Yeah yeah she was abused but
The Guardian has a piece about JK Rowling’s life with her abusive first husband, and to make up for such a twanzphobic act, goes on to abuse her. Part One: here’s how bad it was; Part Two: here’s how bad she is. The two takes don’t mesh very well – the transition is awkward.
The Harry Potter author JK Rowling has spoken about the abuse she suffered at the hands of her former husband, saying he tried to lock away the unpublished manuscript of the series’ first book to stop her leaving him.
Speaking on the Witch Trials of JK Rowling, a podcast series released on Tuesday, the author described her relationship with Jorge Arantes as violent and controlling, saying she had to sneak pages of the work away in small batches to photocopy in case he burned them.
…
“That manuscript still meant so much to me. That was the thing that I actually prioritised for saving. The only thing I prioritised beyond that, obviously, was my daughter, but at that point she’s still inside me, so she’s as safe as can be in that situation.”
End of Part One. Transition to Part Two:
Rowling was speaking to Megan Phelps-Roper, a former member of the Westboro Baptist Church, which is known for its hateful views and frequent protests against the LGBT community and other marginalised communities.
Subtle, but not all that subtle. An oddly conspicuous nudge to remember that Rowling too has “hateful views” according to the new law of nature that lesbians and gay men are in a “community” with people who think they’re the other sex. Rowling of course is not a member of a marginalised community. Women are not marginalised, or oppressed or excluded or bullied or harassed or assaulted or raped or murdered.
Also “known for its hateful views” is a weirdly childish phrase for an adult newspaper, and “other marginalised communities” isn’t much better.
The reporter, Kevin Rawlinson, gives himself the snide last word.
Among those to criticise her take on gender identity are the stars of the Harry Potter film franchise Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint.
Some critics have accused Rowling of stirring transphobia, including through her mocking interventions on social media.
Rowling said she had received “so many death threats I could paper the house with them”.
The Guardian is pathetic.
Between the RWNJ threats of the early 2000’s and the current outrage and threats from the left, she has proved that she is a very strong woman of character who is not going to back down just to take the heat off.
I have listened to the first two episodes, and recommend that all interested parties listen. The first episode is her early life story and the abusive husband who tried to trap her in Portugal by hiding her manuscript and threating to keep Jessica so she couldn’t leave, and the second is about the efforts to remove Harry Potter from school libraries by opportunistic preachers and do-gooders. Among those were Megan Phelps-Roper, the host’s, family of wackos. Interesting that an attorney, a strong Baptist from Arkansas, who had argued the case for restricting access to the Potter series later read the books and decided they were definitely good for kids to read.
Even if you don’t like the Potter series for her style of writing, it’s important to understand that she carefully crafts her themes to illustrate that our lives do not allow for an easy judgement of good and evil. It’s clearly different from most children’s and young teen’s books in the lessons she wants to teach. You can’t make snap judgments about people, because those who seem to be good can be deceivers while those who seem to be bad may in the end just have personal flaws that lead them to be irascible but good. And she also talks indirectly about how the controversy over the first two books influenced the plot of remaining books. If you know where Umbridge fits there, you get the message that she was trying to get across.
Everyone who says the books were really important to them growing up but are hurt that she turned out hateful, did not understand the books, and read them shallowly and “As through a glass, darkly.”
I’m not prone to hero worship, but if anyone has earned a bit of it, it’s Joanne Rowling.
At what point does the doublethink required to maintain adherence to the Social Justice religion become too burdensome to bear? That’s what I want to know, ’cause it sure seems like retention rate is unusually high. I know of a few people (aside from the detrans/desist cohort) who’ve left the faith, but only a few.
As for the Potter series, while I’m not a fan, I will say this. “Magic Academy” is one of the most popular tropes in fantasy. (Example are too numerous to list.) Readers are oftentimes teased with a Magic Academy bait-and-switch, given just a taste before the book spends 95% of its page count on far less appealing scenarios. JKR, on the other hand, said she’d give readers a wizard school, and by God she gave readers a wizard school.
I just listened to the first two episodes as well. They’re very good, as podcasts go. It’s easy to forget, nowadays, that the books weren’t written for us old farts, so whether we liked them is irrelevant. The most important fact about the books is that children who’d never read anything without whining before blazed through hundreds of pages again and again. Their effect on child literacy was enormous.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2005/jul/10/books.harrypotter
Yes, the Grauniad is despicable in its insinuations eighteen years later. Here’s what it should say:
The podcast does such a great job transporting us back to not all too long ago, when we had people at the highest levels of government who actually believed witchcraft is real, and poses a mystical danger to children.
Now these wackos have, astoundingly, found common cause with believers in a new kind of wizardry – the magical transformation of men into women – whose fanatics besiege Rowling because she doesn’t believe in magic.
“The reporter, Kevin Rawlinson, gives himself the snide last word.
“The Guardian is pathetic.”
I wonder if this is based on some cynical editorial calculation on the part of The Groan,that they have more readers of the trans persuasion than they have readers who are Harry Potter fans. That would make them less principled than they proclaim themselves to be, in so many ways.