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TERF WARS
Hogwarts legacy, a high budget Harry Potter video game releases in a few weeks, and discussion around it has quickly evolved into another highly charged political issue for many within the gaming sphere.
As background, Harry Potter was created by J.K. Rowling, who in the last number of years has gotten a vitriolic amount of criticism by hard coded members of the blue tribe. Rowling is what is referred to in leftist spheres as a “TERF,” a Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist. In other words, she is a traditional third wave feminist, but does not acknowledge trans women as being equally legitimate as biological females. Criticism of Rowling began in 2020 when she exposed criticism of certain linguistic tendencies that she had progressively seen engross within her social circles. An article was posted on Devex with the headline…
Rowling took to twitter to attempt to point out some of the inconsistencies in reasoning that she believed these social beliefs couldn’t reconcile with established feminist/progressive worldviews. She began by explaining that ‘people who menstruate,’ used to simply just be called women. And after receiving a bit of criticism herself she extrapolated on the details of her argument.
After the obvious storm of vile that came as a response to this, she then went further in extrapolating her views in an entire blogpost that went into fairly meticulous detail around the entire trans issue as well as major problems that she sees may come as a result of it. I highly encourage you to read it, if not for the argumentative qualities than simply because of the sheer balls of the entire debacle, It wouldn’t be out of place if it was placed on this very culture thread.
https://www.jkrowling.com/opinions/j-k-rowling-writes-about-her-reasons-for-speaking-out-on-sex-and-gender-issues/
Instead of being silenced or somehow intimidated by threats from these cultural forces, she points out that this is primarily one of the motivators of her immediate dislike of the community in general, including their constant use of hyperbole and slurs. The bitter criticism she received did not in any way overwhelm her, but instead made her far more resolute and ingrained to her worldview. She had become more fervently anti-trans since then, to points which are often hilarious. One may lose sight of the grievances often expressed by the left towards public figures, simply due to the sheer amount of it that is consistently thrown into public discourse. But it is important to point out that J.K. Rowling is a legitimate opponent of transgender ideology. Her most recent books have delved into themes that are consistently similar to the themes she has espoused. One book is literally about a detective trying to solve the case of a male serial killer who dresses up as a women in order to fool and kill biological women. Rowling gives extremely large donations to many charities who are their ideological enemies, as well as essentially banning transgender people from using any of her own charities that help victims of female abuse.
Before delving into the responses to this and the subsequent reactions, it is important to give context to what J.K. Rowling encapsulated during the prime years of her Harry Potter authorship. While harry potter is just popular in general, Blue Tribers LOVE Harry Potter, and at one time they >LOVED J.K. Rowling. Rowling’s influence in the early to mid naughts and 2010s cannot be overstated. In fact in many circumstances and social circles people began to read her novels because of her political affiliations, to support those who seemed to have blue coded interests in mind. Harry Potter had become synonymous with feminism and leftism in general, and as a result also became trumpeted by many in the early transgender movement. It isn’t simply because of her opposition to these ideas that she receives the amount of backlash that she does, but because of who she is. She at one point was one of the most influential feminists in the world and was a huge contributor to the cultural power that allowed it to influence so much of society, even in places like academia.
The responses to this given that context is frankly hilarious. It has been quite a long time since the progressive cultural zeitgeist has had such institutional opponent, particularly one that had for so long been such an icon of their movement. It is like if Luke Skywalker had joined the empire at the end of ESB.
This debate is continually devolving as it nears its release, and discussion about the game has been banned on multiple websites for its divisiveness.
https://www.ign.com/articles/hogwarts-legacy-discussion-banned-from-resetera-forum-site-over-jk-rowling-controversy
It had led to an incredible amount of confusion towards that side of political isle, as regular attacks they are so used to employing, that are usually widely successful, seemingly have no effect on Rowling in the slightest. All they can resort to leading up to the release has been reputation destruction and hostility to those who plan on buying it. The most popular tactic used is guilt by association, who claim that if one buys Hogwarts Legacy, they are therefore inherently transphobic. Another important distinction you may notice is the difficulty many are having with disassociating themselves from what was probably their favorite intellectual property. There seems to be a desire to remove Rowling, but still somehow retain possession of the franchise itself, something that is frankly impossible. Take this for example, where fans removed Rowling’s name from her books before reselling them.
https://nypost.com/2023/01/13/reseller-removes-j-k-rowlings-name-from-harry-potter-books/]
Of course, everyone knows this is impossible. Rowling was wise enough to retain full possession of her intellectual work, and anything, and I mean anything relating to Harry Potter must be directly approved by her and she receives a good sum of the profits as well. Amusement parks, toys, video games, streaming sales, everything. Rowling is Harry Potter. Many now are used to franchises they once enjoyed being influenced in one way or another by these cultural elements in their favor, such as Star Wars, Star Trek, Lord of the rings, etc. It is highly ironic that a property is receiving so much backlash not for expressing any pro-red views, but simply because the creator does not agree with one of the fundamental viewpoints that have become synonymous with the left.
On the right, this has had an equally hilarious reaction. While certainly not as fervent or significant of a response, many have taken to supporting Rowling and expressing a desire to purchase Hogwarts Legacy as a form of protest. This includes everyone from Neo-cons to White nationalists.
It seems as if hardcoded Blue Tribe members are learning certain facts about modern cultural society that red tribe members have slowly learned throughout the decade or so. Cancel culture does not work on legitimate financial elites. It does not matter to what ends you try to smear Rowling with, she is and will always remain extravagantly wealthy and beyond any real financial or cultural danger. It is my guess that Hogwarts Legacy will sell extraordinarily well, for it looks to be a genuinely good video game, to the point where even those who are not familiar with Harry Potter may be attracted simply due to its quality. It is already the most pre-ordered game on Steam at the moment has no sign of slowing down. I suppose now that I am not making any particular argument in any way, but It is interesting to see a political force that is usually so successful seemingly work overtime for years on one particular target and see nothing but a proverbial scream into the wind.
Eh, Kanye was a billionaire and it worked on him. I think the difference here is that Rowling could maintain control; Adidas came out and said they owned the designs for Yeezy and, of course, they owned any factories, contracts with foreign entities, distribution networks and so on. So they could brush him aside and he would be unable to recover. JKR could theoretically partner with any media company to sell her stuff (and writing isn't really as capital intensive so she has a lot of options here) so she has more leverage.
That said: it is true that cancel culture is better at targeting cultural elites whose public image is more fragile (or it exists in the first place) and they fear losing cachet (which might explain why so many of them are so conformist*) . But some of those people (take Taylor Swift for a recent person that backed down on something inane) are also filthy rich so it seems strange to not consider them elites.
* Like the people who owe their careers to her but couldn't meet her for the reunion.
Yeah I mean I think its ridiculous to say that cancel culture can't affect billionaires or that it even hasn't affected Rowling. In the sense that, once a person is already rich, only them spending/giving away their own money can stop them from being rich, cancel culture obviously runs into a limit of potential reach. But in basically every domain except money, cancel culture clearly has power even over the wealthy. Rowling's influence over the groups of people she would like to have influence over is clearly less than it would be if she had not taken an anti-trans stance. Perhaps she has more influence over different some smaller, different groups of people. But I bet she would like to express her beliefs and not be 'cancelled,' too.
JK Rowling has ideological allies, because the stance she has taken is one of the main and most divisive culture war issues of our time. She has fallen back to these ideological allies. People who care about the culture war and aren't on her side have cancelled her among themselves -- everyone else, AKA people who either care about the culture war and take her side, or, the significant majority of people, those who do not care about the culture war, have not cancelled her among themselves. Kanye has no ideological allies, because he is taking a culture war stance from two centuries ago, of which one side has already emerged victorious. How much someone will or won't be cancelled and to what extent that cancellation will effect them really isn't anything more complicated of a function than 'how deep does this culture war issue that I deciding to participate in penetrate the public consciousness, and how much of an ideological share of the public who cares is occupied specifically by the side am I taking?'
I think the point i am trying to make is that there is a sharp difference between how someone of Rowling's stature is compared to less affluent celebrities. For example, take Louis CK. His life was permanently altered in a profound way. His agents dropped him, his show got cancelled and he was essentially blacklisted from his career for many years. I understand that the criticisms between them are distinct in a large way but neither of them did anything illegal. Rowling is above any type of that retaliation. Since she holds so much power by her ownership of such a popular property, she still holds ultimate power over thousands of jobs and in some instances, entire careers. If she decided to withdraw her trademark from select industries, she could do far more damage financially to publishers, move studios and amusement parks than they could ever dream to do to her. CK was rejected by many of his closest friends and business partners, but i doubt Rowling has had any real push-back from anyone in her day to day business dealings, because those around her simply cannot afford to do so.
I'm not sure how useful 'neither did anything illegal' is as a way to assert that what they did was or wasn't of similar magnitude. The difference that I am claiming exists between their misdeeds, and thus their levels of cancellation, still holds as a difference between these two examples: Louie CK's misdeeds have no 'supporters' in the culture war. There is no one out there who thinks people should be going around and randomly starting to masturbate in front of women who haven't consented to such a thing. Furthermore the question of whether or not its wrong to sexually assault people is a question with much greater cultural penetration, (especially penetration as a percent of the group of people who would otherwise be buying Louie CK's product). I would venture a guess to say that greater than 95 percent of people who would otherwise be interested in buying a ticket to one of his comedy shows would be turned off by the idea that the guy doing the performance was a sex weirdo who had non-consensually masturbated in front of multiple women.
On the other hand, again as stated, aside from having plenty of ideological allies, JK Rowling's issue just doesn't penetrate that much. People into harry potter are actually for the most part young children, who are too young to care about the discourse, and whose purchasing decisions are made by their parents, who are either too old to care, on JK Rowling's side, care more about satisfying their kid's interest in harry potter than their own interest in not supporting the Rowling estate, etc. Of the twitter-millenial-harry-potter-fan demographic who actually is most likely to care, not all of them do, some of them care but support the anti-trans position in the culture war, some that do care and support pro-trans but can pretend its warner bros that's getting all the profits and not rowling and that level of cognitive dissonance is enough for them, etc.
I think the careful wording of her tactics really does affect the level of retaliation she receives. The fact that she repeatedly maintains she has no hate for trans people etc. is important. That much seems obvious to me. If she started explicitly saying she actively hates trans people, I think its obvious that she would grow to a level of radioactivity at least somewhat more like the other listed examples, Kanye/Louie CK etc. Obviously you're right and that she wields a certain type of power that would insulate her somewhat, but I think overall you're understating the way in which the level of her cancellation is actually at least correlated with actual differences in her tactics, flavor of rhetoric, the specific CW issue she's chosen, etc.
Oh, man...I'm hesitant to dive on this particular grenade, but I think it's really apropos to the larger discussion that's happening here. This is simply a gross mischaracterization. By all accounts, he consistently sought verbal consent, and took "no" for an answer. There's still many good reasons to call this unethical (the power differential, it's likely they didn't take the request seriously or felt pressured in other ways, etc.), but what took place isn't what you're describing -- it's like the talking point that "Woody Allen married his daughter." (And, likewise, his actions can be viewed as extraordinarily unethical, but -- that specific accusation does not reflect the reality of what he did.)
I would say that this is exactly what happened to Rowling -- she has clearly and repeatedly stated her position, and I imagine that if you talked to the average person-on-the-street (that is, if they had any awareness of this at all), they would attribute positions to her that aren't in the same universe. None of it's new, but I do find it dispiriting.
However much this might be the case, you're making a point more about how mis-percieved their actions are, more-so than about how poorly received (the common perception of) those actions are in absolute terms, compared to each other.
Maybe both of them are misunderstood generally. The truth is, though, that even some of the worst interpretations of Rowlings 'misdeeds' are not considered as heinous as some of the best interpretations of Louis CK's. If we're talking about 'Why is Rowling not as cancelled as Louis CK?' my point is only that the difference in this perception is indeed a factor.
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