Trolls v Rowling
A British academic whose new book is about why women are blamed for crimes committed against them has been subjected to thousands of coordinated attacks from alt-right trolls over the last week, culminating in her personal computer being hacked.
Dr Jessica Taylor, a senior lecturer in forensic and criminal psychology, is due to publish her exploration of victim blaming, Why Women are Blamed for Everything, on 27 April. Looking into what causes society to blame women who have been abused, raped, trafficked, assaulted or harassed by men, the book has drawn increasing publicity, including an appearance on Woman’s Hour.
I listened to that conversation on Woman’s Hour; it was very good. She talked about the just world fallacy: thinking “if I do everything right it won’t happen to me” so if it happens to someone else you decide she must have done something not-right. I recognize the tic in myself: hearing of bad thing, wanting to avoid bad thing, making note not to do ___ that person bad thing happened to did. It’s unconscious, it’s knee-jerk, and I absolutely do it.
But since 17 April, Taylor has been targeted by what she describes as a “group of organised trolls” who align themselves with the “alt-right”, men’s rights activists, incel (involuntary celibates) and Mgtow (men going their own way) movements, who have posted thousands of messages on her public Facebook page, including rape and death threats. On 21 April, Taylor contacted police when the screen on her laptop was remotely accessed. The investigation is ongoing.
But today brings a bit of pleasanter news.
That should boost sales just a tad.
But isn’t J.K. Rowling a stalwart Trump supporter, just like you are?
Heh, yeah.
Mine is already on order; I can’t wait until it arrives. But if such a terrible TERF as Rowling orders it…well, that increases my interest, actually. (One of my playwriting friends included a line in one of her plays that J. K. Rowling is a TERF…which led to her having to explain that term to half the room. I kept my mouth shut, knowing that being seen as even moderately sympathetic to a TERF would probably get me booted out of the group, and there are few people out there who produce original plays. I feel kinda bad about it, but probably not as bad as Fauci feels about having to suck up to Trump.)
TERF’s rock! I’m an unapologetic fan. :D
For all my ambivalence about the Harry Potter books — I’m very critical of some of its themes (e.g. magic special people with magic special bloodlines); I very much admire some of its other themes (e.g. an important part of growing up is understanding mortality and death) — I greatly admire the way Rowling deploys her considerable power to defend the rights of women and girls.
‘magic special people with magic special bloodlines’…I hate this plot line so much. And it appears everywhere–including in Hugo-winner The Fifth Season, which one must never ever criticise.
Actually to elaborate a bit it’s not just ‘magic special people with magic special bloodlines’ that disturbs me in a plot, it’s ‘magic special people with magic special bloodlines’ who are treated badly or demeaned or not recognised for their intrinsic amazingness–until the tables are turned and the biter bit. Boy, will they be sorry when the amazingness is revealed! I honestly think this kind of story has done real harm to our society.
@#6 guest,
Yeah, that’s almost why these days I guess I give a pass to the Harry Potter books on that front. The “destiny bloodline” stuff is such a trope in the fantasy genres, the reader almost expects it I guess, and so it gets sort of critically glossed over. But I remember back when I was first introduced to the Potter books I wasn’t so familiar with fantasy genre stuff so I had a hard time swallowing the magic bloodline stuff. It very much chafed against young me, this idea that the protagonist has inherited his “specialness” through no particular action of his own. Because to me, someone who came from nothing, the idea that a character could be handed the keys to the magic kingdom based on who his parents were, and somehow still be treated like the underdog, frankly brought up bitter resentment in young me.
But I like the later Potter books’ take on death and mortality. Death is frightening and confusing and powerful stuff, and most adults want to shield children and young people from it, but the truth is, part of growing up is that everybody has to come to terms with it. And I like that Rowling leaned right into that territory. (Even though, yes, there’s a magical-afterlife element, so in the books death isn’t quite so final as it is in reality, but still, it’s a good place to help kids and young people start to understand and process grieving and loss and all the stuff most grownups are too afraid to talk to kids about.)
I detest that plotline too and I detested it right from the beginning, on my first and last attempt to read HP. In the first few pages i was bothered by the contemptuous hostile use of the word “Muggles” and it didn’t get any better as I went on. When I got to the choice of houses in which one was for good people and one was for evil people, I stopped reading entirely. If it had been brilliantly written I might have continued anyway, but it wasn’t.
However. All credit to her for her stand in this new campaign to cast out the muggles.
Well of course, compared to Shakepeare or Tolstoy she’s a hack, but compared to Tolkein or Carroll, she’s right up there with the best of them. Sorry y’all, I enjoyed the Harry Potter saga immensely. :)
What about the magical bloodline in Star Wars?
No I mean specifically as a writer, not as a story-teller. She doesn’t write well. She may be a great storyteller, but she’s not good with the language.
“hearing of bad thing, wanting to avoid bad thing, making note not to do ___ that person bad thing happened to did.”
Yes, I plead guilty to doing this all the time.
It helps some of us deal with the fact that, in truth, we have little control over many things. Yes, I have confidence that the 3 other cars approaching the intersection are going to obey the traffic laws but if one of them does not, I can’t do much to prevent a crash from happening no matter how many safe-driving-tips I have had or how good my own driving skills are. And maybe I will be in the car that does not get hit but I can’t control that either.
I think we can’t help it. It makes sense to do it, in a way – we’re just trying to learn from experience, including that of other people. But I also get how it’s a mechanism that pushes us toward blaming.
SW @#13, “L’enfer, c’est les autres” seems appropriate here. ;)
Hell is other people?
Yep, pretty accurate so far! :)
It’s been quite a while since I read any of the Harry Potter books, but let’s be clear: In the fictional universe of the books this whole obsession with “bloodlines” is pretty much universally associated with evil (Lord Voldemort, the Death Eaters) or at least extremely unpleasant (Draco Malfoy) people. The good guys in the story all agree that this kind of thinking is toxic. Hermione Granger – by almost any criterion the most admirable character in the story – is muggle-born, and the Weasly family – the poor but decent purebloods as opposed to the rich but morally bankrupt Malfoys – are portrayed as generous and open-minded (e.g. Arthur Weasly’s almost comical fascination with/admiration of all the creative ways muggles have found of getting by without magic). As I remember it, the toxicity of “pureblood” ideology was one of the main themes of the series.
Don’t hesitate to correct me if I’m wrong, but I can’t remember Rowling ever making a special point of Harry’s bloodline? My understanding was that Harry is marked as special from the outset because of what happened when Voldemort tried to kill him as an infant, not because of who his parents were. Wasn’t Lily Potter (the most admirable of his parents) supposed to be muggleborn too btw?
I don’t find the “muggle” label particularly problematic since it would by definition include Rowling herself (as well as all of us since there are no real witches or wizards). There is also something like a use/mention distinction involved. There’s a difference between saying “this is what all of us are called in this fictional universe”, and actively using the word to denigrate ourselves. It could be seen as an exercise in consciousness-raising: We think nothing of applying all these labels to others based on all sorts of arbitrary criteria, but to a wizard, we could just as well be labeled “muggles” etc.
That having been said, I definitely agree that the whole business of sorting students into separate school houses based on specific character traits, as well as the totally corrupt House Cup, not to mention the continued enslavement (!) of house-elfs (that doesn’t seem to bother anyone except Hermione*), make Hogwarts a terribly flawed place, and those are just some of my reasons for seriously disliking the Dumbledoore character. I also don’t agree with those who think the series has a strong critical thinking message. If anything it has more to do with the conspiracy theorist version of “critical thinking”. In a world where there’s always a magical way to fake evidence, going with the evidence is a fools errand. I seem to remember a character in one of the movies saying something like “It all comes down to whether or not You trust Dumbledoore’s judgement, and although I don’t think the line appears in any of the books, it does indeed reflect the vibe I get from the books as well: Going with the evidence is only going to get You into trouble. Instead trust this authority figure to do Your thinking for You, accept that he knows better and do what You’re told without demanding any reasons or explanations (e.g. why trust Snape despite all evidence to the contrary) and In the end You will see that he was right all along.
Anyway, sorry if this is derailing. It’s perfectly ok to not like Harry Potter, but I do think the picture is a little more nuanced than some of the comments make it out to be.
* I think we’re meant to sympathize with Hermione, but the book could have been clearer on this point.
I have never been interested in Harry Potter; the one exposure I had did not impress me. The writing seemed pedestrian, and couldn’t catch my interest. That being said, I have to say that I can’t agree with the dismissal of magical characters and fantastical, unreal ideas. I find this necessary. It helped me a lot as a kid dealing with a reality that was grim, abusive, and seemed inescapable. For a few minutes or hours, I could leave reality behind and move into a distinctly unreal world, and sort of lose myself. I think the problem lies with people who mistake fiction for reality, and vice versa.
I actually have written a little of that myself, though a lot of my novels dealt with worlds that were all too close to reality. Right now, I am writing the fantasy sort, because it is the only thing that gives me that momentary break from the real. Without that, I might never have made it through childhood. Without it now, I would almost certainly succumb to the depression that is threatening to choke off my existence. I hang on by a slim enough thread; if that thread is attached to being able to move into unreal worlds and strange creatures, then I would not deprive anyone of it, because sometimes the real is too much to engage with, and we need those moments…sometimes hours.
Oh don’t get me wrong, I love magical characters and fantastical, unreal ideas. What I don’t love is the separation of humans in many of these kinds of stories into inherently special magical people and inherently nonspecial nonmagical people.
Who’s dismissing magical characters and fantastical, unreal ideas? I’m certainly not. I’ve just always found it annoying that such a crudely-written version was the one to take the world by storm.
Okay, I must have misunderstood. I certainly wasn’t taken with the writing, but then, I never heard more than one chapter, and I hate to judge people on such a narrow hearing. I have heard a lot of fantasy read by people in my writing group, and find most of it grating, annoying, and boring. It all sounds alike. So when I created my witches, I tried to make them at least decently written and interesting. I hope I succeeded.
I read very little of HP but I did read an entire non-HP [non-fantasy] novel of hers, because the story was somewhat gripping, but I had to grit my teeth to do it, because the writing was baaaad.
Bad writing is very hard to work through. I recently edited a novel for a friend who is in my writing group. She was writing historical fiction, and it was about as bad as I could imagine. And I doubt she took any of my suggestions to make it more readable (and I do read historical fiction, so I have a good idea how it should read, though I haven’t read anything in her period – early 20th century Nebraska – since high school. I prefer other periods and other places).
Crudely-written and to my mind (I know I’m in a minority here, possibly of one) unimaginative. The magical-bloodline, destined-for-better-things, treated-cartoonishly-badly-by-family thing grated horribly on my nerves. There’s a lot of it about, especially in children’s literature. I guess having a secret backstory that can take you away from abusive or just plain uninteresting situations is a common fantasy. We all want to be special, after all, and we’d all like to be included in a secret magical world without ever having to do anything to merit it. It’s a common theme because we all have fantasies of that kind, but Rowling still managed to lay it on with one of these:
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/6LWY23V1lDY/hqdefault.jpg
Then there’s the whole idea that magic can do absolutely anything with no effort or great skill…. until it suddenly can’t. You don’t have to understand anything about why waving your wand in a particular way or saying the right words with the proper pronunciation causes magic to happen. Or why you need a wand in the first place. Or why getting a spell wrong sometimes has a different, seemingly-unpredictable effect. There are spells that can do absolutely incredible things to reality and it’s only when the plot requires it that there isn’t just a spell to save the day. That would be fine if it were explained; magic in books should be limited if only to make the plot interesting but why and how it is limited is (to me) the interesting part and something Rowling never seems to get to grips with.
There’s no theory of magic. It all seems so…lazy. There’s plenty of other stuff that annoys me too. How is the wizarding world kept secret? Why is it kept secret? Why didn’t wizards act during world wars?
For all I know, Rowling might have answered these questions in later books, I didn’t get very far. But I doubt it.
Heh, I did the same thing, probably with the same book. I didn’t realise she was the author until I was some way through. It was OK but the writing dragged and the characters were unconvincing.
She’s definitely no more of a Trump supporter than Ophelia, though ;)
Oh, despite writing all that nonsense about Harry Potter, I really just came here to say I’d ordered a copy of Why Women Are Blamed For Everything too and I’m looking forward to reading it also, although I doubt my endorsement will have quite the same effect on sales as Rowling’s.
@Bjarte Foshaug
#17
A problem I have with Hogwarts is that the only education is magic. What do the students learn of math and science, or history? Vernon Dursley may have engaged in extreme muggleism when he said that he didn’t want to pay to have Harry learn magic tricks, but it does seem that Hogwarts doesn’t teach its students to function in the wider society.
To be fair, I’ve only seen the movies and not read the books.