Anything to say about this public shaming?
Graham Linehan calls out the coward celebrities who are ignoring the abuse aimed at JK Rowling:
David O’Doherty? The ‘trans ally’ who gave my wife shit over the phone because he didn’t have the guts to confront me? Let’s see what he’s talking about.
Jokes about Birkenstocks, it turns out.
Aisling Bea what do you think of the pipe bomb threat? You were full of talk of nuance when you wrote this disgraceful, patronising tweet to a survivor of domestic violence.
Jon Ronson, author of ‘So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed’, anything to say about this public shaming, certainly more ambitious in scope and significance than what Justine Sacco went through? Not even a trace of journalistic interest in it?
Ronson of all people should be on this, but he isn’t. It’s pathetic.
Glinner concludes with a pair of retweets of an endless catalogue of JKR-abuse.
The cowardice appals me, especially Ronson’s.
We’re so far past the stage where these people could semi-credibly pretend they didn’t really understand what everyone’s arguing about. Especially, again, in Ronson’s case.
But it’s beside the point anyway because the issue here is women being sent threats and abuse. Why can’t these cowards even summon the courage to say they don’t agree with her on the whole trans issue, but can you lay off with the old threats and whatnot (for some reason I seem to have been channelling Dara O’Briain when I typed that. Which is fair enough; he’s another one Linehan rightly shames for being silent about this)?
I know, I’ve answered my own question. It’s because they are cowards. People with far, far more to lose than they do have entered this fight, suffered the consequences and would do it again because it’s undeniably the right thing to do.
Linehan has mentioned a few others, such as Ben Goldacre. Goldacre’s cowardice pisses me off more than most of the others put together. He wrote an entire book about the evils of the pharmas and the trans issue cannot be disentangled from that. But, like Orac, veracity and skepticism are out of the window whenever the T word appears and he’s made it clear that he doesn’t care about women being threatened, abused and silenced.
I hope that at the very least these people feel shame for what they’ve done, but it’s a largely forlorn hope. They’ll gradually shift position as the zeitgeist eventually changes and will have everyone convinced they were right there fighting on the right side of history all along. Either that, or nobody will remember that any of this ever happened. The trans lobby will gradually be forced to make more reasonable demands that don’t violate the rights of women and homosexuals, societies will adjust and all anyone will ‘remember’ is that a few feminist harpies hated trans people for a bit then got over it.
I don’t much like either outcome, but it’s better than what we have now.
Ronson is one of my biggest disappointments; I think my biggest male one. I had a lot of respect for his work.
I think the Sorting Hat realized it was NOT infallible in evaluating people
Or was fallible. Negatives can trip us up.
The thing about the Sorting Hat though is that it’s just grouping people together by their personality traits. When Harry thinks “please not slytherin” the hat teases him a bit, points out that he does have some of the characteristics shared by Slytherins generally, and then puts him in the category of People Who Step Up And Do What’s Right Even If It Costs Them. Harry doesn’t choose which House the hat puts him in – his wish to not be put in the House associated with the evil wizard who murdered his parents is just one of the things that show his character.
And none of this results in anyone being forced to pretend that his personality means he is a girl.
I found the Sorting Hat utterly stupid and quit reading HP entirely at that point.