Do you have a link to the documentary?
Transgender rights discussion
- Thread starter crappycraperson
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Is that the ‘what is a woman’ doc?
Yeah I don't disagree with you. I did half-write a bit in my post addressing the point you make in your first big paragraph, but cut it as it felt I was going on too much. I think that's a valid point which I'd have a lot of sympathy for if someone from one of those parts of the world was making it to show that we tend to universalise the experiences of certain types of people and assume battles are won which demonstrably aren't for many others.
But as far as I can see, the people who are riling this up into a controversy are the same bunch of rich, white UK-based journalists who leap on any excuse to engineer false conflicts between non-binary people and women. Their intent clearly isn't to contribute in good faith to the discussion this play raises, it's to torpedo the play by labelling it anti-woman and thereby shut down that discussion.
I sort of understand the POV you're describing in your second paragraph, but where it falls down for me is that polling shows that the majority of women, and the vast majority of lesbian and bi women, don't think that way. The view that trans and non-binary identities are instrinsically harmful to women is a minority one, but one we hear a lot because it's adherents are massively overrepresented in the media.
Yup that's the one. I watched it coming in without much knowledge on any of the dialogue, except for what I've seen in Dave Chappelles last few specials which isn't exactly ideal. Definitely has a bit of condescending tones which isn't a surprise given the producer. But what did surprise me was the specific interviewees. I wish that I could discuss this openly somewhere without being shamed, with some thoughtful discourse to help me better understand whatever the fck is going on.
No I know what you mean. I saw quite a lot of it. There’s not a lot in there that I disagreed with if I’m being honest.
It obviously is not but the whole left vs right is about stupid point scoring on social media.
Nuanced discussion has taken a hit and it is all about who is “winning”.
so apparently her latest book centres around a character who gets criticised online for being transphobic and racist
and it’s over 1000 pages long
and it’s over 1000 pages long
Always easier to write what you know.so apparently her latest book centres around a character who gets criticised online for being transphobic and racist
and it’s over 1000 pages long
she is so fecking pathetic honestlyso apparently her latest book centres around a character who gets criticised online for being transphobic and racist
and it’s over 1000 pages long
so apparently her latest book centres around a character who gets criticised online for being transphobic and racist
and it’s over 1000 pages long
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I almost want to read it.
Imagine having all that money and still wanting nothing more than to post online.
These abusive billionaires seem to live such fecking miserable lives. Haven't you got a bouncy castle made from chinchilla fur you can go have fun on, or some realistic humanoid robot you can kick around your palace? Why are you slumming it down here with us destitutes taking Ls at every opportunity.
That's not accurate*. Just like the previous novel in the series was vilified inaccurately, too. It's easy to jump on Rowling looking for problems in everything she says and does since her Tweets, but I still think she's being treated very harshly for largely innocuous comments by the perpetually offended by everything crowd. For those knocking the books for apparently containing similar such transgressions, maybe they should try reading them in their entirety instead of cherry picking a few sentences and spitting their dummies out.so apparently her latest book centres around a character who gets criticised online for being transphobic and racist
and it’s over 1000 pages long
*I'm a little over half way through and maybe the murdered-very-early character you refer to comes back to life in the second half and gets such criticism but I think it's unlikely. Maybe the detectives dig up some more salacious tweets and chatroom logs, but again i can't see it. Is the central character criticised for being a bitch? Yep. For being self-centred and egotistical? Absolutely. Money-orientated and misanthropic? Sure. The assertions being made though, not so much.
What I would say generally is that the Strike series is suffering the same issues as Potter in the later novels, in that (to quote King), she's developing 'diarrhoea of the typewriter': the tweets and chatroom sections of this book are fecking hard work, and her insistence on writing accents word for word instead of, (again King), making it a one-time-and-done to get the point across kind of thing grows very old very quickly - and it's even worse in the Audible version.
edited 'been' to 'being'
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Never read any of her books but from those exerts she's not a good writer, is she? I don't think I could more than a couple of pages of that bland style.
fecking ell
We have pretty different views on what's innocuous, but with people like Rowling it's always a pattern more than any one statement. For instance she'll post a link to a pin with a simple feminist message on it, completely innocent, but she'll be so unlucky that this shop also coincidentally sells some of the most vile anti-trans shit you'll ever see. Unlucky.
She's now praising anti-woman Christian conservatives like Matt Walsh because of their shared opinions on trans people (though she'll not go so far as calling him an ally, in contrast to some of her friends). She's saying that the whole bathroom thing is providing "cover for predators", yet it has never happened. When three people post a picture of themselves outside of her home with protest signs she has no qualms about connecting that to a wider point about how not only the "trans movement" but trans people supposedly behaves (even though none of them were trans), yet she has no problem with gender critical people who has done way more explicit doxxing of people who aren't famous with not very hard to find houses. When her overtly anti-trans real life friends are asked to leave a Pride parade she'll frame it as "lesbians no longer welcome at pride" when it's just an obvious lie that it had anything to do with them being lesbians, but because their open and basically only active goal as a group is to oppose so-called "transgenderism". She'll say that the medical threatment trans people get is a form of conversion theraphy (something that coincidentally matches perfectly with the common gender critical views that trans women are men and that trans men are lesbians under attack, and is probably ironic given her pen name), and she'll booze around with groups like LGB Alliance, people like Maya Forstater and so many more. She'll say that the "gender identity movement" is nakedly misogynistic and a threat to women. And in Linehan style, so so so much more.
Trans women are men, trans women are a physical threat to women and a threat to women's rights, women are under attack and the LGB Alliance is great. That's what Rowling believes, innocuously or not.
If it wasn't clear, I was referring to the books. That said for, reasons of internet and time, I don't want to get into the rest of the discussion but based only on what you've written in your reply to me my views appear to align more with Rowling's than with yours, the conversion therapy comment she made according to your reply aside: my sister, (nee brother for clarity) is transgender and it's coloured my point of view pretty heavily in favour of more rights for tg people, and I believe she did the right thing - including the physical treatments.
Quickly on the 'hidden' messages in the innocent Tweet: while having not seen it, it still makes me think my point is somewhat valid... I mean, maybe there really was a hidden subtext that she fully intended to be there, but then again people will find anything in anything. Thanks for the considered reply.
I know you were mostly talking about the books, but when you referred to her tweets you were connecting how you see her work interpreted to how you see her real world beliefs published on twitter being interpreted, no? Not trying to start a discussion, you don't want that and that's completely fine, just clarifying whether or not I misunderstood.
I'm very happy that you're supporting your sister. That's great and I hope she's doing well. Negative reactions from family and the wider social circle is a big factor in some very sad statistics, so she's "lucky" in the sense that she seemingly has what should be the norm. Some unsolicited advice, and you're perfectly entitled to tell me to feck off because it's none of my business: unless you're very sure about her views on the matter, please consider not bringing up groups like LGB Alliance or people who share their views.
I do think people look for stuff that isn't necessarily there in her tweets and her work, but probably don't know enough about it to have a firmer view than that. I will say this, without really wanting to drag other posters into it, but the post I initially replied to quoted a tweet that literally has nothing to do with racism or transphobia from Rowling, or includes any in any of the images tweeted, which kinda proves my point. All the 'tweets' shown in those images from the book are from the first few chapters, so as I said initially there may be stuff later on that I haven't read yet.
A lot of the family initially disowned her, but most have come round as far as I know (my mum's sister is OK with it now, and she was the worst by all accounts, the younger generations just got on with it). We don't discuss her 'status' really these days as she underwent the procedures probably 8 or so years ago now.
She wrote a series called Harry Potter, they did alright I think.
Were The Spice Girls talented musicians?
What I mean is that she doesn't seem to be talented at writing prose and I don't enjoy reading the sentences she constructs.
Sure they were. They were good entertainers, anyway. Some of them could even sing.
That doesn't mean Rowling is a good author, of course.
Is Stephenie Meyer a good writer? According to a 2019 article I found, Twilight is the 6th best selling fantasy series of all time, above A Song of Ice and Fire, the Wheel of Time, Artemis Fowl, Discworld, etc. Since the article is 3 years old she's probably passed the Chronicles of Narnia as well, and she might be creeping up on The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings (probably not that one considering the TV series). She is by all accounts a wildly successful author. So is she a good writer?
No clue where to properly put this, but it deserves a couple minutes of your time…
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I've heard of that site before, it's pretty much populated by scum who merrily drive (and have driven) people to suicide. KiwiFarms is basically the #1 argument against a decentralized, completely unregulated internet.
I've read and watched the Harry Potter series, and will soon go to Harry Potter world...and I've seen the Twilight films.
None of the rest though.
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If only they could use their weaponized autism to make the world a better place instead of harassing people.
I thought all internet users are trackable. Why are cops not stopping this?
Well, I guess you're not much of an authority on the quality of fantasy writing, then.
No, her writing is nowhere near the level of J.K. Rowling. I could not get through the first 50 pages of the first Twilight Book. I agree with this assessment:
"The real difference is that Jo Rowling is a terrific writer and Stephenie Meyer can't write worth a darn" - Stephen King
Is there any writer in that genre who is obviously better than Rowling? I read a couple of the HP books and never felt they were particularly badly written.
I think with Harry Potter you have to parse out the various aspects of Rowling's writing. Her ability to build and describe a engaging fantasy world kids (and often teenagers and weird adults) wanted to live in is possibly unique. On the other hand, she's truly dreadful at writing characters who do, think and say realistic things, and the world she built, whilst engaging, wasn't internally consistent enough to hang complicated, logical plots on. Those things don't really matter in kids books, but they increasingly do in YA fiction, which the HP series started shifting into by the 3rd book, and in the adult crime fiction set in the 'real world' which she's focussed on since.
Of course. They probably couldn't have written Harry Potter, but if we make the assumption that writing ability and success aren't linked 1:1, then there are many fantasy authors I'd say are clearly better writers.
I started rereading the books some years ago, and I was very surprised. Some of the best magicians in the world say it's impossible to steal the philosopher's stone because the defense system they set up is so extremely good, and what do they mean? You have to pay some attention to the first year school curriculum, be a somewhat competent broom rider, a mediocre chess player and being able to solve a pretty basic riddle. I know it's a children's book, but until I reread them I didn't know how much of a children's book it actually is.
I outgrew HP right around the moment the last book came out, about a year later, read 3 of these and loved them. No idea if they hold up now, but everything was better: world-building, plot, characters.
By genre if you just mean fantasy in general then yeah there’s a shit ton of writers who exceed her
If you’re referring solely to children/YA books in this vein then no idea. When I was growing up I can definitely think of series or writers who I thought were better but can’t really gauge it as an adult
If you want an adeventure story about 10 year olds to hold up to the question "does it really make sense that those random kids are solving this?", then it's going to be a pretty boring book. And that's without the whole fantasy issue.
Sure, but there are varying degrees to this. While the Hardy Boys, Bobbsey Twins and Nancy Drew might not be the pinnacle of detective fiction I find them all less jarring. And while it plays on familiar tropes like the hubris of grownups and how kids are brushed up, "Voldemort couldn't possibly know how the horsey moves" is just several steps too far for me.
I abhor and I really mean the word here , abhor the Harry Potter series but wasn't it literally written for 7 year olds or something?
There’s definitely levels to it, it’s what I found so annoying about Star Wars. Any criticism I’d make about the plot would just be met with “pff, you want some realism in a movie with lightsabers and flying aliens?”
Well, yes. A little bit at least. Otherwise what’s the point? You have to have some rules if you’re going to have any tension.
Probably more 10-15, though YA fiction is usually defined as 12-18 I think.