The "Cancellation" of J.K. Rowling

[Specter Von Baren]

I've been eating that popcorn for a decade plus, and let me tell you, addressing the contradictions isn't going to help. It's not a contradiction of principles, it's a purely semantic debate, there is no resolution without one or both groups setting aside their expressed identity.

Mm, I still believe that eventually there won't be enough power to go around and the groups will start trying to eat each other from necessity. That or the more unfortunate possibility, that rational thought will have been so beaten out of people that the groups won't have any windmills to call dragons anymore and so the only people they can fight are each other.

 

[lil devils x]

Mm, I still believe that eventually there won't be enough power to go around and the groups will start trying to eat each other from necessity. That or the more unfortunate possibility, that rational thought will have been so beaten out of people that the groups won't have any windmills to call dragons anymore and so the only people they can fight are each other.

Thinking that "power" is what they want is part of the problem. The goal isn't to be " superior" to others, or to " do the same awful things that were done to us" it is to end the idea that anyone should have " power" over others in the first place. It is to END the inequalities so that no one is oppressed. The idea that it is a power struggle means you don't understand why these groups exist in the first place.

 

[tstorm823]

Mm, I still believe that eventually there won't be enough power to go around and the groups will start trying to eat each other from necessity. That or the more unfortunate possibility, that rational thought will have been so beaten out of people that the groups won't have any windmills to call dragons anymore and so the only people they can fight are each other.

The opposite would be more effective. If these groups no longer felt a need for change in the world, a lot of the arguments that cause them to butt heads would just fall away. A lot of the arguments around LGBTQ issues are genuinely irrational, but those arguments don't exist to be rational, they exist to be persuasive. The entire "born this way" narrative is questionable at best. I don't know how many people actually buy the idea that deep in your genes you were determined from birth to be attracted to specific genitals or to want to be called a certain pronoun. But asking someone "oh, so you could choose to be gay?" is a proven method for shutting up a homophobe, because they refuse to say yes to that, so the idea caught on. I'm certain many reasonable trans women would agree that a trans woman and a biological woman aren't the same thing in fact, but not if the push for equal treatment and equal rights under the law requires that claim.

Like, if you look at Rowling's arguments after the initial tweet, she's not debating the definition of woman because she cares deeply about the meaning of words. She's attempting to defend a group of people, women, that she feels needs defended. And she's not necessarily wrong there. If we lived in a world where she didn't feel women needed defending, she wouldn't be making her argument that way. It's not really a debate on "what is a woman", the truth of that doesn't matter in the face of the needs of the people using the term.

 

[Specter Von Baren]

The opposite would be more effective. If these groups no longer felt a need for change in the world, a lot of the arguments that cause them to butt heads would just fall away. A lot of the arguments around LGBTQ issues are genuinely irrational, but those arguments don't exist to be rational, they exist to be persuasive. The entire "born this way" narrative is questionable at best. I don't know how many people actually buy the idea that deep in your genes you were determined from birth to be attracted to specific genitals or to want to be called a certain pronoun. But asking someone "oh, so you could choose to be gay?" is a proven method for shutting up a homophobe, because they refuse to say yes to that, so the idea caught on. I'm certain many reasonable trans women would agree that a trans woman and a biological woman aren't the same thing in fact, but not if the push for equal treatment and equal rights under the law requires that claim.

Like, if you look at Rowling's arguments after the initial tweet, she's not debating the definition of woman because she cares deeply about the meaning of words. She's attempting to defend a group of people, women, that she feels needs defended. And she's not necessarily wrong there. If we lived in a world where she didn't feel women needed defending, she wouldn't be making her argument that way. It's not really a debate on "what is a woman", the truth of that doesn't matter in the face of the needs of the people using the term.

Well my feeling on this is that the most prominent reason the two groups don't clash much right now is because they have a common opponent and people become far more lenient on things others do when they are their comrades. If the movements were still predominantly based on the positive then I'd agree that they might just settle in with each other comfortably, but we both see how so much of the rhetoric has become acidic and about breaking something down. Like... if you look back on the revolutions of the past where they were based on the hatred of a system or group that they get blinded by it so that they don't think ahead to what the world will look like after their foe is gone. Then once the common foe is gone and they suddenly have to think about how to make things work, all the things that they don't agree on all come crashing down at once.

I guess if I were to give an analogy, it's when you're pushing hard against a door that you can't get open and then suddenly someone on the other side unlocks it and it causes your momentum to continue forward and make you fall down.

 

[tstorm823]

I guess if I were to give an analogy, it's when you're pushing hard against a door that you can't get open and then suddenly someone on the other side unlocks it and it causes your momentum to continue forward and make you fall down.

I think the clash between feminism and trans activism is more like two groups pushing opposite ways against a door they both think shouldn't exist in the first place.

 

[Specter Von Baren]

I think the clash between feminism and trans activism is more like two groups pushing opposite ways against a door they both think shouldn't exist in the first place.

Could you go into more detail on what you mean? I'm not sure I'm interpreting what you're saying the way you intended.

 

[tstorm823]

Could you go into more detail on what you mean? I'm not sure I'm interpreting what you're saying the way you intended.

The door would be the segregation of behavior between sexes by gender norms. Neither group is particularly fond of that door being closed, both sides would agree that sex shouldn't determine or limit one's behavior. But one group sees the problem as assigning default behavior to gender, and the other sees the problem as assigning default gender to sexes, so their attempts to break down a world split by gender defaults end up pushing opposite directions.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Cancelling JK is one of the most inconsequential things that could happen in my life. I'm just having fun watching my girlfriend being almost physically torn between being a Gurffyndur and not wanting to offend anyone.

 

[Jarrito3002]

Get over this canceling thing. It is the most overhyped thing ever cause lets be real it never works and barely ever works. So far the only official cancels I can see are Weinstein and Cosby and that was decades after they already did more damage at that point.

JK Rowling will be fine. She will stay rich, write under a different psuedonym, and she is not going to jail or some weird trial by "mob justice" of people calling her a dumbass cause her views of trans is some classic fear mongering "think of the woman" tactics. I mean if the mob justice now a days is calling some mean on a social media page we as man kind are limp wristed and gotten soft in our "mob justice".

The only good thing about this is the level of petty of blocking Stephen King cause he posted something she disagrees with. JK went full Karen right there and it will never not be funny.

 

[Hawki]

Cancelling JK is one of the most inconsequential things that could happen in my life. I'm just having fun watching my girlfriend being almost physically torn between being a Gurffyndur and not wanting to offend anyone.

Maybe she should just choose another house.

 

[Specter Von Baren]

The only good thing about this is the level of petty of blocking Stephen King cause he posted something she disagrees with. JK went full Karen right there and it will never not be funny.

I'm fairly certain Dwarv showed that it was King who threw the first punch in this.

This was just after he retweeted J.K. Rowlings tweet and then some-one replied to him calling for him to address the "Terf Tweet"

Retweeted by Stephen King


Tweet directed at him the same day

 

[Kwak]

I'm fairly certain Dwarv showed that it was King who threw the first punch in this.

Not really. It's comparable to someone asking 'vaccines - poison or medically and scientifically sound?', him saying 'the latter', and an antivaccinater getting all offended.

 

[Jarrito3002]

I'm fairly certain Dwarv showed that it was King who threw the first punch in this.

Again maybe Twitter is weird but again none of that is directed at her. The TERF tweet could anyone TERF is not a new thing. Like JK is not involved in the convo so no is boxing unless this is some sort feint or a biggest whiff in history.

 

[Terminal Blue]

I feel like sometimes the word TERF gets thrown at people who aren't TERFs, and would be better described as something else.. like "transphobes"

This isn't one of those cases though, JK Rowling is a TERF and a transphobe.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Erm...ok, sure, she's transphobic, but doesn't she have to be a Radical Feminist as well to be a TERF? Or is "radical feminist" in TERF different from "Radical Feminist"?

Cause googling "JK Rowling radical feminism" gets me lots of results from last month about her being a TERF, and the odd one from last December about her being a TERF, but nothing about Radical Feminism pops up, at least not right away.

I think I'm missing something.

 

[Jarrito3002]

Erm...ok, sure, she's transphobic, but doesn't she have to be a Radical Feminist as well to be a TERF? Or is "radical feminist" in TERF different from "Radical Feminist"?

Cause googling "JK Rowling radical feminism" gets me lots of results from last month about her being a TERF, and the odd one from last December about her being a TERF, but nothing about Radical Feminism pops up, at least not right away.

I think I'm missing something.

TERF is an acronym that spells out trans-exclusionary radical feminist. So maybe your searches are just bunching them all together.

 

[Agema]

Erm...ok, sure, she's transphobic, but doesn't she have to be a Radical Feminist as well to be a TERF? Or is "radical feminist" in TERF different from "Radical Feminist"?

In most common practice as far as I can see, TERF is a pejorative term for anyone saying stuff trans activists don't like who otherwise hold left-liberal / progressive views.

There are also actual proper anti-trans radical feminists, who IIRC tend to be second wave feminists.

 

[Worgen]

We also are supposed to wipe after peeing, unlike men, our urethras are just holes, so we have nothing to " shake it off with" and in order to keep the urine away from our Vagina we have to wipe or jump up and down or try to remain balanced like that for an extended period of time in order to air dry.

I would argue that men should be wiping anyway since just shaking doesn't get rid of all excess liquid. Maybe its less noticeable if you are cut.

 

[Terminal Blue]

Erm...ok, sure, she's transphobic, but doesn't she have to be a Radical Feminist as well to be a TERF?

I guess you're right. After all, second wave radical feminism was incredibly extreme. It gave us dangerous and radical ideas like..

* Rape and violence are serious problems facing women.
* Sexual objectification of women is harmful to them.
* Women should be able to do everything men can do.
* Women should not be discriminated against at work.
* Men and women should participate in family life as equals.
* Abortion should be legal.

Whew. That's some challenging stuff right there..

Joking aside, radical feminism is an archaic term. During the second wave, it referred to the distinction between feminists who were primarily interested in legal equality and institutional change, and feminists who sought wider societal changes to improve the lives of women. Today, other than a few tired hold-ons like Christina Hoff Sommers, almost all feminists largely recognise the need for societal change to improve the lives of women, and thus almost all feminists are radical feminists. The "radical feminist" in the acronym TERF doesn't refer to the extreme or unjustifiable nature of a person's feminism, it is a self-identification used by certain schools or traditions of second wave feminists but which can also be applied to people who use the same arguments and rhetoric as those second wave radical feminists.

As mentioned, trans-exclusionary feminism has its origins in separatist feminism (and to a lesser extent in religious feminism). Separatist feminism was a form of radical feminism that held that existing societal institutions were saturated with misogynist and male-supremacist ideology and symbolism, and that the only way to live a liberated life as a woman was to separate yourself from those institutions and, to the greatest degree possible, from contact with men. Instead, women should try to build a distinctive "female" culture. Separatist feminism rejected the idea that differences between men and women were socially constructed or could be overcome, they saw these differences as part of an immutable symbolism in which femaleness is life and maleness is death and domination.

There are still people (particularly in the lesbian community) who identify strongly with separatist feminism. They are generally cults of personality built around a handful of academics and ex-academics who were active during the 1980s. What has happened in the UK, however, is that this small minority has achieved some social traction outside of an academic setting, mostly through the influence of a handful of media figures and lobbyists. Their language and their arguments have passed into semi-public knowledge and been taken up as a kind of right-on feminist stance by broadly liberal, middle-aged, middle-class white feminists who probably aren't ready to hear that trans women symbolically "rape" women's bodies by existing, but are for some reason very afraid that trans women will rape womens bodies if they're allowed anywhere near them.

When you're talking about how gays and lesbians are threatened by trans ideology, you're using a TERF argument. When you argue that transmen are trying to escape the limitations of womanhood in a patriarchal society, you're using a TERF argument. When you throw words like "trans-identified" into your discourse, you're literally borrowing the words that trans-exclusive radical feminists use to discredit trans people.

If your feminism is borrowed from radical feminists, then it's radical feminism. Radical feminism doesn't mean you have to cut your hair short, refuse to wear makeup or burn your bra, it means your feminism derives from an intellectual tradition of radical feminism, which Rowling's certainly does (so does mine, for that matter, it's just that I didn't stop reading books in 1994). The fact that you can come out with radical feminist arguments and also be a heterosexual millionaire with deeply conservative views about gender is, in one sense, a great victory, but also a sad indictment of how pathetic the things people thought were radical in the 70s and 80s actually were.

In most common practice as far as I can see, TERF is a pejorative term for anyone saying stuff trans activists don't like who otherwise hold left-liberal / progressive views.

If true, is this a problem?

Also, by "trans activists" you mean "out trans people" right?

 

[Hawki]

Get over this canceling thing. It is the most overhyped thing ever cause lets be real it never works and barely ever works. So far the only official cancels I can see are Weinstein and Cosby and that was decades after they already did more damage at that point.

I'm sorry, but that's incredibly naieve.

Just in the paper today, I read about the withdrawal of a journal article for being "racist" by highlighting the issue that Australians are travelling to the Philipines and sexually abusing women there. The author wanted to bring attention to the issue. Apparently it was deemed "racist" because it's...written by a white male, who's highlighting the disgusting behaviour of other white males? The publisher withdrew the article, pledged their support to fight against racism and ableism, and promised that they'd never re-publish it. Personally, I'd have thought that trying to cover up sexual abuse was counter-intuitive to fighting these "isms," but what do I know, I'm just a straight white male.

You can say "that's just one isolated event," but when these events keep happening over, and over, and over, then sooner or later, the pattern can't be ignored. And every so often I get a laugh out of things (such as when an author who championed cancel culture got cancelled himself), but it stopped being funny ages ago.

The one thing I will agree on is that cancel culture does have a backfire effect, because the idea of "forbidden goods" is a selling point. Again, to cite a recent example, Fawlty Towers. One of the episodes was removed temporarily because the character of the major uses some...iffy, language. The entire point of the scene is for the audience to laugh at the major, in an episode that has Basil tiptoeing around German guests ("don't mention the war!") who'd prefer to just be treated normally. In the time afterwards, Amazon sold out of all the Fawlty Towers DVDs.