JK Rowling has branded 'Harry Potter' actor David Tennant the "gender taliban" after he said transgender critics are on the "wrong side of history."
J.K. Rowling is embroiled in a fresh row with another Harry Potter actor over transgender rights.
Following exchanges of fire with Daniel Radcliffe and others, Rowling has blasted David Tennant after the Goblet of Fire star voiced strident views on those who speak out against trans rights.
During an appearance at the British LGBT Awards over the weekend, he called on British equalities minister Kemi Badenoch to “shut up” after she advocated for banning trans women from entering women’s toilets and sports teams.
In an interview at the same event, Tennant called transgender critics “a tiny bunch of little whinging f*ckers who are on the wrong side of history, and they’ll all go away soon.”
Earlier in the week, Rowling branded people like Tennant the “gender Taliban.” In posts on X (once Twitter) on Friday, she expanded her comments to address Tennant’s “wrong side of history” quote.
Rowling wrote: “This man is talking about rape survivors who want female-only care, the nurses currently suing their health trust for making them change in front of a man, girls and women losing sporting opportunities to males and female prisoners incarcerated with convicted sex offenders.”
She added: “For a man who’s supposedly a model of compassion and tolerance, he sure does want a lot of people to cease to exist.”
Welcome to thr Bizarro World of Tory politics. We've got an Environment Minister who doesn't care that the rivers and overflowing with excrement. The Housing Minister hasn't overseen much housebuilding. And on and on.
This man is talking about rape survivors who want female-only care, the nurses currently suing their health trust for making them change in front of a man, girls and women losing sporting opportunities to males and female prisoners incarcerated with convicted sex offenders.
It's hilarious that she's making these seem like widespread issues when most of them are literally just one incident, or aren't happening at all. These are the best examples she can come up with of legitimate grievances against trans people?
How about "bullied to suicide, denied medical care, housing discrimination, employment discrimination, and getting violently hate crimed at enormous rates" for the other side of this issue? Even if you think trans identities are invalid, at least pretend to treat them with the same respect you would other human beings. But no, trans people who are just trying to survive day-to-day are nonchalantly grouped in with pedophile rapists, as if those two things are in any way equivalent.
It's easy to hate someone when you just ignore what they really are and supplant it with something else entirely.
What always gets me about those people is if it's real art, the artist is putting their message into the story. When I was young and in the target demographic, I stopped reading halfway through because the message of the story was getting confusing or annoying. I don't think I've ever seen a main character get more selfish in their character arc. I later found out that Harry's solution to owning a house with severed heads everywhere was to put doilies over them during the holidays.
The books are bad and where probably only tolerable in the beginning because of the editor.
Tennant called transgender critics “a tiny bunch of little whinging f*ckers who are on the wrong side of history, and they’ll all go away soon.”
Is the real headline here. And good for him.
I'd rather not give what's her name any more attention over this crap.
Also, calling Tennant a "Harry Potter actor", while true, feels like a calculated insult to a man who has played Doctor Who, The Purple Man, and Crawley.
Also, calling Tennant a “Harry Potter actor”, while true, feels like a calculated insult to a man who has played Doctor Who, The Purple Man, and Crawley.
I'm not sure it's a "calculated insult" but it did read a but oddly (I assumed initially that it was referring to someone else). I presume the writer or their editor went with that angle because because his having appeared in the Harry Potter movies is relevant to an article and fitted the wider context of JK Rowling falling out with HP cast members. I'm not convinced it was the right approach.
I'm not sure it's a "calculated insult" but it did read a but oddly (I assumed initially that it was referring to someone else).
Yeah. My choice of words was a bit unnecessarily inflammatory. I struggled to find the words for how weird a choice of introduction it is, but don't mean to actually assign malice.
I don't really think the article author meant anything by it necessarily.
Your point about the context of the cat relationships makes sense. Probably why they went for it.
Thankfully the vast majority of the cast of the Harry Potter movies ended up being decent people. They are the ones that young people should look up to, not whatever the fuck Joanne has become.
She's taking the Graham Linehan route, dedicate your whole life to bashing trans people and spreading hate against them, to the point where you ruin your entire legacy and your own personal relationships.
She can keep fighting against trans people's right to exist, but trans people will just fight back at every turn.
Calling someone Taliban while at the same time sharing a lot of Taliban ideology is the kind of delicious irony people like Rowling are completely oblivious to.
It's not like she's forcing anyone to listen. I agree that she's a moron, but I don't understand the celebrities shouldn't have freedom of speech take.
I am/was likely far too old to be in the target demographic for Pottermania but they never worked for me. They always felt a little... safe, reactionary even as they drew on a long tradition of British boarding school books without really addressing or undermining the genre tropes or even using it as a means to examine that culture. It then wasn't a surprise to find out the author had some questionable views didn't seem a great surprise to me.
It came out when I was 9, so I was part of the target demographic, though I didn't pick it up til I was 12 or 13 because we read it at school, though by that point I had read most of the Animorphs books, so potter came across as very tame and a bit too childish. I was already dealing with themes of war and genocide and existential crisis and everything else Animorphs threw at you.
I had the first 4 books and read them around ages 11-13, reading the first two before the first movie came out. I think because none of my classmates at the time had read or watched anything relating to HP, I never really talked about it, so I set it aside after finishing Goblet of Fire, which coincided with the Lord of the Rings movies.
To me, it felt like I was leaving behind a story for kids and getting in on the "real good stuff for adults"
I'm so glad I stopped giving a shit about Harry Potter and accepted that just because a zeitgeist happened in my childhood doesn't mean I should cling to fictional fantasy that hadn't actually done anything novel in the genre or touched upon topics that aren't handled in better novels elsewhere
Once again, I am tapping the sign for people to go watch the two hour video by Shaun on the subject.
The moral of Harry Potter is that the status quo is correct and should never be questioned, and nobody should ever try to change anything.
Harry doesn't defeat Voldemort or change any of the issues inherent in the bumbling bureaucracy of the wizard world. Voldemort kills himself on a magic technicality, Harry becomes a magic cop and helps to ensure that magic is never used to help the undesirables of society (Muggles), and Hermione is ridiculed for being a girl with blue hair and pronouns who tried to end the chattel slavery system before she "grew up" and became a much more sensible person who realized that the slaves actually want to be oppressed, and it's for their own good.
You can see Rowling's morality change practically in real-time as the books go on, from criticizing the system to defending it as she began to benefit from it as her wealth grew. And underneath it all, you can see her discriminatory opinions of people. That was always there. When she wants you to hate a woman, she makes them fat or gives them masculine features. If I have to read the phrase "mannish hands" one more time, I might vomit.
Dude I'm saying! Harry Potter was never good, it was just popular
And yeah I read them and watched them, at least the first few. I'm not talking out of my ass. It's a series with a few imaginative ideas sprinkled throughout otherwise super typical schlock with casually racist seasoning.
I'm curious whether she has actually come out with any hate speech. Can you point to anything she's said which is hate speech? By which I mean real hate speech and not just speech whose underlying motive you believe to be hate?
For example, this is hate speech:
"Illegal immigrants are lazy good-for-nothings and should all be deported."
This is not hate speech:
"Illegal immigration is terrible and I wish the government would do something about it."
I think this is a good place to add context for those outside the UK that don't pay attention to politics, especially foreign politics:
The UK is having elections on July 4th. The House of commons has... 650 seats, of which the Conservatives (Tories, equivalent UK version of US Rupublicans) have ~350 seats.
They are expected to literally lose hundreds of seats in this elections and fall out of power. Labour (UK equivalent of US Democrats) has not been as progressive as people expected/wanted, but they are expected to be the big winners. Hopefully the UKs situation improves from the past 14-15 years of the Tories rule... seems like they've gone scorched earth, and the UK is a shadow of what it was even a decade ago.
Those same whiners in power, are about to experience a near political power extinction event.
I think it's simpler. Those who are in power are gar too full whitted to really do not care and do not really consider this to be an issue. It's not so much that they agree or disagree with her, it's more that they just don't care
I'm not sure that's actually better really but isn't any important distinction.
Hmm maybe if you keep attacking the people who stand for good, that means that you're the evil one with dumb, shitty, and wrong ideas? Ever think of that you dumb fuck Rowling?