Lindsay Ellis

Also, does anyone else find it a bit ironic that Rowling wrote a book under a male pen name, essentially performing transgenderism in the authorial sense?

Huh, the case of Tonks brings to mind my wondering about another of her newer books. It's a fairy tale type fantasy, in which the moral is monster in the bog is weird and scary but not evil, its prejudiced against, etc. Standard fare.

But what's curious is that the monster's species is practicing a nonbinary form of reproduction so after reading the summary I was left wondering whether it'd be somehow rooted in her transphobia; but of course a wikipedia summary wouldn't have that much detail. Did anybody run into articles analyzing The Ickabog from perspective of being aware of author's politics?

You could check your library for it and read it for us.

Suuure its on TPB but I can hardly find the time to read things I actually like I'm only bringing it up because the topic already veered into her, otherwise, fucks are really not present in sufficient quantities to be given out.

Edited by Adannor on Feb 22nd 2021 at 2:02:47 PM

I personally think that Rowling's strong opinions on trans issues didn't emerge until the furor over the Gender Recognition Act reform proposals brought the UK TER Fs out of the woodwork. Rowling pretty much says so in her essay, and I don't know why I wouldn't believe her. It's clear to me at least that the only person she's trying to deceive in those essays is herself into believing her beliefs aren't bigoted.

There may have been things in her old works that look pretty transphobic nowadays, but I think that those aren't indicative of any strongly held beliefs of hers, just slight indications of the biases she may have always had (e.g. ugly=evil), or just coincidences.

Fuck that detective book of hers is already out?

Damn.

It's the fifth one, actually.

And again, TER Fs didn't just appear out of nowhere five years ago (or whenever that term was coined). That's just the current internet conception of a movement that really was the central core of feminism for many decades since the fifties. This particular sentiment was always there under the surface with these old fashioned feminists. It's just that the increased visibility of trans people and their rights has brought that aspect of old form feminism into sharp contrast, and has caused them to rail against that aspect in particular.

And from that review I posted earlier:

This is very telling about Rowling's static form of feminism. By the time of the nineties, the place of gay women in feminism was already being firmly established, but trans women were still largely invisible and marginalized. This was the cutting edge of feminist thought in the nineties, but now it is outdated, to the point of being offensive.

If we can learn anything from this, it is that as progressives we can never really stand still in our ideas. Progressive thought evolves all the time, and it will eventually leave us behind if we don't keep up with it. And then we risk becoming another Rowling, stuck in a progressive past that does not meet the needs of the current times, and perhaps even becoming offensive in our own right.

This happens all the time, by the way. Before trans women, it was gay women who were excluded from feminism. And before that, it was black women. And even before that, it was lower class women. Feminism basically started as the domain of privileged straight white women, and had to adapt constantly over the past century to include more groups on their fringes. Trans people are just the latest group on that fringe.

Makes you wonder who we are overlooking now.

Edited by Redmess on Feb 22nd 2021 at 12:48:15 PM

Tonks is presented as non binary in Order of the Phoenix?

I don't remember that at all. Partially because OP is kinda awful and long and it drags, and partially because Tonks is barely a character in the books to begin with.

Also, while I'm all on the "Rowling = TERF territory", turning Tonks into a lover for Lupin into and a mom isn't because Rowling hates trans people. It's coz she thinks Motherhood is the greatest thing ever. It's also why everyone in the Epilogues of HP has kids.

So this time someone gets to actually be gay ''on the pages of the book'' instead of in interviews and offscreen? Progress, I guess.

Edited by Ghilz on Feb 22nd 2021 at 7:59:55 AM

I think the non-binary person in question was reading the character as non-binary coded as opposed to actually non-binary. And since we're talking about it, I hated the epilogue, but I don't like deathly hallows for a lot of reasons.

Edited by jjjj2 on Feb 22nd 2021 at 9:30:34 AM

Ace-aros?

That's also how I read that assessment. I'm just not sure how Tonks is ever non-binary coded. Beyond the broader "Can shapeshift" bit I guess?

Oh god, don't get me started on that.

I'm ace (not aro though) and dear god people get really weird and antsy about ace and aro people. "Someone who isn't interested in sex or who doesn't need a romantic relationship? But I've built my entire identity around relationships and sex and that means someone else has an existence that's completely alien to me? BURN THEM WITH FIRE."

Near the end of the video, Lindsay mentions that other people have made videos about the more problematic elements of Harry Potter that have been there since the beginning.

Does anyone have any links to some good videos about that stuff? Cuz it sounds really cool. A critical look back on the series' actual content and how it handles gender and race and all that. Not about Rowling specifically.

Edited by GNinja on Feb 22nd 2021 at 5:09:06 PM

Uh, just to check, is this thread about J.K. Rowling?

Not specifically, but Lindsay did release a video on transphobia, which Rowling herself is pretty intertwined.

Yeah, same here, being aro.

Feel kinda bad now assuming this one dude was ace because he had this fae, otherworldly detached air to him, like, "Yep, that's what an ace person looks like."

You can't tell someone's sexuality by their looks, despite what teens will try to tell you.

Yes, hence why I don't feel too good about it now.

Dang I'm glad to see the blogosphere finally take note on the non existence assult and trans statistics are in the UK prison system. I worked for a trans charity in 2019 and did much the same research Lindsey did here, plus reaching out to some contacts in prisions I worked with, and the data just doesn't exist. And seemingly there's apathy towards recording that data.

When the assaults happened and recorded any useful detail of the supposed perpetrators are seemingly not logged (or made avaliable to be logged for policy review). The data just seemingly didn't exist to say the gender identities of purpetrators, what gendered facility they were in, weather they were being denied hormones or not, if there were multiple perpetrators or one, how these statistics compared to cis prison populations of either gender, or even if the perpetrators were inmates of the prision or employees.

Edited by Whowho on Feb 23rd 2021 at 12:33:01 PM

This just reminds me of when Jim Sterling had video about stocks and then thread was for several pages complaining about Wall Street and then mod came in and was like "This is getting off topic" and locked thread ^^;

That doesn't really make sense when people are discussing the topic discussed on the show. What, are they going to lock the John Oliver thread for talking about US politics next?

To some extent, it doesn't matter whether or not you (or any binary person, and I apologize if I'm misclassifying you as binary) can see the coding; just the fact that the extra layer of possible interpretation exists to provide encouragement to non-binary readers is important. In the long term, the portrayal of non-binary people will shift from subtext to text in future works as those non-binary readers become content creators.

Edited by thok on Feb 23rd 2021 at 8:30:03 AM

I think there's just enough there that applicability comes into play. The shape shifting is certainly interesting in the context of transsexuality.

Lindsay notes that despite the video having more comments in it in 24h than the Borat one in 2 months it has much worse views. Like if YouTube is burying it