You don't get to 121k posts and two Poster of the Year awards without the unparalleled ability to keep a CE thread going for a few pages.
Transgender rights discussion
- Thread starter crappycraperson
- Start date
It’s a curse. In a way.
Yes, but I was joking and you endlessly arguing about something like that reminds me that it was by reading your posts ages ago that I understood what a Devil's Advocate is. It's funny.
Take a wild guess what phrase was in her mind, either consciously or subconsciously, when she came up with that nameshe named a Chinese kid cho chang?
I think the definition of "doing inclusivity correctly" changes over time. As I said earlier, her "inclusivity efforts" re: the Patil twins can certainly be seen as clumsy, but I appreciated them as a kid and I still do today.
There is at least some connectivity with the Patil twins and the culture they're representing (despite being able to argue laziness of them too) in comparison to Chang who has a confused background and name.
Agreed - it’s a shame that Harry, the wizard, and Hermione, the witch, didn’t free all of the house elves in this magical world from slavery in the time they had between riding dragons and fighting evil wizards with their magical wands. It sets a bad precedent for real life.
I might as well say “ Would defending her matter to you if you didn’t know her opinion on trans issues? Which you agree with clearly?” For what value this adds to the discussion. It just avoids anything that’s actually been written and contributes nothing, in favour of arguing against a position that hasn’t been put forward. It just negates everything that’s actually written in favour of assuming you know the real motivation and intent of their posts.
Over the last few pages people have been talking about her work and referring to that, and no one has accused her of being an antisemitic person or even deliberately doing anything. I’m not sure where the wires got crossed because we have a bunch of posters saying it’s unfair she’s being called a racist bigot and a raging antisemite about Cho Chang and goblins, when this simply has not happened in this discussion.
Im not sure what the “for what it’s worth” part is meant to signify? (Genuinely asking because obviously I’ve missed something)
The main point about the time elapsed and the view of the author changing and this being the main reason etc doesn’t hold up at all though. Obviously when details about an author or the creator behind some content comes out it might recontextualise certain points etc the book/show/moviemade, but 20 years is ample enough time for views held about something to shift and change. Especially nowadays where the internet hasn’t just made communication more widespread, but it’s also allowed a wider array of voices to be heard.
Movies provide the best example to the point i’m making. Using the 20 years time frame, you have a movie like “Shallow Hal”. It’s the same movie now as it was 20 years ago, but when discussed by today’s standards it’s seen as far more contentious, and a lot of the criticisms it would face today were far more muted or non existent back then. And the more popular an older IP, the more likely it is to be re-examined and analysed by new viewers/readers.
It either means something or it doesn't. You're the one who used the word emancipated. You're allowed to think that emancipating some slaves makes for a good conclusion to a character arc, and I'm allowed to think that maybe it's not really such a big deal.
…or it’s just a convenient plot device to show that x character is ‘good’? Which it is. This hyper-analysis of fairly basic fantasy children’s books with typical character arcs is bizarre.
Okay?
Well, it is a little more nuanced than that. Cho and Chang are both Chinese surnames using the Wade-Giles romanization. Most people think of Chinese as pinyin where the name would be written Zhou Zhang but the West has had an awful problem with translating Chinese phonemes into written English. Pinyin is the most common but Taiwan still romanizes in Wade-Giles as Chang. It can get difficult sometimes on a wuxia forum I frequent because the Hong Kong and Taiwan posters always use variations of Wade-Giles and it looks really off to me being more familiar with pinyin. So yeah Cho and Chang are also Wade-Giles Chinese and not exclusively Korean.
Also, it's not entirely unheard of for a child to be given a surname as a first name. I have a cousin who had a family surname given to her as a first name to honor that side of the family but it is obviously pretty rare.
That said, it's still a lazy and poor effort on the part of a writer that should be doing better (I don't think Rowling thought the character's back story through that much).
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This video was clearly made by an insane person.
If you watched the whole video and that is your conclusion, then my guess is that you're either a neoliberal centrist or a conservative.
I'm neither.
Well then you'll have to elaborate what exactly you disagree with. Preferably focusing on his major points.
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No well adjusted person is going to produce or listen to a 1 hour 50 minute droning diatribe about Harry Potter.
I disagree, but I'll keep this sort of argument in mind for the future when I'm up against opinions I disagree with.
I recognise the thumbnail. I think I lasted 30 seconds when I viewed it ages ago.
I've no idea if JKR is a raging bigot or not or whether she's just guilty of creating well-meant, but lazy, half-baked characters.
I can confirm that Chinese names can be confusing though. It's been something I've been very wary of since moving to Asia. Sometimes my ethnic Chinese colleagues are not sure what gender a person is from the name and now and then are not totally sure on which is the surname. It's normallly surname first but with say Park Ji-Sung you saw it written both ways round, particularly when in English.
1hr50?
Wow, I thought it was going to be around 10 minutes.Four million views. Feck me.
She took one of the most popular Indian surnames and gave two first names to it. Thats all the research that went in there. This Cho Chang controversy is the worst I've heard of. Ridiculous doesn't begin to cover it. Michael Chang was Chinese, let's call him Korean because his surname isn't Chinese, wtf..
I mean she is clearly ragingly bigoted against Trans people.I've no idea if JKR is a raging bigot or not or whether she's just guilty of creating well-meant, but lazy, half-baked characters.
I can confirm that Chinese names can be confusing though. It's been something I've been very wary of since moving to Asia. Sometimes my ethnic Chinese colleagues are not sure what gender a person is from the name and now and then are not totally sure on which is the surname. It's normallly surname first but with say Park Ji-Sung you saw it written both ways round, particularly when in English.
1hr50?
Going to be one of the highest selling games of the year. Point, the online outrage bubble has much less influence than those participating hope.
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i guess nuance is in the eye of the beholder
Why quote my post about tiling? You think she made sure that scene was shot in a building with a star shape on the floor to further her antisemitic agenda?
I think you were being un-nuanced about what others think.
But that’s different to what I’m moaning about in social media. Whenever people argue about something there will be disagreements about issues, or misunderstanding about each other’s point. C’est la vie.
What pisses me off is the the constant need for “the enemy” on social media (whether that’s a public figure, or someone you disagree with) to have no nuance whatsoever. A black and white, one-dimensional, bogey (wo)man. That seems a new(ish) phenomenon. Once the decision was made to take down Rowling for her thoughts on trans rights, the next step was to twist all available evidence into making her also a racist antisemite. Nobody is allowed to be complex, or to have good opinions alongside their bad ones. That’s what I mean by lack of nuance.
I'm not into all the details of this, so this is more of a general comment, but once you discover someone is bigoted against a certain group, is it that big of a stretch to consider they might be bigoted against other groups?
This is nonsense man. The populist media at large have been doing it forever, often without the right of reply afforded by social media.
I think the point he's making is that no-one in this thread is saying this. There's a difference between saying that an author has a habit of lazy tokenism and careless stereotyping/commentary on social issues which impact minority groups, and saying they actively hate those minority groups.
Also, the idea that this has all popped up since she went off the rails with the anti-trans stuff is simply inaccurate. These criticisms have been kicking about for over a decade now and largely came from fans of the series, rather than detractors (detractors usually don't care enough to be critical!). Although frankly, given the sheer scale and popularity of Harry Potter and how basically everyone under the age of 30 has read it, it would be weird if no-one was talking about it - they're not fantastic books but they're clearly culturally important.
Obviously, what's changed with her anti-trans stance is that a lot of people are less likely to give her the benefit of doubt.
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Not in this particular culture war skirmish. Which is essentially pitching trans activists against feminists of a certain age. Whose politics would generally be fairly left-leaning and progressive on other issues. Obviously racists/bigots are going to pitch in on the same side as the TERFs but that doesn’t seem to be why Rowling got involved.
Fair point. Caricaturing those with differing politics to you is not a new phenomenon. But, as you say, that was usually by media organisations with political agendas. It’s depressing seeing ‘normal’ people adopting the same attitude.
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The clumsy name is key to it having the opposite effect. Especially in these times of instant research. Give an a African character a made up iliterative name and its clearly racist? We are jst not as familiar with other racist tropes maybe?
This is a good point, but I never make it having not read a single line of the books.
I'm not sure I see any substantive difference between "Parvati Patil" and "Cho Chang" that would make one more objectionable than the other. They're both names that clearly indicate the racial background of the character in what could perhaps be described as lazy, but surely no worse than that.
I simply can't agree with this. Some effort is better than none, and holding a children's book written in the early 00s to an exacting standard seems excessive in my view.
Well put.
The early 2000's wasn't the dark ages. I'm not saying hang her, just that it's not really inclusivity if you can't be bothered to research a name. And Rowling could have easily got an authentic name if she had any interest in doing so.
Fair enough. I think I'd say it's still some level of inclusivity, but we're splitting hairs and largely in agreement at this point.
I'm happy with that.
OK, I've watched that video someone posted a couple of pages back that was almost 2 hours. Some silly stuff there, sure, even the guy admits some are a bit of a stretch, but in the second part of the video I think he focused on a few things which are probably very revealing of the way Rowling sees the world, and that's about how things tend to stay the same in the end.
Even after the heroes defeat the villain who was a wizard supremacist, the elves are still slaves, the non-human creatures are still discriminated against and the evil house slytherin goes on existing even when all their staff basically joined the nazi. People have certain characteristics that don't came from their personality, but also their social status, as if they were just a thing that is and not a result of social factors. Individual people progress and do heroic and amazing things but the system as a whole tends to not change at all.
She seems to be someone who doesn't like societal change and in the books characters are mocked for being too activist or suggesting something really needs to change. Interesting parallels with how she seems to ally with people connected with ultra-conservative groups.
It was actually an interesting watch (or listen, it's basically a podcast).
Even after the heroes defeat the villain who was a wizard supremacist, the elves are still slaves, the non-human creatures are still discriminated against and the evil house slytherin goes on existing even when all their staff basically joined the nazi. People have certain characteristics that don't came from their personality, but also their social status, as if they were just a thing that is and not a result of social factors. Individual people progress and do heroic and amazing things but the system as a whole tends to not change at all.
She seems to be someone who doesn't like societal change and in the books characters are mocked for being too activist or suggesting something really needs to change. Interesting parallels with how she seems to ally with people connected with ultra-conservative groups.
It was actually an interesting watch (or listen, it's basically a podcast).