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Comment on Does Harry Potter only know fifth grade math?

inb4_FoundTheVegan@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

Please stop.

JK sees the continued support of her work as proof that her views are supported. She is doing active harm to people lives. I know it’s common to say seperate the art from the artist, but that only applies to the dead. Rowling is alive and using her profits to write hateful proganda and restrict healthcare from an already marginalized group.

Please.

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Blaze@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Hello,

Thank you for your comment. That’s one of our main threads, “On the sensitive topic of being a Harry Potter fan while acknowledging JKR’s transphobia” discuss.tchncs.de/post/9633657, quoting popsugar.co.uk/…/harry-potter-fans-jk-rowling-tra…

Still, there may be a way to enjoy Harry Potter as a trans person or ally. Over the years, many fans have found creative ways to engage with the series’s magic while also acknowledging its creator’s bigotry. In her paper “Transformative Readings: Harry Potter Fan Fiction, Trans/Queer Reader Response, and J. K. Rowling,” Jennifer Duggan, an associate professor of English at the University of South-Eastern Norway — says that it’s possible to interpret the text of Harry Potter itself in ways that would certainly horrify its writer. “My central thesis—one which has also been argued by other academics like Thomas Pugh and David Wallace — is that the Harry Potter novels are deeply queer,” she tells POPSUGAR. “I mean this in both senses of the term: they champion nonnormativity through the contrast of the ‘perfectly normal’ Dursleys and Harry, and they are, at their heart, a story about a boy with an ‘abnormality’ (as the Dursleys call his magic) who comes out of his cupboard under the stairs and discovers and finds and affinity for a hidden, colourful, queer world. I take this argument further to argue that the novels are easily read through a trans lens, since there is a focus in many of the books on shapeshifting, including several cross-gendered transformations.”

Fandom, she adds, can provide spaces where Harry Potter fans can explore the series’s queer undercurrents while celebrating their own sexualities. “From what I have observed, I have concluded that for the most part, the Harry Potter fandom continues to offer queer and trans fans a positive space,” she tells POPSUGAR. “The two main trends I have seen in fan works are an ‘answer hate with love’ reaction, in which fans focus on trans positivity, and so-called ‘spitefic,’ which are works that are framed as revenge on Rowling for the hurt she has caused. These works are usually trans-positive, too. That said, I fully understand why some fans feel they can no longer engage with the texts in any way.”

Link to the research paper: link.springer.com/article/…/s10583-021-09446-9

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- Iapar@feddit.de ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Plot twist: jk is a selfhating queer and her subconsciousness wrote Harry Potter to break free without disappointing her self hating parents.
  
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  - Blaze@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    That’s an interesting theory. He literally comes out of a closet, after all.
    
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- TimewornTraveler@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  This response doesn’t address the legislation aspect of the critique. It’s an excellent response for if she were already dead and gone, but what about the harm that comes from supporting her now? Surely you have something to say about that, don’t you?
  
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  - Blaze@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Hello,
    
    You can see some initiatives that take the books away from her, such as this one
    
    A trans artist resells Harry Potter books with new covers that omit Rowling’s name. Canadian printmaker and book artist Laur Flom, who is trans, garnered major attention when they began a project of buying secondhand Harry Potter books and replacing the covers with redesigned versions that don’t have J.K. Rowling’s name. Flom then resells the books for £140, according to Yahoo! News. In a TikTok from February 2022, Flom said, “My aim with this project is to engage critically and give an option to people who do still want to enjoy Harry Potter without supporting J.K. Rowling.”
    
    glamour.com/…/a-complete-breakdown-of-the-jk-rowl…
    
    A link to the version from this person, they look quite nice: laurflom.format.com/harry-potter-rebind
    
    You mentioned legislation, I think that is an interesting point. If the books (and the HP universe in general) are so detrimental, shouldn’t they be condemned by countries court for xenophobia and transphobia? It seems strange to me that there are still 2 major amusement parks Harry Potter themed in the US, and a third one in London if you count the former shooting set, with thousands of visitors every year. That just seems so strange compared to the accusations the books face.
    
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- inb4_FoundTheVegan@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Thank you for the reply, but I don’t see how that is relevant.
  
  Linking to a cis author who said that some fan fiction theoritcally helps some queer peke instead of listening to the trans community that is actively being hurt in substative ways by the celebration of Rowlings current work, not fan fictions, is sort of indicative of how much you actually care about this topic. Your linked community is not for queer retelling of her work, and even if it was that doesn’t adress any of the concerns in my original comment.
  
  I’m not going to argue, this isn’t how I wish to spend my time. All I can do is please ask you to stop and hope one day you will rethink what you’re doing.
  
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  - Blaze@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    The admin of the instance we host the community on is a queer Jewish man, who expressed his feeling about having that community on his instance in this comment: discuss.tchncs.de/comment/6746512
    
    He is still okay with us having that community over there.
    
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    inb4_FoundTheVegan@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I don’t understand why you would link to that
    
    I don’t really engage in this community because of the discomfort Harry Potter generally brings me. I was honestly a bit relieved when it died.
    
    The whole thing just upsets me honestly. Seeing the conflict is painful.
    
    I don’t understand how you interpret this to think he approves. Twice now it seems like you are just reaching for “another person said it was okay” without really digesting what they said. Where exactly did they say they were okay with this community? It seems like they very much said the opposite.
    
    there’s a big difference between consuming public domain work made by awful people who no longer receive profit whilst consuming work by a woman who is actively engaging in political campaigns to make trans peoples lives worse with the profit she still receives.
    
    Which makes it very different than Poe, Doyle or Seuess that were named in that thread. She is alive and well, and using her platform and fan base to produce more hateful texts. (Bad Blood)
    
    The core text of Harry potter itself has many ableist (Durdsley), racist (House elves enjoying slavery) , antisemitic (goblins) and transphobic (Rita Skeeter) themes even if it surface level against racism. His discomfort at the antisemitic tropes are entirely understandable, and while that is not something I am going to claim hurts me, it does seem to hurt Gabe.
    
    As I said before, I’m not going to force you to do anything. Just please understand how you continued celebration of Rowling and her work is hurting others.
    
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