[Discussion] Your Fave is Problematic: HP and Hogwart's Legacy

This thread is to discuss the many concerns and issues with this franchise, the problematic nature of supporting it, and the indoctrination of fascism and white supremacist dog-whistling within it's content as well as the beliefs and behaviours of it's creators.

Please read all posts prior to posting to avoid retreading talking points that have already played out.
Please review the linked material in the Original Post for context.

It's assumed you'll do your own homework before diving in, so your fellow forum members telling you to review the OP or linking back to previous posts is not rudeness, lack of listening, or dismissiveness - you are responsible for your own personal education journey, it's not the responsibility of others to bring you up to speed.

Promoting anti-trans rhetoric or talking points, spamming, or harassment will be removed without notice and may be subject to further moderator action as dictated by the moderation team.

I believe we have person, not persons, defending bigotry. Gross that the person is getting likes on their posts, definitely, but at least not getting signed support for their views. The community at large, at least that is participating in the conversation, is supportive of what's being said. As I read it, at least.

I want to express again, if anyone has sincere, good faith questions and would like to not make people uncomfortable, my DMs are open.

The big question is, who are transgender people hurting?

The number of "bathroom/locker room" incidents is tiny, and can easily be ascribed to rapey assholes who use the claim as a cover. Likewise, the number of athletes is tiny as well. Balanced against those concerns, the number of trans folk who are battered, abused, denied medical care, contemplate suicide or kill themselves, are bullied or killed each year is far, far larger. A recent study showed that the vast majority of people who transitioned are happy with that decision even decades later. And the idea that this tiny percentage of people whose brains function differently from some imagined "norm" (sexuality is a spectrum, we've know that since the 50's) are going to somehow disadvantage or even harm women's status in society is ridiculous, given that the most common thing I've heard from my trans friends is "why won't people just leave us alone?".

The overwhelming conclusion to be drawn is that this is just another step towards the extreme Right's goal of controlling all sexual behavior according to their 3000 year old tribal traditions. Or what they imagine those to be, ripped from context and "interpreted" out of all reasonableness. Anyone who professes to follow Jesus should recoil when offered the poison chalice of working to change someone else who is not harming anyone by their actions. (And no, like gays, trans people are not by their inclinations pedophiles, rapists, murderers or whatever the latest fear is. Those categories are overwhelmingly filled by CIS individuals, as they represent most of society anyway. Want to cut down on pedophilia and sexual crimes? Punish people in power, church leaders as a start, rather than excepting them from accountability due to their social status. Work your way down through politicians and bosses and co-workers and billionaires who think the laws don't apply to them, then take a look at the tiny number of people abusing their claim to trans status. Moral panics always blow things out of proportion and that's what is going on here.)

I've had trans friends since the 70's and the sh*t they have gone through far exceeds any damage some numbskull faking it causes. And they have somehow avoided assaulting anyone, while being beaten, bullied, harrassed by cops, neighbors, religious people coworkers... At least one, I am amazed they are still alive.

Just let them be and they will let you be, and we'll be fine.

Note - I went to a college full of all sorts of people that had unisex bathrooms, and we did not have unusual rates of sexual assault. The whole bathroom violation frenzy absolutely puzzles me. Stalls are all you need for privacy, really.

I get that social change can be hard but instilling hatred of a group based on religious "morality" is an evil thing to do. And no, you can't love the sinner but want to extra-judicially punish them through deprivation of health care, rights, social status and the like. That's just excusing being evil to people for no bad actions of their own.

Toraak wrote:

But actual doctors and psychologists are also labelled as transphobes for simply asking "hey - this is a lot in a short period of time. I wonder why?" and doing a proper study. You saying that you must be right is the same thing as the religious right saying they must be right. Why do you object to finding out the truth? If the dogma is correct (and I hope it is) why not find out for sure?

We already have a very good explanation for this phenomenon, it's been posted above more than once and you seem to be choosing to ignore it. Just like a certain someone.

Robear wrote:

The number of "bathroom/locker room" incidents is tiny, and can easily be ascribed to rapey assholes who use the claim as a cover. Likewise, the number of athletes is tiny as well. Balanced against those concerns, the number of trans folk who are battered, abused, denied medical care, contemplate suicide or kill themselves, are bullied or killed each year is far, far larger.

I agree, and this is what I was trying to get at in my earlier post about how bad facts make bad laws. Nothing ruins things more than people, and when you have predators who will abuse the system it makes it so much harder for the majority of people. The fact that it happened even once is enough for some people to panic and overstate the actual danger.

The overwhelming conclusion to be drawn is that this is just another step towards the extreme Right's goal of controlling all sexual behavior according to their 3000 year old tribal traditions. Or what they imagine those to be, ripped from context and "interpreted" out of all reasonableness. Anyone who professes to follow Jesus should recoil when offered the poison chalice of working to change someone else who is not harming anyone by their actions. (And no, like gays, trans people are not by their inclinations pedophiles, rapists, murderers or whatever the latest fear is. Those categories are overwhelmingly filled by CIS individuals, as they represent most of society anyway. Want to cut down on pedophilia and sexual crimes? Punish people in power, church leaders as a start, rather than excepting them from accountability due to their social status. Work your way down through politicians and bosses and co-workers and billionaires who think the laws don't apply to them, then take a look at the tiny number of people abusing their claim to trans status. Moral panics always blow things out of proportion and that's what is going on here.)

I agree with everything you have said here. Almost infinitely more children have been abused at church than at drag shows.

I get that social change can be hard but instilling hatred of a group based on religious "morality" is an evil thing to do. And no, you can't love the sinner but want to extra-judicially punish them through deprivation of health care, rights, social status and the like. That's just excusing being evil to people for no bad actions of their own.

I agree with this too.

Robear wrote:

I've had trans friends since the 70's and the sh*t they have gone through far exceeds any damage some numbskull faking it causes. And they have somehow avoided assaulting anyone, while being beaten, bullied, harrassed by cops, neighbors, religious people coworkers... At least one, I am amazed they are still alive.

I have several trans friends and acquaintances as well and this has also been my experience, even living in allegedly one of the most progressive cities in the US. It’s unbelievable some of the stuff they’ve went through, from constant microaggressions all the way to full-on assault. I had a coworker at a previous job who was helping a male client carry stuff out to the parking lot and was physically attacked when the guy realized she was trans.

This “just asking questions” sh*t is disgusting and disingenuous and is actively helping to make the world a worse place.

This is how a certain group of people feel special, though; they pretend to be reasonable and agree with most stuff, but still have "certain reservations" which they are, of course, being VERY REASONBLE in presenting. The fundamental goal in all this is to keep repeating the same garbage over and over, ignoring all the people genuinely damaged by their pseudo-scientific and pseudo-ethical bullsh*t, and, when people eventually get angry and tell them they're disgusting bigots and to go to hell, well, that's a win, because they can explain to whatever echo chamber they live in how VERY REASONABLE they were being, and people were just so irrational they wouldn't listen. It's a lovely soup of bigotry and what pretends to be intellectual superiority, and it tragically happens in all sorts of discussions about people who are minorities or disadvantaged in some way.

This guy doesn't give a crap either way about trans people or JK Rowling's views; they're just trying to feel smart and important and oh golly if everybody would just see the world more reasonably like I do it'd all be so much better. He's basically a fedora attached to a keyboard at this point.

That's part of it. And part of it's a little play they put on for any silent onlookers who really AREN'T super well-educated on the issue, maybe really DO just have some questions, maybe really DO just have some reservations. Maybe that person shows up and only reads Toraak's reasonable-seeming, moderate-looking, mildly-worded post and then people jumping down his throat and calling him a bigot and concludes, "wow, if this is how trans folks and 'allies' treat people who are just asking questions, maybe they really are intolerant groupthink bad guys!"

It's why measured responses like this:

Pink Stripes wrote:
Toraak wrote:

But actual doctors and psychologists are also labelled as transphobes for simply asking "hey - this is a lot in a short period of time. I wonder why?" and doing a proper study. You saying that you must be right is the same thing as the religious right saying they must be right. Why do you object to finding out the truth? If the dogma is correct (and I hope it is) why not find out for sure?

We already have a very good explanation for this phenomenon, it's been posted above more than once and you seem to be choosing to ignore it. Just like a certain someone.

... even though they're exhausting to make over and over, are super important. Not because they'll win over someone who clearly isn't arguing in good faith, but for the benefit of that hypothetical silent onlooker.

The fact that it happened even once is enough for some people to panic and overstate the actual danger.

Yeah still waiting for some panic about children killed by guns. Any f*cking day now we'll protect children from actual danger.

But actual doctors and psychologists are also labelled as transphobes for simply asking "hey - this is a lot in a short period of time. I wonder why?" and doing a proper study. You saying that you must be right is the same thing as the religious right saying they must be right. Why do you object to finding out the truth? If the dogma is correct (and I hope it is) why not find out for sure?

The unspoken assumption in these questions is that there's a number of trans people that's too many, or an acceptable rate at which trans people make themselves known in society.

Stele wrote:
The fact that it happened even once is enough for some people to panic and overstate the actual danger.

Yeah still waiting for some panic about children killed by guns. Any f*cking day now we'll protect children from actual danger.

The gun thing is a uniquely American phenomenon that is baffling to the rest of the world.

Freyja wrote:
But actual doctors and psychologists are also labelled as transphobes for simply asking "hey - this is a lot in a short period of time. I wonder why?" and doing a proper study. You saying that you must be right is the same thing as the religious right saying they must be right. Why do you object to finding out the truth? If the dogma is correct (and I hope it is) why not find out for sure?

The unspoken assumption in these questions is that there's a number of trans people that's too many, or an acceptable rate at which trans people make themselves known in society.

Well, no it doesn't. According to Reuters the number of new diagnoses of gender dysphoria in the US went from about 15,000 in 2017 to 42,000 in 2021, almost triple in 5 years. According to the graph posted about left handedness, that went from about 4% of the population in 1915 to about 12% in 1945, about triple, but in 30 years. So it is not about the absolute numbers or some hypothetical "normal" number of trans people, it is the sudden sharp spike.

Personally I'm absolutely f*cking sick of this notion we need to take JKR or any of her fellow traveler's words at face value when they say they don't want to eliminate trans people, as though the only way that can be accomplished is if Joanne personally leads the firing squad.

She opposes reform of the Gender Identity Clinic system in the UK. She opposes moving to an informed consent model.

Currently, if you were referred to the GIC in June 2018, you'd be getting your first appointment now. That's five years on a waiting list before you can receive *any* care. You will not get hormones at your first appointment.

What you will get? Questions, mostly, such as:
When was the first time you had an orgasm?
How do you masturbate?
What do you think about when you masturbate?
Do you get aroused when wearing (mens/womens) clothes?

And if you want to change the sex designation on your birth certificate? Well that's a doozy:
You need to:
Wait at least 2 years
Get permission from two doctors, one of which has to be on a government approved list. You need to pay for both of these reports.
Prove to a panel of strangers (that you will never meet) that you're super duper trans enough.
Get your spouse's permission if you're married or:
Get divorced.

If you don't get a GRC? When you die, your death is recorded as a gender that's not yours. You are not legally recognized as your gender for protections under the Equality Act. Insurers and pension providers will not update their records. You're outed anytime you need to present your birth certificate.

This is monstrous, it's dehumanizing. It's completely inadequate according to the UN's standards.

The United Nations on gender recognition processes wrote:

(i) Be based on self-determination by the applicant;

(ii) Be a simple administrative process;

(iii) Be confidential;

(iv) Be based solely on the free and informed consent of the applicant without requirements such as medical and/or psychological or other certifications that could be unreasonable or pathologizing;

(v) Acknowledge and recognize non-binary identities, such as gender identities that are neither “man” nor “woman” and offer a multiplicity of gender marker options;

(vi) Be accessible and, to the extent possible, cost-free;

(e) Examine seemingly neutral requirements that are prerequisites for change of name, legal sex or gender for potential or actual disproportionate effects in the light of the realities of the trans populations in each given context.”

Scotland tried to reform their gender recognition standards to follow these guidelines. Joanne called Nicola Sturgeon a destroyer of women's rights. She's spoken out multiple times against making this process any easier. She thinks trans people *should* have to jump through as many costly, delayed, insulting, undignified bureaucratic hoops as humanly possible because she wants as few trans people as possible to exist.

There's a word for that.

Freyja wrote:

What do you think about when you masturbate?

DUMBLEDORE

Toraak wrote:
Freyja wrote:
But actual doctors and psychologists are also labelled as transphobes for simply asking "hey - this is a lot in a short period of time. I wonder why?" and doing a proper study. You saying that you must be right is the same thing as the religious right saying they must be right. Why do you object to finding out the truth? If the dogma is correct (and I hope it is) why not find out for sure?

The unspoken assumption in these questions is that there's a number of trans people that's too many, or an acceptable rate at which trans people make themselves known in society.

Well, no it doesn't. According to Reuters the number of new diagnoses of gender dysphoria in the US went from about 15,000 in 2017 to 42,000 in 2021, almost triple in 5 years. According to the graph posted about left handedness, that went from about 4% of the population in 1915 to about 12% in 1945, about triple, but in 30 years. So it is not about the absolute numbers or some hypothetical "normal" number of trans people, it is the sudden sharp spike.

A massive spike of *checks notes* roughly 0.007% of the population.
It’s literally just a tiny fraction of americans that are slightly more willing to be open about their identity, a trickle that critics and alarmists are trying to portray as a flood.

Its nOt AbOUt AbsOLUtE nUmbErs

*posts in terms of absolute numbers*

This isn't clever either.

A more honest comparison would have been 0.004% to 0.012%, but saying the number of diagnoses tripled and recording them in the tens of thousands is easier to scaremonger with.

According to your own link, an even smaller amount of diagnosed patients actually received hormone treatment! And less than 300 got any kind of surgery!

Let's look at the numbers, shall we?

Patients 6-17 initiating puberty blockers:
2017: 633
2021: 1,390

Patients 6-17 initiating hormone therapy:
2017: 1,905
2021: 4,231 (0.001% of the US population, since this is the biggest number)

Patients 6-17 undergoing mastectomy:
2017: 238
2021: 282

So, out of the 42,000 diagnoses, 38,000 received zero medical interventions? Truly a staggering epidemic and not at all a moral panic.

Toorak, do you ever stop to think that the *perception* of what you call a sudden sharp spike in gender fluidity and dysphoria...might be simply a factor of a) there is far broader social acceptance in modern society (you don't necessarily get stoned or lynched for expressing it) and b) there are more advanced medical hormonal and surgical procedures to better achieve gender patient outcomes?

There was a "rally" of religious nutters recently in Sydney protesting LGBTQ+ and it was of course raised under the banner of "think about the kids". Yes indeed, as Robear said, think about the kids who are molested and assaulted in a religious society. Think of the underage forced marriages. Think of how these predominantly male nutters worldwide are trying to forcefully increase their cult/sect numbers through a heterosexual narrative and oppression of women and minorities.

May just be my hysterical {transphobic slur} brain but I also don't remember having to go to three different doctors to get diagnosed as left handed

The entire reason Jkr has to go on a PR tour is to try and make anyone who doesn't understand the consequences of the noxious positions she holds and causes she supports to simply take her word for it that she super pinky swears that she loves {transphobic slur} while simultaneously calling the movement for our civil rights a dangerous cult, and then go out into the world and launder her reputation, and simultaneously put people who are on the business end of it all (like me) on the defensive, again.

It's a cynical ploy and I'm continually disappointed, but not surprised people fall for it.

More evidence of her ridiculous essentialism today as she finds a study in her 'research' that suggests possibly worse outcomes for male heart failure patients when given blood transfusions from women with a history of pregnancies.

No causation is suggested in the study and the correlation is... possible... maybe...

It raises the question of what nightmare scenario of blood purity this future book may contain.

Citing individual studies as someone who is not in the field themselves is always suspect. Reminds me of how during Covid people were "doing their own research" and citing sentences from scientific papers out of context, or from random studies.

Metastudies and review articles are a useful tool for a non-scientist to get an idea of what the current scientific consensus in a field seems to be. If you are not familiar with reading scientific papers and the field, you cannot judge whether (1) the experimental data is solid, and (2) whether the conclusions drawn from that data are plausible. Whether it is published in a well-regarded journal with peer-review provides you with some "seal of quality", but there is plenty of examples of papers in well-regarded journals being fundamentally flawed and invalid.

That's why any paper, such as this blood transfusions one, includes sentences like these:

The findings of the current study are contrary to other studies suggesting that female recipients of male blood have an increased risk of in-hospital mortality and studies that do not suggest an association between donor sex and patient survival. It is challenging to explain the inconsistency between studies investigating the effect of donor sex on recipient outcomes.

and suggests next steps

Our findings have potential clinical implications. Although our results are observational and need confirmation in controlled trials, results are hypothesis generating. If indeed donor sex is a relevant factor, this should be included during the crossmatching procedure, as recently suggested. In stem cell and organ transplantation, donor sex is a well-established factor that can impact donor selection.

That's why as a scientist myself, I am not going to read random papers on climate change to inform my opinion. I accept the current scientific consensus. At some point, I may decide to inform my opinion further by investing the time to read the scientific literature on climate change - this would require at minimum, several weeks, if not months, of my time to be sufficiently familiar with this field.

Bruce wrote:

It raises the question of what nightmare scenario of blood purity this future book may contain.

Oh, this will get even better when you consider that vampirism is now actually supported by science:

Young Blood renews Old Mice

Peter Thiel enters the chat.

IMAGE(https://y.yarn.co/da478dc4-9bb8-4348-8b7e-2a60f3cf7ee2_text.gif)

Ceifid Falls wrote:

That's why as a scientist myself, I am not going to read random papers on climate change to inform my opinion. I accept the current scientific consensus. At some point, I may decide to inform my opinion further by investing the time to read the scientific literature on climate change - this would require at minimum, several weeks, if not months, of my time to be sufficiently familiar with this field.

As also a scientist, I can't emphasize this enough. The sign of a truly smart and self-aware scientist is that they know what they don't know.

I know I don't know enough about transition and all of the scientific and social things that need to happen before, during and after someone transitions to have it be a success. I don't know about all of the pressures that can happen before, during and after that could make it not a success.

That's why I trust the experts in the aggregate, and not the results that I get when I look at a Google search, or have a singular article pointed out at me as being a definitive answer.

The entire liberal perception of what it means to be trans from the POV of a trans person is informed by inspiration porn and Jerry Springer. Self-actualization and understanding your own identity don't matter, it's how much humiliation, voyeurism, suffering, and violence you're willing to put up with to "earn" transition.

The conservative perception is Silence of the Lambs.

Both are predicated on the idea that trans people are untrustworthy narrators of our own inner lives, and can only be verified as "real" by cis people who get to gatekeep who gets access to care by their own (transphobic) standards. The only difference is the liberal view grants that some people can be trans by these standards, the conservative view is that nobody can.

This is the entire bedrock of JKR's worldview re: trans people.

I do not think things are as black and white as some people are making it out to be. Here is a report from Canadian journalism show W5 about these issues that shows how complicated the issues can be.

W5

Bfgp wrote:

Toorak, do you ever stop to think that the *perception* of what you call a sudden sharp spike in gender fluidity and dysphoria...might be simply a factor of a) there is far broader social acceptance in modern society (you don't necessarily get stoned or lynched for expressing it) and b) there are more advanced medical hormonal and surgical procedures to better achieve gender patient outcomes?

Of course those things are definitely part of the reason that we see a spike in the diagnosis of gender fluidity and dysphoria. I think that we do not know that there is any difference in the actuality of gender dysphoria for those same reasons. I don't think that it can be seriously argued that gender dysphoria was not underdiagnosed in the past. The question is - are the people being diagnosed now just catching up to where it was in the population all along, or is there some element of over-diagnosing now that we should be concerned about?

There was a "rally" of religious nutters recently in Sydney protesting LGBTQ+ and it was of course raised under the banner of "think about the kids". Yes indeed, as Robear said, think about the kids who are molested and assaulted in a religious society. Think of the underage forced marriages. Think of how these predominantly male nutters worldwide are trying to forcefully increase their cult/sect numbers through a heterosexual narrative and oppression of women and minorities.

It is appalling how some bad actors (like religious leaders or politicians) when they get caught the narrative is how we shouldn't let one bad apple spoil the bunch. Whereas other groups, typically already disadvantaged groups, all get tarred with the same brush if one of them does something wrong.

There are numerous issues with that, and I am only about 3 minutes in.

First - What type of pre-transition counseling did they have? How much? How extensive? Was the sexual abuse disclosed or known about or was it discovered post-transition? What type of peer support did they have after the top surgery? What about family and society? Post surgery therapy?

Also note that when they talk about the US, Sweden, Finland and the US, they are comparing apples to oranges. In the US, they are making it harder to transition because Republicans (supported by JKR) would gladly eliminate all evidence of trans folk entirely and make it impossible for them to transition, or for anybody to give them any sort of support. Sweden and Finland are changing what they do because they feel it will be better for those transitioning.

I should also note that puberty blockers are not "experimental". Most judges and courts are completely clueless when it comes to science, and are swayed by whichever side can bring the most convincing expert.

As for Canada. They also fail to note that in some provinces (Quebec for example),, once you hit 14, you are entitled to complete 100% choice in your medical decisions, with 0 input from your parents if you wish it to be so. That is for mental health, reproductive health, EVERYTHING. So again, some serious issues with the framing that is being done.

Given the poor quality of the reporting done in the first 3 minutes, I have my doubts the rest of it will be any better, so I am not going to bother watching the rest.

I should also note that while W5 is a good news show, they are also interested in ratings, so a lot of their reports are also sensationalist. Toeing the line between journalism and editorial entertainment.

Toraak wrote:
Bfgp wrote:

Toorak, do you ever stop to think that the *perception* of what you call a sudden sharp spike in gender fluidity and dysphoria...might be simply a factor of a) there is far broader social acceptance in modern society (you don't necessarily get stoned or lynched for expressing it) and b) there are more advanced medical hormonal and surgical procedures to better achieve gender patient outcomes?

Of course those things are definitely part of the reason that we see a spike in the diagnosis of gender fluidity and dysphoria. I think that we do not know that there is any difference in the actuality of gender dysphoria for those same reasons. I don't think that it can be seriously argued that gender dysphoria was not underdiagnosed in the past. The question is - are the people being diagnosed now just catching up to where it was in the population all along, or is there some element of over-diagnosing now that we should be concerned about?

That is the exact same argument that was made prior to the expression of non-cis sexuality being given protection under the law and enshrined in human rights acts.

"Are they really gay?"
"Those kids, always following the trend."
"They are just doing it to be cool."
"They are just doing it to be edgy and rebel against society/family/school/church."

Those arguments were bullsh*t then, and they are bullsh*t now.

It's also the same arguments used for things like autism, ADHD and other mental illnesses.

"It was never this much until vaccines/TikTok/YouTube/the internet."
"Yes, it was, they just learned to hide it or they got the sh*t beat out of them"