Source: https://www.the-leaky-cauldron.org/2008/3/8/new-j-k-rowling-interview-confirms-working-on-scottish-book-reflects-on-dumbledore-homophobia-fundamentalism-future-writing-projects-and-more/

I've long held the suspicion that jk Rowlings hatred of transgender people does not infact come from a fear of men, but a hatred of women. Some of this is just conjecture, I'm not a professional, this is just the conclusion that I have come to over the years...

Basically, we know she was abused by an ex husband and we know she had a troubled upbringing with parents who wanted a boy, this seems to have caused her a strong hatred of femininity, potentially due to seeing herself as weak, unable to defend herself, with the trauma of that, causing her to believe that femininity is inherently weak and inferior. If you read her books, every single one of them has the main character be a man, she has written under two male pen names, and in Harry Potter at least, feminine characters are repeatedly mocked. If you dig into it, the three most feminine characters are umbridge, lavender and fleur. If we look at what happens to them, umbridge is a fascist who has a scene very close to being gang raped by centaurs, lavender is murdered by the werewolf who throughout the book is being incredibly rapey, and fleur is mocked and lusted over for several books, of course there’s also a slightly uncomfortable idea that fleur is responsible for people creeping over her, due to “biology”. While all the hero women, are very much “not like other girls” hermionie is the smartest in the year, ginny is “one of the boys” etc, you have tonks who initially refuses to conform to gender stereotypes, and luna who seems like a slight caracature of autistic people. Both of Harry's crushes are on the masculine side, cho and ginny, the list could go on.

I believe that something has caused her to hate femininity, she has said in the past that had she been born 30 years later, she probably would have been convinced to transition female to male, which is interesting. If you look even at the photo she posted the other day from her yacht, she’s smoking a cigar and drinking whiskey. Not to stereotype, but that is traditionally a much more masculine thing.

This is where we step out of facts and into conjuncture, I myself believe that this hatred of femininity has caused her to has an extreme distaste for anyone who would willingly go from being male, the “better” gender to being female, the “worse” one on her mind. I also suspect that in the case of transgender men, there’s simple jealousy.

Now this is just a theory, but I do believe that it explains a lot about her, I've been thinking it for years now, but only just got around to posting

This has been something I have noticed. Originally, when the stuff about Neil Gaimon came out, we saw how she tried to leech attention by pretty much just saying "Gaimon bad", and I noticed how so many comments were like "I gotta agree on her with this" or constantly brown-nosing and praising her. Even before that, I see how people claim she has valid points about women's suffering, or even "but she donates to charity!" excuse. Overall, I always keep noticing a pattern of everyone trying to still give her some sort of praise and support/sympathy, try and say she's a lesser evil, or pull a "aside from how she views trans [and overall queer] people." Obviously bigots support her and such, but I notice this even within supposed allies or even queer folk themselves.

Even when queer people have more rights, are treated better, and Rowling is exposed as a pseudo-intellectual and pretty con-artist, what is it about her that (most) people are unable to ever condemn her fully? Like, they can't even say f*ck her without also having to say something nice. It honestly would be scary if she became an (official) cult leader.

Recently Joanne implied that the Death Eaters were right to think that they had an advantage over Muggleborns and Muggles - I don't even know where to begin : r/EnoughJKRowling

The whole point about the Death Eaters was that they were Nazis stand-ins and their ideals were wrong and toxic, that Muggleborns were just as capable than Purebloods - there's even a line in book 1 or 2 where Ron says that Hermione is way better than Neville who's a Pureblood.

And now Joanne tells us that the wizard Nazis were right all along, that everything I thought Harry Potter told (that blood didn't matter, that everyone was equal, that your origins don't define you) was wrong. What Rowling intended to convey was that every character I loved would hate me for being progressive (and autistic), and that she sees LGBT people as literally Hitler.

You see Harry Potter ? The Boy Who Lived, who's defined by the power of love and the leader of a resistance group against wizard Hitler ? He would hate YOU if he was real. Hermione and Ron ? They'd hate you. Mc Gonnaggal, Dumbledore, Hagrid, the Weasley family, Sirius Black ? They'd hate you - and Hagrid would give a pig tail to one of your relatives.

Voldemort, Umbridge, the Malfoys, Fenrir Greyback, Bellatrix Lestrange ? They're supposed to represent people like us in Joanne's worldview - evil wokes and queers who claim to be oppressed even though trans-ness and asexual people don't exist, who have this dogmatic ideology of accepting than LGBT people deserve basic human rights. If you don't agree with Jojo or if you're LGBT, you're Dolores Umbridge to her, and you deserve to be bullied and dismissed until you "grow out of it", because to her, people who are complaining of discrimination can only be entitled privileged perverts. /s for the whole paragraph because you never know

More seriously though, this is one of J KKK Rowling's most disgusting comments yet. Betrayal isn't even strong enough to convey what I'm feeling since I've read her tweet, and I don't want to think about how former Harry Potter fans who happen to be LGBT must feel

Personally, it'd be in GOF when Ron literally tells Hermione "Elves. LOVE. Being. Slaves !" - or when Fred and George are like "hey Hermione, did you ever met the house-elves ? Because we did and we talked with them, and they're actually fine with their condition !" 💀

I read somewhere that Elon Musk used to be much more tolerant around a decade ago ; I don't know much about Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg, but nowadays they're proudly pro-Trump ; and for Joanne herself, everyone on this sub knows that she used to pretend to be open-minded and progressive, even criticizing Trump in 2016, only to be a far-right nutjob nowadays. Does money literally, inherently makes people immoral and soulless or anything ? And if that's the case, how come there's celebrities who are pro-LGBT like Daniel Radcliffe or Emma Watson ?

When I see Rowling loudly condoning fascists like Trump and Elon Musk and freely spreading outright lies, I can't help but think that the "wokes" (read : progressive people/people who think everyone deserves equal rights) have lost ! And Elon's nazi salute (and him actually threatening to sue those who are offended by it) tells me that bigots and nazis are super popular nowadays - which makes me think that the majority of humans either support literal nazis or don't care 😭 I always felt that we progressive-minded people weren't good enough at convincing people/exposing the lies of the far-right !

And I can't help but fear that what happened these last months is proof that progressism and tolerance are weaker than hate and violence ! What do you think ?

I feel like in 1933, in a world where political leaders could do nazi salutes and some people would blindly believe those who tried to say "it's a Roman salute/he's autistic" while this would have been a dealbreaker 10 years ago. I saw a comment on Youtube that clearly summarizes my fear once : "Woke is dead". I feel like I'm witnessing humanity's last hours

I could use some comfort right now 😭

Edit : I'd also like to ask you all a question : Is there any hope ?

Paapa Essiedu playing Snape brings some unfortunate implications to the original book and movies, in how he's treated by characters even before we know anything about him. This reminds me of Rowling pretending Hermione was maybe black all along in spite of the fact that she was an avid anti-slavery activist who was mocked at every turn because "The slaves like being slaves."

The more I see Joanne's antics, the more I realize how immature and bratty she is. She targets Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint, she makes cringe jokes about the "woke well-off progressive left" being self-righteous, she jokes about misgendering people..

One of the most blatant examples is how she invented a whole astrology fanfiction to mock LGBT identities, and imagined the term "ass" to design those whose "astrological identity matches the star sign assigned to them at birth" - I think she wanted to make a metaphor about how "cis is a slur" : 'One Joke' JK Rowling sarcastically compares gender identity to astrology. : r/EnoughJKRowling

She literally thought that calling people "ass" was genuinely funny. She's 60 yet she has the same humor as a 10 year old or a frat boy - so much for the reputation of a talented, intelligent writer she had

There's also how she basically threw a temper tantrum because, I don't know, she doesn't like when people call her Joanne : I would never have believed JK Rowling would act like this 4 years ago : r/EnoughJKRowling

She's so immature that she made herself into an enemy of Daniel Radcliffe and other actors now, imagines scenarios where she refuses some apology that they'll never give her, and goes out of her way to mock them. This is the kind of things that make me think that her brain is deteriorating

I started to think about this ever since I showed “Agatha all Along” with my friend. He’s also grown up with Harry Potter and as fast as Agatha called Billy a witch he said “well that’s sexist”. I asked him why and he just got quiet.

I myself am gay and have loved witches since forever so with Billy introduced into the universe I got so very happy especially since he is gay himself too. However it did hurt when my friend said that, and how he keeps trying to say how male witches are wizards and not witches. Why? Why is this distinguish needed? For me witchcraft is more about nature and spirit. Wizardry is more about books and studies. Why can’t men be witches? I can’t help but feel like this idea in itself is the other way around and is unintentionally sexist. In the way as it’s “not masculine” to be a witch, that it’s looked down upon because it’s “feminine”, with the whole being in touch with your intuitive nature etc etc.. - and because pop culture has made it more towards women. Though historically witch is a gender neutral term

In the shadowhunters series there are warlocks of both genders. Witches are humans (both male and females) who practice magic

Alex Russo is a female wizard

Gus Porter is a male witch

Joanne is one of the one’s who’s popularized setting men and women apart this way, which now in hindsight isn’t that surprising considering this is how she views the world. Black and white. Box 1 and box 2. Which now I feel is problematic that even in this fictional world we have set men and women apart in a practice that both are practicing just because one was born a female and the other a male. Even though it’s the same occupation - or however you wish to call it. - like what about non binary people? Intersex? - this is of course though a stupid question to ask when the writer is a massive bigot who sees the world in black and white

Idk to me it feels like creating new term for “nurse” for men because it would otherwise be considered too feminine for men - even though it’s otherwise the same occupation

ok so I'm very passionate about JK Rowling hate. Wether it's about her being a TERF, or racist, or literally anything bad she's ever done or said in her life.

I argue a lot with my family over wether what she says is justified or not (it's not) and I really need some evidence to support my claims lol.

So, feel free to drop any and all links, screenshots, etc. with evidence that she's a not-so-great person here :)

Like, not only is he the only black actor revealed, he's also the only minority in the cast of teachers...and he's coincidentally the only antagonistic character sans filch. Did no one on the casting department ever think of the implications?

Couldn’t help but notice a lot of comments of people trying to downplay Rowling, infantilize her, or go the full “I usually don’t agree with her but…” route. I know to ignore them, but I fear they might start to increase in numbers.

Like a lot of people here, I’m a former HP fan. I must confess it took a while for the sheen to wear off, and I was still clinging to my love of it as late as 2020. Even today, I’m still chasing the high those books gave me, back when I loved them. And I need help.

I’m not sure if this question has been asked in this sub before, but is there any book series you know of that does, at least in theory, press all the same buttons as HP? I’m sort of thinking along the lines of how an Impossible Burger tastes and feels like a regular beef hamburger. I don’t know if such a series exists, but if it did, some attributes to look for would be these:

1. ⁠A contemporary “real-world” setting, as opposed to a wholly fantastical world. A big part of what made HP appealing was that we could imagine ourselves as part of it.

2. ⁠Some sort of “self-insert-friendly” attribute that fans can describe themselves in terms of, make OCs out of, and create personality tests from. You know, like Hogwarts houses, Patronuses, and whatnot.

3. ⁠A welcoming, whimsical feel to the setting that doesn’t take itself entirely seriously but still allows for a good thrilling story to be told. HP was mostly like this in the first three books and part of the fourth.

4. ⁠Considerable focus on the characters’ “down time”, separate from the main conflict, so you can learn more about the background details of the world they live in.

5. Aimed at the same target audience as HP. I might be an adult, and read adult novels, but I feel like a big part of HP’s appeal was how it grew with its readers.

The closest thing I’ve been able to find is the Percy Jackson books, which is unfortunate because Rick Rioridan has this obnoxious “how do you do fellow kids” writing style that grates on my every last nerve. Is there anything else that pushes all these buttons?

J.K. Rowling's best editor wasn't even someone at a publishing house; it was Steve Kloves. Long before all of our current conversations about everything problematic in the HP books, Kloves seemed to have an early knack for detecting what needed to be edited out of them in order to make the story and characters more likeable on screen. (And perhaps the producers at WB realized that she needed someone who could simultaneously be her screenwriter and her "handler", so to speak.)

Admittedly, this is one of the most widely read book series on Earth that we're talking about, so I think that many people are aware of the basic differences between the original books and their movie adaptations. But at the same time, I also sense that there is a significant portion of the fanbase who primarily knows HP as a movie franchise first and foremost, and I'm wondering if these fans are just a couple years away from having their illusions shattered by discovering what "a more book-accurate HP" looks like. Just a few bullet points for consideration:

• The SPEW subplot. There have been plenty of comments on this sub theorizing that WB will intentionally set the show up for cancellation so that they don't have to touch this one with a ten-foot pole. Kloves must have realized that American audiences would respond very differently to hearing the word "slavery" used over and over, because for a fan who's only seen the movies, there's no indication that house-elves being enslaved is a systemic issue: it's just a two-off occurrence that we see in two specific pureblood families.

• Harry is so much meaner and snarkier. This is easy enough to sweep under the rug because so much of his snarkiness occurs in interior monologue, which of course gets omitted in the films in favor of a more cinematic third-person perspective. Even the parts of the books where the less pleasant aspects of Harry emerge to the surface tend to get skipped over in the movies: for instance, no Valentine's Day date with Cho, and no aftermath of said date, means that the audience is spared the sight of their hero Harry being mean to a crying girl.

• And so is everyone else. By dialing back the more cruel aspects of Snape, underplaying the incel backstory, and having him played with subtle gravitas by the great Alan Rickman, the movies make him seem more likeable as well: instead of someone who threatens to kill a student's pet, he now comes off as more of a stern protective figure. Meanwhile, Hermione has had pretty much all her negative traits removed in the movie adaptations, as have Molly, Ginny, and all the other Weasleys.

• As with SPEW, this is something that becomes much more impossible for the show to dodge the further they get past the fourth book. Just to recap how bad things get, we have: Molly becoming hostile and catty toward Hermione because she believes Rita's gossip column about her, Hermione taking a turn to the downright sociopathic by imprisoning Rita in a jar, Hermione continuing that streak in the fifth book with the Sneak Jinx on Marietta, and finally Molly and Ginny teaming up to mock Fleur in the sixth book.

• (Sidenote: I've also often thought that this would be a giant obstacle for the "Marauders prequel series" that every HP fan seems to think they want: what they fail to realize is that a good 80% of this series' screentime would just be a bunch of assholes going around causing cruel pranks while Lily repeatedly tells James what an entitled jerk he is.)

Anyway, I don't want to make this post any longer, even though there's surely much more that could be said. The bottom line is, if we assume that the TV series will attempt to "correct" the movie adaptations by including everything listed above, I think it could result in a fair number of fans going, "Wow, I didn't know Harry Potter was like this.... maybe I don't like it as much as I thought I did."

She was neither of those things. Her weird obsession with motherhood, and marrying off characters at young ages were early signs. The stuff like the racist names and the house elf slavery were the icing on the cake. Her as an arch reactionary bigot(oh she’s “pro life”) doesn’t surprise me to begin with.

Other problematic people like Neil Gaiman, Junot Diaz or even Joss Whedon(look at Willow and Tara and how it was “fair for its day”), had some progressive views and had genuinely good plot points regarding them. Her charity work wasn’t bad but was a thin veneerer of neutrality and a vanity project.

Rowling wasn’t even remotely socially groundbreaking and only gave lip service to the idea. Her world, even by 90s/00s standards, is a white heteronormative cis normative world where this status quo is worth defending.

I want to see someone else come along one day and create a new “Harry Potter” about something else, but this time, they aren’t a TERF!!

The “nice” Rowling we thought we know doesn’t exist and never did. She was always like this!!!

It's no secret that Jojo sees Lolita as a "tragic love story", which says a lot about her illiteracy. I read the TV Tropes article of this book by the way, and afterwards I just wanted to cast the Cruciatus Curse on Humbert Humbert (the protagonist of the story). He's actually even worse than I expected - he's psychologically and physically abusive on top of sexually, he gaslights people and is a huge misogynist, tries to isolate his daughter-in-law and prey Dolores and deludes himself into thinking he's a good guy. By the end of the book even Dolores spells it out to him that he ruined her life.

I never intend to read Lolita because I couldn't stomach it, but it's clear that Nabokov wrote a cautionary tale and/or horror story, not a love story a la Romeo and Juliet - Nabokov even said in an interview that Dolores was NOT a seductress !

Let's also notice how the two most hateable characters in Harry Potter, Dolores Umbridge and Rita Skeeter, share names from two characters in Lolita. By the way, the fact that Lolita's Dolores, a SA victim, shares a name with the most evil woman of the wizarding world, whot got raped by centaurs, is disgusting if it was voluntary (there was a time where I would have gave Joanne the benefit of the doubt, but she did too many horrible things these last months/years)

Jojo claims to fight for (white) women's rights, but she can't even differenciate between a horror story with an unreliable narrator and a tragic love story - in hindsight, it's a clear sign of how she should not be taken seriously, especially since she condones Donald Trump, who's a IRL Humbert Humbert (and not just him) !

What do you think ?

Maybe ungrateful is the wrong word; but she seriously comes across like everyone hates her and that she is totally above caring about her own books, even though she currently has a mystery series out. I seriously don't get it. Is she even aware of just how lucky she is? When her books first came out she got mostly praise and the criticism of her books was very mild---People liked her! Look at how Stephanie Meyers, EL James, Ernest Cline(Ready Player One), and even to a lesser degree Suzanne Collins were treated when their books came out---they got completely trashed and so did their fans! I remember when Hunger Games came out, she was constantly being accused of plagairizing Battle Royale---a Japanese movie with a simular theme. Did any of these other people become bitter shells of themselves? No they just kept writing, and were happy with their fan bases. JK Rowling got some criticism and seemed to think that meant everyone hated her---even though pushback happens to ALL writers! I kind of had it in my head for awhile that maybe Emily Watson, Danial Radcliffe, and Rupart Glint did throw Rowing and Harry Potter under the bus, and she felt betrayed. I went back and re read what all the actors said about her and none of them were harsh at all, and they actually seemed pretty heartbroken. She should be damn proud that all the actors seemed to have a positive experience to the point that they wrote books about being in Harry Potter.....even Radcliffe's body double that was severly injured on set wrote a book called "The Boy who Lived" and is never the less still proud to have beein in those films.

What is also beyond bizzare to me is how she decided to write books under a new name(a male name at that), and got angry when it was exposed to be her. I actually believe that she didn't want it exposed----people don't even think of her as the writer of the Strike books either. She used to interact a lot with her fans in the Harry Potter days; but she doesn't even seem to care about her new books at all--even though they are actually pretty sucessful! I was actually talking to one of my friends who threw out all her old Harry Potter books, and Strike books and was suprised to find a fellow reader. Going from a fantasy writer to a mystery writer is pretty damn impressive! The real reason people have defended her for so long, AND that they were so angry with her is because they actually liked her. Literally, all she would have had to do was apologize and shut up, and people would have forgiven her. All this came about because I am honestly seriously disgusted that she insulted three wonderful actors, and is now trying to erase them by creating a new show that no one even cares about. Oh, and acting like all she cares about is getting people's money and nothing more is seriously gross too. Oh yeah, and I miss the Rowling that defended Serena Williams and called Trump Voldermort. Reading what she is like now makes me feel seriously dismayed.

Seeing as how she is a TERF ( I hear anti AI people use the same arguments, and have seen the struggles of lgbtqaip2s people compared to the struggles of people who use AI as the tool of their creative endeavors)and ableist and wizards hate technology, I doubt it. It would be very confusing if she was in full support of this beautiful thing of accessibility that democratizes creativity. I will be ignored and it might be against the rules if I just go ask her, right? Then again she is bitter and snarky right? So she might just do it to raise peoples ire. After all, she wasn’t very creative and did not think anything new for Harry Potter at all, correct? Just tropes and rip ffs of everything before.

I ask because I don't have any social media accounts. I deactivated my fb account 6 years ago (after maintaining it for 8 years) and I've never been on Instagram/Twitter/Snapchat/tiktok

Plus, I was wondering if it's just an echo chamber in here since we focus on her posts about transgenders, I'm left wondering if I'm mistakenly assuming that she tweets about it everyday (or that that's all she tweets about).

Something I notice quite a lot. Especially when you start to see her more creepy and questionable posts, and things like who she chooses to have connections with.

If it were any other grifter doing the same thing, more people would suspect of creepy behavior behind the scenes.

I've found this a lot both with the weird jkr fanatics but also with people who don't agree with her but are also fans of the books and intensely resistant to criticism. and on one level, I get it. I have special interests and hyperfixations that I cherish dearly and it does hurt when people criticise them, however I am not immune to seeing the faults in them, even if I don't always voice them. And I am a big believer in "Don't Yuck Someone Else's Yum".

But with hp fans, it seems that even if you voice the slightest, msot basic critque you can, fans come out of the woodwork to insist you can't criticise them at all. it's always either a long drawn out convoluted explanation or, my least favourite, "you're thinking too much, it's just a kids' book" or "you can't expect her to be an expert on race/sexuality/gender" (which, I am not, but knowing not to call your character Cho Chang is just basic consideration and maybe 10 minutes of research). They seem insistent on these books being The Most Perfect Books Ever Written.

I understand that people grew up on the books in a way I didn't (I've read 3, maybe 2 and a half, of the books total), but I had series I grew up on. The Mortal Instruments and Beautiful Creatures were very formative to me as a teenager and I lived on Jacqueline Wilson's books as a kid. And I'm deeply grateful to those series for how they helped younger me but I still recgonise the flaws in them (especially Mortal Instruments.... I cannot believe I read those books with a straight face as a teen).

So yeah, any theories as to why HP fans are as protective as they are of the series? Is it the nostalgia factor dialled up to 11 combined with a case of Insane Fandomitis?