Strict supervision

Another man bravely steps forward to tell JK Rowling what she should be doing instead of what she is doing.

Scrolling through J.K. Rowling’s Twitter page is a surreal experience. 

The Harry Potter author is currently celebrating the success of her new children’s book, The Ickabog, engaging her young fans by retweeting and praising their artwork. 

Well, it’s more that she’s taking the time and trouble to make a lot of her young fans extremely happy by retweeting and praising their artwork.

In between these adorable, enthusiastic retweets, Rowling will, randomly, offer her opinion about trans people. Much of it can be described as “politely worded bigotry,” rhetoric that recklessly harms the trans community, seemingly innocuous on the surface. 

Randomly. Yes, she’s just some bit of fluff who has no reason to have opinions about the way women are being redefined. It’s all so random and inexplicable and puzzling.

Despite constant, vocal pushback from trans activists and medical experts, Rowling continues to post her strange screeds, nestled right next to the artwork of young children, who will likely be exposed to her opinions while exploring her Twitter page, searching for fan art.  

Medical experts? What medical experts? I haven’t seen any vocal pushback from medical experts. Is being trans a medical issue now? I thought it was a matter of self-definition? What could medical expertise have to say about self-definition and the absolute right to be “validated” as whatever you identify as which?

Is Rowling’s Twitter page a place where her young, impressionable fans can browse artwork, or is it a place to debate trans rights? Because this bizarre blend of trans-exclusionary talking points and children’s fanart is deeply, almost hilariously, inappropriate.

Is it any of this guy’s business what Rowling’s Twitter is for? Is Rowling not allowed to decide for herself what her Twitter is for? Not if she’s using it to abuse or harass, but she’s not, so in the real world, can’t she decide for herself what to tweet about? Without journalists correcting her?

“Nobody asked for this” was the joke behind the meme, and considering how Rowling now spends an embarrassing amount of her time passionately engaged in a debate that doesn’t even concern her, it’s as though the meme has manifested itself into reality. 

Dude. The debate concerns us.

Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but when you’re an obscenely wealthy and influential author, constantly using your massive platform to punch down on the marginalized isn’t just stating an opinion – it’s pure entitlement.

The wealthy part comes from the popularity of her books, not from grinding the faces of the poor. She sold millions of books. She didn’t grow cotton with slave labor or mine coal with child labor or market tobacco while lying about its health effects; she wrote books. The obscenely part is questionable given the fact that she’s given a lot of it to good causes. As for the marginalized…women are marginalized. Men who say they are women are not the worst-off people in the world.

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