Its association
Concerns over inclooosivity. Concerns, I tell you.
A Harry Potter-themed formal at Girton College has been cancelled after concerns were raised over the event’s inclusivity, due to its association with the book series’ author, J.K. Rowling.
Rowling has been the subject of significant controversy in recent years, due to her outspoken views on trans rights, which many consider to be transphobic.
It’s funny how it’s never put the other way. Trans ideology has been the subject of significant controversy in recent years, due to its habit of trampling all over women’s rights, which many consider to be misogynist. Why don’t we talk about it in those terms for a change? Why is it that Varsity and the Guardian and the BBC would never ever frame it that way? Why are women the people who are not allowed to defend our own rights?
Initial concerns were raised over the Harry Potter formal on the anonymous submissions page Girthfessions, with one user calling the planned event “inherently transphobic”.
Removing JKR from the planned event over this fatuous claim is inherently sexist.
After such concerns emerged, the College’s JCR committee emailed students apologising for any upset caused by the association with Rowling, stating its commitment to creating a safe space for the LGBT+ community, and assuring students that the author would not be profiting in any way from the event.
But what about women? What about a safe space for women? And anyway it’s not “the LGBT+ community,” it is at most the T community. The constant thumb on the scales of adding LGB people to beef up the numbers is cheating. Some people who consider themselves the T community are angry that JKR doesn’t endorse trans ideology, so they get her disinvited and deleted and erased every chance they get, and journalists obediently report this shunning as if it were a courageous civil rights movement.
Speaking to Varsity, the JCR committee detailed that they “endeavour to create a safe and inclusive space for everybody at Girton” and therefore “do not wish to hold any event that causes offence to any member of our community”.
But by bowing to the Transpolice they are creating an unsafe and uninclusive space for feminist women at Girton. You can’t have everything. If you do the bidding of one petulant entitled group then you’re letting that petulant entitled group run things, whether everyone else is ok with that or not.
There’s an interesting debate to be had about consuming, celebrating, or teaching works of art that contain elements of racism, sexism, etc.
But I don’t think even JKR’s most ardent haters claim that there’s anything transphobic about the Potter novels themselves. Indeed, I usually hear them lament that these books they love that are about fighting against prejudice and hatred are “tainted” by their association with their author.
If the standard for consuming, celebrating, or teaching works of art is “their AUTHOR must never have said or done anything racist, sexist, etc. in any aspect of their life,” then you can pretty much kiss our entire cultural history goodbye. (You can’t even save this argument by saying that we’ll only apply it to authors who are out of step with their culture — so we’ll give 19th century authors a pass on racism, but not 21st — because JKR’s positions are utterly in the mainstream of today’s culture.)
But of course that’s not going to be the standard. It won’t be applied to any issue besides trans. Even the rest of the LGBTQ “alliance” isn’t getting this treatment.
Between Islamo- & Trans- I now doubt the intellectual honesty of anyone who put -phobia as a suffix.
Jim Baerg – I was just listening to a talk by someone who, in the course of the first 15 minutes, managed to hit all the ‘transphobia’ dog whistles, and also declared anyone noticing that Muslims have done acts of violence or that they have a problem with women – well, they are racist, I tell you. In other words, the truth is racist, right? And transphobic?
Meanwhile, she gave a one hour talk on the subject of abortion without using the word “women” except when naming her group (which was named back when there still were women) and when quoting Sonya Sotomayor’s dissent. I left.
Is Rowling going to be there in person, barring people from entering? Is anyone going to be doing that? Then where’s the threat to “inclusivity?” How many “T” people are likely to be at this school anyhow? Or is this a way for “allies” to demonstrate their purity?
This is now taken as read, with no evidence and no justification. To the extent that people believe this without question, the smear against Rowling has worked. Seems to me that she has been outspoken on women’s rights. That this is taken as “attacking” trans rights is very telling, and shows how untrue claims of “no conflict” between women’s rights and trans “rights” are. The only people who are going to be upset or indignant about women defending their boundaries are those who are keen on violating them. Also telling.
Why indeed. NO DEBATE and NO CONFLICT cover a multitude of sins. When people who ought to know better (like “investigative” reporters at the CBC) speak glibly about trans “rights,” they help cover up this conflict. Their complicit laziness is perpetuating and propagating the lies and distortions upon which trans claims and demands depend.
iknklast @ 3 – I’d love more details on that talk, if you feel like providing them. I see FFRF just (3 hours ago) tweeted about “the first queer woman” elected to district [words missing]. I asked them what “queer woman” means.
FFRF didn’t reply, but Martina did. Heh.
Overall, the talk had a lot of good points – it’s the one with the map. It’s just, the total avoidance of the word woman, the need to constantly throw in LGBTQ+ in a talk about abortion (obviously not all of the alphabet soup can have abortions), and the assumption that any mention of Islamic violence against women is racist – that put a sour note in an otherwise great talk.
Sounds very irritating.