Trans Memes

So much was covered in it, human rights, and media/propaganda too.

"You've been reading Rita Skeeter, Mr Fudge" is a line that I hear in my head so often when I hear people speak hatefully nowadays.

She also covered how being a trust-fund kid makes you better than everyone else. Which was a little odd for her politics at the time.

The only way I'd ever be willing to re-experience Harry Potter is through those movies, as they represent more than just the work of Rowling. I do agree that HP as a work itself was good, which makes JKR's bullshit feel like even more of a stab in the back.

I mean it may not have been amazing, but the target audience was children. I was never like super into it but I did like it as a kid and I do understand people being sad that something they grew up with got ruined.

It's not just about enjoying the stories though. It's more about buying more and more merch, running promo with your house scarf and that stuff. It's about.claiming to be an ally while still giving her money that she proudly funnels into hate campaigns.

I’m conflicted when her movies enter the libraries of streaming services. I’m not sure how exactly they get monetized and how much of a difference one watch makes. I watched Fantastic Beasts. Newt Scamander is a cute character. But I watched it with my parents, who would’ve watched it anyways.

I own Hagwarts Legacy, I got it somewhere for free. They probably get some compensation for freebies, but I wouldn’t expect that to be determined by the exact amount of gifted titles either. I never played it.

No.

Let them go entirely.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=fmOPM1cSrY4

Tldw: piracy still makes her money. Also, money is not the only form of currency that empowers her. And attention IS money.

Don't pirate. Let it go. Move on.

This is exactly it. So many of the very people she hates were the ones who loved her stuff the most. Queer people were the backbone of the HP fandom, so her embracing evil was that much more of a betrayal. If the people who wrote fanfiction, cosplayed, and engaged with the community the hardest can walk away from it, normies can too. It is not some monumental ask, nor is it one that a lot of the people demanding it haven't done themselves.

I dropped literally everything in your list for the reasons you outlined (except WoW, which I dropped before I knew anything about Blizzard).

But Rowling is worse than them.

Corporations are amoral, and entirely self serving. They will fuck over anyone if it earns the corporation a profit.

Rowling is not amoral. Rowling is driven by hate, and her goal is not self interest, and her harm is not indiscriminate. Her harm is targeted and deliberate, and she explicitly uses her visibility to normalise and encourage harm to the people she is targeting.

And deliberate targeted hate that tries to create more hate is worse than amoral self interest.

A few things

The "there is no ethical consumption under captilaism" as a get out of jail free for trying to do better is just a nothing. We should all be, within our capabilities, trying to ensure we aren't at the very least direct financial supporters of evil companies.

Re: no trans person you know (...)

I'm a trans person I know, I go nuclear about jkr and harry potter, and I also go nuclear about the support and usage of meta products, purchasing of games from corps like actiblizz, ubi, ea, square, Microsoft, etc, Minecraft, discord, etc etc etc. I'm in the minority of the minority, sure. But most people don't have the emotional or mental energy to "fight that many battles" at once, much less to convince others to do so.

The fact that most people might stop at hating jkr and HP isn't evidence that they're wrong or something. Its just a symptom of how well known it is that jkr and her products harm trans people. Fewer people know (or, have internalised) that the other examples are bad.

I think people should feel shame if they're giving money to jkr or otherwise promoting her presence. I also think it would be good if more people were taking stands against more things, but jkr's a good start

This is a strawman. There may be no ethical consumption under capitalism, but not all consumption is ethically equal. Each individual makes a value judgement based on how much harm their purchase is doing and how much they need to make it.

That line is different for everyone, and you’re conflating those lines by collapsing trans people into a monolith. It’s inconsistent because people are different.

That being said, anecdotally, I don’t give money to any of the companies you listed, and neither do most of my friends afaik.

i think a lot of it comes down to how much easier it is to drop Harry Potter than entire social platforms and such.

for example, it'll take time and energy for me to move from Windows to Linux, which i simply don't have right now. but all i need to do to stick it to Rowling is not care about Harry Potter.

now, that doesn't mean i would go out of my way to harass people who still support the franchise, but i could see how that would embolden other people to do so, and i still think it's important to let people know that J.K. Rowling actively advocates against trans people existing.

Like Ada said, JKR is uniquely hateful and her acceptance by society is enormously harmful. She shares as much responsibility as Hilary Cass for trans people being as discriminated against as they currently are in the UK. Her activism has ruined and ended lives, not because she's just greedy, but simply for the love of the game.

Also, don't use any of those other products if you can avoid it. Harry Potter is an easily avoidable series, not a hard to avoid service like Amazon or YouTube. It's not that hard to walk away from that fandom, especially when all the most interesting contributors have already left.

Well, here’s one, I actively cut many of those things out of my life. For instance, I used to love StarCraft 3, but haven’t gone back in a long time, and dont buy or play blizzard games, I don’t use any meta products, shop amazon, have anything to do with hp, gave away the books and movies etc.

Jkr is a horrible person, and if you just can’t give up a very mediocre story, maybe you aren’t an ally

The biggest difference is that all of your examples are standard big, evil corporations who fuck everyone over, while JK is a specific person spewing hate at a specific group of people.

Animorphs is better, there's more of it, and the authors support trans kids.

Unlike some trans people, I actually think the original works were pretty good, even with all of their flaws and problematic portrayals. Those aspects do make it easier to not engage with anymore, but a work that touched so many people and characters who were so beloved are nothing to scoff at. If Rowling was instead trans people's greatest ally, people wouldn't be so critical of it.

All that said, there absolutely is better stuff and HP is fairly easily replaceable.

It's really the people who come to you for assurances that they aren't doing a bad thing by supporting HP. Like they tell you about playing Hogwarts Legacy hoping that you'll ease their conscience. It's really awkward and they never feel good when you tell them that, yes, them buying into HP directly hurts us.

Only if they never talk about it with anyone so as to not cause other people to spend money instead. JKR and her work being promoted in society is inherently bad for trans people.

Sure, that's probably fine. But on the other hand, why not try any of the vastly better stories about a magical world to be obsessed with?

It is ok to let go of something you used to love. It is ok to let go of something you still love. It will be sad and maybe even uncomfortable. but if you learn and know that this thing you love is hurting other people, you need do decide what you value more; peoples right to self-actualization and be their authentic themselves, or your own comfort and entertainment.

(I used a lot of "you" and "your", but I want to stress I used those in a general sense, not directing this towards you specifically)