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.
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Not to pivot, but it is worth noting that at CPAC, a speaker explicitly called for the eradication of “transgenderism.”
This is why it’s important not to mince words and excuse who Rowling is and what she’s about. This is why we used the word “exterminationist” on the podcast, because the mainstream conservative position on this issue is exterminationist.
Truly some of the crap that is seen coming out of the current right wing culture wars in the US is horrendous. There is a recent John Stewart video that is more focused on the gun problem, but he does draw a fairly devastating comparison with one republican legislator who wants to ban drag shows "to protect children" but won't do anything about the number one cause of child fatalities (firearms).
Anyway, as for who JKR is and what she's about, is anyone listening to the new podcast?
Truly some of the crap that is seen coming out of the current right wing culture wars in the US is horrendous.
John Oliver's recent episode on Ron DeSantis covers some of this (e.g. banning of a children's book on gay penguins (Tango makes Three))
I think Jon Stewart's podcast covers the hypocritical right wing outrage machine quite well.
Anyway, as for who JKR is and what she's about, is anyone listening to the new podcast?
this person did, the article is a well written analysis of the first 3 episodes Washington Post
Hey, so, question: did Activision Blizzard ever clean up their act in any substantial way? 'Cause about a year ago everyone was up in arms about the rampant sexual harassment going on there, I guess they made a couple multi-million dollar out of court settlements that took care of the legal end of it, but like... do we have any reason to believe they actually cleaned house, or did they just pay the Being a sh*tty Immoral Company Tax and move on with business as usual?
I ask because Diablo IV is in beta, I see a lot of people playing it, and I don't see a peep of the kind of uproar Hogwarts Legacy got. I don't want to support a company rife with sexual harassment any more than I want to support the anti-trans causes JK Rowling pours money into, so like... what do?
I mean, you can not buy it. I'm not, and I do know of others who aren't because they don't think Blizzard has actually changed yet. But there hasn't been a big "you can't support Blizzard and call yourself a feminist ally" thing like there has been with HL and trans people. And to my knowledge Blizzard isn't giving tons of money to political movements advocating for the sexual harrasment of women, or publicly stated that they view interest in their franchise as people silently supporting their efforts to sexually harass women.
From speaking to the wife of someone who recently started working there, they are sincerely trying. I don't know how successful they will be but there's been a lot of internal change.
So, the last episode of the JKR podcast is out and is an interesting listen. If you want to know from her mouth what she believes, this is the episode to listen to as the host puts a lot of the criticism of JKR to her.
My take, in short is that JKR will probably never see trans women as the same as biological women. She does believe that genuinely transgendered people deserve respect and protection. She is not calling for the eradication or elimination of trans people, as some have claimed in this thread. She is concerned about the recent explosion in trans identifying youth and thinks that many of them are being put down a path that will ultimately be harmful to them.
I think that a lot of her fear is based on a small number of incidents. It is a truism in legal circles that bad facts make bad laws. For example, the bathroom thing. There is a report of an incident where a self identifying trans woman tried to assault a girl in a bathroom. For JKR, this is justification for denying the dignity of the vast majority of transwomen who would never assault anyone and just want to pee in peace. Not that she sees it that way, instead she says that we are preferring the comfort of one group of people (trans women) over another group of people (presumably all other women).
Personally, I think many of the issues deal with the difficulty of trying to apply the general to the specific, and vice versa. I think that it is transphobic to say that all trans women are not real women. I don't think that it is transphobic to doubt the sincerity of transition of particular individuals. For example, I doubt the sincerity of transition of the individual rapist who, after being convicted of rape, claimed to be a trans woman and was put in a women's prison where they raped again. Using that person to justify laws that would discriminate against all trans people is obviously wrong. However, I think that it is also wrong to use some sort of ideology to insist that because this rapist said they are a woman, they must be and that any denial of that is transphobic.
Yeah as Stengh there's not the same specific movement against D4 as there is against Hogwarts and without that there's not a lot of oomph behind individual action. Which doesn't mean there's no room for people's own discomfort with it of course. It doesn't help that the issues with D4 are more or less the background radiation of all industries so it's easy to both forget and just sort of give up on the issue.
My general go to stance on things like this where an individuals aren't necessarily going to make a difference is to at least think about playing/watching something and running a free marketing campaign for it. It's one thing to enjoy something with issues and another to write long posts about how much you love it with a footnote at the end about how it sure is a shame about this one bad thing about it. It is possible to enjoy something quietly and not talk about it in places where you are going to perticapate in the broader positive word of mouth that drives sales
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