OZ Bookshop bans JK Rowling novels from shelves to create 'safe space' for trans folk

[Swan]

Originally Posted by Niamh.

Yes and back then they liked to tell women to shut up and sit down as well...backwards in time we're going

Yep...

[LeatherTrumpet]

The German National Socialists loved a good book banning (and burning)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_book_burnings

[Niamh.]

Originally Posted by Ammi

...this is from Pink News also as well as the Australian bookstore one...Jedward and Piers Morgan in ‘furious clash’ on Twitter...

...the Tweets aren’t loading for me for some reason so I’ll just link the whole article...

https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2020/09/1...ights-twitter/

Piers! What’s ridiculous is you fighting JK Rowling’s battles when she needs to reevaluate her actions and be aware of the consequences and damage her fictional book is inflicting on the transgender community!

Just a couple of men telling a woman how she should and shouldn't think..........

[Shaun]

The choice of Robert Galbraith is an odd and perhaps unfortunate one in hindsight. I doubt she heard about him before choosing a pen name and thought "YES. THAT'S THE ONE." Even if she were a massive bigot, it'd be a bit on the nose and easy for detractors to point out

[Oliver_W]

Originally Posted by Ammi

...this is from Pink News also as well as the Australian bookstore one...Jedward and Piers Morgan in ‘furious clash’ on Twitter...

...the Tweets aren’t loading for me for some reason so I’ll just link the whole article...

https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2020/09/1...ights-twitter/

Morgan, whose own track record on trans rights isn’t, er, great

That's where I stopped reading. He's great when it comes to LGBT stuff tbh. The linked "article" is just stupid jokes and stuff about "nonbinary", which is nonsense anyway

[bitontheslide]

this strikes me as a calculated offering to create confrontation and publicity. A bookstore is free to stock or not stock any books they want to and that's always been the case

[Liam-]

Originally Posted by Swan

Book burning though? Didn't they do something like that in the 1950's

Do we really think Jedward are aware of anything but themselves and hairspray?

[Niamh.]

Originally Posted by bitontheslide

this strikes me as a calculated offering to create confrontation and publicity. A bookstore is free to stock or not stock any books they want to and that's always been the case

Yeah totally their choice but it's only going to end up increasing her sales anyway so all's good for multi millionaire JK

[Swan]

Originally Posted by Liam-

Do we really think Jedward are aware of anything but themselves and hairspray?

No of course not, but they are in the public eye being 'twitter icons' n'all. They have over 600k followers (yes i googled 'jedward twitter' for the first, and last time). It's dangerous to encourage people to revert back to the 50's and 'burn books' just because they don't like the author. It's progression doing a 180.

[Oliver_W]

Originally Posted by Swan

No of course not, but they are in the public eye being 'twitter icons' n'all. They have over 600k followers (yes i googled 'jedward twitter' for the first, and last time). It's dangerous to encourage people to revert back to the 50's and 'burn books' just because they don't like the author. It's progression doing a 180.

Especially when said author is openly feminist and has been a major progressive voice for god knows how long..

[Toy Soldier]

Originally Posted by bitontheslide

this strikes me as a calculated offering to create confrontation and publicity. A bookstore is free to stock or not stock any books they want to and that's always been the case

Indeed, a cynical publicity grab, they can stock whatever they want of course but choosing to do it loudly isn't about making an ethical stand... is it... it's about drawing attention. These days it seems like people are generally OK with people hijacking their cause for self-publicity, though, so long as the message fits the tribal zeitgeist.

On a personal level I wouldn't be interested in a bookshop that is anything other than politically neutral. Half the point of GOING to a physical book shop would be to see if something outside your usual sphere of influence catches your eye ... if you know what you're looking for you buy online for a fraction of the price like everyone else .

Quite seriously though this trend towards some variant of revisionism and book-burning is a bit concerning. If we started burning the books of every author we disagree with or even those who have a blatantly murky personal history we'd be going round the shelves with a supermarket trolley FULL of books for the pyre. Imagine thinking you can only consume content made by squeaky-clean people who are on your personal and political page . What does a generation of people living in that sort of intellectual closed-system look like? Not a world I'm ever going to advocate, really. And no I'm not saying the Harry Potter series is top tier intellectualism - but once you start stripping one set of books from the shelves (and dousing them in lighter fluid along the way)... that's a pandoras box that it would be very naive to assume you can close.

What happens if other book stores or chains start stripping LGBT literature from their shelves because of their personal beliefs? Is that difficult to imagine? How will anyone who champions this action be able to say one word about it? If you say "taking books off the shelves is fine... burning books is fine..." it becomes very, very difficult to then say "hold on, I didn't mean THOSE books!!"

[Toy Soldier]

Originally Posted by Shaun

The choice of Robert Galbraith is an odd and perhaps unfortunate one in hindsight.

That part did stand out to me to be fair, but it's something I'd have to dig around before jumping to "social media conclusions". I agree that it would be a pretty clear piece of political banner waving if it was a deliberate choice, and therefore it seems quite unlikely. But also a bit of an unusual name. Hm.

[Liam-]

Originally Posted by Toy Soldier

Indeed, a cynical publicity grab, they can stock whatever they want of course but choosing to do it loudly isn't about making an ethical stand... is it... it's about drawing attention. These days it seems like people are generally OK with people hijacking their cause for self-publicity, though, so long as the message fits the tribal zeitgeist.

On a personal level I wouldn't be interested in a bookshop that is anything other than politically neutral. Half the point of GOING to a physical book shop would be to see if something outside your usual sphere of influence catches your eye ... if you know what you're looking for you buy online for a fraction of the price like everyone else .

Quite seriously though this trend towards some variant of revisionism and book-burning is a bit concerning. If we started burning the books of every author we disagree with or even those who have a blatantly murky personal history we'd be going round the shelves with a supermarket trolley FULL of books for the pyre. Imagine thinking you can only consume content made by squeaky-clean people who are on your personal and political page . What does a generation of people living in that sort of intellectual closed-system look like? Not a world I'm ever going to advocate, really. And no I'm not saying the Harry Potter series is top tier intellectualism - but once you start stripping one set of books from the shelves (and dousing them in lighter fluid along the way)... that's a pandoras box that it would be very naive to assume you can close.

What happens if other book stores or chains start stripping LGBT literature from their shelves because of their personal beliefs? Is that difficult to imagine? How will anyone who champions this action be able to say one word about it? If you say "taking books off the shelves is fine... burning books is fine..." it becomes very, very difficult to then say "hold on, I didn't mean THOSE books!!"

You’d have more of a point if we weren’t already told as a community to get over it when companies refuse service for things like gay weddings because it falls under ‘freedom of choice’ so we can’t demand that private business cater to us

[Liam-]

Originally Posted by Toy Soldier

That part did stand out to me to be fair, but it's something I'd have to dig around before jumping to "social media conclusions". I agree that it would be a pretty clear piece of political banner waving if it was a deliberate choice, and therefore it seems quite unlikely. But also a bit of an unusual name. Hm.

I can’t imagine that she fell into the name by accident and it’s all just one big coincidence, it’s a very specific name and she’s admitted to apparently doing a lot of research, I don’t see it as anything but a very deliberate choice

[bitontheslide]

Originally Posted by Toy Soldier

That part did stand out to me to be fair, but it's something I'd have to dig around before jumping to "social media conclusions". I agree that it would be a pretty clear piece of political banner waving if it was a deliberate choice, and therefore it seems quite unlikely. But also a bit of an unusual name. Hm.

what's the issue with the pseudonym, she has used them in the past

[Niamh.]

Originally Posted by Toy Soldier

That part did stand out to me to be fair, but it's something I'd have to dig around before jumping to "social media conclusions". I agree that it would be a pretty clear piece of political banner waving if it was a deliberate choice, and therefore it seems quite unlikely. But also a bit of an unusual name. Hm.

Her explanation for the name choice is Robert after her political here Robert Kennedy and Ella Galbraith was her fantasy name as a child. Who is Robert Galbraith?

[Liam-]

Originally Posted by bitontheslide

what's the issue with the pseudonym, she has used them in the past

Robert Galbraith was the person who invented gay conversion therapy

[bitontheslide]

Originally Posted by Liam-

Robert Galbraith was the person who invented gay conversion therapy

oops

[Niamh.]

Originally Posted by Liam-

Robert Galbraith was the person who invented gay conversion therapy

Why do you think JK Rowling is anti gay though?

[Liam-]

Originally Posted by Niamh.

Why do you think JK Rowling is anti gay though?

I don’t think she’s necessarily anti-gay, I think she’s a fake ally that likes using the community when it suits her personally, no true ally would be happy making money using the name of someone that was the direct cause of such mental and physical torture for countless members of said community, personally speaking

[LeatherTrumpet]

Im sure what ever name she came up with someone would have found some link to diss her

[Ammi]

...this is an interesting article actually, so I’ll just leave it here if anyone wishes to read it as it’s quite long...


We Should Have Known About J.K. Rowling's Views, Thanks to Her Under-the-Radar Book Series...

A lot of valid criticism has already been written about J.K. Rowling and, by extension, Harry Potter, particularly in light of the author's recent, vastly misinformed anti-transgender comments via blog post, Twitter, and elsewhere. Like so many Potter fans, I'm wrestling with my disappointment and personal relationship to the series in light of all this. Many intelligent articles explore the misinformation she uses to defend her perspective and how insensitivity around gender and race was already evident in her wizardry canon. For the original seven books (1997-2007), though, some fans have argued that they were "of their time" and subject to increasing criticism after the books were completed. But what about Rowling's other series, the whodunit mysteries she's actually still writing under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith? Unlike Harry Potter, this story takes place in the real world—one in which Rowling directly explores issues of race, gender, and sexuality. It's really bleak.

For a long time, I loved the Strike series. I preordered the books. I read them the day they came out. I loved her representation of her secondary protagonist, Robin Ellacott, who's a rape survivor with PTSD—made even more poignant because Rowling shared she's a sexual assault survivor in her latest blog post and has since claimed to have received rape and death threats. I'm also a rape survivor; I felt so seen by Robin's depiction that I wrote a Medium blog post devoted to it in 2018. It was perhaps because of my own connection to one of the characters that it took me much too long to acknowledge what else was staring me, a cisgender white woman, directly in the face.

There's a strong moralistic undercurrent in the Strike series. Exploring some similar themes as The Casual Vacancy, there's no patience for people who are lazy, greedy, gossipy, fame-seeking, cheating, or deceitful. Among others, she presents unlikeable characters who take the form of conservative, hypocritical politicians; radical leftists; wealthy elite who rub elbows with royalty; publishers, editors, authors—especially the misogynist ones—in the literary world; and journalists, particularly those who work for the Daily Mail and Sun chasing salacious stories and hacking phones. By contrast, protagonist Cormoran Strike is an impoverished, disabled veteran who lost half a leg to an IED in Afghanistan. As a private detective, he serves as the sometimes caustic voice of reason as he seeks justice for his clients.

To an extent, this is the job of the crime writer—to create characters that read as seedy, given that they're all potential suspects. But this element makes it all the more upsetting that, as with Harry Potter, problematic racial undertones exist throughout: describing a seamstress as "oriental" in book one, The Cuckoo's Calling, and calling a multiracial man a "masterpiece produced by an indecipherable cocktail of races." A homeless Black woman, "uncompromisingly plain" with "greasy skin...the color of burned earth...covered in acne pustules and pits" is a covetous blackmailer, killed for her shortsightedness. An Italian Briton in book four, Lethal White, is "swarthy" and ultimately sociopathic. There's an offhand use of the n-word via a Jay-Z and Kanye song in the background. An investigating Strike resorts to taunting a Muslim man about his family's disownment because of their mistaken belief in his homosexuality.

Rowling's not the first crime writer to use racist stereotypes, but the problems don't stop there. There are even fewer LGBTQ+ representations, but we actually don't have to go far to see her depict a transgender character: book two, The Silkworm, which won the Gold Dagger Award in 2015 from the Crime Writers' Association. A potential suspect, trans woman Pippa Midgley is a pitiful, high-strung, violent character with no sense or self-preservation. She stalks and attacks Strike with a Stanley knife. When Strike defends himself and drags her into his office, references are made to Pippa's assigned sex at birth: her "prominent" Adam's apple, voice "as rough and loud as a docker's," and the vocal exercises she may have done, as she explains she's transitioning. Strike threatens her when she attempts escape. "If you go for that door one more ****ing time I'm calling the police and I'll testify and be glad to watch you go down for attempted murder. And it won't be fun for you inside, Pippa...not pre-op."

Here, the protagonist, the hero you're meant to be rooting for, is making a pretty clear threat—an allusion to prison rape. This is particularly callous in light of Rowling's admission she's a survivor, and seemingly flying in the face of her blog comment that "[t]rans people need and deserve protection." It's also transphobic to taunt Pippa about her transition—a grossly inappropriate remark that wouldn't be made if he were treating her simply as a nefarious woman—and highlight how that will lead to more violence. Other characters respond with pity, rather than scorn, to Pippa, but her attempts to form a new family after disownment and honor her experience via memoir are treated glibly. At one point Strike calls her a "self-dramatizing twat."

In 2019, Vice noted the book's transphobic nature as preexisting evidence of Rowling's beliefs. Trans writer Katelyn Burns wrote for Them in 2018 that "[i]t’s an entirely common though insulting trope about trans women—that they are aggressive and unable to overcome their masculine nature, not to mention villainous—that has become all too common from cisgender authors with only a passing knowledge of trans people."

It doesn't stop there. Book three, Career of Evil, spotlights and heaps scorn on two characters with body integrity identity disorder (BIID), in which sufferers "reject" healthy body parts and seek amputation or paralyzation. The disorder garners significant controversy; Researchers categorize it as rare, extreme, and debilitating. It may originate as a psychiatric disorder and/or a neurological problem that produces abnormal brain scans. And some conservative writers incorrectly conflate people who have this agonizing disorder with people who are transgender.

And in fact, some readers have already noted that Rowling's depiction of BIID in Career of Evil comes off as a coded criticism of being transgender. There are similarities in the language, like, "People have died trying to do it themselves," and one of the characters proudly announcing, "It's a need...I've known ever since I was a child. I'm in the wrong body. I need to be paralyzed." This garners a response from the disabled Strike: "Get some ****ing help. With your head." Rowling hasn't spoken specifically about her feelings about BIID, but the violent, derisive depiction fetishizes and pathologizes the characters in the same way as Pippa. Worth noting: BBC apparently cut both Pippa and the BIID storylines from the C.B. Strike TV series.

Not as many people read the Strike series—it would be almost impossible to replicate the insane success of Harry Potter—but the first two Strike books hit 1.5 million copies in 2015 and Rowling's been steadily chugging along ever since (book five is set to debut September 29). The decision about what to do with the series depends on what an individual needs to process and heal: Some walk away, some work to separate the art from the artist. Some fans have already said they won't purchase more Strike books. Two Harry Potter fan sites, MuggleNet and Leaky Cauldron, have issued statements condemning her remarks—particularly that she chose to tweet during Pride Month. Some argue that Rowling has made herself irrelevant. Many, myself included, have committed to listening to trans writers when they call out prejudice the first time. Burns posted a thread that encourages readers to pivot from Rowling to the intersection of race and transphobia:


It's still true that the Strike series helped me reckon with my own trauma and feel seen. But, I'd rather be a true ally. If there's one small silver lining, then, it's that Rowling inspired transgender and nonbinary people—in some cases, to write more inclusive books of their own. "If the root of Rowling’s books is the constant miracle of overcoming considerable odds with love and courage to negotiate hatred," explains writer and transgender woman Charlotte Clymer, "trans people, who leave our homes every day into a world full of discrimination and violence against our bodies and souls, are the closest thing this world has to magic."



https://www.marieclaire.com/culture/...lbraith-books/

[Niamh.]

Originally Posted by Liam-

I don’t think she’s necessarily anti-gay, I think she’s a fake ally that likes using the community when it suits her personally, no true ally would be happy making money using the name of someone that was the direct cause of such mental and physical torture for countless members of said community, personally speaking

I think that name is very well known though is it? I never heard of him anyway

[Liam-]

Originally Posted by Niamh.

I think that name is very well known though is it? I never heard of him anyway

Whether you personally have or not isn’t the point, she’s claimed to do a lot of research and considering she once compared forms of transitioning to conversion therapy, I think it’s very much safe to assume that she probably knows who he is, I mean, if you were an author and wanted to use a pseudonym, wouldn’t you check to make sure said name didn’t have connections to something off?

[Niamh.]

Originally Posted by Liam-

Whether you personally have or not isn’t the point, she’s claimed to do a lot of research and considering she once compared forms of transitioning to conversion therapy, I think it’s very much safe to assume that she probably knows who he is, I mean, if you were an author and wanted to use a pseudonym, wouldn’t you check to make sure said name didn’t have connections to something off?

She claimed to have done research into trans issues not gay issues though, whether they're under the same umbrella group or not they really aren't that similar. I actually have no idea whether or not I would check a name or not tbh, I couldn't say for sure either way having never been in that position before. I really don't believe JK Rowling would champion a man who introduced gay conversion therapy though and JK Rowling has never given any indication that she was anything but a supporter of gay rights