J.K. Rowling's new book, The Ink Black Heart, features a storyline about creator who was doxxed by her own fandom over content viewers found transphobic and racist.
Normally I try to give writers a pass when they use the old "black = bad" because the intent is rarely racist and only sometimes unintentionally has subtext that implies that, but in Rowling's case, she may not deserve that pass considering her laughably dated patronizing attitude toward Native Americans in her HP spinoff series where not a single tribe or its survivors had any meaningful input in what was supposed to be a magic school based upon old timey stereotypes that the author knew and made no further inquiry before appropriating them. She may as well made them pat their hands over their mouths while making war whoops.
There was also, of course, that horribly-named Chinese character, among other offenses.
I'm not saying the villain with the "black" heart is black in her book. I don't know. But with what she's put out so far, it's more likely there's no meaningful black people at all.
In her new book, Rowling introduces readers to Edie Ledwell, a creator of a popular YouTube cartoon who sees internet trolls and her own fandom turn on her after the cartoon was criticized as being racist and ableist, as well as transphobic for a bit about a hermaphrodite worm.
The creator is doxxed with photos of her home plastered on the internet, subjected to death and rape threats for having an opinion, and was ultimately found stabbed to death in a cemetery. The book takes a clear aim at “Social Justice Warriors” and suggests that Ledwell was a victim of a masterfully plotted, politically fueled hate campaign against her.
But despite the clear similarities to her own life, Rowling claimed to Graham Norton that it’s all just a big coincidence. “I should make it really clear after some of the things that have happened the last year that this is not depicting [that],” she said.
BTW, it's not particularly hard to doxx J.K. Rowling, you can just fucking google it and find out that she and her husband now live on the 162-acre Killiechassie Estate, near Aberfeldy in Perthshire, Scotland after having sold their old house near Edinburgh.
The neat upside about having land in Scotland is that access legislation was removed about 20 years ago, meaning that you can do pretty much fuck all to prevent people from walking on your land. There are some exceptions I think, like protected wildlife habitats and military grounds. But as long as you don't use motorised trasnsport you could walk about in Rowling's 162-acre Killiechassie Estate, near Aberfeldy in Perthshire.
what would i even threaten her with? standing outside of her walled-off mansion with a sandwich sign until her TERF paladins drag me away? she's literally a billionaire who can afford armed bodyguards, a team of dozens of bloodthirsty litigation lawyers and who with 100% certainty doesn't open all that hatemail herself. I'd honestly be surprised if she still blocks people on twitter herself instead of having a lackey do that for her. It's downright ridiculous that she whines about doxxing when there's doxxed trans people without any of her vast ressources for protection and retaliation out there being hounded until suicide by her frothing, unhinged supporters.
all i'm saying is that it's fucking rich when a public figure whose real estate purchases make it into the british yellow press pretends that it needs the actions of militant trans activists to doxx her.
There was a time when JK Rowling was seen as an inspiration to aspiring writers everywhere with her rags to riches story. Then she became a meme for retconning every other detail about her series, and now she's known as the Transphobe who never stops posting about being one. What a life.
Imagine an alternate reality where JK either moved on from transphobia or never had it: She would easily go down in history as one of the best writers of the modern era, and her Twitter could just be silly jokes about Hogwarts classes starting up, Harry Potter holidays, or just worldbuilding.
Harry Potter itself wasn't for me and I read the whole series, but I at least had respect for her. Now she went full clout-chaser with the whole "DAE le trans people BAD!?!?! THANKS FOR THE CASH, TWITTER!"
there would be think pieces every few years about how fucked up the house elf slavery stuff was, or the anti-semitic goblins or whatever, but i don't imagine any of that would ever stick without the author publicly doing her best to make the world a worse place
Heath experimented with gay conversion therapy, and claimed to have successfully converted a homosexual patient, labeled in his paper as Patient B-19. The patient, who had been arrested for marijuana possession, was implanted with electrodes into the septal region (associated with feelings of pleasure), and many other parts of his brain. The septal electrodes were then stimulated while he was shown heterosexual pornographic material. The patient was later encouraged to have intercourse with a sex worker recruited for the study. As a result, Heath claimed the patient was successfully converted to heterosexuality. This research would be deemed unethical today for a variety of reasons. The patient was recruited for the study while under legal duress, and further implications for the patient's well-being, including indications that electrode stimulation was addictive, were not considered
The first few books had all sorts of LGBT-coded characters, magic that literally let you change your gender, and a young group of alienated iconoclasts fighting against a moribund, sclerotic status quo that threatened to crush them for being different.
Then JK Rowling blew up, got personally famous, and partnered with Disney. Suddenly the stories were about defending the status quo, horny teenagers in painfully vanilla relationships, pro-sports, and big explosions.
The pro-sports was always there, none of them were really queer coded, she didn't partner with Disney, they never really fought the status quo, just kinda complained sometimes, and magic never really changed anyone's gender. We see women only look like men using magic in the last book, ever other transformation was in the same gender, because jkr can't imagine gender changing. Thd books and author sucks but learn what you're talking about before speaking.