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hp was a big part of my pre transition life when i was in the closet. i hate jk so i dont buy new things but i still do reread my existing books. leaky, pottercast, and starkid were the first places i fit in.
but i dont actively seek out pro rowling hp fandom tho. fuck rowling.
I think a lot of us trans girls are in the same situation. I learned to read on HP books, and Hermoine was a deeply important character to me growing up 😅 It's hard for me, but I have gradually moved away from the series as it increasingly becomes associated with Britain's Top Transphobe.
Dunno if you know dimension 20 and their Misfits & Magic mini-series, but it was basically a satire of Harry Potter, really attacking some of the unquestioned tropes in that series.
Anyway, this is a beautiful clip of Erika Ishii, who is NB, at the start of the series, saying what they think of TERFs:
same! i also got into chris colfers land of stories which is infinitely better too (and he's a better person too!)
Supporting Gaiman is supporting a rapist; it will negatively impact a couple people directly.
Supporting Rowling is much worse.
Does buying Gaiman's work after he's dead still benefit him or can I separate him from the art at that point? I don't wanna support him, but I do wanna read his work someday
Sail the high seas.
Buying Gaiman's work after he's dead won't benefit him, but it could have the second-order effect of giving the impression to people that people broadly don't care about boycotting rapists. It's a lesser sin than supporting him now.
I would say so, yes. The only issue then being, can you enjoy reading their work knowing what you know ?
I wonder if I am unusual in that I am able to read good books by bad people without feeling gross. (I'm not claiming that I would support a bad person, just that reading their books doesn't generally cause me particular anguish.) Is this something that is unusual about me, or do people just assume that it should be difficult to read books like that, but most people aren't bothered? Same with movies and music. Listening to Michael Jackson or David Bowie from my personal archives, I don't feel any particular difficulty despite the allegations against them.
Anecdotal, but I read the Mists of Avalon years ago and enjoyed it enough to want to read more. Then I found out about the author (and her husband) sexually abusing children, including her own daughter, and I absolutely cannot bring myself to read any more of her books.
Fuck abusers. I'm glad she's dead and I don't give two shits what she had to say about anything when she was alive.
Harry Potter is so ubiquitous that most people who consume it do so without really knowing much about the author beyond their name and then there's a decent chunk that don't care because it doesn't affect them and they think it's culture war stuff that doesn't matter.
Making people care about things that don't directly affect them is always the hardest task.
Notice how a lot of folks aren't aware of the disgusting things Gaiman did, specifically BECAUSE he went quiet. Rowling doesn't want to go quiet because she's a crusader: discriminating against trans people is a goal for her.
yes, she sees herself as a kind of martyr and victim of a witch-hunt, which does change how she responds to the cultural backlash she receives for her behavior.
some googling later
Well, shit. Glad I buy secondhand books at every opportunity, otherwise I would have given money to a human sized pile of shit.
yeah learning about gaiman was hard, his work meant so much to me.
The Sound of Her Wings was an incredibly important story for me. It still is. But goddammit, Gaiman certainly tainted that memory.
I mean, I still love American Gods, Good omens and Neverwhere. I just stopped recommending them to people.
The thing that really pisses me off re: Good Omens in particular is that it took Pratchett out with him. And we don't get any more of the TV show because of it, either. Even though it's only half-Gaiman, it got ruined anyway.
I still enjoy his writing, but I'm not sure how to engage now. I want to separate the artist from the art and let the legal system do its thing as a separate thing and I don't know what 'right' looks like as a reader
Buying used copies and pirating his stuff so he never sees a penny, and talking about what a pile of shit he is. I do the same with David and Leigh Eddings. Who locked children in cages in their basement and beat them, among other things.
I can't separate artist and art. I feel guilty and angry. But I also don't want to. Money to them is money to their deeds. Paying for anything Harry Potter is paying for anti-trans movements. Paying anything Gaiman goes to the "fix your image" firm he has hired. Then I start thinking that firm is probably out there with messaging convincing people to separate art from the artist.
Heres what you can do:
Encourage people to pirate his shit
Remind people what he did. In detail.
Start with me! I know he did... Some rapey shit? Pro ably wizard flavored?
Here's the sanitized AP reporting: Woman’s lawsuits say sci-fi author Neil Gaiman repeatedly sexually assaulted her
Here's the full account from the victim (ALL the trigger warnings): "There is no safe word" - Vulture
Wow that's...
What strikes me is how boring the abuse was. Like, boiler plate horror. Maybe this does make me think less of him as an author, not just as a person.
Am I going to get rid of his works that I own? No, probably not. I love them. Which is why it sucks so much to never recommend them again, but that's the reality.
Shitty people can make good art. Death of the author.
Just never give them money.
My 2c tho, the Harry Potter novels legitimately suck. This has been my opinion of them since I was in 8th grade when the first one came out. At the time I described Sorcerer's / Philosopher's Stone as a failed attempt at ripping off Roald Dahl (British author who wrote mean-spirited children's books that stereotyped characters with funny-sounding names based on their physical descriptions). I was frequently urged to and attempted to give the books a second chance, never got more than 20 pages back into any of them before I put them down in exasperation because to me they always felt very petty and derivative. I was not very surprised when JK started to peel off her mask to the public.
Abolitionism is literally a running gag; the idea that someone might want it.
The stories aren't good.
You see, the difference is... Supporting Gaiman makes you seem like a rape enabler.... And anything related to rape is bad.
You want to discriminate against gay/trans/black/brown people? It might be distasteful, but it's not universally considered bad. There's lots of people out there willing to vote a Nazi into the white house and cheer him on as he breaks the law to deport anyone and everyone he wants to just because they're "not from here" (or they think they're "not from here").
See, they're ~~not~~ the same thing.
Yeah but Agent Orange was convicted of sexual assault too, so that argument doesn't hold.
I’d only heard about Gaiman on tumblr, and they’re fairly socially conscious over there. Frankly, I’d be surprised if he had any staying power with the crowd that previously endorsed him.
“Sexually assault your fans” wouldn’t sit well with anyone, whereas “women aren’t real women” comes out of left field.
Thing is Gaiman pissed off all feminists with the SA allegations so of course he has disappeared from the online world because the cross over between Neil Gaiman readers and SA-appologists is very small.
Whereas a sect of the feminists support her gatekeeping opinion that the only thing that can describe if you're a woman is being born with a cunt. This one very vocal audience is not unified.
On top of that Rowling is more mainstream than Gaiman is and the general public is more willing to ignore the mudslinging world of gender politics and not get involved if it means more content from a popular mediocre scribe.
yeah, agreed - Gaiman's fans are far less willing to tolerate his SA, HP fans are more general public and transphobia is more socially acceptable than SA.
Basically this post is essentially saying, "it's a shame transphobia is so acceptable to people"