Playing the pain card
Even when pointing out that Rowling’s new novel isn’t all about a trans woman, it’s imperative to put the boot in anyway. After several paragraphs of plot summary to make clear that the minor character who puts on lady-coat and a wig isn’t trans and isn’t the main suspect, the final paragraph gets to the boot.
Perhaps some will still consider this depiction transphobic, given Rowling’s rightly widely criticised views on trans people.
How different that sentence would have been without the “rightly.” Miles less ugly and clumsy, for a start – “Rowling’s rightly widely criticised views” – that is a mess. But substantively – who says “rightly”? I say “wrongly” so now what do we do? It’s not just a simple fact that the criticism of what Rowling said was all “rightly” done. And then there’s something missing: it wasn’t just a matter of criticizing her views, it was a torrent of abuse, much of it misogynist and violent and disgusting. Can we “rightly” criticize that? And then there’s the sloppiness of “views on trans people” without any specifics, which obscures the fact that Rowling didn’t simply shout abuse of trans people, or anything like it.
It is, at best, an utterly tone-deaf decision to include an evil man who cross-dresses after months of pain among trans people and their allies.
There it is again, the emotional blackmail. What pain? It looked to me more like people having a blast abusing a woman. Or if we are going to talk about people’s pain, what about the pain of women who are called names and told to stfu about their own concerns and accused of phobias and labeled Karens and bullied off social media? What about that pain?
I’m not sure that the writer (?) knows what “at best” means. Because that’s not the best interpretation at all.
How about: “It is, at best, irrelevant to the plot of the book or to public discourse that an evil man disguises himself as a woman.”
Or: “At best, it’s a statement by Rowling that she will not be bullied into silence…”
Or: “At best, Rowling makes a pro-trans statement by having the evil man dressed as a woman not be transgender.”
I think “at best” isn’t what the writer meant. Perhaps the writer imagines that “at best” really means “I’d like to say even worse things about Rowling, but I’m having a hard time making them up.”
At best, this writer is jealous that Rowling is a much better writer.
Her views are not widely criticized, but the misrepresentation of her views surely is. The dogpiling was pretty widespread, no doubt. Funny how much moralizing a simple word like ‘rightly’ has packed into it.
Transphobia means whatever they say it means, which renders it mostly meaningless. They are not helping their cause by calling so many things by so many people transphobic. The fluffy trans-cult rhetoric is not to be taken seriously. Oh look, a wolf! Wolf! Wolf! :P
I suppose that, at best, it’s tone deaf for the critic to focus on the “months of pain” undergone by trans people without acknowledging that their pain was self-generated and unnecessary. At worst, she doesn’t realize that.
“Playing the Pain Card” is risky. Your audience already has a template for those people who Deserve More Sympathy and Protection than others will give them: rape victims, bullied children, POC facing race discrimination, etc.. They can imagine heartless Others saying they deserved it or need to toughen up and rush readily to join the Caring group. The Pain Card can take the trick.
But the audience also has a ready-made template for people who Cry Over Nothing. There are aggrieved teenagers, unreasonable coworkers, and annoyingly over sensitive whiners the world over. The “Oh, Grow the Hell Up” card will trump the Pain Card. They overplay their hand — out it comes.
Usually it’s risky, but for some reason it hasn’t been for this particular “activism” – at least not yet. I mean it has put some of us off, clearly, but not so many that it’s been put out to pasture. I don’t understand it – I don’t understand the infinite appetite for all this maudlin whining and carrying on.
Apologies for forgetting the link; I’ve added it now.
Sort of like all the other words they use, like “gender”, “sex”, “woman”.
Exactly, “cis”, “terf”, the pronouns, it’s all fairly ridiculous. They could have done a more respectable job of getting their agenda put forth. Seems like a kind of nastiness of temper goes with the territory.
I don’t think that was possible. They have no argument, and relied upon bullying and intitutional capture. Now that they have much of the institutional high ground, it’s all “NO DEBATE!”
I wonder if some of the psychic pain these poor people endure is the result of living beneath a weight of cognitive dissonance I would impossible to bear. Their most cherished beliefs conflict with what men and women actually are, with how language reflects that, and so on. However much they stay within their bubbles of the like-minded, reality does have a way of breaking through. That is perhaps why their beliefs require constant validation and reinforcement.
Only a little ways into “Troubled Blood” but so far it is the best book of the series – it keeps track of many threads and adds in new warps and weaves as it goes.
But a reader would really have to project a pre-determined conclusion if they wanted to see the things some people are complaining about – for example there’s a significant difference between a man wearing a woman’s coat as a disguise (which is mentioned at least three times) and “cross dressing” (which hasn’t been mentioned yet, but – spoiler – I know it is in the text of the book once – ’cause I searched the text)
So, ignoring the “pile on the wabbit” tendencies typical of twitter, perhaps the triggers are in less direct places? For instance, as they are heading out on a long drive, Robin says to Strike:
“Social identity theory’s very interesting,” said Robin. “That and self-categorization theory. I studied them at uni. There are implications for businesses as well as society, you know . . .”
[snip – snip – Cormoran has fallen asleep in the passenger seat] . . . later, Strike wakes up and Robin continues:
“In essence we tend to sort each other and ourselves into groupings, and that usually leads to an over-estimation of similarities between members of a group, and an under-estimation of the similarities between insiders and outsiders.”
Maybe not the sort of concepts people want to read about when they think they have a “right” to self-categorize?
Ok now I do want to read it.
As far as I can tell they’re just grabbing whatever words they can use to get their way. I’ve noted that they seem to be pivoting from the pretty reliable ‘do as I say or lots of people will DIE [and you will be responsible]’ to the even more reliable ‘do as I say or we will reject you from the group of good people/you will be alone/everyone will hate you’. When I’ve mentioned this elsewhere someone pointed out that these are the best words to use to manipulate young women, who are their target audience.