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Notes -
Harry Potter and the Vibe Shift
I actually was thinking about giving this topic a rest - it makes me feel like I'm being radicalized in slow motion - but...just when I thought I was out...some room for optimism: NY Times: In Defense of J.K. Rowling
To give a brief rundown of the situation:
NYTimes employees in conjunction with GLAAD released a letter putting pressure on the NYTimes for reporting in a "biased" fashion on trans issues recently and how it's being used by states to pass bills against gender medicine.
The NYT...actually shows some spine and refuses to bend, saying: “...But at the same time, we recognize that GLAAD’s advocacy mission and The Times’s journalistic mission are different.". Who would have thought that we'd get to the point where a basic recognition of the different role of activists and journalists would be noteworthy?
Apparently the NYT also posted an internal memo warning NYT staffers against public working with an activist organization against their own company stating that they: "will not tolerate, participation by Times journalists in protests organized by advocacy groups or attacks on colleagues on social media and other public forums."
Then, we see what the bruhaha was likely about and what the open letter was trying to preempt: we get the above op-ed yesterday, basically defending JKR against the criticism she faced - ahead of the release of The Witch Trials of JKR by Megan Phelps-Roper, an escapee from the Westboro Baptist Church.
In essence: the same strategy we've seen from wreckers and ideologues time after time played out, but the Times did the bare minimum and acted like adults. At a certain point - just as with wreckers like Felicia Somnez at WaPo - I suppose it simply became too much for too little gain. The constant fitna was fine when it was in service of popular causes with little cost, but now seems to be in service of a cause that is dragging many people down. So why not put out the op-ed, while also keeping the workers in line?
Said article's content?
...
Nothing here is new to anyone who spent any time checking on the actual words of JKR and her defenders. But it is interesting to see the NYT posting about it and fighting the pushback, especially as it follows the incredible failure of the Hogwarts: Legacy boycott and Sturgeon's fall from power*
The backlash can no longer be written off as the cultural peculiarity of "TERF Island" - a desperate rhetorical ploy used by activists to distract the blind. It's not just a European thing. It's everywhere.
My personal take was that transactivism was just the next, inevitable step in the march to atomization in liberalism. And it probably still is. But there may be bridges too far, even for liberals. I hope.
A good note to leave the trans issue on for at least a while and reset my brain before I become some sort of schizo, hyper-reactionary monarchist or something. Maybe go play a few new games...
* It's been a great month for her, after years of shit, I have to say.
Similar here, I figured that the high water mark before the tide receded would be somewhere in the vicinity of HAAS Fat Activism and the push for acceptance of "Otherkin." I hoped dearly that it would be be WELL before we hit the "MAP is a valid and acceptable sexuality" movement.
My suspicion is that the very visible entrance of Trans women into female sports leagues combined with the push for gender reassignment of prepubescent children is what snapped normies into a posture of resistance.
Note that I don't think the resistance is particularly well organized or even coherent, but with NYT taking the position that "it is in fact acceptable to consider the implications of these policies and one is not required to accept activist claims at face value" at least there's some room to breathe for those who actually WANT there to be a discussion on the matter.
But the left has no option to just retreat on this point, and as we've seen even the most milquetoast of defiance is treated as a nigh-existential threat, so generally I just find myself wondering which angle of attack they will implement next.
It feels very weird, though, to be on TheMotte talking about a culture war issue where the right is seemingly the one with momentum and the left is now on defense. Only took the combined might of the most popular author on the planet, the largest newspaper on the planet, and some of the more popular GOP governors and pundits.
The Cathedral as a whole appears to be proceeding with it's general plans quite unhindered, mind.
The fat activists have been pretty successful. The fact that "fat shaming" is regarded as something that shouldn't be done is really quite remarkable.
I've been listening to the Maintenance Phase podcast recently, if only for the entertainment of hyper-woke individuals spewing typical Fat Logic, and I've noticed a sort of Holocaust Denial vibe. They'll do very good episodes about how some diet or some other piece of health apocrypha is bullshit, complete with what at least seems like a fairly rigorous review of the scientific literature, which is fine and what makes it entertaining. But the conclusion you're supposed to draw from the series as a whole isn't that certain things in the diet ecosystem is bad, but that you shouldn't worry about your weight or anyone else's and that doctors are unnecessarily turning obesity into a health problem it's not. It reminds me of how people like David Irving will focus on minutia like whether a particular facility was used as a gas chamber and, regardless of the quality of the scholarship, expects you to draw the conclusion that the Holocaust never happened. Being obese is really unhealthy; any doctor will tell you that.
Two groups tend to be left out of the whole "fat acceptance" culture, though. The first is fat men. Fat women never had much of a problem getting fat men to date them. I suspect that a lot of this fat acceptance bullshit is really just trying to guilt thin men into dating them; you don't ever hear of any obese young women standing up for some fat Trekkie who's being made fun of. The second group is old people. I see a lot of stuff on the internet about being "healthy at any size" but it's always women under the age of 45 who seem to be the poster children for this stuff. You never hear about older fat people in this context, despite the fact that magazines love to profile active seniors who talk about how their lifestyle has prevented health problems. Of course, none of these people are ever fat, because there aren't many fat older people who do things like walk 9 holes every day or take ballroom dance lessons. Most of them are at home in front of the television, dealing with diabetes, or heart problems, or arthritis, or any number of other disorders that obesity increases the risk of.
Fat men that are tall or built do well. Those that look like Jason Alexander do bad though on the market.
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