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I have some trans friends (who I love dearly) and they are offended by some of J.K. Rowling's remarks and beliefs. When they see Harry Potter content (including streams and clips of the new Harry Potter game), it can be offensive and threatening for them.
Growing up, I had a fondness for Harry Potter. I read all the books, watched all the movies, and to this day I have a deep nostalgic attachment to the franchise. I don't personally have an issue with Harry Potter, and all I have seen in terms of criticism of J.K. Rowling was Dave Chapelle's stand-up special (not particularly critical) and a blog post about an inflammatory tweet J.K. Rowling made about a male rapist transitioning and asking for internment in a women's prison (this seems like the edgiest of all edge cases and only useful as an inflammatory wedge).
I believe that my trans friends should be able to browse the internet without seeing content they deem hateful/disturbing (like harry potter content). But I also sympathize with people who want to play the new Harry Potter game or watch their favorite streamer play the new game.
Furthermore, there's an issue where if a streamer has trans viewers (I'd imagine most of the top 100 streamers have at least a couple, and the top 10 streamers in any channel have many trans viewers), by playing the new Harry Potter game the streamer is knowingly streaming content that will offend (some of) those trans viewers (admittedly not all trans people will be offended by the Harry Potter stuff).
My current position is that I hope the hubbub and streamer playthroughs of the game will subside in a week or two and we can just forget the whole thing. But I think this kind of tension will come up a lot. Like the next time Dave Chappelle releases a special. I will want to watch it.
How can I support my trans friends while also being okay with people enjoying the new Harry Potter game?
How should I feel about streamers who choose to play the new Harry Potter game on stream? In some sense they have disregarded my friends' feelings and excluded them from their community!
Any response is much appreciated.
Do you think that it is healthy for them to be so easily offended by things? Do you think it is in their best interests to feel threatened by things that cannot harm them? Aristotle defines friendship as a mutual feeling of goodwill, of wanting what is best for one another; are your friends as anxious for the world to be as you wish it to be, as you are for the world to be as they wish it to be?
J.K. Rowling appears to be as trans-positive as it is possible to be without accepting outright falsehoods or social policies that literally and demonstrably endanger women. People who feel "threatened" by her work are either engaged in performative displays of virtue signalling, or have internalized falsehoods. Trans people who feel "threatened" by work that draws inspiration from her work, created by people who actively disagree with her on trans issues, take a further step away from reality, stringing the causal chain out into absurdity.
It would be healthy and wise for your friends to be better people, and you should want that for them. Indulging their anxiety-spiraling flights of fancy is not goodwill, but--at best--a kind of pity. This is a distortion of the virtue of friendship.
This is just incompatible with the internet being a place that everyone gets to use to their liking. If you don't like Harry Potter content, don't seek out Harry Potter content. If your favorite streamer is streaming Harry Potter content, you have a choice: stop watching their stream, or get over yourself.
If they're really your friends, it won't hurt them that you enjoy Hogwarts Legacy; they have no reason to think it will hurt you. I have many friends who believe things I find incorrect or even abhorrent. I do my best to function as a moral exemplar to them, and I like to think they are doing their best to do the same for me. Our disagreement does not preclude any of that. By contrast, someone whose every whim I must indulge is not my friend, but my master.
In no plausible sense have they disregarded your friends' feelings (how could they even be aware of your specific individual feelings?) or excluded anyone from their "community." For one thing, it's not really a community, it's a parasocial bit of internet media. For another, if they play boring games instead of offensive ones, does that "exclude" people? If they express political beliefs explicitly, does that "exclude" people? There was a joke back in the 1990s that the only people who listened to Rush Limbaugh were "liberals" looking for something to complain about--which was why he had an audience of millions!
To be quite honest, part of me seriously wonders whether your post can possibly have been written in earnest, rather than as a troll, or a bit of bait for confirming your own priors, or something. It all sounds a bit too convenient to me. But I have to admit that Poe's law may well apply here, so I have responded to the best of my ability. If these Rowling-phobic trans friends of yours are earnestly afraid, then obviously it would be polite of you to not play Hogwarts Legacy in front of them, or invite theme to a Dave Chappelle viewing party. But you've absolutely no reason at all to fault others for playing Hogwarts Legacy or streaming it. And if your trans friends think less of you for being insufficiently enraged by their own pet neurosis, well, then they are not very good friends.
This seems like a stretch, can you elaborate here? Like the thing about a rapist asking to be imprisoned with women is hardly evidence that women in general are in danger (I'll admit maybe I'm just ignorant here). It's a cherry-picked example of an extreme edge case that's easily handled on a case-by-case basis.
This seems disingenuous (although it's poetic), I don't think anyone's under the illusion that it will hurt me-- isn't it about politics or something?
How do you address topics with your friends that you know you disagree on? Can you give an example? Especially when they come up organically, in the course of regular conversation? This happened to me today, and I avoided the subject.
This isn't quite correct-- literally no one was surprised (that's hyperbole, sorry, but you get the point) that there was a boycott of the game and loud pushback.
So to go back to the specific example that prompted my post, the friend I was talking with today didn't behave that way-- when the issue came up in conversation and I kind of side-stepped, she did as well and we didn't speak of it again. I didn't feel good about it for a few reasons, one of which was I wasn't totally sure how I felt about the issue. I'm hoping to get some more clarity and then either destroy her with facts and logic or live and let live (or maybe a wild third option I hadn't considered yet).
As far as I have seen, the "extreme edge case[s] . . . easily handled on a case-by-case basis" are the sum total of Rowling's putative "transphobia." She explicitly believes that transsexuals/transgendered/etc. should be treated with courtesy, referred to by their preferred pronouns, included in polite society--except she strongly opposes their participation in spaces that specifically exist to protect females from males. Sex-segregated spaces like prisons or women's shelters have historically been sex-segregated for good reason--because women are characteristically vulnerable to men in certain specific ways. You can't say "that's a cherry-picked case" while also maintaining that Rowling is somehow transphobic; her opposition to the statement "trans women are women" extends only and exactly to the cases that are so obvious, your instinct is to call them "cherry-picked."
There's certainly nothing wrong with avoiding the subject, but it would be nice of your friend to notice that you avoid the subject and intuit that they should drop it.
For me, how I act depends on the subject, and on the friend, and on the occasion! Usually I just say what I believe. If they say something I disagree with, I usually say something like, "Hmm, I disagree, because..." and then I tell them why. Then I listen patiently while they destroy me with facts and logic, and either I change my mind or I don't, and we get back to doing more important things, like playing games or complimenting one another's taste in clothing. Sometimes they say things I disagree with, but it seems unimportant or like a bad time to disagree, so I might say, "I'm not so sure about that, but it's complicated, so for purposes of this discussion let's assume that's right." And sometimes I just let it pass because I've got other priorities in the conversation than making my views maximally clear. I am more willing to be blunt and offensive in my own house than in other people's houses. I am more willing to be blunt and offensive at casual occasions than at major social events (weddings, christenings, etc.). Just not making my political identity my whole identity goes a long, long way in these matters.
But admittedly I am older than the modal mottizen, and worry much less about social standing than most people do. I have definitely had people I thought were my friends cut me out of their life because I was honest about my beliefs, and willing to defend them. I am sorry about that, but I have many other friends who appreciate my candor and effort even when we disagree, and I would probably not be such good friends with them if they didn't appreciate me in this way.
Right, because trans-Twitter is extremely predictable in this regard. But doing things that you know some group will be upset about is not much of a reason to not do those things. It's important for you to consider the feelings of your friends (and for them to be considerate of yours), but you have no reason at all to worry what a stranger is going to think of you, no matter how loudly they complain about it.
FWIW, this sentence substantially increases my suspicion that you are trolling. If you're looking for ways to "destroy her with facts and logic" then you're being a pretty shitty friend. But if she is constantly making you feel uncomfortable with demands for allegiance to her pet cause, she's being a pretty shitty friend. And really--if she's a decent friend, you saying "I think you're great and I like your company, but I just disagree with you about some of these things and I'm worried that our friendship might not survive our disagreement," I would expect her to at minimum just avoid the topic with you in the future. She may even appreciate that you took the time to inform her of your feelings so she had a chance to save the friendship.
Or in the alternative she may blow up at you and/or cut you out of her life, but like--that would tell you far more about your value to them, than your decision to watch Chappelle could possibly say about their value to you.
I should have done this to begin with, but I read through some of the stuff that J.K. Rowling is being pilloried for (by some). I didn't really care all that much beforehand, just saw the memes, etc.
I read this article which summarizes her essay, includes some tweets, and includes quotes from a few of celebrities.
I read her essay from 2020
There's not that much in there that I take all that much issue with. I think fearmongering about people fraudulently changing gender to predate women isn't much of a real concern (though I can see how survivors/victims of assault, etc would feel that way). It probably happens but not often. Prisons and shelters already have systems in place already for preventing inmate-on-inmate violence/assault, and clear cases of fraud can be caught (isn't there still tons of inmate-on-inmate violence in prisons anyways? Is the sex of inmates really the issue there?). Could probably make a utilitarian argument that allowing gender change is good enough and improves lives for enough people that 1-in-a-million (this number isn't really fair, maybe it's one in 10,000 or 1 in 1000) cases of fraud are fine.
But I think what you're saying is that even if you don't believe that the trans-in-women's-spaces issue matters, that's the worst of what J.K. Rowling has said, and this can't be construed in good faith as transphobic. Is that right? I don't think transphobic is a good word to describe J.K. Rowling, but I think some of what she said can easily be construed as offensive or threatening.
The reason I say this is cherry-picked is because it's not relevant to the reality of the debate-- it's such a rare example that it's mostly useful for rabble-rousing.
This doesn't necessarily follow. Sometimes a good debate amongst friends is fun. I'll admit that in this instance I was being flippant and making a cultural reference, and that "destroying her with facts and logic" would not be a good approach. What I meant by this was "One approach I am considering is disclosing my true position to her and laying out a reasoned, rational case for why I feel that way."
This is good advice, I am thankful for your responses here. I might try something like "I support you in any of your efforts to boycott the new Harry Potter game. Someone recommended me this cool adblocker that can do keyword filtering on YouTube. [provide reference to uBlocker]. I need to confess that I am not personally offended by Harry Potter content and won't be filtering it out of my own internet experience. I understand that this might offend you, but I value our friendship and want to be honest about my personal and political views. [hopefully this leads to a good discussion about why she feels so offended by J.K. Rowling and the new Harry Potter game and I can further refine my position].
In hindsight this approach would have been preferable to avoiding the subject, if the opportunity presents itself I will give it a try and report back.
Part of the problem is that some of my trans friends have expressed that they don't feel like pushing their views on other people, they would just rather avoid the issue entirely. So I want to be careful about bringing it up to be sensitive to their expressed desires (back to that filtering out offensive shit idea).
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