Reminder: “separating the art from the artist” is an approach to engaging with an artwork, and is a separate question from whether or not you should engage with an artwork when doing so has real life consequences.
Whether or not you should consume HP Lovecraft media despite the fact he was a racist is entirely up to you because he is long dead. He doesn’t make any money. He isn’t even racist any more. Because he’s dead.
When you consider whether or not you consume Harry Potter media, you must consider that JK Rowling will make money and will donate that money to anti-trans groups. If you still go on to buy licensed merch, or pay a streaming service to watch it, you will literally be helping to propogate transphobia. Continue to enjoy anything you currently own if you want. That is where separating the art from the artist comes into it. But if you still actively promote the material online and thereby increase the demand for it; again, transphobia, arguably.
Only applies to artists who can no longer enjoy the spoils.
Can we pirate it. Or will that just make it more popular
Edit: or should we just boycott
Pirating it wouldn’t make it more popular if you kept it to yourself, but talking about it after you watched it probably would.
I have to say, this is just such an in-the-weeds moral stance that it crosses the boundary of reasonableness. Honestly, it’s this sort of thing that drove me away from left wing styles of thinking a while ago.
The impact you make on the world in any of your possible actions with regard to Harry Potter is miniscule. Like, truly, utterly insignificant. Are you going to organize an anti-potter boycott? Participate in a protest? Harass the actors in an online trolling movement? Throw eggs at JK Rawling’s house? Great! Go do all those things! Actively participate in changing the world for the better! These actions might actually lead to real change.
But denying yourself pleasures in the name of moral purity accomplishes nothing. If all you do is sit at home and think to yourself “I wanna watch the new Harry Potter thing, but I can’t, because then I’m a bad person.” (or in this case, "I wanna talk to my friends about the new Harry Potter thing I pirated, but I can’t, because then I’m a bad person) then you are accomplishing literally nothing except making yourself miserable. Again, if you are going to actually do something, then go do it! But if you don’t have the time or energy or interest or social battery to actually do something, then shaming yourself or others into not doing things is actively counterproductive. Go take a road trip without calculating if the pleasure you will derive is worth the carbon footprint! Eat an ice cream cone without feeling bad about the the suffering of the factory farmed cow it came from! Get one of those good-paying jobs in oil and gas or defence and make some goddamned money! You are simply not important enough for any of these actions to have any actual real-world impact. The only thing that happens is that you convince yourself that if you ever enjoy anything, then you are a bad person. You train yourself to constantly be looking for the ways in which life’s simple pleasures are destroying the world, so you can feel bad about them.
Just stop it. Be happy. Do whatever you need to do to chill out and enjoy your life and gain some sense of contentedness and security. And then go out and make the world a better place by actually doing something. Hyper-anxious, shame-ridden, depressed know-it-alls rarely create effective social change because no one wants to hang out with them. No one see them and thinks “yeah, that’s what I want my life to look like.”
In order to lead by example you have to show a path to a better world. Not a cell.
Don’t deprive yourself of happiness to spite her. That being said the books have several reasons to not read them on their own merits. Don’t forget “dobby is weird for not wanting to be a slave” is an actual plot point in the books. Not to mention the goblins. If you want to revisit a beloved fantasy series, give LOTR another read/watch.
I think its best to move on
☠️
JK Rowling is rich enough to fund anti trans groups for decades without any input from us. Boycotting HP has no effect on trans rights.
But if you still actively promote the material online and thereby increase the demand for it; again, transphobia, arguably.
I agree with everything you wrote up to this point. I’m not really a Harry Potter fan and I certainly don’t think much of J.K. Rowling since she revealed her true nature but this last bit is a very slippery slope.
You know the slippery slope fallacy right?
I had not seen that before but I’m not sure it applies. Perhaps the wording was poor to indicate my intent but it was not my intention to indicate “a chain reaction resulting in an undesirable end or ends” as that article says.
I was trying to communicate that making a broad statement, like OP did, that promoting Harry Potter online indicates transphobia or transphobic behavior by itself ignores both intent and context, which I think matters.
They’re not saying it’s transphobic, but it is promoting transphobia. Which isn’t really any better in my books.
it ispromoting transphobia
It literally is not, not without context and intent.
Somebody going online and posting, “I grew up with Harry Potter and loved it and I’m interested to see the new [whatever]” is not equivalent to promoting transphobia.
You cannot make a black and white determination like that without context and intent. Without those you’re just making assumptions.
Except for the fact that the money spent on the movie directly funds transphobia via JK Rowling…
You get she’s literally doing that right?
No, it indirectly funds her through a convoluted system of ownership and IP law.
The problem isn’t people consuming media. The problem is the system that funnels wealth into the pockets of bigots.
You get that the only person who controls what JK Rowling does is her, right?
You don’t have to like that someone may choose to continue to consume Harry Potter but trying to claim they are directly promoting transphobia unless the context and/or the intent is there.
Someone with a track record of transphobic behavior, sure. Someone who is posting about it in spaces intended for trans people, especially if that space has already clearly communicated their stance on it, maybe.
Context and intent matter.
“I grew up with Harry Potter and loved it and I’m interested to see the new [whatever]” is not equivalent to promoting transphobia.
It is equivalent, because in this case, it is literally promoting transphobia. One of the worlds leading transphobes will directly benefit from the profits this show makes, and will directly turn those profits against dismantling the rights of trans folk.
This isn’t an analogy, it’s not dramatic license, or over exaggeration.
You cannot make a black and white determination like that without context and intent.
If you know she will hurt trans people with the money she makes, and you do things that continue to make her money (which includes just advocating for continued consumption of her work), it is black and white, and the context and intent are quite visible.
By itself, it doesn’t mean someone is transphobic. But it does mean that at the very least, personal nostalgia is more important to that person than the harm their actions cause. And that is plenty of intent and context.
It is equivalent, because in this case, it is literally promoting transphobia. One of the worlds leading transphobes will directly benefit from the profits this show makes, and will directly turn those profits against dismantling the rights of trans folk.
adverb: literally in a literal manner or sense; exactly.
It literallyis not. I posted the definition in case you needed it. Purchasing or consuming a product is not exactly the same as promoting transphobia.
By your logic every person in the United States who pays any kind of taxes that go to the federal government is promoting transphobia. If you’ve ever shopped at a store that employs a transphobe, you’re promoting transphobia. If you’ve ever watched a movie or tv show that has a transphobic actor in it, you’re promoting transphobia. Doesn’t matter if you know it because, as you put it, they directly benefit from your money.
If you know she will hurt trans people with the money she makes, and you do things that continue to make her money (which includes just advocating for continued consumption of her work), it is black and white, and the context and intent are quite visible.
The only part of this that’s true is “advocating for continued consumption of her work” and even that’s a stretch because a person could have any number of reasons. Also, simply expressing interest in something is not advocating for it, it’s sharing an opinion or preference.
By itself, it doesn’t mean someone is transphobic. But it does mean that at the very least, personal nostalgia is more important to that person than the harm their actions cause. And that is plenty of intent and context.
It doesn’t mean that, that’s what you’re assuming because that’s what it means to you.
You do not make the rules for other people.
I am so tired of this “fall in line or else” attitude everyone seems to have.
You want to preface it with “in my opinion” you go right ahead and we’ll have to agree to disagree but it is by definition and factually not literally promoting transphobia.
Whether or not you should consume HP Lovecraft media despite the fact he was a racist is entirely up to you because he is long dead. He doesn’t make any money. He isn’t even racist any more. Because he’s dead.
I always say “If you’re going to be a shitshow of a human being but a talented artist, the least you can do is also be dead.”
See also: Phil Spector, Pablo Picasso.
HP Lovecraft was more a clinical xenophobe and expressed that in his writings. He was afraid of different races, but he was also deadly afraid of scientific advancement and even the color indigo. He also didn’t fund terrible politicians or get into feuds on twitter. You also don’t see terrible people on twitter using his writings to justify their beliefs.
JK Rowling is actively funding and bragging about making other people’s lives worse.
Yeah, I actually think Lovecraft was doing what was probably the healthiest thing available to him at the time with all his fucked up phobias by turning them into inspiration for spooky stories. He was creative and articulate enough that he could have been writing political screeds and trying to get others on board with driving out all the immigrants, but instead he wrote about crab monsters from space. Far from the worst possible outcome considering a lot of the other possibilities from the time.
HP Lovecraft is a national treasure.
His detractors are potatoes.
His writing can be good and he personally can be a piece of shit. One has nothing to do with the other. His detractors as it were virtually all hate that he was a racist POS.
Your opinion is shallow, conformist fluff.
I’m sure some is profiting from his estate, no?
Is his estate run by raging racists?
No
Well his estate is pretty loose about enforcing copyright and don’t take in much per product. That’s why you see so much merch. Secondly they are not some racist dipshit.
Their right to anything is as fictional as any of his works
https://lovecraft.fandom.com/wiki/Copyright_status_of_works_by_H._P._Lovecraft
Plus, it was a shared mythos. He created the main core of it, but others contributed as well. So, figuring out copyrights would be difficult, since some stories reference other stories. Remember, they thought they were just writing some horror stories, but that they would never be something anyone other than other horror story enthusiasts would see.
IP was not a thing yet, and they were just writing for fun. A modern version would be the shared SCP universe.
In addition to my loathing of the author, I have to say I am also really bothered how the books normalize slavery, glorify blood purity and elite privilege, treat systemic child abuse as comic relief, use goblins as thinly veiled anti-Semitic caricatures, reduce fat characters to jokes, sideline women or box them into tired tropes, justify authoritarianism with a shrug, romanticize magical servitude, paint non-human creatures as inherently dangerous, and act like destiny is a substitute for character development — all while the wizarding world runs on a caste system and no one ever questions it.
So I will be passing on this series, personally.
sideline women or box them into tired tropes
Which makes it mind bogglingly insane how many claimed “feminists” support her because of her stance on trans people.
Hermoine and Ron ending up together is shit. He treats her like garbage throughout the series.
Bellatrix is presented as this fucked up “Daddy’s Little Monster” to Voldemorts Joker.
All of the “good” women are passive little teachers and moms.
What happens to Tonks is especially gross as shit. You have a GNC women. Goes by a shorten, masc-ish name. Short hair, colors, dresses ambiguously.
Then she gets married off to the other queer coded character. (Werewolf = HIV, I’m pretty sure she straight up said that at one point.) He calls her her extremely feminine birth name, and iirc the text even mentions that she is vaguely uncomfortable with that? Then gets knocked up and killed off. She gets to die a “proper woman.”
TERFs say “trans men shouldn’t transition! Just be a non confoming woman!” But it’s a fucking front. They are a conservatives in disguise. They don’t want GNC people to exist, just like they don’t want trans people to exist. “Just be non-binary! But also, shave your legs and wear makeup and make sure to present in a feminine way.”
If I was a billionaire feminist who could buy courts, I could think of several better priorities.
If I were a billionaire, the amount of low-to-no cost housing, green energy, and fiber internet I would build would be off the charts. And with Elon Musk money, I’m fairly certain I could ensure that NO ONE in the US would ever have to worry about where their next meal would come from. Certainly not schoolchildren. Also, I would commission a third season of the classic 1999 anime Big O, with the original writers and showrunner.
She did give away a lot of money to charity. About 16% of her wealth when she became a billionaire iirc. Gave to help children in poverty and to fight the disease MS.
I don’t know much about her stance on trans people other than she seems to believe that there is a difference between trans and biological women. Feel free to drop a good link where I can educate myself.
Anyway, reading comments here make it sound like she’s a modern day Hitler that’s never done anything good in her life, and that sounds both unfair and untrue.
this what most of the people are elucidating her meaning of her books, its her subtle way to express her transphobia, anti-semititism, etc.
Ok fair, and kind of obvious now that I think about it. But a lot of people seem to also be arguing that the books can stand alone and be enjoyed separate from the author’s discriminatory beliefs. And if that is the case, then let’s take the books separately, and examine what they really are presenting to the audience that loves them so much. Even forgetting about Rowling, can these people really say they feel it’s totally ok to enjoy a classicist story about discrimination, slavery, and child abuse, etc.? And that they should be allowed to enjoy such a story without anyone casting aspersions against them?
I’ll agree to examine the books separate from the author the day buying them doesn’t mean giving her money to finance her backwards agenda. Until then, they are 100% linked.
I have no idea what book series you read (or if you’ve read it at all) but you are…very off on this take.
Don’t get me wrong, JK Rowling is a total piece of shit, but the books themselves are distinctly anti classism, “blood purity,” slavery, misogyny, and a whole host of other things you listed.
Are they without any flaw? Certainly not. Is it okay if people boycott the media because of Rowling’s ongoing transphobia? Absolutely. But most of what you’ve listed about the book series is blatantly untrue…
Doesn’t HP end up a literal magic cop at the end of the series? The whole caste system is also upheld throughout, at no point is revealing the wizarding world to muggles even considered an option despite the fact that little kids are dying from cancer all over Britain/the world that could be magically healed in an afternoon. The whole SPEW thing is just profoundly racist and always has been. “Cho Chang” – nuff said. The whole point of Hogwarts is that it’s a boarding school, which proudly inherits all its real-world British characteristics which are intrinsically linked to the more problematic parts of the British class system.
Rowling has always been a bigot and I will die on this hill. Any progressive messaging that people read into harry potter is at best performative (for instance yes she explicitly denounces “blood purity” pretty early on, but that’s super performative considering her entire worldbuilding is built on the premise that some people are just inherently magical and others are inherently not invited to the party. “Blood purity contests” are only bad when wizards to it to other wizards.).
I don’t think she’s a good enough writer to have done most of the racist/classist/misogynist messaging intentionally, but nonetheless her reactionary poorly thought-out world view transpires through every bit of her writing.
EDIT: Trying to expand on my own thoughts here. I’ve always despised HP as a franchise so to try to be fair to HP let’s contrast and compare with the piece of shit author who did make a book I like, Ender’s Game. I pirated it a couple years back, and I won’t pretend it’s not obvious at times that he’s a homophobe and a religious nutcase with some obvious cognitive dissonance with some of his (at least at the time) progressive views. I guess the good thing about that particular IP is that there’s no new stuff coming out besides one awful movie, so everyone can agree Orson Scott Card can get fucked and move on with their lives. But it’s important to acknowledge that his religious zealousness did impact his writing and to take a step back even if we decide to still appreciate his work.
The problem is that HP fans are in a much tougher situation because the writing just isn’t good so if you drop the flimsy pretense that 2000s Rowling was a champion of liberal ideals, then you really don’t have much left besides a profoundly flawed worldbuilding with shitty characters who only work to uphold the wizarding status quo. Yeah I’d get pretty mad too if I had spend my teenage years obsessing over that heap of trash.I agree she is anti classism, and anti “blood purity,” but there is no redemption for the enslaved elves. Hermione written as irritating and the strong women are housewives and spinsters.
She is fine with different people moving to her country as long as they assimilate, so muggleborns and half-bloods can be wizzies too as long as they wear robes and curse in Merlin’s name. She hates multiculturalism, which is why the elves stay enslaved. They’re irreconcilably different. Sort of like transfolk. We’re different, in a way that can’t just be assimilated away.
Or… something like that. Her politics are kind of incoherent.
I think people like to take all the poorly written parts of HP and conflate them with bigotry. Its possible, but jk Rowling is just a shitty writer who does not plan ahead at all. I still think fans wrote the last three books via posting theories on HP forums.
Everyone who praised blood purity was a villain and the entire last half of the series was about how the real hero was a dude with mixed blood. What are you smoking bruh?
JK Rowling sounds like an incredibly talented author. Most people just massage things into place. Reuse tropes. But you’re saying she baked her worldview into practically every sentence?
If I see ugliness in the world, I might express it as I see it. I don’t have to think something is right for me to include it in a story. Do you think I’m special? Am I the only person capable of writing things that I don’t necessarily support? Everyone else is forced to include things they personally would vote for. If you write about slavery, that means you love slavery. Is it weird that I’m capable of being against slavery, yet it’s possible for me to include it in stories? Should I be using this power?
I didn’t realize Rowling was one of the best authors. I thought she just reused things without really thinking. I never knew it was 100% meticulous and so… thought out. I don’t think even Tolkien can be said to inject so much meaning into every single page.
Am I the only person capable of writing things that I don’t necessarily support?
I can’t speak to that. But I can say that I don’t think that sentiment applies to her. And I think there’s a difference between a viewpoint that one can objectively examine from both sides, and a bias, that is so deeply ingrained to one’s psyche that it colors how one perceives the world. And yes, I do think both things exist.
You realize she didn’t write about slaves right? She made the main character a slave owner and had a plot point about how much the slaves love being slaves and dobby is just weird for not wanting to be a slave.
It’s pretty simple. Rowling is an avowed bigot who is using all of her means, financially and socially, to punish trans people for existing. She is a hateful person who should be judged harshly and ostracized. It will be a good day for the world when she is no longer able to or allowed to espouse her bigoted views.
Supporting her in anyway, be it paying for her works or even enjoying her content should be stigmatized to the maximum degree. Actors agreeing to work with or for her should lose everything, as they are even worse for helping to continue her pursuit of hate and villainy.
If she were to fall down a literary flight of stairs, I would be most pleased—especially if this were to happen daily until she were unable to fall any further.
Here’s to hoping that anyone that hitches their wagon with hers suffers pain and ruin.
Because they’re supporting the anti-trans hag?
The parents of the child actors should be getting plenty of pushback. Exploiting their kids like this is gross.
It’s like seeing pictures of kids in KKK robes.
Wanting children to get hate for some other woman’s opinions is wild lol
Before I get more down votes. They clearly said. “Should”.
It’s almost like we shouldn’t blame others for another. I dunno. Maybe I’m a trans hater like the trans community wants to paint anyone that enjoys Harry Potter.
Maybe I’m a trans hater like the trans community wants to paint anyone that enjoys Harry Potter.
That kind of wild generalization certainly makes you sound like a trans hater.
No one is claiming that everyone who likes Harry Potter hates trans people. But any interaction you have with Harry Potter books, movies, merchandise, etc. makes money for one of the most prominent trans haters in the world and helps her to spread her hateful message. At least pirate her stuff if you care.
If you’re going to make broad generalizations about every trans person like that, I mean, maybe. There are trans people that read HP and trans people that don’t GAF.
Brother, it’s Harry Potter which is not exactly a thing you can’t live without lmfao
You’re making it sound like they’re asking you to give up breathing
Yes. You are. We are asking you not to engage with a very specific thing, and you are refusing. You are stamping your feet like a toddler that we are asking you not to give money to someone that is using that money to fund anti-trans lobbying.
So yes, you are a “trans hater” and need to do better.
Also what money. I haven’t given anyone money. I’m a pirate you dunce.
What is there to even enjoy? The world building is trash, the characters are shallow, and the setting is mid and bland. You really going to die on this hill?
Read another book, I’m begging you.
In your opinion.
Learn to let people enjoy what they enjoy and stop hating people’s personal opinions when they don’t align?
No, I hate that you’re giving money to a transphobe that wants me dead. You are responsible for what your money does.
I just look down on you for having shit tastes.
These are totally different positions.
Read another book.
The online portion of the community that is complaining about all this may be valid, but it’s still a small portion of the actual public. Regardless of all the negative press, if this show is good, it’s going to be a commercial hit.
I guruan-fucking-tee there’s going to be a new character who’s basically just a transgender boogeyman
No, I bet the trans character will be more of a “look! are you happy now?” like with the game.
Naw, JK Rowling has actual creative input this time.
Fuck the whole HP franchise.
It was always shitty writing and the plot was garbage. The whole story was a thinly veiled glorification of British exceptionalism.
The only saving grace of that stinking turd of a franchise is that, in the '90s, it seemed like a good way to get kids to read.
It’s always moraly right to pirate any harry potter media.
I don’t pirate things I boycott. Professionals have standards.
More morally right to never indulge in any Harry Potter media at all. Don’t reinforce the hype by watching that crap, even if by piracy.
I’m probably gonna watch it because it’s interesting to see what they made of it, I’m gonna pirate it and seed it far and wide tho lol
John Lithgow reacted to the open letter mentioned in this article, sent to him by “a very good friend who is the mother of a trans child” by saying “Why is this a factor at all?” and expressing sympathy for the transphobic bigot.
So it’s unfortunate that he probably wouldn’t know what a social media is if it slammed him right in the asshole - which is the entirety of him - because he certainly sounds deserving of decades of hell. Especially from his now hopefully former “very good friend.”
Hopefully he dies early in production. How’s that for winding down?
I wonder if he’d be ok with others wishing he would die. Or is it only acceptable when he’s playing a character or working for bigots? In any case I’m sure he finds it all very exciting.
Never give these people an inch, or they’ll take a mile.
When you say “these people”, who exactly are you referring to?
