I dont think Rowling was good enough at building a world to get that far. Beyond the school, there just isn’t much there.
I think you’re right about how people tend to read. We tend to read books as though they are making arguments. So maybe your point is unavoidable: people tend to read novels as though they are making arguments, so novels should be written with that in mind. I guess I’m just wishing that things were different.
On the one hand, there’s an issue with people finding the content offensive. Lovecraft spent a lot of time harping on about inferior races and so on. I imagine it can be quite jarring to come across that. The argument then proceeds, I suppose, to promoting or adapting his work as being tantamount to failing to oppose or censure racism. I’m less sympathetic to that. It’s one thing where the author’s alive, but a lot of Lovecraft’s stuff is public domain (apparently there’s controversy). I don’t believe any adaptations of Lovecraft’s work have reproduced his racism (except in the abstracted and, frankly, slightly wanky Eng.Lit sense that fear of The Other permeates all of his work), so I think it becomes a little unreasonable to object.
But if you look at fantasy, it’s undeniable that an implicit race essentialism permeates the genre, and SF to an extent (looking at you, Star Trek). It’s not that reading one book will turn you into a phrenologist, but a person steeped in fantasy might well become more sympathetic to notions of ingrained personality traits and characteristics. Ultimately, I don’t think any good can come of a censorious approach, except with totally egregious stuff, but I also don’t think it can be dismissed completely.
Besides that, as Orwell said, all art is propaganda. Viewed through an uncharitable lens, Harry Potter is a high-school jock who becomes a cop. You don’t have to get too fancy to think that’s not so admirable. And I think this kind of analysis is much less objectionable with YA stuff, even if YA appears to be what most people in their twenties read now. Art may not brainwash adults, but it can certainly be formative of children.
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It’s not as starkly aspirational as Star Trek, no, but the heavy handed contrasting between Harry Potter in the “real” world, where he’s abused by his guardians, and the relief he feels when he gets to the utopia that is the school certainly to me seems like an argument that the hope is the world can be more like the school.
Good, thorough response to the Rowling piece here:
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This is very good, thanks for the link.
That rebuttal nailed it.
What are people’s thoughts on underage minors? I am strongly opposed but would like to hear from some on the board.
Also should a transgender inform someone they are dating of their history? I was recently called a bigot for stating that I believe they should.
Transsexual is an offensive term. Use transgender.
Of course they should inform someone they are dating. Doesn’t have to be on day one of course.
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The piece I linked to states:
Doctors don’t diagnose kids as trans unless they show persistent dysphoria, and have gone through therapy for years.
Now, I am not personally in possession of concrete evidence that the claim about years of therapy is universally true. I have seen celebrities like Graham Linehan and Robert Webb (Jez from Peep Show) claim furiously that it’s false. They have not presented any evidence that I’m aware of. Does your attitude change if it is true that children aren’t medically recommended to transition without years of therapy?
If it isn’t, why not?
The piece I linked also features this image:
As a Simpsons fan, I can tell you that macro is missing a ‘so’, but as far as I’m aware it doesn’t contain any other errors. I would - no bullshit - be interested to hear if you think you can authoritatively contradict the bodies it mentions.
It probably wouldn’t change. (I’d have to think about it)
I feel like often times parents are making a choice that has more to do with them than the child.
What if the child changes their mind?
My understanding is that undergoing the change means you won’t experience the sexual sensations that all other persons do.
Also with regards to the child changing their mind I feel like there is a large amount of contradiction in the ideology. Gender roles need upgrading but also we believe them so strongly that someone should feel like they have to transition?
I wholeheartedly agree an adult should have freedom to do what they want but a child?
This is something I hear a lot from Gender Critical people. This idea that there’s a huge contingent of parents out there who are like encountering their son playing with a Barbie and being like "Playing with a doll, eh? Do you think you might be trans? (enthusiastic nodding)
I’ve never seen any evidence of it, nor does it seem intuitive to me, like, at all. Trans activists tend to take the position that That. Does. Not. Happen. and personally, I think there’s like 7 billion+ people out there, lot of psychos, who knows. I don’t see the point in making ourselves hostages to fortune. Maybe there’s one or two absolute fucking weirdos out there doing that to their kids. But people do a lot of shit to their kids. I feel like if that was an actual phenomenon, if that was some trend, we’d have heard about it from people other than those who position themselves against trans rights in multiple other ways. I also think the years of therapy might also be a bulwark against it.
What if the child changes their mind?
Further to the years of therapy mentioned before, the piece claims:
The NHS says that less than 1% of people detransition, some of those go on to retransition, and most cite transphobia and lack of family support for their reason to detransition, not “transition regret”. That is not to say that people who do regret and other detrans people can be ignored at all. They often have all the same healthcare requirements as trans people, and sometimes even less support. It does mean that they should not be used as a tool to unempathetically wield against trans healthcare. That would be like pointing out that because up to 20% of people regret knee surgery (a regret rate over 20x higher than transition), we should ban it for everyone. If you genuinely wanted to decrease detransition rates and help detrans people you would increase funding for trans healthcare, remove the strict pressures on trans people to “transition the whole way or have no rights”, and improve LGBT education.
So I dunno — accidents happen sometimes? Shit goes wrong sometimes? I don’t see this apparently minuscule rate of false positives as a meaningful argument against the presumed (100% — minuscule) rate of false negatives implied by doing otherwise.
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I’m of the belief that women are sometimes biased because of bad relationships with men and a culture that has failed them in numerous instances. I’m not studied on the matter so I will be happy to be corrected with facts.
Also, the stats you posted with regards to changing one’s mind; I didn’t see anything about age groups. Children are exceptionally vulnerable and credulous. How would we know if they truly wanted to go back? What would that even mean? It all seems like way too much for a child to process which leaves me thinking that its the adults doing the thinking. Do you think it would be wrong to teach them to wait until they are 18?
Ive read stories of children as young as 8 being chemically castrated and I just dont think I can ever agree with that. Feels like they are being oversexualized to even consider this.
Thank you for conversing with me on this. I just wonder if we truly accepted gender fluidity and everything short of the actual surgery would people really feel the need to change?
I don’t even know how to deal with this, as I don’t know what it’s intended to suggest. What are you supposing this to imply?
‘Credulous’ there is, to me — like I said, no bullshit — kind of a red flag. It seems to implicitly buy in to this notion of a wave of parents urging their kids to transition. I think it’s more your job to show me that’s happening than it is mine to show you it’s not.
I’ll take a risk and depart from the piece, and tell you about David Reimer. Actually, I won’t bother doing all that typing; I’ll just tell you, Go read that Wikipedia page.
Have you read it yet? OK, cool. David Reimer is something GC/anti-trans people will sometimes bring up. Look at this kid, they’ll say. Urged and consciously conditioned to conform to a gender role contrary to his biological sex, and look what happened. And yeah, what happened there wasn’t great.
But what was the cause of what happened? Surely, his accidental castration played a role. But that’s not what we mean. What played the role we’re talking about here was not listening to the child. This Dr Money guy told these parents to raise him as a girl and instructed them to ignore his protestations to the contrary. There’s nothing there trans activists need explain and much they can point to as confirmation of their case. The parents should have listened to the child.
And — to tie a knot — David Reimer killed himself, sure. But so did his twin brother. I’m not an expert, but my understanding is even the experts don’t know how large a role genetics plays in depression, suicide etc. But I understand they’re fairly sure it’s not irrelevant.
The case for allowing transitioning pre-puberty is that puberty brings irrevocable physical changes to the child, to variable extents. It can be avoided, to variable extents, by early intervention. I’m again of the view that the false positives this approach yields don’t outweigh the false negatives yours does.
About being ‘oversexualised’, I mean, come on, man. Trans people are just people. They’re not sex freaks, they’re not hypersexual. Suggesting that a child may be trans is not ‘sexualising’ them. It’s cough cough unhelpfully reductive to consider the trans issue solely in terms of genitalia and sexual desire.
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She will ignore porn being tweeted at children but she will not ignore someone being mean to her online
https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1279755418621878272?s=21
Hypothetically, let’s say Olympic Sports get to where Gold Silver and Bronze are all transgender athletes. Is that still cool? Do you create a third category for women born without penises (not sure what this is called now)?
One thing you’re leaving out here is that it is also based on the idea that some aspects of transitioning are irreversible. Obviously there are also some that are not, but I would hope that those are less controversial than the ones which are. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to favor waiting in many cases when it comes to the irreversible stuff.
Secondly, there is nothing about the idea that the percentage should be low that is incompatible with the idea that waiting can be harmful. There is no reason someone can’t believe both of those things.
It’s a fucking tough calculation. You have to weigh the damage of waiting vs the chance and damage of making a wrong decision. So, knowing how frequent “wrong” decisions are (to the extent that is knowable) is still important in the decision making process even if one truly believes that waiting is harmful.
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Looks like the mask is completely off now
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This bullying is pathological at this point. Does JK really have nothing better to do?
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