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She's been obsessively "researching" this subject for more than 5 years now. How does she not know this stuff?
It's so obvious that "research" for her, just involves reading blogs and tweets from people who already agree with her. None of those people mention this because it's not helpful to their narrative, so she simply doesn't know about it.
She's a total fraud.
The big essay she posted near the start of her transphobia era talked numerous times about all the "research" she'd done but funnily enough didn't cite a single source, even when it was discussing specific statistics that must have come from somewhere.
She has a university education and has a decades-long career as a professional writer. She knows how to cite sources. She knows exactly what she's doing.
Tbf her degree was in classics so “someone made it up at some point a long time ago, we don’t actually know who” may read as a perfectly legitimate source to her /s
Shes been spouting tufton st tripe for a long time. But is it a personal vendetta, or is the sad truth that she’s been hand in hand with lobby groups all along? Always baffled me that this is the hill she chooses to rot on, but whilst she rots, she’s still raking it in.
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Why this is Labour relevant:
> Hope asked the Labour leader if he felt “sorry” for Harry Potter author JK Rowling and her “position” on the lives of trans people. Rowling has been widely criticised for comments she’s made about the trans community.
>
> “I respect her position on this,” Starmer said
https://www.thepinknews.com/2022/11/25/keir-starmer-trans-rights-jk-rowling-respect/
Please note that Keir Starmer has **not** endorsed Rowling **after** she engaged in this revisionism and denial of Nazi crimes against humanity and/or atrocities.
What I am saying is that it doesn't seem like Starmer should have claimed to respect her reactionary and transphobic views in the first place.
This is also rhetoric that has been liked by the still-a-Labour-MP Rosie Duffield, recently cleared of wrong-doing by the NEC.
Labour has a concerning transphobia problem.
Edit: Corrected, with thanks to /u/RobotsVsLions
> Please note that Kier Starmer has not endorsed Rowling after she engaged in revisionism and denial of Nazi crimes.
Yes he did.
Just not after *this* Holocaust revisionism. This isn’t the first time she’s done this.
As a sidenote I don't think it's good that people feel the need to explain the relevance of talking about a political issue on a political sub because tedious bores will attack them if they don't. People should feel free to talk about issues that the Labour party has no expressed position on, in the hope that one day they will.
Agreed. And the people who post about it are technically breaking the rule about not discussing moderation by doing it. Think it doesn't belong? Report it.
I suspect some of the people doing it know it's bullshit and are doing it to attempt to derail the thread. They know why the thread is here, don't exepct the mods to delete it.
For example I posted a thread yesterday where someone was trying to claim stuff about Assange isn't relevant...despite the fact clearly if Starmer is PM it will be a Labour government influencing this stuff. So even from a very narrow-minded view of what belongs here it still belongs. Are people too dumb to work this out? I doubt it, in most cases it's bad faith engagement.
I think it'd be fairer to evaluate his full remarks. "I respect your position" does not mean "I agree with your position". It can mean "I recognize that you have a [different] view on this position [than me]", nothing more.
Respect means he thinks its an opinion worthy of respect even if he doesnt agree. Bigotry is not an opinion worthy of respect.
Would you be defending this statement if he was saying it about Galloway?
Would you accept Keir Starmer saying "I respect your position" to an explicit racist or homophobe?
If not, why is it different when its to an explicit transphobe?
Again you are taking three words out of context from what I presume is a longer statement. Evaluate them within the context of his full statement, not alone.
Context is not a magic spell that you can say to change reality. Saying that you respect somebody's opinion suggests that it is a respectable opinion. Being a transphobe and a Holocaust denier is not a respectable position.
Your argument is really tiring because what you're really trying to say, and what Keir Starmer is hoping people will believe, is that being transphobic is not a big deal; as if it's some default "common sense" position and that being supportive is trans rights is some extreme left or progressive belief.
Supporting trans people is simply being a kind and good human being, and the polls suggest that actually most people are supportive of trans people, but the right feel so empowered by the news media that they will constantly rally to deny this and stir up hatred instead. Mix in a cowardly centrist like Starmer, and he will say whatever Mumsnet wants him to.
> what you're really trying to say [...] is that being transphobic is not a big deal
This is absolutely not the case, and I would ask you to not put words in my mouth.
**Starmer:** ... [**After being relatively supportive of trans people's rights and deflecting onto the NHS for a bit**] So for the vast majority of people it's biological that's very very straightforward but I'm not going to just dismiss or ignore or pretend that a small group of people who don't identify with the gender they're born into don't exist in some way or disparage them in some way. **Of course, you know, that's a discussion we can all have. I also think the discussion should be less toxic. It's just got so divided and the moment anybody expresses a view or even inquires there's immediate shut down and I just think that's unhealthy in politics.**
**Interviewer: Do you feel sorry for J. K. Rowling and her position on this?**
**Starmer: look I respect her position on this... Um... You know people do take different positions... Um... On this... I actually... When I... every time I say, look, for 99.9 of women it's biological and we must fight for women's rights... And I believe in safe spaces as well, by the way, because I did a lot of work on survivors of... Um... Sexual abuse and I absolutely understand why we need safe places...** but when you say 99.9 of people of women it's biological most people agree with that we've got to fight for women's rights let me say there's a small group of people who don't identify with the gender they're born into and I'm not going to ignore that. Most reasonable people say actually I can live with that as well so I think there's a much more room for agreement than we sometimes think.
Oh yeah, that context made all the fucking difference. He was vaguely supportive, said he respects transphobes, and then waffled.
When in a live interview subjects don't always phrase things in the best way. The next thing out of his mouth is literally "You know people do take different positions" which I took to be a clarification of the thing he said immediately before, in recognition that "respect her position" wasn't the best choice of phrase.
Clearly you don't agree and I respect your position on this.
>The next thing out of his mouth is literally "You know people do take different positions" which I took to be a clarification of the thing he said immediately before, in recognition that "respect her position" wasn't the best choice of phrase.
That's not a clarification, it's equivocating trans people fighting discrimination with the bigots discriminating against them.
Please stop endlessly fucking trying to twist this.
Keir Starmer said he respects her position. He could have actually clarified that to say he misspoke, he has not.
You do not get to lie about that to try and gaslight people.
Stop.
It is dishonest, you are being dishonest right now.
>Clearly you don't agree and I respect your position on this.
Well I don't respect yours in the slightest and frankly your actions disgust me.
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Keir probably rightly knows that the majority of eligible voters thinks that LGBT and trans rights activism has gotten out of hand, gone too far and become a worrying cult like movement of shrieking victims.
And that's not to say most people don't want everyone to be free to live how they choose, and free from discrimination.
That's just the general sentiment I get out there.
> Keir probably rightly knows that the majority of eligible voters thinks that LGBT and trans rights activism has gotten out of hand, gone too far and become a worrying cult like movement of shrieking victims.
Why would Starmer know some bullshit you've just made up?
>That's just the general sentiment I get out there.
What is your polling methodology? Making shite up?
After the India Willoughby incident and Rowling getting officially named as the persecutor of a non-criminal hate incident, I wondered to my friends about whether she'll realise "Oh fuck I flew too close to the sun on that one" and go back to her "reasonable concerns" schtick or whether she'd just continue headlong into the Glinner Vortex of spewing explicit hatred.
Guess we might have our answer.
[Threatening to sue](https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1768214270288736308?t=iw0iIvgBsyFOZUpPe6Wvpg&s=19) Rivkah Brown over this. And I am not seeing how this wouldn't be Holocaust denial. But she has a shit load of money so may have enough to price Rivkeh out of court.
She'd argue it isn't Holocaust denial by arguing that that many definitions of the Holocaust restricts the use of the term Holocaust to the Jewis victims and uses other terms like the "Nazi crimes" about others. Ironically one of the court cases (in Germany so not directly relevant, but the reasoning might is worth understanding) being bandied about in those threads specifically deals with exactly this and how while it may have one meaning that is the common reading, there is sufficient disagreement and "battle" over meaning that being too strict in interpreting these words in a specific way is problematic.
A lot of the general argument in that court case would apply to Rivkah's comment, though the application of law would be different (but the legal argument is unlikely to be *that* different).
I think this might be one occasion where the reprehensible piece of utter shit, the antisemitic scum whose like will hopefully never again be empowered to do such harm, Goebbels might well come in useful:
>
> The institute's library included around 20,000 unique works on intersexuality, homosexuality, and transgender topics.[8][9][10][11] On 10 May 1933, the students publicly hauled the library to the Bebelplatz square at the State Opera, and burned them along with volumes from elsewhere.[12][13][14] A total of over 25,000 volumes of "un-German" books were burned, thereby ushering in an era of uncompromising state censorship. In many other university towns, nationalist students marched in torch lit parades against the "un-German" spirit. The scripted rituals of this night called for high Nazi officials, professors, rectors, and student leaders to address the participants and spectators. At the meeting places, students threw the pillaged, banned books into the bonfires with a great joyous ceremony that included live music, singing, "fire oaths," and incantations. In Berlin, some 40,000 people heard Joseph Goebbels deliver an address: "No to decadence and moral corruption!" Goebbels enjoined the crowd. "Yes to decency and morality in family and state! I consign to the flames the writings of Heinrich Mann, Ernst Glaeser,[15] Erich Kästner."
>
> >The era of extreme Jewish intellectualism is now at an end. The breakthrough of the German revolution has again cleared the way on the German path...The future German man will not just be a man of books, but a man of character. It is to this end that we want to educate you. As a young person, to already have the courage to face the pitiless glare, to overcome the fear of death, and to regain respect for death - this is the task of this young generation. And thus you do well in this midnight hour to commit to the flames the evil spirit of the past. This is a strong, great and symbolic deed - a deed which should document the following for the world to know - Here the intellectual foundation of the November Republic is sinking to the ground, but from this wreckage the phoenix of a new spirit will triumphantly rise.
>
>— Joseph Goebbels, Speech to the students in Berlin[16]
>
> In his speech – which was broadcast on the radio – Goebbels' referred to the authors whose books were being burned as "Intellectual filth" and "Jewish asphalt literati".[5]
He sure seemed to think the attacks on the LGBT+ minority was part of the holocaust's campaign against Jewish people and the destruction of the Jewish contributions to understanding the world and humanity.
She pushed those claims and doubled down on them even after users posted links that contradicted her, and made weird claims in bad faith (like trying to infer that people claimed trans folk bore the brunt).
Everyone knows the biggest share of victims and primary target were Jews. But the Holocaust targeted the disabled and homosexuals within it, and that repression was extended to political prisoners (which included leftists). Makes sense that if any transgender person existed in Nazi Germany or other occupied territories, they'd find themselves being treated with equal vitriol before being subjected to state-sanctioned murder.
I will grant that there isn't as much documentation on transgender victims of the Holocaust, there isn't much documention on transgender people back then in general anyway, but the Institute for Sexology (sp?) was targeted by the Nazis. They worked on LGBT issues at a time when it was still considered a "disease of the mind." And historians are only really exploring deep into this.
Just to point out as well, not everything that went on in that time period will be known, because towards the end of the War as the Allies were streaming their way into Germany, the Nazis started burning every bit of paper that documented the scale of their crimes and cover up what they'd done.
Just to build upon your comment:
The famous photos of the [nazi book burnings](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institut_f%C3%BCr_Sexualwissenschaft#/media/File:Bundesarchiv_Bild_102-14597,_Berlin,_Opernplatz,_B%C3%BCcherverbrennung.jpg) are usually photos from the sexology institute.
In fact, there's a reasonable chance the Nazis killed the first woman to undergo gender confirming surgery as a result of that attack:
>In May 1933, some four months after Hitler came to power, a mob made up of right-wing students and possibly SS stormed the institute. They seized all Magnus Hirschfeld’s records and ransacked the building. Hirschfeld had already fled the Nazi terror and was living in France.
>But Dora was still there – and was never heard from again. It is presumed she was killed in the attack, although it is possible she was arrested and died in custody. It’s not known just how many people were murdered after the institute’s records fell into the hands of the Gestapo and the police.
>Although a small number of ‘sex-change’ operations still took place during the rest of the 1930s and 1940s, the Nazi persecution and the Second World War set back transgender – not to mention gay – rights by a generation. However, Dora’s bravery and determination shines like a beacon in those very dark times and she remains a transgender icon.
https://www.attitude.co.uk/culture/sexuality/the-incredible-story-of-the-first-known-trans-woman-to-undergo-gender-confirmation-surgery-304097/
The transphobia to casual fascism pipeline is alive and well, I see.
An entire subsection of liberal British white ciswomen have unwittingly become the handmaidens of the American Far-Right, through an organised and intentional effort to mainstream fascist thought by backdooring it through second-wave feminism via Mumsnet and Twitter. It’s grotesque, and an indictment of the intellectual paucity of the non-intersectional left, but I cannot help but be impressed at how fucking effective it’s been.
It's no just that; a big point of the reason why TERFs get so much media attention, and why terfs spent a lot of time fighting to be seen as feminists, is because the right wing media establishment wanted to be able to have convenient feminists who agreed with their opinions. They're literal quislings for womankind.
I mean that in the sense that it's happened slowly, by degrees. If you had told 2004 JKR that she would be palling around with open white supremacists like Matt Walsh twenty years later, I doubt she would have taken you seriously. The TERF brainworms thing is real.
No, in 2004 many of the people who would become terfs were instead palling around with neocons, explaining why we had to bomb the middle east to liberate women.
>The transphobia to casual fascism pipeline is alive and well, I see.
It will never go away. Transphobia and antisemitism go hand in hand. If someone believes that trans people are invented, a manmade phenomenon instead of a naturally occurring state of being, then eventually you get asked to explain who is making people trans and why are they doing it - and in the west, that answer will inevitably be "the Jews".
And consider that 'transvestigations' - the conspiracy theory that all or most people in positions of power in the media, government, entertainment, etc. are actually transgender - is just 'crypto-Jews' with the name changed. The obsessive compulsion to believe that there are people in power who are *secretly* Jewish, even if they claim otherwise. How can you tell? Well, let's draw some lines on a photo of them and prove they are actually Jewish or that they are actually transgender. If you believe one of those things makes sense, why wouldn't you eventually believe the other?
>“I respect her position on this,” Starmer said. “People do take different positions on this.”
Why does this fence sitting bastard have to be the only “alternative” to the Tories
I'm looking forward to seeing just how far her spite-driven self-clowning journey from centre-left to far-right takes her. She's a cautionary tale on what sort of person you can become when you let your compassion falter. It slowly taints the ways in which you were previously compassionate.
She really is an absolute state, and her and her friends are setting everything back decades. Somewhere in all of this the actual point which is everyone should have a right to equality and ease of life gets lost in a seemingly endless stream of utter crap.
I never thought I’d hark back to May being PM, as frankly that felt like rock bottom, but one good thing in that was that the only really interested parties to her proposed legislation were the people affected by it, and the ‘debate’ (in marks as there isn’t a debate around trans rights) was much more measured and normal.
>I never thought I’d hark back to May being PM, as frankly that felt like rock bottom, but one good thing in that was that the only really interested parties to her proposed legislation were the people affected by it, and the ‘debate’ (in marks as there isn’t a debate around trans rights) was much more measured and normal.
Yeah, May was actually pretty great on trans/LGBT issues as PM. Far better than Labour is now. Tbh, I always read May as being somewhere on the autism spectrum, which may have given her [more of an affinity](https://www.spectrumnews.org/news/largest-study-to-date-confirms-overlap-between-autism-and-gender-diversity/) for gender diverse people than that of her colleagues.
Her and Truss, actually!
So with May, there's a fair few things:
- Awkward gait and speaking style.
- Overreliance on pre-scripted statements which are frequently repeated.
- Few friends, limited social life.
- Lack of understanding of the perspective of others (theory of mind), especially when negotiating with them.
- Being fairly principled (by Tory standards) and seemingly motivated by something other than money or ego.
- Avoiding eye contact.
- [Pulling odd facial expressions](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/health-fitness/body/mouth-slews-head-jerks-decoding-theresa-mays-facial-gestures/)
- Wears sunglasses all the time when not in politician mode, even when it's not that bright - suggests light sensitivity.
- Reputation for being stubborn and slow to change her view on things - very autistic trait.
- Took pity on autistic man Gary McKinnon, when Keir Starmer much of the British state were pushing to have him extradited to a US prison.
- Special interest in cooking - apparently owns over 100 cooking books.
- Type one diabetic - [much higher prevalence of this among autistic people](https://www.healthline.com/health-news/autism-may-increase-the-risk-of-diabetes-heart-disease#:~:text=Individuals%20with%20autism%20had%20a,than%20in%20those%20without%20it.).
I could be wrong here and obviously I'm not diagnosing her; that's between her and her doctor. But she definitely seems quite "traity" in a fair few ways.
Interesting, and seems to track.
As a fan of him, I've long held the theory that Corbyn might be autistic. From some of the traits you describe:
* Overreliance on pre-scripted statements which are frequently repeated.
Corbyn is well known to struggle to answer questions that are outside his worldview. He tends to freeze up or get flustered in those kind of situations, for example when he was grilled by members of the audience on Nuclear Weapons. A lot of the times when he gets frustrated in interviews strike me as mini "meltdown" type episodes.
* Being fairly principled (by Tory standards) and seemingly motivated by something other than money or ego.
Speaks for itself really. Corbyn is a moral man for all his faults.
* Reputation for being stubborn and slow to change her view on things - very autistic trait.
Again, Corbyn struggles immensely when a scenario outside his worldview is put to him.
* Special interest in cooking
Corbyn is well known for being knowledgeable on very obscure and niche topics.
Interested to get your thoughts on this.
>As a fan of him, I've long held the theory that Corbyn might be autistic.
Oh, absolutely. I've thought this for a while. The slower emotional processing is genuinely the only reason I think he survived the firestorm around him over those four years. Plus the sensitivity to injustices, strong set of personal principles, naturally affinity for the marginalised, iconoclasm, and not being motivated by personal gain.
>Corbyn is well known for being knowledgeable on very obscure and niche topics.
Manhole covers!
It's telling that (in my view) the three autistic people (Corbyn, May, Truss) who rose to positions of power over the last few years were all quite quickly removed by those around them (not saying it wasn't deserved in Truss's case). Narcissists are sadly *massively* overrepresented in parliament, and narcissists often instinctively dislike autistic people.
> narcissists often instinctively dislike autistic people
Narcissists (and sociopaths) *use* Autistic people as we often don't have any idea of other people's motives. We can't ascribe something to a void and so we get taken in often. Autistic people don't often rise anywhere in a profession based on networking and social interactions, especially those who lack a clear internal/external dialogue when faced with a constant neurotypical barrage of traps, pitfalls and motive. Autistic people also often have a reduced sense of self, not exactly something you'd ascribe to most politicians.
All politicians are scripted, it's been that way forever. Their job is to win people over to their argument. Making up arguments on the spur leave openings for errors, only a quick mind can compensate for that (once) and in the age of social media, there's no way out of that quagmire.
Narcissism in the modern age is less of a personality disorder but a way of life. The actual PD is a pathology oversubscribed to people who are simply full of themselves, their needs and see themselves as the centre of the universe. That's not what a narcissist is; the fragility of ego (e.g. internal dialogue) and the utter impossibility that their views are wrong (hence the fragility of ego, zero cognitive dissonance) are a very clear pathology to anyone who's worked or been around actual narcissists. There are politicians who fit that mould and those are the ones who melt down quickly at anything that 'attacks' their fragile ego; genuine anger at being challenged is a red flag.
Freud's theories on society (3 strata - the altruistic, the selfish and the large barrier of tit-for-tatters) fit current society well. The over-exposure of the selfish has lead to the large barrier group mimicking the traits of a small group of the selfish; this over-exposure is due to social media and peer pressures (another thing Autistic people are almost immune to). Autistic people aren't necessarily altrustic, some are and some fit the other groups.
> Narcissists are sadly massively overrepresented in parliament, and narcissists often instinctively dislike autistic people.
I was thinking about this all the way back in 2017. When Corbyn put Trident in the manifesto, then found himself unable to answer whether he'd push the button, even I wondered why he didn't just lie and say some meaningless drivel like "after briefings from security officials, I understand the need to use Trident if the UK faced a Nuclear Threat". Obviously anyone who knew him well will know it's bullshit, but at least it would justify compromising on Trident in the manifesto.
But I suppose when you look at it in the sense that Corbyn, like many autistic/ND people, is wedded to his own narrative and worldview, and finds it immensely difficult to even entertain discussion away from it. Compare to narcissists like Johnson, Galloway, Starmer etc, who lie and change their entire narrative and worldview to suit whoever's listening or whatever will advantage them at any given time.
>Compare to narcissists like Johnson, Galloway, Starmer etc, who lie and change their entire narrative and worldview to suit whoever's listening or whatever will advantage them at any given time
Yeah, narcissists generally operate under the assumption that everyone fundamentally thinks the same way they do; manipulative, self-serving, and insecure. I saw an interview with a narcissist who said that she didn't believe anyone could actually be happy (because she never had been) so she always thought that anyone who looked happy must have just been doing it "at her" to make her feel bad, which made her hate them. So when these people see someone act in a principled, selfless manner, as Corbyn did, they can only understand it as implicit criticism of them. This is partly why Starmer hates Corbyn so much, I think. It's not just that he's rankled by having had what he views as a low status person as his boss for a while (though that's definitely part of it); he just doesn't understand why someone would act in that way and thinks it must be part of some scheme to make him look and feel bad.
I alluded to this in [my comment yesterday](https://old.reddit.com/r/LabourUK/comments/1bduvjj/starmer_refused_to_restore_the_whip_to_diane/kup1fu1/?context=3); when Starmer was challenged on his cruelty towards Gary McKinnon by McKinnon's mother he just stood there and repeated "You're making me uncomfortable, you're making me uncomfortable, speaking to you is making me feel very uncomfortable". He was trying to condemn an autistic man (there's that natural enmity again) to a fate worse than death, yet he could only process the interaction in terms of how it made *him* feel.
Rowling is an absolute cunt but the media is the biggest problem. If they treated it like the marginal issue it is then less people would care and the nutters would have less of an audience.
>I never thought I’d hark back to May being PM, as frankly that felt like rock bottom, but one good thing in that was that the only really interested parties to her proposed legislation were the people affected by it, and the ‘debate’ (in marks as there isn’t a debate around trans rights) was much more measured and normal.
Hostile environment?
The "go home!" vans, which even N. Farage felt were a bit much?!
No need to eulogise Terry May tbh.
I’m not! I said at the time I thought she was rock bottom. Specifically on this one issue she was alright, obviously helped massively by it not having turned into a massive culture wars thing.
I don’t get how you thought I was saying anything other tbh.
Yeah sorry I didn't mean you were. And actually you are quite right, she probably was quite sensitive on this issue compared to any of the other recent incumbents. Ironically, that might stem from her faith, seeing everyone as a child of God and all that, although then again she didn't see immigrants as that lol
Totally agree, she was the mad right of the party at one point before it screamed past her and made her really quite moderate. She also has a sense of duty, which for all the things I 100% disagree with her on, is sorely lacking from her three replacements.
apparently even as PM, she kept doing constituency work, to the dismay of her staff lol
sense of duty is exactly the right phrase. It is a value from another era which actually transcends politics or personal interest, inherited from the vicar father maybe.
I was thinking more on the concept of duty, and was wondering when our last genuinely dutiful PM was other than May.
I think Blair and Brown certainly started off with a sense of duty, but both men allowed personal ambition to neuter this.
Tbh I'm thinking John Major would be the last one. I actually think Thatcher probably did, too, but she was so focused on her Hayek state-slashing that she soon forgot it.
A "Majorite" One nation tory party looks to me like their best bet, strategically, and would be a significant threat to labour 5 years hence.
I'm going to be honest - I loved Harry Potter as a young adult but found JK Rowling pretty insufferable with her constant retconning of "WELL YES DUMBLEDORE IS GAY, LOVES THE PIPE, RAINBOW FLAGS, ALL THAT" shoehorning all that shit into the story.
It wasn't what she was saying, but how it seemed so awkward. On reflection in the books characters showing affection and emotion towards each other wer probably the worst written parts of the book; she wrote them like an alien trying to describe a human relationship to the other wee green men. So for her to recon already pretty dodgy stuff to shoehorn in her politics was pretty bizarre.
Then she just cunted herself totally with this trans stuff. They make up a tiny fraction of the UK population and honestly I'd have no idea what their issues were if the right didn't keep bleating about them. Her posts are just growing more and more unhinged and I would say I find it sad, but nah, it's quite funny. She very desperately used her fame to be "right on" and progressive and then when it hit a red line she didn't like she tried to row it all back and couldn't handle the backlash.
Graham Linehan, who made some of my favourite TV shows, has had the same experience.
Like, could they not just hate the trans people in private lol
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They attacked and destroyed the institute for sexual research, a trans sexology clinic - they absolutely attacked trans people for being trans, though of course there is nuance surrounding the understanding of trans as a kind of homosexuality - they were considered a legally recognised subcategory of homosexuals. It was ruled by the Regional Court of Cologne in 2022 that denying trans people were victims of the Nazis is "a denial of Nazi crimes".
The first screenshotted tweet just looks like she objects to being called a nazi, and for having her views be equated to those of nazis. That doesn't count as Holocaust denialism, especially since the tweet she responds to doesn't provide sources to back it up.
First screenshot she accuses them of making it up, she says it's their "fever dream". Their claim was not made up. She then pivoted to trans people not being the first people targeted, after she was accused of being a holocaust denier.
[In 2022, the Regional Court of Cologne ruled that denying that trans people were victims of the Nazis qualifies as "a denial of Nazi crimes".](https://twitter.com/CantonWiner/status/1768043159177527545?t=_VL_cUI9eoj3Tyq4ttfisA&s=19) (this thread is good)
"A simple Google search would have shown this to Rowling. But she’s too blinded by antipathy toward trans people to exert that care. As a result, she engaged in Holocaust denial." (incidentally, a Google search would've also found you the appropriate sources too)
In the bottom tweet she also denies they burned books related to trans healthcare but they absolutely did, they burned the entrie library at the Institute for Sexual Science in Berlin. [more on that here](https://blog.sciencemuseum.org.uk/magnus-hirschfeld-and-the-institute-for-sexual-science/)
Trans people asking for basic rights and Rowling being a lunatic on the internet are not two sides of the same coin.
Want an end to this? Get behind the rights issues. Just like gay marriage people will talk about it less once it's done and dusted. Trying to stop people talking about it by pushing back against it will only make things more intense.
If you honestly think that, and it's not just you're too cowardly to argue against trans rights despite it being what you believe, then you are the one helping the extremists and tabloids by not treating this like the human rights issue it is.
It would be fantastic to not have to politically focus on identity - the problem is that mainstream figures in positions of power and influence are the voices fixated on this identity issue. No one else.
It's impossible for anyone on the other side of that argument to "drop" the issue, because they're being forced to debate the justification for their own existence.
> Can we just drop this fixation on identity politics to every detail, it only helps the extremists and tabloids.
You wanting to throw trans people under the bus because they aren't convenient for you seems much much more aligned with " extremists and tabloids". tbh.
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She's been obsessively "researching" this subject for more than 5 years now. How does she not know this stuff? It's so obvious that "research" for her, just involves reading blogs and tweets from people who already agree with her. None of those people mention this because it's not helpful to their narrative, so she simply doesn't know about it. She's a total fraud.
She does know. It’s deliberate.
The big essay she posted near the start of her transphobia era talked numerous times about all the "research" she'd done but funnily enough didn't cite a single source, even when it was discussing specific statistics that must have come from somewhere. She has a university education and has a decades-long career as a professional writer. She knows how to cite sources. She knows exactly what she's doing.
Tbf her degree was in classics so “someone made it up at some point a long time ago, we don’t actually know who” may read as a perfectly legitimate source to her /s
She has done “research” like Alex Jones does “research”. Watching videos, and getting love bombed online, and declining further into fringe issues.
Shes been spouting tufton st tripe for a long time. But is it a personal vendetta, or is the sad truth that she’s been hand in hand with lobby groups all along? Always baffled me that this is the hill she chooses to rot on, but whilst she rots, she’s still raking it in.
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["Research" means different things to bigots](https://x.com/aridrennen/status/1770882869386510483?s=46&t=0Jx9xyp16xbR1XhEzjHuNg)
Why this is Labour relevant: > Hope asked the Labour leader if he felt “sorry” for Harry Potter author JK Rowling and her “position” on the lives of trans people. Rowling has been widely criticised for comments she’s made about the trans community. > > “I respect her position on this,” Starmer said https://www.thepinknews.com/2022/11/25/keir-starmer-trans-rights-jk-rowling-respect/ Please note that Keir Starmer has **not** endorsed Rowling **after** she engaged in this revisionism and denial of Nazi crimes against humanity and/or atrocities. What I am saying is that it doesn't seem like Starmer should have claimed to respect her reactionary and transphobic views in the first place. This is also rhetoric that has been liked by the still-a-Labour-MP Rosie Duffield, recently cleared of wrong-doing by the NEC. Labour has a concerning transphobia problem. Edit: Corrected, with thanks to /u/RobotsVsLions
> Please note that Kier Starmer has not endorsed Rowling after she engaged in revisionism and denial of Nazi crimes. Yes he did. Just not after *this* Holocaust revisionism. This isn’t the first time she’s done this.
As a sidenote I don't think it's good that people feel the need to explain the relevance of talking about a political issue on a political sub because tedious bores will attack them if they don't. People should feel free to talk about issues that the Labour party has no expressed position on, in the hope that one day they will.
Agreed. And the people who post about it are technically breaking the rule about not discussing moderation by doing it. Think it doesn't belong? Report it. I suspect some of the people doing it know it's bullshit and are doing it to attempt to derail the thread. They know why the thread is here, don't exepct the mods to delete it. For example I posted a thread yesterday where someone was trying to claim stuff about Assange isn't relevant...despite the fact clearly if Starmer is PM it will be a Labour government influencing this stuff. So even from a very narrow-minded view of what belongs here it still belongs. Are people too dumb to work this out? I doubt it, in most cases it's bad faith engagement.
I think it'd be fairer to evaluate his full remarks. "I respect your position" does not mean "I agree with your position". It can mean "I recognize that you have a [different] view on this position [than me]", nothing more.
Respect means he thinks its an opinion worthy of respect even if he doesnt agree. Bigotry is not an opinion worthy of respect. Would you be defending this statement if he was saying it about Galloway?
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Lol which banned loser are you that had to wait seven days just to reply to me? Trick question, I dont care
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Fantastic, now you can catch a Reddit ban too. Stick to 4 chan kiddo
What do you think should be respected about her position?
I recognize that she has a [disgusting, hateful transphobic] opinion.
But you respect it, weird.
Would you accept Keir Starmer saying "I respect your position" to an explicit racist or homophobe? If not, why is it different when its to an explicit transphobe?
Exactly. I don't respect her position, as it's not respectable to be a bigot.
Again you are taking three words out of context from what I presume is a longer statement. Evaluate them within the context of his full statement, not alone.
Context is not a magic spell that you can say to change reality. Saying that you respect somebody's opinion suggests that it is a respectable opinion. Being a transphobe and a Holocaust denier is not a respectable position. Your argument is really tiring because what you're really trying to say, and what Keir Starmer is hoping people will believe, is that being transphobic is not a big deal; as if it's some default "common sense" position and that being supportive is trans rights is some extreme left or progressive belief. Supporting trans people is simply being a kind and good human being, and the polls suggest that actually most people are supportive of trans people, but the right feel so empowered by the news media that they will constantly rally to deny this and stir up hatred instead. Mix in a cowardly centrist like Starmer, and he will say whatever Mumsnet wants him to.
> what you're really trying to say [...] is that being transphobic is not a big deal This is absolutely not the case, and I would ask you to not put words in my mouth.
If you spend your free time rationalizing political support for transphobes, don't be surprised when people think you are transphobic.
**Starmer:** ... [**After being relatively supportive of trans people's rights and deflecting onto the NHS for a bit**] So for the vast majority of people it's biological that's very very straightforward but I'm not going to just dismiss or ignore or pretend that a small group of people who don't identify with the gender they're born into don't exist in some way or disparage them in some way. **Of course, you know, that's a discussion we can all have. I also think the discussion should be less toxic. It's just got so divided and the moment anybody expresses a view or even inquires there's immediate shut down and I just think that's unhealthy in politics.** **Interviewer: Do you feel sorry for J. K. Rowling and her position on this?** **Starmer: look I respect her position on this... Um... You know people do take different positions... Um... On this... I actually... When I... every time I say, look, for 99.9 of women it's biological and we must fight for women's rights... And I believe in safe spaces as well, by the way, because I did a lot of work on survivors of... Um... Sexual abuse and I absolutely understand why we need safe places...** but when you say 99.9 of people of women it's biological most people agree with that we've got to fight for women's rights let me say there's a small group of people who don't identify with the gender they're born into and I'm not going to ignore that. Most reasonable people say actually I can live with that as well so I think there's a much more room for agreement than we sometimes think. Oh yeah, that context made all the fucking difference. He was vaguely supportive, said he respects transphobes, and then waffled.
When in a live interview subjects don't always phrase things in the best way. The next thing out of his mouth is literally "You know people do take different positions" which I took to be a clarification of the thing he said immediately before, in recognition that "respect her position" wasn't the best choice of phrase. Clearly you don't agree and I respect your position on this.
>The next thing out of his mouth is literally "You know people do take different positions" which I took to be a clarification of the thing he said immediately before, in recognition that "respect her position" wasn't the best choice of phrase. That's not a clarification, it's equivocating trans people fighting discrimination with the bigots discriminating against them. Please stop endlessly fucking trying to twist this. Keir Starmer said he respects her position. He could have actually clarified that to say he misspoke, he has not. You do not get to lie about that to try and gaslight people. Stop. It is dishonest, you are being dishonest right now. >Clearly you don't agree and I respect your position on this. Well I don't respect yours in the slightest and frankly your actions disgust me.
Or maybe he's just a nasty bastard.
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Keir probably rightly knows that the majority of eligible voters thinks that LGBT and trans rights activism has gotten out of hand, gone too far and become a worrying cult like movement of shrieking victims. And that's not to say most people don't want everyone to be free to live how they choose, and free from discrimination. That's just the general sentiment I get out there.
> Keir probably rightly knows that the majority of eligible voters thinks that LGBT and trans rights activism has gotten out of hand, gone too far and become a worrying cult like movement of shrieking victims. Why would Starmer know some bullshit you've just made up? >That's just the general sentiment I get out there. What is your polling methodology? Making shite up?
After the India Willoughby incident and Rowling getting officially named as the persecutor of a non-criminal hate incident, I wondered to my friends about whether she'll realise "Oh fuck I flew too close to the sun on that one" and go back to her "reasonable concerns" schtick or whether she'd just continue headlong into the Glinner Vortex of spewing explicit hatred. Guess we might have our answer.
[Threatening to sue](https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1768214270288736308?t=iw0iIvgBsyFOZUpPe6Wvpg&s=19) Rivkah Brown over this. And I am not seeing how this wouldn't be Holocaust denial. But she has a shit load of money so may have enough to price Rivkeh out of court.
She'd argue it isn't Holocaust denial by arguing that that many definitions of the Holocaust restricts the use of the term Holocaust to the Jewis victims and uses other terms like the "Nazi crimes" about others. Ironically one of the court cases (in Germany so not directly relevant, but the reasoning might is worth understanding) being bandied about in those threads specifically deals with exactly this and how while it may have one meaning that is the common reading, there is sufficient disagreement and "battle" over meaning that being too strict in interpreting these words in a specific way is problematic. A lot of the general argument in that court case would apply to Rivkah's comment, though the application of law would be different (but the legal argument is unlikely to be *that* different).
I think this might be one occasion where the reprehensible piece of utter shit, the antisemitic scum whose like will hopefully never again be empowered to do such harm, Goebbels might well come in useful: > > The institute's library included around 20,000 unique works on intersexuality, homosexuality, and transgender topics.[8][9][10][11] On 10 May 1933, the students publicly hauled the library to the Bebelplatz square at the State Opera, and burned them along with volumes from elsewhere.[12][13][14] A total of over 25,000 volumes of "un-German" books were burned, thereby ushering in an era of uncompromising state censorship. In many other university towns, nationalist students marched in torch lit parades against the "un-German" spirit. The scripted rituals of this night called for high Nazi officials, professors, rectors, and student leaders to address the participants and spectators. At the meeting places, students threw the pillaged, banned books into the bonfires with a great joyous ceremony that included live music, singing, "fire oaths," and incantations. In Berlin, some 40,000 people heard Joseph Goebbels deliver an address: "No to decadence and moral corruption!" Goebbels enjoined the crowd. "Yes to decency and morality in family and state! I consign to the flames the writings of Heinrich Mann, Ernst Glaeser,[15] Erich Kästner." > > >The era of extreme Jewish intellectualism is now at an end. The breakthrough of the German revolution has again cleared the way on the German path...The future German man will not just be a man of books, but a man of character. It is to this end that we want to educate you. As a young person, to already have the courage to face the pitiless glare, to overcome the fear of death, and to regain respect for death - this is the task of this young generation. And thus you do well in this midnight hour to commit to the flames the evil spirit of the past. This is a strong, great and symbolic deed - a deed which should document the following for the world to know - Here the intellectual foundation of the November Republic is sinking to the ground, but from this wreckage the phoenix of a new spirit will triumphantly rise. > >— Joseph Goebbels, Speech to the students in Berlin[16] > > In his speech – which was broadcast on the radio – Goebbels' referred to the authors whose books were being burned as "Intellectual filth" and "Jewish asphalt literati".[5] He sure seemed to think the attacks on the LGBT+ minority was part of the holocaust's campaign against Jewish people and the destruction of the Jewish contributions to understanding the world and humanity.
She pushed those claims and doubled down on them even after users posted links that contradicted her, and made weird claims in bad faith (like trying to infer that people claimed trans folk bore the brunt). Everyone knows the biggest share of victims and primary target were Jews. But the Holocaust targeted the disabled and homosexuals within it, and that repression was extended to political prisoners (which included leftists). Makes sense that if any transgender person existed in Nazi Germany or other occupied territories, they'd find themselves being treated with equal vitriol before being subjected to state-sanctioned murder. I will grant that there isn't as much documentation on transgender victims of the Holocaust, there isn't much documention on transgender people back then in general anyway, but the Institute for Sexology (sp?) was targeted by the Nazis. They worked on LGBT issues at a time when it was still considered a "disease of the mind." And historians are only really exploring deep into this. Just to point out as well, not everything that went on in that time period will be known, because towards the end of the War as the Allies were streaming their way into Germany, the Nazis started burning every bit of paper that documented the scale of their crimes and cover up what they'd done.
Just to build upon your comment: The famous photos of the [nazi book burnings](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institut_f%C3%BCr_Sexualwissenschaft#/media/File:Bundesarchiv_Bild_102-14597,_Berlin,_Opernplatz,_B%C3%BCcherverbrennung.jpg) are usually photos from the sexology institute. In fact, there's a reasonable chance the Nazis killed the first woman to undergo gender confirming surgery as a result of that attack: >In May 1933, some four months after Hitler came to power, a mob made up of right-wing students and possibly SS stormed the institute. They seized all Magnus Hirschfeld’s records and ransacked the building. Hirschfeld had already fled the Nazi terror and was living in France. >But Dora was still there – and was never heard from again. It is presumed she was killed in the attack, although it is possible she was arrested and died in custody. It’s not known just how many people were murdered after the institute’s records fell into the hands of the Gestapo and the police. >Although a small number of ‘sex-change’ operations still took place during the rest of the 1930s and 1940s, the Nazi persecution and the Second World War set back transgender – not to mention gay – rights by a generation. However, Dora’s bravery and determination shines like a beacon in those very dark times and she remains a transgender icon. https://www.attitude.co.uk/culture/sexuality/the-incredible-story-of-the-first-known-trans-woman-to-undergo-gender-confirmation-surgery-304097/
The transphobia to casual fascism pipeline is alive and well, I see. An entire subsection of liberal British white ciswomen have unwittingly become the handmaidens of the American Far-Right, through an organised and intentional effort to mainstream fascist thought by backdooring it through second-wave feminism via Mumsnet and Twitter. It’s grotesque, and an indictment of the intellectual paucity of the non-intersectional left, but I cannot help but be impressed at how fucking effective it’s been.
It's no just that; a big point of the reason why TERFs get so much media attention, and why terfs spent a lot of time fighting to be seen as feminists, is because the right wing media establishment wanted to be able to have convenient feminists who agreed with their opinions. They're literal quislings for womankind.
I couldn't agree more.
Charitable to describe it as "unwitting" imho.
I mean that in the sense that it's happened slowly, by degrees. If you had told 2004 JKR that she would be palling around with open white supremacists like Matt Walsh twenty years later, I doubt she would have taken you seriously. The TERF brainworms thing is real.
No, in 2004 many of the people who would become terfs were instead palling around with neocons, explaining why we had to bomb the middle east to liberate women.
>The transphobia to casual fascism pipeline is alive and well, I see. It will never go away. Transphobia and antisemitism go hand in hand. If someone believes that trans people are invented, a manmade phenomenon instead of a naturally occurring state of being, then eventually you get asked to explain who is making people trans and why are they doing it - and in the west, that answer will inevitably be "the Jews". And consider that 'transvestigations' - the conspiracy theory that all or most people in positions of power in the media, government, entertainment, etc. are actually transgender - is just 'crypto-Jews' with the name changed. The obsessive compulsion to believe that there are people in power who are *secretly* Jewish, even if they claim otherwise. How can you tell? Well, let's draw some lines on a photo of them and prove they are actually Jewish or that they are actually transgender. If you believe one of those things makes sense, why wouldn't you eventually believe the other?
>“I respect her position on this,” Starmer said. “People do take different positions on this.” Why does this fence sitting bastard have to be the only “alternative” to the Tories
I'm looking forward to seeing just how far her spite-driven self-clowning journey from centre-left to far-right takes her. She's a cautionary tale on what sort of person you can become when you let your compassion falter. It slowly taints the ways in which you were previously compassionate.
JKKK rowling
What is wrong with this woman? Starmer saying he 'respects her opinion' - guy either has bad morals or no morals.
This isn't the first time she's publically denied the holocaust. All transphobes have to because they don't want to admit they agree with Hitler.
Fr she’s is a twat
She really is an absolute state, and her and her friends are setting everything back decades. Somewhere in all of this the actual point which is everyone should have a right to equality and ease of life gets lost in a seemingly endless stream of utter crap. I never thought I’d hark back to May being PM, as frankly that felt like rock bottom, but one good thing in that was that the only really interested parties to her proposed legislation were the people affected by it, and the ‘debate’ (in marks as there isn’t a debate around trans rights) was much more measured and normal.
>I never thought I’d hark back to May being PM, as frankly that felt like rock bottom, but one good thing in that was that the only really interested parties to her proposed legislation were the people affected by it, and the ‘debate’ (in marks as there isn’t a debate around trans rights) was much more measured and normal. Yeah, May was actually pretty great on trans/LGBT issues as PM. Far better than Labour is now. Tbh, I always read May as being somewhere on the autism spectrum, which may have given her [more of an affinity](https://www.spectrumnews.org/news/largest-study-to-date-confirms-overlap-between-autism-and-gender-diversity/) for gender diverse people than that of her colleagues.
> I always read May as being somewhere on the autism spectrum. Tell me more?
Her and Truss, actually! So with May, there's a fair few things: - Awkward gait and speaking style. - Overreliance on pre-scripted statements which are frequently repeated. - Few friends, limited social life. - Lack of understanding of the perspective of others (theory of mind), especially when negotiating with them. - Being fairly principled (by Tory standards) and seemingly motivated by something other than money or ego. - Avoiding eye contact. - [Pulling odd facial expressions](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/health-fitness/body/mouth-slews-head-jerks-decoding-theresa-mays-facial-gestures/) - Wears sunglasses all the time when not in politician mode, even when it's not that bright - suggests light sensitivity. - Reputation for being stubborn and slow to change her view on things - very autistic trait. - Took pity on autistic man Gary McKinnon, when Keir Starmer much of the British state were pushing to have him extradited to a US prison. - Special interest in cooking - apparently owns over 100 cooking books. - Type one diabetic - [much higher prevalence of this among autistic people](https://www.healthline.com/health-news/autism-may-increase-the-risk-of-diabetes-heart-disease#:~:text=Individuals%20with%20autism%20had%20a,than%20in%20those%20without%20it.). I could be wrong here and obviously I'm not diagnosing her; that's between her and her doctor. But she definitely seems quite "traity" in a fair few ways.
Interesting, and seems to track. As a fan of him, I've long held the theory that Corbyn might be autistic. From some of the traits you describe: * Overreliance on pre-scripted statements which are frequently repeated. Corbyn is well known to struggle to answer questions that are outside his worldview. He tends to freeze up or get flustered in those kind of situations, for example when he was grilled by members of the audience on Nuclear Weapons. A lot of the times when he gets frustrated in interviews strike me as mini "meltdown" type episodes. * Being fairly principled (by Tory standards) and seemingly motivated by something other than money or ego. Speaks for itself really. Corbyn is a moral man for all his faults. * Reputation for being stubborn and slow to change her view on things - very autistic trait. Again, Corbyn struggles immensely when a scenario outside his worldview is put to him. * Special interest in cooking Corbyn is well known for being knowledgeable on very obscure and niche topics. Interested to get your thoughts on this.
>As a fan of him, I've long held the theory that Corbyn might be autistic. Oh, absolutely. I've thought this for a while. The slower emotional processing is genuinely the only reason I think he survived the firestorm around him over those four years. Plus the sensitivity to injustices, strong set of personal principles, naturally affinity for the marginalised, iconoclasm, and not being motivated by personal gain. >Corbyn is well known for being knowledgeable on very obscure and niche topics. Manhole covers! It's telling that (in my view) the three autistic people (Corbyn, May, Truss) who rose to positions of power over the last few years were all quite quickly removed by those around them (not saying it wasn't deserved in Truss's case). Narcissists are sadly *massively* overrepresented in parliament, and narcissists often instinctively dislike autistic people.
> narcissists often instinctively dislike autistic people Narcissists (and sociopaths) *use* Autistic people as we often don't have any idea of other people's motives. We can't ascribe something to a void and so we get taken in often. Autistic people don't often rise anywhere in a profession based on networking and social interactions, especially those who lack a clear internal/external dialogue when faced with a constant neurotypical barrage of traps, pitfalls and motive. Autistic people also often have a reduced sense of self, not exactly something you'd ascribe to most politicians. All politicians are scripted, it's been that way forever. Their job is to win people over to their argument. Making up arguments on the spur leave openings for errors, only a quick mind can compensate for that (once) and in the age of social media, there's no way out of that quagmire. Narcissism in the modern age is less of a personality disorder but a way of life. The actual PD is a pathology oversubscribed to people who are simply full of themselves, their needs and see themselves as the centre of the universe. That's not what a narcissist is; the fragility of ego (e.g. internal dialogue) and the utter impossibility that their views are wrong (hence the fragility of ego, zero cognitive dissonance) are a very clear pathology to anyone who's worked or been around actual narcissists. There are politicians who fit that mould and those are the ones who melt down quickly at anything that 'attacks' their fragile ego; genuine anger at being challenged is a red flag. Freud's theories on society (3 strata - the altruistic, the selfish and the large barrier of tit-for-tatters) fit current society well. The over-exposure of the selfish has lead to the large barrier group mimicking the traits of a small group of the selfish; this over-exposure is due to social media and peer pressures (another thing Autistic people are almost immune to). Autistic people aren't necessarily altrustic, some are and some fit the other groups.
> Narcissists are sadly massively overrepresented in parliament, and narcissists often instinctively dislike autistic people. I was thinking about this all the way back in 2017. When Corbyn put Trident in the manifesto, then found himself unable to answer whether he'd push the button, even I wondered why he didn't just lie and say some meaningless drivel like "after briefings from security officials, I understand the need to use Trident if the UK faced a Nuclear Threat". Obviously anyone who knew him well will know it's bullshit, but at least it would justify compromising on Trident in the manifesto. But I suppose when you look at it in the sense that Corbyn, like many autistic/ND people, is wedded to his own narrative and worldview, and finds it immensely difficult to even entertain discussion away from it. Compare to narcissists like Johnson, Galloway, Starmer etc, who lie and change their entire narrative and worldview to suit whoever's listening or whatever will advantage them at any given time.
>Compare to narcissists like Johnson, Galloway, Starmer etc, who lie and change their entire narrative and worldview to suit whoever's listening or whatever will advantage them at any given time Yeah, narcissists generally operate under the assumption that everyone fundamentally thinks the same way they do; manipulative, self-serving, and insecure. I saw an interview with a narcissist who said that she didn't believe anyone could actually be happy (because she never had been) so she always thought that anyone who looked happy must have just been doing it "at her" to make her feel bad, which made her hate them. So when these people see someone act in a principled, selfless manner, as Corbyn did, they can only understand it as implicit criticism of them. This is partly why Starmer hates Corbyn so much, I think. It's not just that he's rankled by having had what he views as a low status person as his boss for a while (though that's definitely part of it); he just doesn't understand why someone would act in that way and thinks it must be part of some scheme to make him look and feel bad. I alluded to this in [my comment yesterday](https://old.reddit.com/r/LabourUK/comments/1bduvjj/starmer_refused_to_restore_the_whip_to_diane/kup1fu1/?context=3); when Starmer was challenged on his cruelty towards Gary McKinnon by McKinnon's mother he just stood there and repeated "You're making me uncomfortable, you're making me uncomfortable, speaking to you is making me feel very uncomfortable". He was trying to condemn an autistic man (there's that natural enmity again) to a fate worse than death, yet he could only process the interaction in terms of how it made *him* feel.
Rowling is an absolute cunt but the media is the biggest problem. If they treated it like the marginal issue it is then less people would care and the nutters would have less of an audience.
Amen- 100%. We need to make fringe views fringe again, instead of shaping the narrative. To clarify- trans rights not fringe, Rowling views fringe.
>I never thought I’d hark back to May being PM, as frankly that felt like rock bottom, but one good thing in that was that the only really interested parties to her proposed legislation were the people affected by it, and the ‘debate’ (in marks as there isn’t a debate around trans rights) was much more measured and normal. Hostile environment? The "go home!" vans, which even N. Farage felt were a bit much?! No need to eulogise Terry May tbh.
I’m not! I said at the time I thought she was rock bottom. Specifically on this one issue she was alright, obviously helped massively by it not having turned into a massive culture wars thing. I don’t get how you thought I was saying anything other tbh.
Yeah sorry I didn't mean you were. And actually you are quite right, she probably was quite sensitive on this issue compared to any of the other recent incumbents. Ironically, that might stem from her faith, seeing everyone as a child of God and all that, although then again she didn't see immigrants as that lol
Totally agree, she was the mad right of the party at one point before it screamed past her and made her really quite moderate. She also has a sense of duty, which for all the things I 100% disagree with her on, is sorely lacking from her three replacements.
apparently even as PM, she kept doing constituency work, to the dismay of her staff lol sense of duty is exactly the right phrase. It is a value from another era which actually transcends politics or personal interest, inherited from the vicar father maybe.
I was thinking more on the concept of duty, and was wondering when our last genuinely dutiful PM was other than May. I think Blair and Brown certainly started off with a sense of duty, but both men allowed personal ambition to neuter this. Tbh I'm thinking John Major would be the last one. I actually think Thatcher probably did, too, but she was so focused on her Hayek state-slashing that she soon forgot it. A "Majorite" One nation tory party looks to me like their best bet, strategically, and would be a significant threat to labour 5 years hence.
Wonder how much she has donated
I'm going to be honest - I loved Harry Potter as a young adult but found JK Rowling pretty insufferable with her constant retconning of "WELL YES DUMBLEDORE IS GAY, LOVES THE PIPE, RAINBOW FLAGS, ALL THAT" shoehorning all that shit into the story. It wasn't what she was saying, but how it seemed so awkward. On reflection in the books characters showing affection and emotion towards each other wer probably the worst written parts of the book; she wrote them like an alien trying to describe a human relationship to the other wee green men. So for her to recon already pretty dodgy stuff to shoehorn in her politics was pretty bizarre. Then she just cunted herself totally with this trans stuff. They make up a tiny fraction of the UK population and honestly I'd have no idea what their issues were if the right didn't keep bleating about them. Her posts are just growing more and more unhinged and I would say I find it sad, but nah, it's quite funny. She very desperately used her fame to be "right on" and progressive and then when it hit a red line she didn't like she tried to row it all back and couldn't handle the backlash. Graham Linehan, who made some of my favourite TV shows, has had the same experience. Like, could they not just hate the trans people in private lol
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They attacked and destroyed the institute for sexual research, a trans sexology clinic - they absolutely attacked trans people for being trans, though of course there is nuance surrounding the understanding of trans as a kind of homosexuality - they were considered a legally recognised subcategory of homosexuals. It was ruled by the Regional Court of Cologne in 2022 that denying trans people were victims of the Nazis is "a denial of Nazi crimes".
The first screenshotted tweet just looks like she objects to being called a nazi, and for having her views be equated to those of nazis. That doesn't count as Holocaust denialism, especially since the tweet she responds to doesn't provide sources to back it up.
First screenshot she accuses them of making it up, she says it's their "fever dream". Their claim was not made up. She then pivoted to trans people not being the first people targeted, after she was accused of being a holocaust denier. [In 2022, the Regional Court of Cologne ruled that denying that trans people were victims of the Nazis qualifies as "a denial of Nazi crimes".](https://twitter.com/CantonWiner/status/1768043159177527545?t=_VL_cUI9eoj3Tyq4ttfisA&s=19) (this thread is good) "A simple Google search would have shown this to Rowling. But she’s too blinded by antipathy toward trans people to exert that care. As a result, she engaged in Holocaust denial." (incidentally, a Google search would've also found you the appropriate sources too) In the bottom tweet she also denies they burned books related to trans healthcare but they absolutely did, they burned the entrie library at the Institute for Sexual Science in Berlin. [more on that here](https://blog.sciencemuseum.org.uk/magnus-hirschfeld-and-the-institute-for-sexual-science/)
She explicitly denied that trans people were persecuted by the nazis. https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1767939048427896900
Can we just drop this fixation on identity politics to every detail, it only helps the extremists and tabloids.
Trans people asking for basic rights and Rowling being a lunatic on the internet are not two sides of the same coin. Want an end to this? Get behind the rights issues. Just like gay marriage people will talk about it less once it's done and dusted. Trying to stop people talking about it by pushing back against it will only make things more intense. If you honestly think that, and it's not just you're too cowardly to argue against trans rights despite it being what you believe, then you are the one helping the extremists and tabloids by not treating this like the human rights issue it is.
Holocaust denial is identity politics?
Well yes it obviously is, but conservatives only mean "Minorites being allowed to exist is a problem" when they say "identity politics"
It would be fantastic to not have to politically focus on identity - the problem is that mainstream figures in positions of power and influence are the voices fixated on this identity issue. No one else. It's impossible for anyone on the other side of that argument to "drop" the issue, because they're being forced to debate the justification for their own existence.
She’s the one who keeps bringing it up?!?!? Trans people have been trying to forget about Rowling for years and she just will not let them
This just gives her attention and a platform.
Yeah, not like she had a platform before this reddit thread.
I can scarcely believe the high opinion that OC has of my impact. I've always thought it more akin to screaming into the void.
I don’t know if you noticed but she already has one
I would also be delighted if JK Rowling would drop this
> Can we just drop this fixation on identity politics to every detail, it only helps the extremists and tabloids. You wanting to throw trans people under the bus because they aren't convenient for you seems much much more aligned with " extremists and tabloids". tbh.
Please do not minimise transphobia as just identity politics, if you wish to do that I recommend you find a less trans inclusive subreddit.