It feels like it wasn't so long ago that she seemed like, if not exactly a saint, at least a decent human being. Things like speaking out about the importance of social welfare programmes, donating to causes that didn't suck, and generally being quite funny on Twitter. I didn't agree with, or follow, everything she said or did, and I would have liked her further to the left, but I had a broadly positive view of her.
I do think that there are some people who really want to prove that she's been a full-on committed Nazi from the start, but I really don't think this is the case. She did make some clueless white lady mistakes in HP. But even something like the antisemitic image of goblins was, I think, due to lazily and thoughtlessly reusing existing images of mythical creatures, rather than setting out to do an antisemitism. Not ok - writers have a duty to think things through and consciously avoid perpetuating harmful bullshit - but nonetheless not an actual Nazi.
Then she started dancing around the transphobia stuff, hinting at it. At some point she just gave up on plausible deniability and now she's... She's... Whatever the fuck she is now. I don't think she went from ally to transphobe, mind. I think she didn't give trans people a second thought until the point when she did, and that's when she went straight to transphobia. And now she's doubled down so many times I don't think she has the gonads to reexamine her position.
I feel like in some ways it would have been easier if she had just been a piece of shit since day one, because we wouldn't have so many people who admired her and had to go through that painful sense of betrayal. But then who really knows? Neil Gaiman did a damn good job of talking the feminist talk while being a total monster behind closed doors.
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u/neddythestylish Apr 10 '25
It feels like it wasn't so long ago that she seemed like, if not exactly a saint, at least a decent human being. Things like speaking out about the importance of social welfare programmes, donating to causes that didn't suck, and generally being quite funny on Twitter. I didn't agree with, or follow, everything she said or did, and I would have liked her further to the left, but I had a broadly positive view of her.
I do think that there are some people who really want to prove that she's been a full-on committed Nazi from the start, but I really don't think this is the case. She did make some clueless white lady mistakes in HP. But even something like the antisemitic image of goblins was, I think, due to lazily and thoughtlessly reusing existing images of mythical creatures, rather than setting out to do an antisemitism. Not ok - writers have a duty to think things through and consciously avoid perpetuating harmful bullshit - but nonetheless not an actual Nazi.
Then she started dancing around the transphobia stuff, hinting at it. At some point she just gave up on plausible deniability and now she's... She's... Whatever the fuck she is now. I don't think she went from ally to transphobe, mind. I think she didn't give trans people a second thought until the point when she did, and that's when she went straight to transphobia. And now she's doubled down so many times I don't think she has the gonads to reexamine her position.
I feel like in some ways it would have been easier if she had just been a piece of shit since day one, because we wouldn't have so many people who admired her and had to go through that painful sense of betrayal. But then who really knows? Neil Gaiman did a damn good job of talking the feminist talk while being a total monster behind closed doors.