a thoughtful web.
Good ideas and conversation. No ads, no tracking.   Login or Take a Tour!
comment by coffeesp00ns
coffeesp00ns  ·  1358 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Pubski: July 8, 2020

You're welcome, glad it stuck. Some of the stuff you've said stuck with me over the years (positively).

    but the people trying the hardest to champion usually end up being the ones being corrected the most because they're willing to put in the work.

The important part about being one of these people is to be okay with being corrected. Every community I've encountered, or personally been a part of, has been very giving to people who fuck up, so long as you correct yourself and keep moving. "Sorry, my bad," goes a long way.

I did a bit of deep dive to see where this discussion built from, and I have to say I'm very disappointed that TNG posted an article by a person whose notoriety mostly comes from preferring that people like me don't exist. I think it behooves us to consider who writes articles, and what their motives might be, before we post them.

I would assert that this article is a much better read on the situation.

It's important to remember that trans people are, as has historically been the case (see Weimar Berlin, 1920s America, 1950s America), the canary in the coal mine of conservative attempts to pull the Overton window back in their direction. As a minority, we are easy to vilify, especially those of us who are gender non-conforming. We are not a part of regular experience, and so we are easily turned into a bogeyman. That's what the "Gender Critical" movement does, and it has reared its ugly head quite publicly in the UK.

The knock-on result of these current efforts (If they come for the trans people, and you do nothing because you are not a trans person) is that anyone who does not fit a conservative ideal of "man" and "woman" becomes subject to ridicule and lost opportunity. Already cis women are getting harassed by men for "going into the wrong bathroom". Fuck, my old masters teacher, a midwestern mom, has had this experience. the only "gender nonconforming" feature she has is a caesar haircut.

An incredible amount of the people who signed that letter are bad news. There have been some great rereads of Rowling's books with her current views in mind, and well, they get ugly. A race of human-like creatures who love to be servants and don't know what they would do if they were freed. a race of long-nosed caricatures who have few rights but control all the money. A woman who shapeshift but has "mannish hands" (a classic transphobic trope). Atwood has actively been part of attempts to silence women who accused a UBC professor of sexual assault.

These people are not good company. They have a right to say what they believe, but they don't have a right to freedom from criticism, or freedom from the consequences of saying those things, nor do they have a right to a public forum to say them. Free speech absolutism is the privileged opinion of people for which there are no actual consequences when they have an academic argument around "do Black people deserve to be beaten by police", and "Do trans people deserve rights". It is the privilege of those who believe they are unaffected.

Until, well, they are affected.





kleinbl00  ·  1358 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I read Harry Potter last year for the first time last year. The first book is great. The second book is okay. The third book is... meh. Everything after that is fucking terrible. My wife and kid are grinding their way through the books now and I've refused to read Order of the Phoenix when my wife gets sick of it because it's just so goddamn awful.

JK Rowling is a monarchist starfucker who is all about the proles knowing their place. I wasn't nearly as focused on her bad ideas about gender; her bad ideas about society were more than enough.

That scene at the end of the last movie? Where Harry and Malfoy are like waving at each other at the train station?

Fuck Harry Potter.

user-inactivated  ·  1358 days ago  ·  link  ·  
This comment has been deleted.
kleinbl00  ·  1357 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I observed exactly this at community college, when the Running Start kids totally dunked on the retraining kids with their fuckin' lightsaber deathly hallows stickers.

Legit heard a 18-year-old friend refer to our instructor (10 years my junior) as "such a fucking Millennial." Called him a slacker, griped that his face was always in his phone, and made fun of his facial hair. Kinda feel like kids these days would totally vote Eisenhower if they could.