Blood libel
This is blood-chilling.
A teenager commits suicide (if this implausible story is even true) and Councillor Penny Zenny (who is a trans woman) asks the teenager’s mother “Was it JK Rowling?” Objection, your honor: leading the witness. In fact grabbing the witness by the neck and trying to force words out of her mouth.
Penny Zenny is easy to find on Facebook. PZ (oh there’s a funny coincidence) now has a self-pitying post (also public) about the angry reaction PZ got from that vile accusation.
I expressed my disappointment at the suicide of a youth as a direct result of the things J K Rowling has been saying and I get a whole bunch of people attacking me, not knowing my history, or the fact I have been a Samaritan, etc etc. Seems people get off of hate and ignorance.
Except the claim that the suicide was “a direct result of the things J K Rowling has been saying” came from Penny Zenny. He hasn’t offered any other reason to believe it’s true. What a horrific thing to do.
He seems to have taken down the first post. Good move, but shit move to post it in the first place.
Somebody needs to research this and find out if there even was a suicide committed by anybody. This sounds like a complete TIM BS grift to me.
I seriously doubt it. Notice there are no details PZ can be checked on. It sounds bogus as all hell – it sounds “I agree with PollyO!” level bogus.
So PZenny ‘learns’ of a 15-year-old who has committed suicide, promptly gets in touch with the child’s mother, whom he appears not to have known from before (just as he appears not to have known the 15-year-old), and asks her if it was Rowling’s fault. I’m not surprised the poor mother, if she and her child, actually exist, found the next few minutes after the question was asked by this meddling stranger ‘unbearable’. PZenny’s behaviour, whether the event is true or not, is unbearable. Note that he doesn’t even bother to tell us what this mother actually said in response to his question (assuming that the event took place – if it didn’t, one might thought he might have provided the fictitious mother’s fictitious response: he doesn’t seem to have the guts to go the whole hog with his story).
If enough PennyZ’s report on fictive ‘transgender teenage girl suicides’ instigated by fiction-writer JK Rowling’s expressed concern over transgender social contagion among vulnerable teenage girls, there might eventually be some non-fictive vulnerable teenage girls joining the crowd.
I never go near Twitter, of for that matter, PZ Myers, but would recommend to him none the less, that given the inclination of people to assume that ‘Penny Zenny’ = him, the very same PZ Myers, that he declare on his blog without delay that he is not posting anywhere as ‘Penny Zenny’ or under any other name than his own sacred, untrammeled, dignified, and justifiably world-famous moniker and handle.
PennyZenny’s hands around the distraught mother’s throat:-
“It was Rowling who did it. Confess, you bitch. It was Rowling, Rowling, Rowling.”
The only reason I’m reluctant to think it’s made-up is that it’s such a bad story. Surely a made-up story would be better: A trans person who is a long time fan of Rowling and was inspired by the characters in her books is devastated by Rowling betraying them, becomes depressed, and eventually kills themself. That would be the core. Then sprinkle in details like how they angrily destroyed all their Harry Potter books beforehand. Or they killed themselves surrounded by their Harry Potter books and toys. All sorts of possibilities for a “JK Rowling killed them” tale.
Instead we get no sign of JKR being involved, just a leading question to the mother that doesn’t even get a clear affirmative response.
Well that might be the most ass-backward logic I’ve ever seen. Because some fanatic tells a details-missing “story” about asking why a teenager committed suicide, you’re reluctant to think it’s made-up. Ok let me try. Somebody blew up a planet this morning. There: reason to doubt that’s made-up, because it’s such a bad story. Smoothest path to deception EVER.
@Skeletor #7:
I think you’d need to look up past postings by PZenny, in order to gage general style and whether they tend to be prolific. You’re describing someone of literary bent ( or scientific) — provide background, build suspense, exposition, climax, denouement. They could just be a lazy writer, and/or not particularly bright.
The argument is so clumsy, I’d probably assume it.
I remember the days when it was the butler who did it.
What I question is, how does “Penny” propose to “stop” Rowling?
Rowling is using her right to free speech to express her opinion. I think it’s pretty clear by now that you can’t “stop” her by yelling at her that she’s wrong, and you can’t put economic pressure on her.
So that leaves two ways to “stop” someone from doing that. One is to have her arrested for her speech. The other….
Ha, I’ll bet you’ve seen much, much worse.
Yes, when one of the key details missing is any kind of affirmation within the story that it’s true. She asked the mother if it was because of Rowling, and even within the story the mother didn’t clearly indicate it was. If the mother in the story had blubbered out “yes!” then resumed sobbing, that would be different. But why tell a fake story that doesn’t make your case when that’s the only reason to invent the story?
No, you want me to believe someone blew up a planet, so you made up a story where someone blew up a planet. It’s clear why you would tell the story that way. And it sounds fake because it’s implausible.
If you said someone is blowing up planets and you know this because you had suspected they were and they looked guilty when you’d confronted them about it, then I still wouldn’t believe a planet had been blown up, but I might wonder if you’re a crazy person and your story was literally true in that you’d accused someone of doing that and misinterpreted their response.
Blockquote fail. :’(
Skeletor, one reason to doubt the truth is the extreme similarity to many of the stories you can find in books aimed at Christians who want to convert others. Use this story, the books say. There are few details, no affirmations that the story is true, none of what you are looking for to suggest the story isn’t true. And often the person they tell the story about just “stares at them in [shock, a daze, whatever]”, which is no real confirmation that they converted said person, because someone can stare at them in shock that someone would say such a ridiculously stupid thing.
Some liars don’t give details because they are too easily checked. Even the statement about the mother saying yes, which would seem basic. I have a brother who is a pathological liar, who lies when telling the truth would actually be a better thing for him, and this is similar to the stories he tells…detail free, no affirmation that it’s true, and yet, I know it is not true that he built his own house, or married a super-model, or…whatever stupid thing he reports today.
I am not saying it isn’t true. It may be, and maybe the next few minutes were unbearable for the mother because she couldn’t believe this asshole was trying to use her child’s death to affirm their own beliefs, or whatever. But I don’t see any reason to assume it is true because of the reasons you put forth.
The story isn’t a “story” at all – everything is missing. He “learned of” a trans teen suicide. How, where, from whom? He “asked” what the cause was – asked whom? When? Where? Why? We’re completely lost already. He “could see they couldn’t put words together” – WHO??? Who couldn’t put words together? Where is he? Where is this happening? Why is he interrogating someone, and who is that someone? So then, out of that whirling blank of confusion, he asks if it was Rowling. THAT’S NOT A STORY.
If it had really happened surely the person or people he was asking these questions would have loomed large enough in his memory for him to have mentioned them before the punchline.
Furthermore…
But he didn’t ask the mother, at least he didn’t tell us he asked the mother. He just “asked”…without spelling out whom he asked. That’s not a sign of truth-telling, it’s a sign of just babbling. As for why tell a fake story: because he’s incredibly stupid.
This comment received 6 likes and a blocking from Penny’s FB.
Who was this person?
How did you come to know them?
Did they leave a suicide note implicating JKR?
Or have you fabricated the story out of whole cloth?
Whta a hoot.
We’re all on the same side here. I just thought there was a chance this person had tried to pin a suicide on JKR with a leading question and had misinterpreted the response, so what they were telling us was literally true without meaning what they thought.
But I agree it’s at least as likely they made the whole thing up.
And even if some poor trans person had committed suicide because they were upset by JKR, that wouldn’t be her fault. She has done nothing that a reasonable person would see as being apt to cause suicides. If anything I’d put some blame on the people spinning her reasonable concerns as denial of existence, etc.
Yes, sorry, my vehemence is more about the awfulness of the “writing” than anything else.
My take on that story is that PZenny came up with what they thought was a good, punchy slogan: Save lives, stop JK Rowling. Of course, a slogan like that needs a backstory to justify it, and there being no actual deaths definitively (or even vaguely) linked to Rowling to draw on, Zenny either had to get inventive or lose the chance of being known as the creator of what I’m sure they felt would be the anti-Rowling rallying call.
Two minutes lalateand Zenny had concocted a non-checkable story tying a teen suicide directly to Rowling, and Zenny knew that details don’t matter as the target audience are not stringent fact-checkers; if it makes the enemy look bad, they’ll believe it.
Personally, I think the addition of save mothers was a mistake. Zenny might have thought it showed them to be an extra-caring ally – oppressed trans and their distraught mothers: very sympathy, much empathise – but it looks like an afterthought and serves only to break the rythmn and turn a snappy soundbyte into a clumsy mouthful.
Don’t know about her Twitter (I don’t use it), but after quite a bit of pushback she has made her FB private. As with all TRAs, kept asking for proof when challenged about her errors, but rejected the proof since none of it carried the imprimatur of her preferred, biased, sources.