Smirky little goon
This is not just snide, it’s stupid and wrong.
JoAnne Harris is a novelist and the Chair of the Society of Authors. Some members of that society think it’s crappy that such a snide cheerleader for trans ideology is in that role.
As for the substance of her comment: nobody is claiming Rowling gave Daniel Radcliffe a job or that he has to share her beliefs out of gratitude. The point is that he would be a nobody if it were not for Rowling: her Potter books and the cult around them are why the films were made. The point is not that he has to agree with her but that he could just shut up about her. It’s not a general rule, it’s certainly not a law, it’s just a feeling that in the circumstances it’s ugly and kind of misogynist for him to keep trash-talking about her. If she were a Nazi or a Trump supporter I wouldn’t say that, but the hysterical martyrdom frenzy over trans women is a very different kind of controversy, and I think he could just figure that out and then button his lip.
Hell, he could even have, y’know, shown her the respect of reaching out to her to have a private discussion off-line. I’m sure she would’ve been happy to entertain such prior to the public mewling. And he might’ve even learned not to take the TRA’s words for what JKR’s actual positions are. (Pretty sure neither he nor Watson could outline them accurately.)
So few of the Righteous can. “She must have said something awful at some point, since everyone says she did, right?” How could this not be true when everybody knows it is? Smoke, fire, etc. Hell, if they had anything awful she said to actually quote, we would know it off by heart, because TAs would be rebroadcasting it 24/7. But no. It’s all code and dog whistles. Nothing direct. Of course, as we’ve all come to learn, even mentioning women’s sex based rights, or saying that sex is real, is hateful, bigotted, and transphobic.
These are allies of a movement that says we should “be kind” to convicted rapists who discover that they’re “trans” after they decide they don’t like being in prison with their fellow males.
I think they’re pretty much hopeless as human beings.
The person who owned the plumbing company and paid for your apprenticeship is owed *something* (at least your silence) even if they turn out to be Vladimir Putin… Joanne ain’t even close.
I read the Telegraph article. It’s a short and perfectly reasonable article, saying unsurprising things, and it’s being extensively distorted by Sara Gibbs in her commentary on Twitter, focusing on the minutiae of wording to claim that the author thinks Radcliffe is “really” Potter, and that Radcliffe wasn’t actually talking about Rowling. But I guess distortions of what people said is normal behavior for transactivists.
The trio do not owe her their political agreement, nor even ‘shutting up’ about her in my opinion. What they owe her is the courtesy of actually understanding her stance before going public about her. The wild inaccuracies in what they say about her however shows either a lazy perusal of her writings on the subject, or no perusal at all.
This might be a good time for a quote from All About Eve: It’s time the piano realizes it has not written the concerto.
Seriously, if the plumber was given his first job, and it made his career, it’s likely he would consider himself a loyal, grateful friend to the one who gave him that job. I work with and around a number of tradespeople, and it isn’t uncommon to hear them, even 40 or 50 years later, referring to the person who gave them their first job with loving, even tearful, memories.
It is a sign of the times that the trans activists could simply say “transphobe” and have so many people turn on someone, even in many cases, someone they’ve felt respect for, they liked, they spent time with. Now, if the cool kids decide it’s time to dogpile, why, the only possible thing is to join the dogpile!
I don’t expect the plumber I employed 20 years ago to feel grateful towards me.
However it’s not been given a passing job, it’s been given a huge, career-turning break. I don’t know how grateful Rowling feels towards the publisher that first took her on after rejections, but I bet she would hesitate before bad-mouthing them.
It’s just really weird to me that no one involved in that franchise has actually spoken out about what Rowling really said when they either throw her under the bus, or offer support. There are more than The Three whose careers benefited from being in the series of movies and the three Magical Creatures features. Tom Felton supports her, but didn’t really explain where she has been misquoted or her intent misstated (deliberately.)
There are directors, producers, and executives, all making bank at Warner Bros from participating. But they just kind of stay silent, cashing their checks but remaining silent so they don’t face pushback.
And, Robert Pattinson, if you’re reading this, it’s time to “be” the Batman and stand up for what’s right even though she killed Cedric off.
It’s the casual betrayal of someone you’ve been close with (to some degree) for years that rally gets me. They don’t want to be linked to the pariah. Not because she actually is one, but because everyone else says she is. Radcliffe, Watson and Grint would have had better access than most to talk to her privately if they felt so inclined. I’m thinking none of them did. If they had, they could claim to have talked with her personally to no avail, and thus acquire even higher trans cred. Seeing how low they’ve already stooped, I doubt they’d have had any qualms about betraying the contents of any such private conversations, had they occurred.
None of these people ready to pillory Rowling for her public statements seem to understand that the rest of us can read what she actually said, and see there was nothing “hateful” or “transphobic” in them. It puts people like Radcliffe at an extreme disadvantage to have to rely on the hearsay of others’ distorted takes on them when confronted by people who have read her words for themselves. We know better. It didn’t have to be that way; they knew her.
Another individual who has tried to save his ass in all this is screenwriter (now producer) Steve Kloves. In writing the screenplays of most of the Harry Potter films, and producing the Fantastic Beasts series, he has worked alongside Rowling for the better part of twenty years. You’d think that if he’d been that close to her for that long, something would have come up. I would think he would be better placed than most to know what she thinks on any number of subjects. If anything had come up in the course of their working relationship, he could have commented on it. But what is he reacting to? Activist-led fallout from Rowling’s public statements. Not the statements themselves, not any interactions they might have had in the time of their collaboration, but the perception that whatever it was she said is “transphobic.” Did he say, “yes, I felt she was transphobic when I was working with her,” offering proof and corroboration to the charges leveled against her? No. He’s just riffing on “trans rights” in conjunction with the baseless smear campaign that failed to address, quote (or sometimes even link to) what she actually said that was transphobic. If he had any additional ammunition to bring to the fight, he would have. But he didn’t. So his lofty “statement” in “solidarity” is just another opportunistic joyride on the libelous bandwagon.
Contrast this to what happened with the accusations against Cosby and Weinstein. Once the lid was off, others came forward with their own stories of abuse suffered at the hands of these two predators. The personal testimonies of those who came forward added details and showed what appeared to be a pattern of behaviour that extended over many years. They were their own accounts, in their own words. It wasn’t the tired repetition of anodyne, boilerplate statements of “solidarity” that added nothing to the substance and detail of the accusations. Had there been a similar outpouring of previously hidden Rowling statements and actions, detailed by people who were in a position to know what Rowling “really believed,” and who were now speaking out with evidence of actual hatred of trans identifying people, then that might have been a clue. If there was more to point at than the careful, malicious, misrepresentation of her public statements, then we would have heard about that. It would have blown up all over trans twitter. Trans activists would not have hesitated to use the most powerful evidence and arguments at their disposal: instead, they were forced to make shit up, because they had to. If any such actual evidence had come up, there would be some reason to suspect that Rowling harboured some pre-existing animosity towards trans people. (That she might now feel some amount of dislike or distaste at trans activists would hardly be surprising, given the treatment she’s received at their hands. Not everyone is as eager as Mike Pence is to lick the hand that’s struck you.)
Rowling’s greatest sin was to expose the lie of “no conflict” between trans “rights” and women’s rights. What little she said about trans identified males was actually very tolerant and compassionate (moreso than I would be inclined to be). The bulk of all of her statements have been about protecting the rights, safety and dignity of girls and women. Her need to voice her concern showed that she believed that trans demands were a danger to girls and women. She was right to so believe. It is instructive that this was reflexively understood by trans activists as being “anti-trans.” The careful failure to quote exactly what was transphobic about what she actually said is also telling. It would have exposed the fact that what Rowling was saying was reasonable and correct. Better to hide her actual words under your own preferred spin than to give wider exposure to her completely logical, pro-woman position. To rephrase Lewis’s Law, the response to any statement in support of protecting women’s rights against trans demands demonstrates the very need for those rights.
(this is a complete tangent aided by ethanol)
Cedric was already dead years before the movie adaptation, so it was clearly a one-time role anyway.
Does anybody else find the name Cedric Diggory eerily reminiscent of Eustace Scrubb (who almost deserved it)? Just me? Ok then.
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Back when Rowling published her now-infamous essay, I wrote about the issue on Facebook, and the ensuing “discussion” led to a great hemorrhaging of friends. One, who has surprisingly still not abandoned me, attempted to help me see the error of my ways by giving “reasons” JKR is a transphobe. I don’t recall that my friend gave any links to other people’s writing, but it seemed obvious she had cribbed the material, as I suppose many of us might do to bolster our stances. The kinds of “evidence” provided included:
• Rowling used sarcasm when talking about a “trans” issue;
• Rowling liked a post by, or followed, or posted a link to a product from, a store that sold products deemed “insulting” to trans people;
• Rowling said things that disagreed with gender identity ideology, such as “transwomen are men”, or she “misgendered” someone.
Lots of guilt-by-association, lots of “disagreement = hatred”, lots of “disrespect = hatred”. My friend didn’t look at the substance of what was written, only whether what was written was in compliance with the way people are supposed to talk about trans issues.
Even though Radcliffe decided early that he was determined to be a coward he could still have said something like “I don’t agree with everything JKR has said, but she’s a great person.”
He’d still be a lying, cowardly shitbag, but he would at least not have thrown additional fuel onto her pyre.
I don’t think he or the other talentless brats owe her anything other than friendship and integrity. It’s clear she gave them both and they were happy to accept it until they thought it might damage their *ahem* stellar post-Potter careers.
I’ve worked with a lot of people I’ve fallen out with (impossible to believe, I know :)
Some have annoyed me personally or professionally and I remain professional about them. I’ll try not to let my personal opinion of them taint my professional assessment to whatever extent I can. For example, I’ve had bosses that blamed me for their own mistakes and colleagues who shopped me to the boss when we were both conspiring to improve (as we’d thought) the company’s working practices.
There are others who have acted in a way I will never forgive. One of my many ex-bosses tried to rape another employee. Half a dozen men in one firm I was a contractor for had a chat group discussing what they’d like to do to the female employees. We’ve seen where that can lead. One ex-colleague sent nude pictures of his ex-girlfriend, who also worked for the firm, to pretty much everyone. I resigned the same day because our mutual boss refused to fire him.
There are some things on one hand that I have no intention of forgiving and some on the other that are differences of opinion or clashes of personality. Radcliffe is treating what can be at worst the latter as though it were the former. He knows he’s doing that. He knows the harm it will do.
He doesn’t owe her unbridled loyalty. He owes her the very well-documented friendship and integrity she gave him when he was an almost unbelievably shitty child actor swept up in an enormous phenomenon that brought joy to millions despite being a bit – in my opinion – shit.
Seriously, Daniel. I mean, you saw the Sixth Sense, right? You realise that children can actually act, right? That was an extraordinary performance. Yours…. not.
Oh, funny, in fact sixth sensey – I was thinking about that just the other day – that performance. I don’t remember apropos of what, but it was definitely about what amazing acting for a kid.
Oh, the plumber thing.
I met a kid about 35 years ago who didn’t have a single qualification. Not a GSCE, not a cycling proficiency certificate. He hadn’t even rescued a brick from a swimming pool, which is something all British people have to do before joining civilized life. He was doing some – to be perfectly frank – mediocre graphic design for a company I worked for. But he put in a lot of effort around making sure images were properly curated and he had ideas. So when I moved firms I hired him for something I knew he was totally unqualified for. And he excelled. He earns far more than I do now.
Do I want everlasting gratitude for giving him a job? Of course not. But this is a relationship that’s lasted decades. I put a lot of trust into him when I gave him that job. He trusted me to train him and to protect him from the horrible management at that place.
Isn’t this the kind of relationship we’re talking about with JKR and the child actors? Not hiring a plumber but taking a big chance hiring someone to do an intricate job and doing what you can to help them?
I think it is. My friend of 35 years is… not a big fan of my gender critical views, but we haven’t fallen out about it. And I know that if either of us needed help, we’d be there in a heartbeat. A fucking heartbeat.
I think this is the sort of relationship more appropriate to the ingrate child actors on those Potter movies. I think that if JKR ever needed any help then they should be on the phone within seconds.
That’s what I think.