think people underestimate how bad the backlash was to her original essay and how that might have affected her psychologically, combined with the fact that that that has never stopped happening since. I’m not saying there shouldn’t have been backlash, I mean that people underestimate how much of it is and always has been rape and death threats, which is not a genuine expression of upset at someone’s political views, it’s because you want to send someone rape and death threats.
There was also the ickabog, where people sent porn, and child porn, to a tag being used by children + parents to post children’s drawings - that’s not a genuine expression of political dissent either, that’s because you want to try and inflict porn on children and make it her problem at the same time.
I don’t think anyone should be like, “Well, if I was receiving rape and death threats every day, I would simply just brush them off and be cool about it.”
People have literally turned up her house / castle - she doesn’t and you don’t know that those aren’t the same people sending or planning the threats.
Her original essay was mostly focused on Keira Bell, who is a detransitioner who genuinely felt that she shouldn’t have been allowed to transition, and who I think is the only trans (or ex-trans) person JKR had probably personally met upon writing the essay, outside of stuff on the internet, and the response should have been, “one person’s regret doesn’t represent everybody” not “let’s tell her we want to decapitate her” - which people did, many people did, because I saw them.
She’s not going to get better until she literally stops being threatened. Q boomers are imagining threats, but she is literally receiving them on a regular basis, due to being a massive public figure.
Don’t know if I agree but that’s an interesting thought. Maybe receiving death threats makes her think she’s writing things WORTH receiving death threats for. Or what she wrote needed to become worth it for her, so she leaned in. Threats are easier to brush off when you have a layer of conviction or righteousness between you
I agree…I think she might have even come to accept a different viewpoint if people had not so viciously attacked her.
That is why I am not a fan of this kind of activism. It cancels any debate and debate is the only thing we can use to deal with such complex topics.
Eh, I disagree. I think she was already way too far gone. She was supporting Maya Forstater way before that essay. She was probably way further down the pipeline than anyone outside really knew, and she just became emboldened by anything that criticized or insulted her to lean more publicly into it.
At the end of the day, if JKR wanted to be open to debate and respectful of trans people, she’d be that. Doesn’t matter what anyone writes online if she truly wanted to respect other people. It’s just a convenient excuse to go “see they’re big meanies who want me dead so that’s why I can be mean back”.
I definitely think this is part of it!
I don’t necessarily disagree, but (at least in the trans community) she was already being outwardly hateful long before she posted her essay. She followed and retweeted self proclaimed neonazis, racists and anti-feminists whenever they shared criticisms and vague hatred towards trans communities.
The essay was for a lot of people the final step that cemented her stay in a hatred filled community, not the beginning of her decline into hatred fuelled posting.
She also used to receive death threats from those hateful right wing christians, because she wrote about magic and included a character vaguely to be hinted at that he was gay… Now she works with them because they agree on the anti-trans issues, THAT is when those death threats lessened: when she changed her public image.
That will never happen simply because wherever there is any amount of public controversy, some idiot will use that to get out the death threats he really wants to send someone, anyone.
But I also think you’re giving much more grace to her here. She lives in a mansion, she’s a billionaire, she could hire round-the-clock security. But the policies she is advocating are actively being used (for example, in the US) to strip away the rights of trans people and continue to commit violence on them. Trans people HAVE DIED because of JK Rowling’s actions and words.
Where is the grace for those real threats that trans people receive and have to live with? Most of whom can’t hide in a huge mansion and can’t hire round-the-clock security?
Also, JKR sees the very existence of trans people as a threat nowadays, so there is no way she will ever stop feeling threatened. Because she is not as different from a QAnon tinfoil hat as you want to believe. A trans woman can’t even exist online without JKR denigrating her humanity and calling her a rapist. Those are not beliefs grounded in facts. Those are conspiracy theories.
Which ones, specifically?
You probably could have ended that sentence there, unfortunately.
I know women who have the same vehemence as her on this issue despite being liberal and progressive in every other aspect of their lives.
In both cases, they were assaulted by men when young, as Rowling was, and in both cases, the biological distinction of being a woman is important to them, because they utterly fear and loathe most men.
It’s not a conscious, constant hatred of the other gender, it’s a continual subconscious and internalized fear of being assaulted again.
Anything that reinforces that fear by allowing the notion of men being able to pass among women triggers their internal insecurity about rape, basically.
Psychologically speaking, it’s entirely understandable. It’s not stable or rational, but it’s also a product of horrible trauma and not a mere matter of them “choosing” to be bigoted.
Have you ever considered that, perhaps, if your greatest enemies are lesbians and feminists, that you could be the one in the wrong?
What are you even talking about? Read the post. I’m not enemies with JK Rowling or anybody, for that matter.
I totally agree with you, but I don’t agree that she couldn’t get better given the space and time to do so, it’s just that genuinely giving her privacy and space is impossible in the age of social media, globalisation, etc.
I think people forget that where she is now isn’t where she started, where she is now has been psychologically reinforced over and over again by the things I’ve mentioned, and that where she started is only just over 3 years ago - it seems much longer bc it was covid years. 3 years is not a lot in a lifetime over otherwise being a kind and almost uniquely generous person.
If somehow her circumstances could change, I think she could change.
Possibly. The two women I know who are similar in outlook are not rich, famous or exposed publicly.
But that also prevents any change or view of the matter as something that requires change; it doesn’t impact their lives to fear trans people. They don’t know any … other than a relative of mine, who they treat nicely despite their own views, because cognitive dissonance allows it.
In both cases, they are intellectually gifted but deeply emotionally arrested, so therefore immature in many of their views, attitudes and behaviours. Outwardly, loving and normal. Inwardly, incredibly conflicted and unlikely to ever trust most people enough to seek help.
Ultimately, when people suffer trauma, they also suffer mental disorders. As someone who has struggled with them my whole life, I can tell you most mentally ill people can’t see, or qualify, or quantify their issues.
So expecting them to change is extremely optimistic at best, and often just naive.
It’s very rare for people to “fix” deeply negative traits. They are defensive traits, typically. Until the person feels secure enough to get help – which usually requires outside intervention – it never happens.
Yes, she won’t seek that help because she’s rich, famous and can isolate however she likes. But equally, the average person will never seek it because they are literally never exposed to any ramification of feeling that way.
Again, mostly agree, although I would argue that it does impact her life to fear trans people when again, they turn up where she lives. That is not going to convince anyone to support you or change their mind.
I think that’s painting all trauma survivors as people who can’t “choose”, though. A great many women have survived trauma, even the same kind of trauma, as Rowling, and haven’t become bigots. Hell, trans people are at a massively increased risk of sexual assault, and most of them aren’t bigots.
Sorry, but as a trauma survivor, I think it’s highly irresponsible to attribute bigotry to trauma. Bigots are ALWAYS choosing to be bigots. We trauma survivors are not exempt from this. We’re not led by instinct. We have agency to choose. And JKR chose to become a bigot and is every day choosing to remain one. She is fully accountable for her actions, as any other bigot is.
Why? I literally referred to three women going through this and posited why. I didn’t apply it to “all” at any time.
I’m also a trauma survivor and have had complex PTSD for much of my life. If I can understand their subconscious drivers are clearly beyond their control or understanding, you should be able to as well.
People are psychologically complex. By ascribing “all” to my post, you’re doing the exact thing you’re accusing me of: assuming everyone could handle it the way you did.
EVERY HUMAN BEING IS LED BY INSTINCT. We all have subconscious drivers we DO NOT, and CANNOT control.
That is a neurobiological reality of how the brain functions. No neuroscientist worth his salt will comprehensively say we have “free will” if the definition includes controlling subconscious drivers.
I did not read it as specific to those three people, but as a more general statement on these types of people, who turn to bigotry and have a history of trauma.
Uh, no, that’s just what I inferred you saying from your comment. Hence I called it out, because I thought YOU were saying it.
There are things outside of our control. Being a bigot is not one of them. It is not an instinct. It is an active choice one has to make and keep making. If you’re traumatized by the actions of a man and a specific trans person’s appearance happens to trigger your trauma and you go into fight/flight/freeze/fawn, then that’s an instinct. But if you then go on a rampage to call all trans people rapists and donate to transphobic causes and people and ally yourself with actual fascists and fascism-apologists, that is not an instinct. That is an active choice.
But it’s a choice based on belief, which humans have a very hard time controlling. So it’s a deeply misinformed choice.
… what? You seriously think we can’t control beliefs or opinions?
Do you just think that humans are mindless automatons who can’t control anything or most things in life? Because that’s nonsense.
And why is it so important to you to find explanations or excuses for her choices? The choices remain deeply damaging to society and to marginalized people and communities. Even if she was truly just motivated by her own trauma, that does not make these choices defensible. She is making the world worse for people who have done nothing to her and who only want to exist in peace.
There is no defense for this.
I think it is difficult for people to understand who do not have mental issues. I have in certain situations severe anxiety. People even those who know me well often do not understand that I cannot just help being the way I am. That the feelings that come are not something I can control. People constantly interpret my behaviour as asocial and unfriendly but I am far from that I just cannot help becoming defensive and silent when I am afraid.
Yep, I feel like JK is a great example of what happens when you attack people for not getting things right, instead of gently showing them the error of their ways.
One of my trans friends espoused much the same perspective as yourself. She was a deeply empathetic person at the beginning. If people hadn’t attacked her the way they did, she probably wouldn’t have been radicalized.
She was already radicalized pretty far when she threw out the essay and justifiably got called out for it. You don’t support Maya Forstater and her desire to create a toxic work environment if you’re not already a good chunk down the radicalization pipeline.
The fuck??
To be completely honest, when she officially came out as a transphobe in 2020, I blocked all her social media, deleted Twitter, unfollowed fan pages, and then tried to pretend she no longer existed (mostly so that I could protect my beloved childhood memories - I was a major fan). To this day I still only engage with very small, safe HP communities online. So I don’t know everything that’s been going on. I have heard through the grapevine, though, some of things she’s done since then (like the mean tweets and donating only to trans-exclusionary charities) as well as some of the backlash. You’re right, it does sound very brutal what she’s gone through, and I do feel some sympathy for her. She once said that her greatest fear is her loved ones dying, so I have to imagine there is a lot of terror around those death threats if they are targeting her family members as well. I would be afraid to leave the house or let my kids go anywhere. It’s unacceptable for people to act like that. I don’t care how noble the cause.
Still, I wish one of her loved ones would take her damn phone away and tell her to get off Twitter.
I’ve not heard of anyone targeting her family, but I wouldn’t exactly be surprised. I think because of her recognisability the internet is probably her main source of new / fresh social contact now and so it’s a self-reinforcing problem.
She started falling apart before she got sucked down the transphobia rabbit hole. Don’t forget that just before it dropped she’d blown up for her weird tweets about the Harry Potter universe about wizards publicly shitting themselves and had her attempts at writing other things repeatedly flop. She clearly liked both being a beloved writer and being a twitter personality, and I think her insecurities over both of those things left her open to being drawn into the terf cult.
This article from a while back by Scalzi about the surprisingly common phenomenon of SF/Fantasy authors losing their minds always comes to mind when I think about how Rowling wound up where she is now.
https://whatever.scalzi.com/2017/05/03/the-brain-eater/
? The Strike series are very successful.
So the thing is they only got anywhere after someone leaked that they were written by her while “wearing manface”, to use terf-adjacent terminology. The first book she wrote for adults under her own name had a resoundingly mixed reception. It seems to me that she was trying to do a Steven King and prove to herself that she wasn’t just coasting on her own name, and failed pretty miserably at it.
Yep, that she did. I’ve read her other books and they’re shite.
Isn’t it actively a stop on that one Harry Potter tour
No idea, but it was covered in the news as unwelcome intruders, so not part of the tour.
Just did a little googling and yep. These are her tweets claiming her address was leaked by The Evil Trans Activists (https://imgur.io/pBxwlR0?r), this is the public Wikipedia page for her house (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killiechassie), this is my level of sympathy for her
Poor public figure billionaire who couldn’t get off twitter long enough for some self reflection
I don’t agree with the threats but I also don’t agree that when someone’s existence is being debated openly, they have to be the bigger person.
If you’re an incredibly wealthy woman with all of the prestige and status that JKR has, you can survive a few internet trolls. Just go offline for a while, chill in your mansion, and come back once you have used your immense network or resources to actually form an opinion.
You don’t owe politeness to bigots, honestly, even if it hurts their feelings.
Well there’s her first challenge. She’s practically glued to Twitter.
I mean. There’s a lot of space between ‘not being the bigger person’ and ‘not being polite’ and ‘sending someone rape and death threats’ and an incredibly frustrating part of this whole conversation is that they are treated as if they are basically the same thing. I am impolite all the time yet I never threaten anybody.
Also, again, she can go offline but people have turned up where she lives, on several occaisions.
All Rowling has ever said is that women deserve their own spaces and words. For females. Because male-born trans women are not and will never have the same experiences or fears. It’s not bigoted to say that.
What that has got to do with debating someone’s existence I don’t know.
Do ‘bigots’ deserve to have thousands of rape and death and violence threats and doxxing attempts thrown at them? Because that’s what it seems some people think the opposite of ‘not owing politeness to bigots’ means.
I’m laughing just reading how extremely nuts it’s being made out to be when the women didn’t actually say anything new.
There are differences. WOW so controversial lol. She didn’t disparage anyone with names etc.
If she’s so deplorable then I hate to tell you about some other people we have in the world.
Y’all gotta toughen tf up. People have a right to express their feelings.
If you don’t allow that the consequences are far worse.
That’s why we have all these right wing nutjobs in the world now.
Everyone forced a silence on certain topics and the right types of people took advantage.
Not everything will fit neatly onto little political compasses folks.
She has said a lot more than that, and publicly supported people who have said a lot worse things as well. You’re living with your head deliberately in the sand if you can’t see what her true views are after all the tweets and articles she’s put out about trans people lately.
Thanks but I’ve read everything she’s put out, other than her books ironically.
What do you think her true views are? Considering she has not once said anything about wishing death on trans people (or anyone) which is more than I can say for her detractors who are seemingly quite happy to support the people that post stuff like this.
But those never seem to count. It’s only when women say no that people seem to get up in arms.
I dont like her opinion and that is true, though. She nevercalled forthe death of people.
I find the people who feel so self-rightious that they sent death threats to people over a shitty opinon much worse than the people who simply have a shitty opinon.
However, I think the sting would not have been that bad if Rowling was not as famous and did not spent her time so much on twitter doubling down on it after the backlash.
That’s the reason why so many women love her is precisely for her refusal to back down. Rowling has enough clout and money behind her to not have to think about potentially losing her job over the apparently controversial opinion that women are women and trans women are trans women.
And the reason it’s always trans women? Because the power lays - and always has done - with males. A man telling the world he is a woman holds more clout than a woman telling the world he isn’t.
Finally someone with a rational opinion. J.k. isn’t the villain all of these people want her to be.
No one who cites that site has a rational opinion.
I find this sentiment so interesting, because it implies that cis women have the same experience and fears, which is so obviously not true.
It’s almost like you can’t draw conclusions about someone’s perspective from aspects of their identity or social presentation… but damn, people really want to try.
I’m not trying to make a point, just amused and trying to broaden my own thinking.
For what it’s worth, no one deserves threats, and that seems to be a inevitable consequence of fame (regardless of one’s views). I think I that’s horrific, but the only solution I’ve found is avoiding fame at all costs.
I also have think the defenses of Rowling are sometimes accurate (like the idea that the doesn’t want all trans people killed), but that’s a bit disingenuous. A high profile influential person questioning whether children should be able to receive gender affirming care has demonstrable negative effects on trans people, including the deaths if children. This has been studied. It’s fair to hold people accountable for their actions, and she is responsible for her choices.
Pretty sure she was getting death threats, rape threats, etc, from the moment she became famous, well before her transphobia became public.