I have read several reviews online of the history of Rowling’s conflict with Gender Theory ideologues, whom she refers to as “fundamentalists.” One common point they share is to offer the views of the Harry Potter film franchises’ actors and actresses who came out against the author’s views as a kind of counter-weight, as if those voices balanced out Rowling’s supposed “transphobia.” Rowling has not responded to the criticism of those thespians, but she has been absent from public events and filmed reunions in which they were featured players.

Last week, in an exchange with dancer Rosie Kay on Twixter, Rowling made it fairly clear that she despises those she feels betrayed her at a time when she was being piled on by all the usual suspects. It seems that there won’t be any reconciliation or cameos on the HBO+ adaptations of the Potter books.

To understand Rowling’s comments to Kay, it helps to know the dancer’s tweet, in which she struggled to “deal with feelings of betrayal.”

 

The “small business” she refers to, I think, is the Rosie Kay Dance Company, of which she was the founder, choreographer, and principal. It’s website no longer exists though its pages can be found on the Wayback Machine. It may have been “small,” but it was a rising cultural landmark. It disappeared when Kay was forced to resign from her positions at her company after complaints were made by some of her dancers to the board. They felt she needed to be canceled because of her “transphobic” opinions, in essence, that she thought men and women are different. You can read the long painful story of her resignation in the face of this usurping of place here, here, here, and here.

A July 2022 profile in The Times shared how much Rowling’s support meant to Kay at the time of her cancellation: [Read more…]

Rowling posted a new twixter home page photo and cameo yesterday and Strike fandom was all over it in a heartbeat. Ludicrous Moniker and Badly Wired Lamp identified it as the Minster in York:

Ludicrous Moniker recalled that a page of a York guidebook was posted on the Robert Galbraith website:

The question was raised during discovery about whether York would be featured in The Hallmarked Man or the as yet untitled Strike 9. Rowling was listening in, apparently, and answered the question:

Hats off to Ludicrous Moniker and the other Serious Strikers on Twixter for tracking this down and for prompting that helpful response from Rowling-Galbraith!

For the complete catalog of Rowling’s twixter homepage pictures compiled by Nick Jeffery with helpful information about the readers who identified each and links to discussion online of what they mean, see ‘All J. K. Rowling’s Twitter Headers.’

Read the BBC version of the Chopra’s family inspiring story, ‘It’s an Honour and a Privilege to be Educated.’

In an Inauguration Day rally, Elon Musk spoke to a crowd of Trump supporters at DC’s Capitol One arena. During his brief talk, he twice bumped his chest and threw out his right arm to the crowd, once to the group in front of him and immediately after to the crowd behind him. He said just before this talk that he was giving thanks from his heart to all those who had worked and prayed and contributed to Trump’s electoral college and popular vote triumph last November.

The American Public Broadcast Service (PBS), a news organization funded by tax payers as well as private donors and corporations, tweeted that Musk’s gesture was a “Nazi” salute, a la Hitler’s Sieg Heil arm motion and the Italian fascist ‘Roman’ gesture. The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), a watch-dog for Neo-Nazi behaviors and anti-Semitism, immediately responded that Musk’s gesture had been misinterpreted by PBS and that, stressful as the transfer of power was for many in the US, a little grace was in order. It was not, from their view, a “Nazi salute.”

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (‘AOC’), an American politician and activist serving since 2019 as the U.S. representative for New York’s 14th congressional district, weighed in to condemn both Musk for the salute and the ADL for being ‘soft’ on Nazi-ism (!). (She was not at the inauguration or any of the balls afterward because “I don’t celebrate rapists.”) Firebrand and catnip that she is to friends and foes respectively, her branding Musk’s gesture as a sure sign that he is a closet fascist showing his true colors generated the inevitable memes of other politicians, to include AOC, extending their arm in that fashion while speaking to the public. Historians of twentieth century totalitarianism, most notably Gerald Posner and Niall Fergusson, dismissed AOC as a partisan crank.

I share all that because Joanne Rowling Murray (‘JKR’) teamed up with Gender Critical feminists to mock on Twixter those Progressive gate-keepers who make risible historical analogies. These “TERFS” as a rule who have spent the last five years being branded by leftists as “Nazis,” “fascists,” even “Holocaust deniers” because of their resistance to “transgenderism.” JKR’s preferred partner in these staged satirical conversations, as we’ve seen earlier this month, is Julie Bindel, who wrote Rowling with a true confession about her struggle with Nazi salutes:

[Read more…]