Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
No bio...
User ID: 297
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
1mo ago
Sometimes I think you just read posts, decide who's expressing the "conservative" (bad) position, and reflexively argue the opposite.
Whereas people like Rowling aren't fully committed to that broader conservative project, they just want to slander and eradicate trans people
All right, you have hit one of my pet peeves, because I hear this shit all the time from my nice progressive friends. It's just repeated ad infinitum, as an article of faith, as a proven, established fac, that JK Rowling "hates trans people," that she "wants to slander and eradicate them," etc. In unrelated hobby spaces, I've seen it argued unironically, in all seriousness, that she literally advocates "genocide of trans people" (and also that Harry Potter goblins were intended to be metaphors for Jews because she also hates Jews).
I have been a Rowling fan since before she got on Twitter. Yes, I actually like the Harry Potter books (despite being way too old for them). I've read all her Cormoran Strike novels, and even The Casual Vacancy. I follow her on Twitter and I read her blog. So I know whereof I speak, though I won't claim I can remember every single thing she's ever said in public.
I have never seen her say anything that approaches "hate" or "wanting to eradicate" trans people. She has said the opposite many times. She is a standard issue very liberal second wave feminist.
What does she say?
- She does not believe trans women are women.
- Therefore she does not believe trans women should play in women's sports or go to women's prisons.
- She believes trans people should be free to live their lives in peace without harassment.
- Some so-called trans women (like the sexual predators she highlighted) are bad faith opportunists claiming trans status for political purposes or because they would prefer to go to women's prison rather than men's prison.
I think all of these points are reasonable, and even if you disagree with some or all of them, none of them resemble anything like "hate" or wishing for a "trans genocide."
I would love it if you could point to me any public statement of hers, or even a reliable second-hand account of some alleged private statement, in which she's said anything that resembles what you are claiming.
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
9mo ago
We seem to be having a spate of low-effort ramblings that are basically "I'm mad about something and want to vent." I am sorry if you're having an existential crisis over Trump (for months at a time now?) but if you are going to post a top-level post, please make it relevant, interesting, or at least present an argument. We don't want to see free-form rants about how Trump or Biden or whoever is The Worst, devoid of anything but your own undigested disgust.
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
11mo ago
This post is bad.
It's bad because you are framing it in a confusing and, I suspect, deliberately misleading way. You clearly think you're being clever with your ironic commentary. You are not speaking plainly. I had to actually go search this story to figure out what is actually going on and determine what point you are trying to make, or pretending to make.
This and several other posts, and the newness of your account, make me suspect you are not participating here in good faith.
Don't do this again. If you have a point to make with a news story, make it clearly and straightforwardly.
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
4mo ago
This seems a little low effort. If you want to feed an AI some random questions with vaguely CW topics and post the results, provide context, an argument, some relevance. We would rather not see lots of posts about "Look at what ChatGPT says if you ask it about Muslims and trans."
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
6mo ago
What's the point of this comment? No one is going to get in a room and fight, you're just calling people cowards and thus engaging in the same sort of Internet Tough Guy act you're accusing others of doing. Attack arguments, not people, and if you have something to say to any specific individual about the lack of congruity between their words and their actions, make sure it's relevant, not just a sneer.
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
6mo ago
I have a genuine question, because I haven't been able to find a reliable answer:
Is the "blue octopus" actually an anti-Semitic dogwhiste, like, anywhere? Or is this an association that was just invented yesterday to pile on Greta Thunberg?
I've seen the infamous Nazi cartoon, of course, and it's not unique, but octopuses have long been used to symbolize conspiracies. A fishy alien thing with lots of tentacles reaching everywhere makes a pretty convenient metaphor for any group you're accusing of being sinister infiltrators.
I have never before yesterday, however, seen the claim that blue octopus plushies, specifically, are some sort of secret mascot used by white nationalists.
If they are, I seriously doubt that Thunberg was aware of it and deliberately signaling her own hatred of Jews. So this seems a lot like people freaking out over the "okay" signal.
I also suspect that, just like the "okay" signal, we're now going to see actual white nationalists unironically adopting blue octopus plushies as mascots.
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
7mo ago
A good essay. I was never as cool and radical as you, but I did use to be very liberal - I never counted myself an "SJW" but I mostly agreed with them, just thought they were kind of extreme. Eventually I realized that in recognizing they were "extreme," I was actually recognizing that their arguments were disingenuous and incoherent and made in bad faith, and that the frequent conflicts I had with them despite being "on their side" were because, well, they were wrong, and I was interested in what is actually true and practical, and they were not.
On the subject of prison abolition and ACAB - I have mentioned to you before that I watch a lot of YouTube channels showing police bodycam footage, and also parole hearings. (I don't know why, I just find them interesting.) I realize these are mostly curated for what will look interesting on YouTube, but in all the police bodycam footage I have watched, it's almost entirely dysfunctional idiots behaving like criminals and children, often escalating routine traffic stops into full-on brawls with multiple cops having to hold them down. I have seen perps screaming, spitting, kicking, hurling abuse and screaming "I can't breathe!" and "You're traumatizing me!" and everything else they can think of, and 90% of the time, the cops are impeccably polite and professional and even kind to them despite having just been kicked and spit on. I'm sure the fact that they all know they have bodycams which people now file FOIAs to put on YouTube has something to do with that, but however it happened, I have really moved to Team Blue over the last couple of years. Sometimes you do see cops acting more aggressive and antagonistic than the situation calls for, when it's clear they are out of patience, but only rarely have I seen cops really behaving like "bastards" or taking down someone who didn't need to be taken down or using unnecessary force.
Between these clips, and the parole hearings I have also watched, it's clear to me we have a substantial population of outright dysfunctional people who are at best self-centered entitled narcissists, and at worst, sociopathic predators. These are not criminals who were created by capitalism and/or wealth inequality. Many, many of them have drug problems, but not all. Maybe a better, more just world would create fewer people like this, being raised in fewer dysfunctional environments, but I think we will always have some very bad people who will prey on anyone around them given a chance, and the only solution I have ever heard from the "restorative justice" crowd appears to be a sincere belief that a guy who sexually molested his six-year-old daughter and three other neighborhood children can be rehabilitated if put in a proper therapeutic environment with community support. (Would this "community support" include keeping him the fuck away from children, I hope? And if he decides he doesn't want to stay away from children, how will they enforce that?)
Freddie deBoer has written several articles about this. Despite being a Marxist who hates cops himself, he has pointed that those who want the Brock Turners and Derek Chauvins and Kyle Rittenhouses of the world locked up forever are frequently the same ones who claim to want to abolish the "carceral system," so... ¯_(ツ)_/¯?
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
11mo ago
spoiler: so far I haven't heard back, so I assume I didn't get it anyway
I'm (unfortunately) not surprised that mentioning FIRE probably tanked any chance you had right from the beginning. Yeah, FIRE is basically right-coded nowadays, and frankly I suspect it will suffer from the same sort of institutional capture in reverse that swallowed the ACLU. (That said, it's one of the few charities I still donate to.)
I first noticed "free speech" being treated as basically code for "right winger who wants to call people the n-word" back in the A+ "Freeze Peaches!" days, but it's still been shocking to me how many progressives now literally consider "free speech" or "academic freedom" to be a right-wing talking point.
Anecdotally, I feel like even in the tech industry I am seeing a lower quality of college graduates the last few years, though it's hard to say how much of that is them being put through too many woke hoops and how much was Covid laying waste to academic rigor and accountability.
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
11mo ago
Because this woman is almost certainly part of the problem. Yes, yes, we don’t know, but do you really think she’s voting Republican? You think she has a Blue Lives Matter flag in her living room? I’d eat every hat I own if she did.
I really dislike this argument that's becoming increasingly frequent here and elsewhere, that is basically "Even if what happened to this person is unjust and morally wrong, they probably voted for Biden so fuck them." (Obviously the same argument is made everywhere else on the Internet about Trump voters.)
Yes, I get it, war to the knife and it's fun to munch popcorn while watching leopards eat faces, and @FCfromSSC will say this is just the sound of inevitability.
I know expecting people to show empathy for a (presumed) member of the enemy tribe is too much, but ffs we don't even actually know if she is in fact a woke liberal BLM-supporting enemy tribeswoman, we're just doing some sort of pseudo-Bayesian reasoning where she probably is so fuck her.
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
26d ago
So far, you have deleted everything you post, including all the top-level posts you use to start threads with. And your posts mostly look very much like trollbait.
At this point, I am convinced you are posting in bad faith. I am banning you, effective immediately, but if you would like to DM the mod team and explain yourself, we will hear you out.
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
3mo ago
Are the rich really so attracted to the idea of cheap servants that they would see their communities destroyed? I think there are some true open border believers in the far left, and that the rest of blob is just sort of going with the flow.
This touches another one of those thoughts that would coagulate into an effort post if I had the will. I watch people believing obviously absurd and horrible things ("We should let infinite numbers of people across the border", "Trans women have no advantage in sports" while staring at a 250-pound "female" rugby player, etc.) and my conclusion, from being in a pretty Blue bubble with mostly leftist friends, is that you are underestimating both the number of true believers and the degree to which normies don't notice and don't care until their schools are actually being taken over by illegal immigrants.
Yes, a lot of lefties (and not just the "far" left, but mainstream liberals) literally cannot imagine that letting more people across the border is anything but good. It's a combination of "They are poor refugees fleeing oppression and it would be immoral to turn them back" and "We need more people who will become good productive American tax payers." Any suggestion that a lot of these people becoming criminals and/or net drags on the social welfare system? That's racism.
When I was younger, even on the left, "I support immigration but not illegal immigration, we welcome new Americans as long as they come the right way" was the mainstream position. Now that's racism and dangerous Trumpism.
And the normies who don't pay much attention except when a picture of people flooding across the borders hits the news? They vaguely understand that there are poor people who want to come here, as there always have been, and we have some sort of immigration system that's supposed to filter them, but to speak up and say that there seem to be some problems and maybe too many people are getting through would make you sound like a MAGA or something.
The dominant theme of the post Covid period has been that incentives don't matter and we can't enforce rules on anyone. So maybe we are theoretically against open borders, but we also can't actually enforce any rules (that's mean!), so we end up with defacto open borders.
From talking to a number of my true blue Democrat-voting friends (but who would not describe themselves as "leftists"), yes, this is pretty much the case. Ask them if they are literally in favor of open borders and they will say no. But ask them what sort of restrictions we should have, and what measures they would consider acceptable to keep undesirables out, and the best they'll come up with is "Well, maybe not someone with a violent criminal record." (As if we have access to that information for hundreds of thousands of people coming from dozens of countries.) Like, in theory they'll allow that letting Cartel soldiers just come across the border is probably bad, but anything that resembles strict enforcement makes them cry about children in cages.
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
29d ago
Oh no, you don't get to duck out that easily.
You started this, and you started it with multiple, very specific, very damning statements about a very specific person (JK Rowling) which you claimed were obviously and provably true. And when I took on the challenge and went down the list of every one of your accusations, you suddenly play "Oh well, that wasn't my point, I don't actually care about Rowling"?
No, dude. You clearly do care about Rowling.
I will say that 'carefully litigating every word JK Rowling has ever said to determine whether it is about X of just mentions X' is exhausting and frustrating.
If we're talking about JK Rowling (and we are), it actually matters what she actually said. I mean, if you were accusing me of being a Holocaust-denying white nationalist who also thinks we should abolish the age of consent, and you based that on my saying some things that Holocaust-denying white nationalists who also think we should abolish the age of consent say, you can bet I would care a lot about carefully litigating the words I actually said, because if you are accusing someone of holding reprehensible views, it matters whether they actually said the things you are accusing them of! You don't get to just accuse them of believing all the things the very worst people in their "faction" say!
Frustrating because it's really super irrelevant to my larger point about the rhetoric and factions involved here, which is the relevant thing I actually care about, which few have bothered to respond to
I directly addressed your entire "This is what her faction believes and this is what her rhetoric inevitably leads to" argument! If you disagree with me, go ahead and point out where my reasoning is flawed, but don't claim I didn't bother to respond to it!
I find it frustrating that you make specific, provably untrue statements (for example, repeating bullshit about how Troubled Blood is about a serial killer who pretends to be trans and tries to sneak into women's spaces, as evidence of how much Rowling hates trans people) and when this is contradicted by people who actually read the book, you don't even acknowledge it, you're just all "Oh, I don't actually care about Rowling."
So many of the comments are nit-picking about whether I'm being 'fair' to Rowling, and I frankly don't give a fuck about one person like this and what they did or didn't say, the interesting issues are the larger factional concerns
I mean, we can all agree Rowling has FU money and immense popularity and can't actually be harmed by anyone saying mean and dishonest things about her. The reason we're arguing about Rowling is because people much less wealthy and powerful than her who say similar things (the people in her "faction" as you keep calling it) are suffering tangible harms, harms which you apparently believe are justified. So yeah, if you claim that JK Rowling wants a trans genocide, or that her "faction" does and she's abetting it, then that has implications for people who are not JK Rowling and that's why you are being challenged, not because everyone here is a JK Rowling fan.
I'd be happy to just say 'sure, whatever, Rowling is a perfect angel who has never done anything wrong, if that's what you want to believe;
Transparent straw man. Stop this kind of disingenuous whining.
can we please talk about my actual point though'
Yes, let's. It's your turn.
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
5mo ago
Tell you what - if you survive, let us know, and I will unban you. I'm banning you now because you've been warned and at this point you seem to just be trolling for attention, and frankly, I don't want to indulge you any further in your strange suicidal fetish.
All the questions you ask aren't really questions because you don't actually listen to what anyone says.
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
6mo ago
My take is that posting the same thing over and over is annoying and borders on egregiously obnoxious.
Look man, I believe you really feel these things and you're unhappy. But this place isn't a therapy group, and while people are usually pretty willing to offer advice and feedback when someone posts about their personal struggles, when someone whines about the exact same thing over and over again, using exactly the same examples and verbiage, it becomes self-indulgent and a bit selfish. Your exercises in self-pity are beginning to look like some sort of shame kink in which you're making us all unwilling participants.
I'm loathe to invoke the single issue posting rule and ban you, or tell you you're just not allowed to talk about this anymore. But find some other things to talk about, and if you are going to post about the despair of being unlaid, stop reposting essentially the same thing over and over.
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
10mo ago
You seem to be playing some sort of game here, and I strongly suspect you are trolling.
You have posted several times like this, long form culture war articles which you don't explicitly agree with, even suggest you might disagree, but this appears to be merely a guise for introducing the article without committing yourself to actually endorsing it. "Look at this article by a white nationalist; isn't this interesting?"
Normally, while I might consider this a little sketchy, you aren't the only regular poster who makes a habit of being somewhat oblique about your agenda, and we don't exactly have a rule requiring you to be explicit about your POV and agenda. (The requirement to speak plainly comes close, but people often misinterpret this as "You must always be direct and explicit and literal about what you're saying," and that's not really what it means.)
You've been warned a couple of times by @naraburns, and your now-deleted responses are consistent with this pattern of being coy about your intentions. @naraburns has also observed your tendency to write trollish posts that seems calculated to provoke responses without really saying anything.
Following your last posting spree, you deleted all your previous posts. While we allow people to delete their posts (though we'd prefer they didn't), this also looks quite suspect.
All of this is to say: whatever you are up to, you have attracted the attention of the mods, and while this post in itself is borderline (you basically repost the article with minimal commentary), you are starting to look like a bad actor. Whatever game you are playing, start being upfront and stop looking like someone who's not posting in good faith (and is likely a previously banned poster).
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
10mo ago
Sigh.
What you are describing is very similar to how I'm feeling nowadays.
I guess my own personal hobby horse, and the reason I am still here (and a mod) is that I really, really value free speech, the whole post-Enlightenment American Constitutional version, the version that says yes, even Nazis and pedos and people who've made it clear they'd gulag me if they could should have it. And since the rest of the Internet (and essentially all public spaces) don't allow that anymore, here we are.
But we are approaching a zillion witches, and the views of most people here have calcified. Worse (for me personally), the conflict theorists won. They persuaded me. It's war to the knife and I need to act and prepare accordingly.
I'll probably stick around as long as the lights stay on.
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
3mo ago
I think men and women are different. I do not think we are aliens to one another, incapable of deciphering how those strange opposite-sex brains work. That you don't personally value the status signified by a handbag doesn't mean you aren't capable of understanding why a name-brand purse is a status signifier. A woman is perfectly capable of understanding why you collect Steam games and don't play them. She might think it's stupid, just like you think caring about a purse is stupid, but these are not strange alien behaviors, they're just male/female-focused behaviors. The women who affect mystification at the fact that men are turned off that they have an OnlyFans are either in denial, or have genuinely lived in a cultural bubble where, essentially, the men in their lives are lying to them because it's not politic to admit "Yeah, I don't actually want to date a camwhore even if I say it's perfectly legitimate work." Men too fall prey to these fallacies from living in a bubble and then being unable to grasp that sometimes what people in their social circles claim to believe is not actually how most people feel.
You might as well argue that no one is truly capable of understanding a person from another culture. (Maybe you do believe that too, I don't know.)
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
5mo ago
You've accumulated a lot of reports on this post, and it annoys me that I had to read through this wall of text to parse out the arguments you are making.
Essentially all you've posted is a tribalistic screed. Making an argument that boils down to "My enemies are evil" is just culture warring. You hit all the old classics - Jews, MLK, Herbert Marcuse - but here and in the comments below you basically poison-pill the discussion because anyone who questions your priors or your definitions is just part of "woke."
This is a bad post that barely makes a coherent argument. There are ways to write essays about how evil your enemies are that actually make arguable points and present things to discuss. This is just fist-pounding.
I'm going to refer to this post in the future when people say "All you have to do to not get modded on the Motte is be verbose." This is an example of a very long, verbose, arguably even "effortful" post that is still crappy and low value.
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
8mo ago
I'm a little bit surprised that Ilhan Omar came to Marbach's defense.
Optimistically, I'd like to think she actually believes that stuff about freedom of religion.
Cynically, I suspect she is just anticipating a fight over what her religion believes about LGBT folks.
Even more cynically, I wonder if she just saw an opportunity to slag a Republican Jew.
But I am often surprised that people are surprised that yes, orthodox Christians do in fact believe you (yes, you) are going to go to hell if you do not accept Jesus Christ. Yes, that means they literally believe every last atheist and Muslim and Jew and pagan and Hindu and Buddhist is going to burn in hell forever. (And a lot of the Protestant denominations include Catholics, Mormons, and JWs in that bucket.)
It's almost as amusing as watching liberals in Virginia discover recently that mainstream Muslims are mostly not, in fact, "queer-friendly."
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
8mo ago
I've gotten flack for making the argument that if pro-lifers really believed abortion is murdering babies, they'd actually act like babies are being murdered. But unlike you, I actually believe pro-lifers do, in the abstract, believe abortion is morally wrong. Which is why I find your argument kind of silly. It's also commonly presented even more strongly by HBDers: "Do you really want those people breeding more?" That's a good argument if you believe the progressive framing that pro-lifers don't actually care about babies at all and banning abortion is purely a way to punish women/own the libs. But if they really do believe abortion is wrong, then of course it's wrong even if it means more of "those people" are breeding, and arguing that they should be in favor because the kind of women who have abortions are mostly the kind of women you want to have abortions is missing the point.
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
2mo ago
Not mod-hatted, but borderline, because you're annoying me.
I modded Incanto below because "Shut up, I'm sick of you" is not a good response to someone who's being tiresome on a subject. But you really are being tiresome, and not because I disagree with you, but because it really looks like every time something even vaguely related to HBD comes up, you have to post some little jab that is clearly meant to provoke the HBDers on the Motte into going after you. Does this give you a smug sense of validation, or are you just spoiling for a fight? I don't know, but it's tiresome.
"One of the less stupid ideas..." "certain individuals" "I have my theories" - this is all weasel-wording to hide your real message which is "I want to openly display my contempt for you people." And as several people have noted, you do it even in the most tangentially related threads just because you have a hammer and you want to swing it.
As for "I have my theories but none that are likely to be considered "charitable" or "kind" by the mod team."That is "I really want to tell you what I really think of you and display my contempt even more openly, but I know I'd get modded if I did so I am just going to handwave in that direction and expect you to understand I'm insulting you even though I'm not technically allowed to do that." Speak plainly, and if you know "speaking plainly" would get you modded, then either keep it to yourself, or figure out how to express what you want to say in an appropriate manner (it's not like people here don't call each other's ideas stupid and evil every day).
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
3mo ago
The actual observed evidence, unless anyone can show me otherwise, is that trans women have no competitive advantage. Competitive advantage means winning more often, and if you win more often that shows up in stats. Sports stats are among the most obsessively collected and analyzed numbers in our society, no one has ever been able to show me a simple t-test showing that trans women win more often than cis women. No matter how many anecdotes you have and how strong your intuitions are, there's a straightforward statistical definition that's easy to test, and it doesn't support the idea of an advantage.
That people argue this blows my mind. Do you genuinely believe that males do not have a substantial physical advantage over women, or do you genuinely believe that going on hormones for a year erases that advantage?
You dismiss the growing amount of "anecdotal evidence" of 40-to-50-year-old men suddenly "transitioning" late in life and taking up a sport and absolutely dominating professional female athletes 20 years younger than them who've been in the sport for years because... there aren't enough trans women athletes to have taken over the leaderboards in every sport, yet?
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
8mo ago
Look, I already dinged someone else about this.
It is completely reasonable for you to look at @SecureSignals's posts with suspicion. "Don't engage in ad hominems" does not mean "You cannot consider someone's history when evaluating how credible they are." But this is not the way to express your doubts. Address the argument, and if you find it questionable because of who's making it, you can just wait and see what other people say (usually you won't need to ask for a debunking if there is a debunking to be made). What we don't want is people flinging "Well, of course you'd say that, you're a Holocaust denier" and "You're just saying that because you're a liberal" back and forth.
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
9mo ago
An argument? You want an argument?
Every person who was wrong about Trump and his effect on this country needs to pray to God for forgiveness. I know I have.
That's not an argument, it's just ranting.
If you spectated this disaster from the comfort of intellectual distance, you're part of the problem.
Hectoring, finger-wagging, and telling people "You're a bad person and you should feel bad" is not what this place is for. Go ahead and talk about why you think Trump is terrible and Trump supporters should repent, but right now you're not a lot different from a evangelical Christian yelling that we all need Jesus.
You know man, you get reported a lot and even the other mods have a hard time with you because a lot of people think you are and always have been a bad faith borderline troll who just says things to get under people's skin, without regard to truth or accuracy. And I have always leaned towards leniency, maybe because I'm a quokka and too willing to assume people actually believe the things they are saying and are sincere in their argumentation, even if they're really annoying. But I have frequently argued against banning you because it's too easy to find things you say that are moddable when most of the forum is trying to get you banned.
I guess this is the point where I say "Goddamn, I get it now," because frankly, you are either being astoundingly clueless or just flat out disingenuous.
(Let me also be clear, this response is with my mod hat off, and I am not threatening you with mod action for the above post, because I found it merely aggravating, but not in violation of any rules.)
You have actually spouted a ton of bullshit about something I know a lot about (for my sins), so let's go through this.
Just for starters, and not strictly on topic, we get accused of being an echo chamber so often it's tiresome. You are right that you're an outlier here, as an unabashed leftist. You are definitely not some unique snowflake with views unrepresented by anyone else. And "intentionally taking a contrarian position" is pretty close to trolling. I mean, if you really believe the things you are saying, fine, argue them, but if you're just doing it as an "intellectual exercise" (or to "own the righties") you should know that most people do not like feeling like they are being treated as NPCs in your roleplaying game, and this is perhaps a reason why you generate so much resentment and hostility.
Okay, that's a hell of a waffle. If you say "People like Rowling want to eradicate trans people" and I rebut that by pointing out that Rowling emphatically does not want to eradicate trans people, it is not a credible defense that "You meant people like Rowling." I mean, I could say "People like guesswho want to literally guillotine landlords, redistribute the property of all rich people, and disenfranchise whites." (Because some of your fellow travelers certainly do.) If you objected, reasonably, that you want no such thing and have never endorsed that, I don't think you would be satisfied if I said "Well, there's a reason I said 'people like you.'" You'd find it disingenuous and evasive. We are talking about JK Rowling, not everyone who has ever expressed an anti-trans sentiment.
It is not "mildly true," it is absolutely true. Her personal rhetoric is not "extreme" by any reasonable definition. Again I will ask you to cite an example if you think otherwise.
What do you mean "part of a faction"? If you mean "Everyone who is gender-critical/trans-skeptical," well, that's a hell of an umbrella and she would reasonably reject it, as would I. I have in fact seen absurd allegations online that she literally donated to the Texas GOP (!!) just because they are anti-trans, an accusation that makes no sense on multiple levels. If you're trying to lump JK Rowling with the Texas GOP just because they are both critical of trans activists, your idea of what constitutes a "faction" is just frankly ridiculous. I believe IQ is a real measurable thing and there are racial differences in IQ; by this standard, I guess you would put me in the same "faction" as white nationalists and holocaust deniers, because they also believe that.
Show me. Show me her endorsing someone who literally wants to "eradicate trans people." The most extreme example I can think of coming anywhere close to this is Maya Forstater, a gender critical feminist whom Rowling has famously supported. Forstater's public statements are mostly pretty mild (you could more legitimately accuse her of carefully curating her public statements than Rowling) while she has occasionally, in public and private, gone full mask-off with rather derogatory language about trans people. But even Forstater has never, to my knowledge, said anything remotely close to advocating violence or eradication of trans people. It's probably fair to say she thinks they are all perverted AGP men. Maybe Rowling actually believes that herself in private too. She famously got in a spat with Ben Shapiro because Shapiro endorsed her trans-critical views and Rowling was quick to point out that mildly agreeing about one thing does not make them allies.
I don't think you can actually show Rowling endorsing the views you claim she does. Even with this wide net you are casting where anything she has ever touched, by transitive property, is endorsing any statement by anyone else who is touched by it.
Again: show me. No, one person on the Internet who says something nasty about trans people who is also a Harry Potter fan does not by transitive property mean Rowling is endorsing anything they say. This is the kind of nutpicking that LibsOfTikTOk does. LoTT regularly finds some trans person being accused of rape or child abuse and blasts it to the Internet, the implication clearly being that this is typical trans behavior. I'm pretty sure you don't appreciate LoTT's tactics and would consider it offensive and disingenuous for them to say "But these are their bedfellows, this is the faction they are part of." So no, you don't get to do this either.
This is not obvious to me, as I think I am very accurately describing what she says herself, and the "implications" seem to be irrational projections you have made up.
You are referring to Troubled Blood and you are taking her most hysterical critics' claims about the book at face value, most of whom never read it and just repeated what other people said in a game of Chinese whispers, until it became "a book about a serial killer pretending to be trans." That's not a remotely accurate description. I can post a whole damn book review if you want, but a serial killer who in one scene disguises himself as a woman is not something any reasonable person would read as some sort of metaphor for trans people. The killer never "pretends to be trans" (I don't think trans people are ever even mentioned in the book, but I can't remember for certain) he does not "try to get into women's spaces," and the cross-dressing scene is a single incident that's there as a red herring.
My point here is that you haven't read Troubled Blood, and you're just repeating the bad faith accusations of Rowling's haters who also haven't read it, and this is how you arrive at nonsense claims about Rowling being a literal fascist who wants to genocide trans people and Jews. (I mean, you didn't say that. But people "like" you have! You know, people in your faction.)
This is possibly true, and while you may find it offensive, the belief that trans social contagion is a real phenomenon and that many troubled girls today are embracing trans identity as a way of escaping what they perceive to be an unpleasant existence as a female, and that other kids adopt it because it's "cool" and trendy and rebellious, is one I share. So does that mean I also want to eradicate trans people?
"Blood libel" would be something that's wholly untrue (like "Jews drink the blood of Christian children").
My personal belief is that the "blood libel," as you put it, does accurately describe a significant number of trans women today, especially the ones who are going out of their way to be public activists. I also believe many trans women are sincere in their gender dysphoria, and even if not, they are sincere in wanting to live as women and be left alone, and they should be allowed to. I can't speak for JK Rowling but I am pretty sure that's reasonably close to her position. This is a far cry from spreading "blood libel" because you believe trans people should be "stamped out."
Nothing I or JK Rowling have said (that trans women are not the same as women, that they shouldn't be in women's prisons, that social contagion is real, that children probably shouldn't be put on puberty blockers and SRS) leads to the "obvious and inescapable" conclusion that we need to eradicate transgender people.
Yes, I do want you to do that. But before you go to the trouble, let me be clear that the "receipts" I want are JK Rowling actually saying or endorsing any of the things you've claimed. Not shaun or contrapoints (whom I've watched) constructing a fallacious argument like you have that her statements "imply" or "inevitably lead" to this, not guilt-by-association where someone whose tweet she once Liked might have said something extreme. You seem to think I am unfamiliar with the charges against her and why trans activists claim these things about her. I am not.
Sure, let's play!
Top result: A Complete Breakdown of the J.K. Rowling Transgender-Comments Controversy.
Reading through that post, I see a rehash of all the statements I am already familiar with (from her snarky "people who menstruate" tweet to her long "TERF Wars" blog post in 2020). And this example of her "hatred of trans people":
Most of the other links are similar collections of snarky tweets and her trying to defend her views while emphasizing the same things I have said above.
GLAAD's summary is predictably uncharitable, if not outright dishonest. They repeat your bad faith summary of her books, and say things like:
So "Many health professionals are concerned that young people struggling with their mental health are being shunted towards hormones and surgery when this may not be in their best interests" is false information? Or just something you and GLAAD disagree with? Likewise, you may disagree with her about trans social contagion and homophobia, but that does not substantiate the extremism you claim is so obvious and well-documented. GLAAD's page is full of "Falsely claimed" accusations, followed by a tweet by Rowling simply asserting something they disagree with (but nothing that resembles "blood libel").
The Cut's Here's what J.K. Rowling has Actually Said About Trans People is mostly just repeating everything GLAAD said, and statements like:
I mean, that's just describing how their viewpoints differ. Where is the extreme rhetoric, the "inevitable conclusion" that trans people must be eradicated?
I scrolled through a lot more results, and got the same thing. Nowhere did I find any quote of Rowling actually saying anything more extreme than what I've mentioned, implying it, or endorsing it.
So, got anything else? Bring it.
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