Rowling: TERF
“I
know and love trans people, but erasing the concept of sex removes the
ability of many to meaningfully discuss their lives. It isn’t hate to
speak the truth,” she continued, objecting to the idea that biological
sex “isn’t real.”
“I
respect every trans person’s right to live any way that feels authentic
and comfortable to them,” Rowling tweeted. “I’d march with you if you
were discriminated against on the basis of being trans. At the same
time, my life has been shaped by being female. I do not believe it’s
hateful to say so.”
“JK Rowling is a TERF” (which stands for trans-exclusionary radical feminist)
Serpent's tooth: Daniel Radcliffe
Transgender women are women. Any statement to the contrary erases the identity and dignity of transgender people and goes against all advice given by professional health care associations who have far more expertise on this subject matter than either Jo or I," Radcliffe stated.
He further shared that 78% of transgender and nonbinary youth have reported that they have been the subject of discrimination due to their gender identity. He noted, "We need to do more to support transgender and nonbinary people, not invalidate their identities, and not cause further harm."
The actor also addressed Harry Potter fans and apologised to them if they were hurt by JK Rowling's comments.
Radcliffe wrote, "To all the people who now feel that their experience of the books has been tarnished or diminished, I am deeply sorry for the pain these comments have caused you. I really hope that you don’t entirely lose what was valuable in these stories to you."
Serpent's tooth:Emma Watson
Watson, who played Hermione Granger in the popular movie series, shared her thoughts on the issue, and she condemned Rowling’s tweets.
“Trans people are who they say they are and deserve to live their lives without being constantly questioned or told they aren’t who they say they are, I want my trans followers to know that I and so many other people around the world see you, respect you and love you for who you are.”
.......................................................
Create her child of spleen; that it may live,
And be a thwart disnatured torment to her!
Let it stamp wrinkles in her brow of youth;
With cadent tears fret channels in her cheeks;
Turn all her mother's pains and benefits
To laughter and contempt; that she may feel
How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is
To have a thankless child! Away, away!
King Lear Act 1, scene 4
..........................................
I have sat in this room and been the only one of an adult quintet not to be reading his or her own, freshly-purchased copy of the latest Harry Potter tripe; y'know, wizards and spells, tiny kids' bedtime stuff. Ah, but mr ishmael, she was a single mother. Aye, right, but it's still tiny kids' stuff. And she's been maried, JayKay, for ages, so it's no longer an excuse, being single, never was, actually. What's good is being a single mother and - like nearly all of them - just getting on with it, not making hundreds of millions of trash-pounds; Christ, who'd want JayKay - and her security team and her PR team and her publishers - Fuck me, Jesus, who'd want all that shit for a mum.
A little sidebar here, with myself. If the Labour Party was so important to her, how come she only gave them one of her hundreds of millions of pounds; why not twenty million or a hundred million; don't it make ya wanna rock'n'roll, the generosity of the artist? Why not make a difference instead of a gesture. Big people give a little and they get all the praise, little people, relatively, give a lot and they just stay little people; move along now, you're in the Celebrities' way.
Most successful marketing exercise since NewLabour, itself, I think, Rowling's mewlings and pukings. Baby-talkin' the masses, it's the new Newspeak, Obama does it, Blair did it; Brown couldn't speak but only sermonise and the Coalition mobsters are all just children, themselves, spoiled children, waiting til their father gets home. But baby-talking is the New Way.
Ah but mr ishmael, she got a lot of kids reading again, did JayKay. Fuck off, she didn't, this is publishing industry shit; the kids who didn't read before Pottermania, still didn't read after it. They didn't read because they didn't read, because their parents didn't read, if they had any parents, and even if they did have any parents, maybe they didn't have disposable income set aside to improve our childrens' minds, weren't able to chose Steiner schools, because we believe in them and that our children are well, just that little bit special -why?- well, because they're ours, bless them. Vanity and narcissism? No, I don't believe so not that reading Harry Potter improved anything, it just led to people old enough, one would have hoped, to know better, reading these awful monstrosities before their brats could get hold of them - they call it sharing the literary experience with our children, it really is so precious. No, it fucking isn't. Last book I read for fun with a child was The Tiger Who Came To Tea.
I have noted previously that when I was a kid it was cool to read grown-up books. Thanks to my big brother, I did it all the time; I read Catch 22, The Naked and the Dead, The Loneliness of the LongDistance Runner, From Here to Eternity, Lucky Jim, oh, shitloads of stuff, Pans and Penguins, and I also warped through a galaxyful of science fiction, short stories, novellas, novels, trilogies, anthologies and compendia; I have a small library of 'sixties science fiction which isn't but ought to be worth a fortune.
Brian Aldiss, one of Britain's greatest sci-fiers describes his trade as first creating a whole new world of different but credible creatures, with credible habitats, biologies, technologies, religions, superstitions, hierarchies, creating a place into which we can extrapolate human preoccupations, such as war'n'peace, over-population, natural disaster, individuality, totalitarianism et cetera and explore them. And then writing a story in it.
Isaac Asimov, in his Foundation Trilogy scattered humanity across the galaxy, his swarming spread guided by psycho-historian and futurist, Hari Seldon, his wars, crises and triumphs catalogued in the Encyclopaedia Galactica. Asimov, himself a distinguished scientist, formulated the fictional Laws of Robotics, realised much later in the derisory film I, Robot. This stuff was proper reading for a kid. This was proper imagination, this wasn't McDonalds-in-a-Book, the addictive, franchised, shove-it-in-their-faces, give-em-what-they-want, fast-food drivel of Harry Potter.
In his bleak 1954 existential masterpiece, I Am Legend, Richard Matheson revived the then-retired, zombie-vampire genre, his lonely and bereft hero, Robert Neville, first battling his neighbours-turned-vampires with garlic and stakes and later with a phlebologist's laboratory bench. Some of my teachers would say You can't read this stuff, others'd turn a blind eye, feeling, I guess, that it was OK for me to read stuff aimed at an older readership. I am Legend, too, became grist to the Hollywood mill, milled into ashes and dust, it was, a vehicle for Will Smith's shiny white smile. Never mind, the book is there, still.
Now, of course, GlobaCorp sells anything to anyone, creates the myth that Yes, it's Good, yes, it's Worthwhile, Yes, parents should read kiddy fiction, listen to kiddy music.
.......................................................
Create her child of spleen; that it may live,
And be a thwart disnatured torment to her!
Let it stamp wrinkles in her brow of youth;
With cadent tears fret channels in her cheeks;
Turn all her mother's pains and benefits
To laughter and contempt; that she may feel
How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is
To have a thankless child! Away, away!
King Lear Act 1, scene 4
..........................................
MAY YOU STAY FOREVER YOUNG, THAT'S AN ORDER.
mr ishmael 5th March 2014
mr ishmael 5th March 2014
I have sat in this room and been the only one of an adult quintet not to be reading his or her own, freshly-purchased copy of the latest Harry Potter tripe; y'know, wizards and spells, tiny kids' bedtime stuff. Ah, but mr ishmael, she was a single mother. Aye, right, but it's still tiny kids' stuff. And she's been maried, JayKay, for ages, so it's no longer an excuse, being single, never was, actually. What's good is being a single mother and - like nearly all of them - just getting on with it, not making hundreds of millions of trash-pounds; Christ, who'd want JayKay - and her security team and her PR team and her publishers - Fuck me, Jesus, who'd want all that shit for a mum.
A little sidebar here, with myself. If the Labour Party was so important to her, how come she only gave them one of her hundreds of millions of pounds; why not twenty million or a hundred million; don't it make ya wanna rock'n'roll, the generosity of the artist? Why not make a difference instead of a gesture. Big people give a little and they get all the praise, little people, relatively, give a lot and they just stay little people; move along now, you're in the Celebrities' way.
Most successful marketing exercise since NewLabour, itself, I think, Rowling's mewlings and pukings. Baby-talkin' the masses, it's the new Newspeak, Obama does it, Blair did it; Brown couldn't speak but only sermonise and the Coalition mobsters are all just children, themselves, spoiled children, waiting til their father gets home. But baby-talking is the New Way.
Ah but mr ishmael, she got a lot of kids reading again, did JayKay. Fuck off, she didn't, this is publishing industry shit; the kids who didn't read before Pottermania, still didn't read after it. They didn't read because they didn't read, because their parents didn't read, if they had any parents, and even if they did have any parents, maybe they didn't have disposable income set aside to improve our childrens' minds, weren't able to chose Steiner schools, because we believe in them and that our children are well, just that little bit special -why?- well, because they're ours, bless them. Vanity and narcissism? No, I don't believe so not that reading Harry Potter improved anything, it just led to people old enough, one would have hoped, to know better, reading these awful monstrosities before their brats could get hold of them - they call it sharing the literary experience with our children, it really is so precious. No, it fucking isn't. Last book I read for fun with a child was The Tiger Who Came To Tea.
I have noted previously that when I was a kid it was cool to read grown-up books. Thanks to my big brother, I did it all the time; I read Catch 22, The Naked and the Dead, The Loneliness of the LongDistance Runner, From Here to Eternity, Lucky Jim, oh, shitloads of stuff, Pans and Penguins, and I also warped through a galaxyful of science fiction, short stories, novellas, novels, trilogies, anthologies and compendia; I have a small library of 'sixties science fiction which isn't but ought to be worth a fortune.
Brian Aldiss, one of Britain's greatest sci-fiers describes his trade as first creating a whole new world of different but credible creatures, with credible habitats, biologies, technologies, religions, superstitions, hierarchies, creating a place into which we can extrapolate human preoccupations, such as war'n'peace, over-population, natural disaster, individuality, totalitarianism et cetera and explore them. And then writing a story in it.
Isaac Asimov, in his Foundation Trilogy scattered humanity across the galaxy, his swarming spread guided by psycho-historian and futurist, Hari Seldon, his wars, crises and triumphs catalogued in the Encyclopaedia Galactica. Asimov, himself a distinguished scientist, formulated the fictional Laws of Robotics, realised much later in the derisory film I, Robot. This stuff was proper reading for a kid. This was proper imagination, this wasn't McDonalds-in-a-Book, the addictive, franchised, shove-it-in-their-faces, give-em-what-they-want, fast-food drivel of Harry Potter.
In his bleak 1954 existential masterpiece, I Am Legend, Richard Matheson revived the then-retired, zombie-vampire genre, his lonely and bereft hero, Robert Neville, first battling his neighbours-turned-vampires with garlic and stakes and later with a phlebologist's laboratory bench. Some of my teachers would say You can't read this stuff, others'd turn a blind eye, feeling, I guess, that it was OK for me to read stuff aimed at an older readership. I am Legend, too, became grist to the Hollywood mill, milled into ashes and dust, it was, a vehicle for Will Smith's shiny white smile. Never mind, the book is there, still.
Now, of course, GlobaCorp sells anything to anyone, creates the myth that Yes, it's Good, yes, it's Worthwhile, Yes, parents should read kiddy fiction, listen to kiddy music.
It's
JayKay Rowling's dreadful marketing triumph - the Harry Potter
tripeology - and the PBC's Doctor Who - sexy actor and saucy
jailbait cyberminx companion which I blame for this deliberate
and sinister generation-merging.
Those
are just two examples but global Infotainment makes little distinction
between generations of consumers and if there is a cross-over product -
be it interporn or smartphones or wizardly doggerel then
cross-generationally-marketed it shall be. There is almost a compulsion
about it, that we must read and watch the same stuff as our kids, use
the same cyber-enslavement devices - I found myself, in the
nineteen-nineties, taking a mobile phone call whilst sitting on the
loo; haven't had a mobile telephone phone since, I mean a mobile, of
course, we don't waste words by saying mobile phone. I mean, that's one
word wasted everytime you say mobile phone. And that adds up to a lorra
wasted words. An anyway, adjective is the same thing as a noun, innit.
Even though the fucking things aren't fucking mobile, they are fucking
well portable, stupid fucking braindead, illiterate, uncomprehending,
pigshitthick buffoons.
.............................................................................................
Just a bit of Cosplay fun:
Author's notes:
BOOKS,
MEDIA WHOVIAN SOUNDTRACK EROTO-MINX COMPANIONS, ALDISS ASIMOV matheson
Potter, wizards and stuff, tripe, luvem2bits, my son and my best friend
narcissistic emotional noncing, I know what it's like, extravagant
spiritual, emotional and thespian gifts. balladeer's thin man,
something is happening here but I don't know what it is, conveeeyor
belt, continuum uni generational consumers.............................................................................................
Just a bit of Cosplay fun:
17 comments:
The Rowling debate is an instance of the degradation I’ve cited, Mrs I. It is a slice of purest madness but it is not untypical. Only a civilisation ready to topple could possibly indulge in it. Meanwhile, a record number of abortions, over 200,000, in England and Wales.
The loss of what it is to be human.
Interesting discussion here:
https://youtu.be/WUG3IsajGEw
Some American exceptionalism creeps in at times (they are pitching to an Anglo audience), but leaving that aside, the nail was hit on the head for me towards the end, when what is now happening in the West was described as "self-hate". I think this is correct. Its as if in their sub-conscious, people now realise that what has been happening in the West on many levels is wrong. The response may not be coherent, but perhaps the diagnosis is.
We used to talk, mr mike, with mr i, about the point of the left now that the economic argument of socialism in all of its guises has proven to be pretty and lovely but undoable and ruinous. New Labour made an attempt to define new things - "social justice", "the investment", etc. In the end NL proved to be just as incompetently financed as all of the rest of the previous manifestations. It breaks. It does as Mdad Maggie said run out of other people's money.
Not for the first time - internal liberalism is your answer. Silence is so very not violence. What did More say? "I do none harm. I say none harm. I think none harm. And if this be not enough to keep a man alive, then in good faith I long not to live." We do more than that now but I am afraid that there is no option but to get up out of one's bed the best part of five days every week and work for a living. We can thus look after the unfortunate - even the permanently unfortunate - but we cannot look after the feckless, and certainly not the permanently feckless. My kids are more important to me than your kids, and certainly more important than some other unknown person's kids. If the shit hits the fan, I will feed mine first. As will you. This is horrible but true and Darwinian. If a Labour MP tells me that I am a bad person because of that, his kids in a private school, her expenses fiddled, his mortgages flipped... Well, we need a tree and a rope.
What is the role of mr i's beloved Left? These history-free eegits in the street - what do they want? Do they know? Are they capable of thinking the question through?
I venture that a new dead end has been found. Identity politics. Which is just a fixing-to-die coalition-building stupidity. Even now in the US they are trying to fiddle November via massive postal voter fraud. An identity of covid-hiding, black-shunned cant. My marxist mate of long ago used to say that these sins were excusable because he had a duty to deliver his nirvana. (I expect that he too has grown up now.) The inexcusable is excused now because it is expedient.
What does the left do now that we already have an NHS, we already have pretty safe working conditions, parental conditions, respect for minorities and majorities alike. What is it for? It surely isn't for pulling statues down onto its own stupid head.
Much of that agreed, Mr Mongoose, and yet where, or what, now is the Right? The homely capitalism of every man in his castle, and in his church on Sunday, is no more (if it ever was). Instead, it has mutated through technology and is become a supranational, humanity-devouring maw. It is Mammon who is being fed by the fools you describe.
The common, devastating loss is, I am sorry to say, God. The self-loathing of which Mr Mike speaks, and the lethal aridity of Left and Right - meaningless labels - derive from His departure and the departure of a spirituality to temper our appetites. No merely political or economic creed will suffice nor, alas, will a liberal humanism which has no ultimate core to resist the predators.
We have been inhabiting the twilight of the gods and now, I worry very much, the night is falling. Biblical of me, I know, but Ye shall know them by their fruits.
Having been the beneficiary of a Catholic convent-school education, I have been pretty firmly the atheist ever since, and deeply opposed to hierarchical structures of organised religion - as you've probably gathered from my occasional comment in these pages (and from the photo of the girl bishop in the comedy hat, above). mr bb's comments in this thread, however, remind me of my sick indignation when reading Philip Pullman's Northern Lights trilogy. I had already tired of Pullman's self-indulgent prolixity, inauthentic dialogue and baggy plotting when I came to his depiction of an old, tired, powerless and imprisoned God and of the horrors of hell. Okay, maybe this was an extended metaphor. Maybe the three hefty volumes of sustained attack on organised religion were intended as a balancing weight to C.S.Lewis - and therefore justified(?) But they were nasty. And targeted at children. Why any parent would encourage their kid to read such stuff if they knew what the pages contain, I know not. Turning this stuff into children's TV programmes and films seems to be the Devil's work. The Devil, being in this, and every instance, the human race up to its usual tricks. The draining of comfort, goodness, hope and spiritual growth does not have to be the logical corollary of retiring God and his parasitical hierarchy in their lace-trimmed frocks and comedy hats, if we have the will and motivation to just say no to Philip Pullman and the rest of the anti-life nation-groomers.
Don't worry about the night falling, mr bb, remember Victor Hugo : "Even the darkest night will end and the sun will rise".
God knows what sort of day it will be, though.
mr mike, thank you for the link to the debate between Alex Christoforou and Alexander Mercouris, (disbarred barrister, reinvented as commentator). Definitely worth a look, even though it got a bit Book of Revelation at times. At a running time of 30 minutes, you'll need to settle in, but it covers much of the ground that we have elegantly traversed here in these pages of late and considers the collapse of empires as the core nation fails to understand the currents of dissent within its own body; political paralysis; irrational, theatrical, cultish rituals; dealing with fictions within a fractured nation, and the process being mainpulated for political purposes.
Empires rise, Empires fall. It is the way of empires. I won't be the only one glad when the American Empire falls, but it will be mourned - is being mourned - by those invested in the status quo ante.
There is no Left and no Right, any more, mr mongoose - hasn't been since Blair invented New Labour. Just a set of well-groomed politicians wearing obsolete party colours round their necks.
mr ishmael's beloved Left was from a time before-before; the Left of the Worker's Education Association, the Trade Union Movement, the Beveridge Report, from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs, clause IV of the Labour Party manifesto: "To secure for the workers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry and the most equitable distribution thereof that may be possible upon the basis of the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange, and the best obtainable system of popular administration and control of each industry or service."
All gone now. Windy rhetoric, turned to dust and ashes and blown away by Blair.
Funnily enough (in light of Mr BB's observations) I was thinking along parallel lines (despite being no one's idea of any kind of theist) because the no-plinthing movement comes, surely, from a very barren outcrop of ultra-secular development, one with no time for entrenched cultural inclinations with a Christian heritage, namely forgiveness and the idea that nobody's perfect. Damn right they'll be casting the first stone, and the one after that, because that's what you do when you're right. Ishmaelites will be keeping beady weather-eyes on where this goes next - portraits first, then books? (ISIL would approve, of course. Irony, much?)
cheers
v./
These people must have zero knowledge of history.
A simple modicum of the historical facts would entitle a person to put forth their opinion.
Otherwise fuck off to some place else to do your attention seeking.
"All Tories are bastards." Such did Diane Abbott say on the Today programme back in the mists of time when I was a political toddler. "All of them?", asked the interviewer. "Yes, all of them" said Abbott. And there we are you see. Two legs good, four legs bad. And that's why socialism fails every time it is tried. Not because it's wrong or mad, sorry, mrs i, but because it needs division and attendant demonisation. It's a response to capitalism really and therefore requires capitalism, and therfore...
We have done away with God, Mr BB, but kept religion. We are particularly fond of calling out heresy and having metaphorical burnings at the stake of the poor heretic. JK the latest, her serpent's teeth kiddies stoking the fires - with great regret, natch.
Indeed, Mr Mongoose, these are all religious manifestations or, more precisely, parodies. The real thing has to do with sacrifice of self; the dark inversion always ends in the sacrifice of others.
Messers Verge, BB and mongoose. I too am not really religious in the Godly sense, but I agree that there is a distinct lack of spirituality and spiritual leadership in the West. Maybe its the Facebook generation being trained to be infantile pavlovian consumers? Their minds conditioned not to think and instead to respond to their programmed desires. What with social media there is no escape. A #MeToo generation.
I went through an epiphany of sorts over the last few years. Each year I've walked one of the famous Camino routes through France, Portugal and Spain. Its a pilgrimage in the original sense - a journey to test one's beliefs. Each day 30+kms usually in solitude through beautiful countryside for a month. 7 hours a day walking in silence. It soon moves on from being a physical challenge to being a spiritual challenge as you reflect on the events of your life. I've spoken with other pilgrims and some describe it as life-changing, maybe not that far for me but its quite an experience.
At the end of each Camino, I always go to the evening pilgrim mass in the great cathedral in Santiago. I'm not Catholic but the service although in Spanish is very moving - some are in tears. There is a nun who leads the singing and she has a crystal clear voice that rings around the vast space of the cathedral. The emotions are part elation at completing the challenge, but also a deep sense of grief because something personal has ended.
Unfortunately this year's journey was cancelled, but next year I intend to complete for me the last main route - the Camino del Norte. To any fellow Ishmaelites, I highly recommend doing a Camino.
Thank you, mr mike, I am very moved. The Richard Durrant virtual concerts that I have been posting? His destination is, I believe, Santiago, although he will bicycle, not walk, the pilgrim route, and play sublime guitar.
Organised religion in the West has become self-parodying. A dispassionate observer finds much to mock in the ritual, the dress-up, the whole whited-sepulchre squatting over the abuse of innocents, the Smaug-like accummulation and hoarding of wealth, the preposterous narrative taken from another time, another culture, another climate. Has become? Nah, it was always like that, folk just didn't know about it, not being literate, they had to rely on what they were told by the priestly class.
And yet, 17th century philosopher and mathematician, Blaise Pascal, told us we are born with a God-shaped hole in our hearts, waiting to be filled by God. And that feels right - we yearn towards the ineffable; disappointed by organised religion, unsatisfied by consumerism, sated by sex n drugs n rock n roll, we seek the meaning which we feel must be there somewhere, thinking this can't be all there is, surely? I don't think that there is a lack of spirituality - it is just differently felt, differently expressed, because folk are both bored and sickened by the manifestations of organised religion and now seek spiritual growth in other ways - meditation, mindfulness, mind and body disciplines, trance, chakra contemplation. I used to know this group of people who came together to worship, bringing food to share, chatting together, no priests, no music, no buildings - yet a purposeful gathering, intended to be, in essence, spiritual.
And I, too, have cried at the soaring voice in an ancient building, but also at the Red Army Choir; such is the sheer glory and beauty of the works of man.
If I may say so, Mr Mike, that is very beautiful.
Ah, mr verge, I do hope that your Bonfire of the Vanities vision doesn't collide with our reality, but I fear that it has started.
Starting in February 1495, during the time in which the festival known as Carnival occurred, Dominican friar Girolamo Savonarola began to host his regular "bonfire of the vanities". He collected various objects that he considered to be objectionable: irreplaceable manuscripts, ancient sculptures, antique and modern paintings, priceless tapestries, and many other valuable works of art, as well as mirrors, musical instruments, and books of divination, astrology, and magic. He destroyed the works of Ovid, Propertius, Dante, and Boccaccio. Major contemporary artists such as Sandro Botticelli and Lorenzo di Credi, consigned some of their own works to his bonfires. Anyone who tried to object found their hands being forced by teams of ardent Savonarola supporters. These supporters called themselves Piagnoni (Weepers) after a public nickname that was originally intended as an insult.
Compelling narrative, public shaming and apolgy, debasement, the removal of non-congruent artwork... Hard to start, but when rolling,it will crush all before it.
Mrs I: you may enjoy this - about a strawberry.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-A-D0jgrYA
And thank you, Mr BB.
mr mike, sweetheart, how did you know? Sublime and funny.
Here's a version without the comedy hats: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdb5siNzXmQ
Saw the Red Army in Bradford Alhambra when I was a mere child, back in the last century and thereafter forgave the USSR absolutely everything.
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