Shamefully silent is it?
Brendan O’Neill mocks Owen “Babyface” Jones for trying to scold JK Rowling.
Jones is hopping mad. He’s even written a 1,300-word screed on what a rotter Rowling is, which I’m sure we can all agree is a perfectly normal response to a woman making a joke. His line of attack is that Rowling has been shamefully silent on the suffering of Palestinians. She claims to stand up for women, he says, yet she’s schtum on what is happening to women in Gaza.
His Rowlingphobic diatribe drips with haughty sexism. He bemoans her “useless obsessions”, by which he presumably means her valiant defence of the reality of sex and her financial backing of women and homosexuals who have been persecuted for their beliefs by either their bosses or the state. Sounds pretty useful to me, Owen.
He commands her: “End your silence.” Maybe he didn’t get the memo – men don’t get to tell women what to do anymore. Women are free to think and say whatever they please. Radical, I know!
Well, maybe men in general don’t get to tell women what to do, but of course OJ is an exception. Why? Because he’s so brilliant, so charismatic, so passionate yet wise.
Rowling’s bold defiance of the gender cult is a strike for the autonomy of all women. In contrast, the myopic Israelophobia of the whackjob Left fashions a ruthless hierarchy in which the pain of Palestinians counts for more than the pain of anyone else on earth.
What’s more, these faux-feminists zip their lips when women are being oppressed by Islamists. They cosplay as feminists at home, holding forth on the gender pay gap and whatnot. Yet they fall silent in the face of the Iranian regime’s mass murder of women who want more rights or the Taliban’s medieval subjugation of its female population.
Not to mention in the face of the Saudi regime, the Afghan regime, the Pakistani regime, and on and on. Fear of being labeled “Islamophobic” trumps solidarity with women every time.
Wait, wait–I thought the current trend was to accuse JKR of being anti-semitic because she used standard folklore takes on goblins in her books, and because the studio (without any input from her) chose a historical bank to shoot some scenes in, and that bank happened to have a swastika pattern in the tile floor.
Yes, Rowling has an almost infinite list of issues, causes, and issues on which she has remained completely silent. Guess what? So does Owen Jones! So does everybody. It’s a big world with lots that needs to be fixed. Each of us gets to pick and choose what we put energy, time and effort into following, supporting, or engaging in. We can shed light on causes we think are important, but we cannot conscript others into joining us in our concern. We get to say “No,” and we don’t have to give a reason. It says nothing about my character that I have “remained silent” on the plight of left-handed, colour-blind, albino, Zoroastrian, brain surgeons in Uruguay. It does say a lot about Owen Jones that he feels morally and politically entitled to demand the attention and energy of Rowling, and force her to work on whatever cause he thinks she should. I’ll bet there’s a big long list of relevantly powerful people, in government and other fields, to whom Jones might rightfully expect to address his questions. Why concentrate on Rowling? She’s busy with her own causes. She gets to do that, without input from Jones, or anyone else. Self-righteousness, testosterone, and a keyboard, in the wrong hands, can result in serious mischief.
Very well put, as usual, YNnB
There are plenty of undeservedly obscure causes in the world, where human suffering goes unnoticed and screams of agony are lost in the void, because nobody cares enough. Palestine is not one of them. For a whole slew of reasons, some better than others, it is THE inescapable issue of our times.
Imagine the crawling shame of being lectured for being a member of the chauvinistic old boys club… by Brendan O’neill! And I haven’t heard Jones’ statements in support of improving Aboriginal Australian health outcomes and life expectancies (to choose just one example out of millions)… therefore he must be against that!
That said, the wheels come off fairly badly when he turns to the Israeli/Palestinian angle. Yes, the pain of Palestinians has a higher count than that of Israelis, in the most literal sense: 78,866+ known dead against 2,027, and that’s the tip of the iceberg.