Rowling is on solid ground here in this thread, by the way. The euphemism ‘Gender Affirming Care,’ chemical castration and surgical mutilation in plain speech has been demonstrated to result in minors twelve times more likely to commit suicide than those not having these treatments and surgeries, an especially appaling statistic because the argument used to coerce parents into these atrocities posing as medical care is that the boy or girl in question if not “transitioned” irreparably will commit suicide. “Would you rather have a dead daughter or a living son?” See the Cass Report for more on this.

The new retort rhetorical strategy evident here is Rowling’s taking the attack to her Trans Radical Activist opponents using their own smear tactics, albeit more subtly and on point. They have repeatedly branded her as a TERF Nazi, going so far as to call her a holocaust denier.

Rowling turns the tables here by noting how a Bio-Ethics report is eerily reminiscent of the language employed by Eichmann and other National Socialist war criminals (and conformist civilians who were never brought to trial) to justify their going-along-with or aiding-and-abetting crimes against humanity. She cites Hannah Arendt’s The Banality of Evil to great effect here in calling out a recently published Bio-Ethics article which moved the ethical goalposts off the playing field and into the stadium parking lot. The new metric for success in gender mutilating therapies and surgeries, believe it or not, is if the patient got what they said they wanted in their initial interview rather than what they experienced consequent to such “Gender Affirming Care.”

Rowling does not say to the TRAs and doctors involved, “You want Nazi criminals? You’re the Nazi criminals, you butchers!” But it isn’t hard to draw the lines connecting those dots. If that weren’t clear enough, she doubled-down on the analogy avalanche later in the day by linking the medical professionals and families pushing and permitting the abuse of what they call “trans kids” or “trans children” with lobotomists, who destroyed the higher brain function of tens of thousands of patients around the world, predominantly women, in the name of mental health:

Five years ago, Rowling posted the tweet heard round the world in defense of a woman who’d lost her job for insisting on biological facts. She spent the better part of two years on the defensive and under a cancellation tsunami. Since that time, reality has caught up with the conformists and medical profiteers — and now Rowling is on the offensive. Her 14 million twixter followers, if her comment threads are any indication, have ‘transitioned’ from a horde-like herd of angry TRAs who were once devoted Rowling Readers to a community very much on board with her biology-based medicine and feminism understanding of “transgenderism.” [Read more…]

Rowling has been active on Twixter this month, perhaps “hyperactive” is fair, but I think this brief post may be the best.

First, it’s funny. Rowling turns an insult from an angry Gender Theory Extremist into a clever title of a teevee series (think ‘A-Team’) or film (‘Inglorious Basterds‘) that celebrates exactly what the presumed AWFL wanted to condemn.

Second, it’s clever. Rowling writes an elevator pitch or trailer copy for the new series or film, “Insufferable Terfs.” That’s not only funny, it requires a certain sophistication and playfulness with genre writing. Rowling has this down pat.

Third, it’s brief. There’s a set-up and punchline that take less ten seconds of reading to play out with the ‘Gotcha.’

Fourth, it’s serious but not heavy. Rowling decided in late 2w019 to take the point in the battle against one of the most egregious movements of postmodernity, namely, Gender Theory Extremists and their incredible over reach. She also tweets and retweets about Iranian government attacks on women and other light subjects. This tweet skewers the ‘enemy’ in a way that highlights the importance of the subject without causing a brain cramp about global injustice and a hospital stay for depression.

Thanks for the pointed laugh, Mrs, Murray!

Last week the big news in the niche world of Harry Potter fandom and Rowling Studies was the announcement that UK actor Paapa Essiedu has been chosen to play the part of Severus Snape in the Bronte Studios and HBO+ adaptation of the Hogwarts Saga for television. Essiedu is of Ghanian descent, which is to say that he is a black man rather than white, and the subsequent controversy, after the model of ‘Black Hermione’ in Cursed Child, is called ‘Black Severus’ or ‘Black Snape.’

I wrote about the reasons I think this casting choice was casting genius on Thursday, why I thought ‘Black Severus’ differed significantly from the diversity hiring aspect of ‘Black Hermione’ on Friday, and the possibility of a ‘Black Sirius’ (please, let’s not have ‘Black Black’ or ‘Black Squared’) with ‘Black Severus’ to highlight the parallel and inverse lives of those two characters. Comments from HogPro readers came in at 10 to 1 against the casting choice.

What did Rowling say or tweet about this casting choice and controversy? She is the owner of Bronte Studios and an Executive Producer of the adaptation so it is a safe assumption that she had to have been asked to sign off on this decision.

She has said nothing about it, or ‘nothing publicly’ that I know of. The only work-related or Rowling, Inc., themed tweet she has shared has been to say that Hallmarked Man, the eighth Strike-Ellacott novel is still a work in progress:

I’m guessing that the blowback about offering “medical advice” has something to do with Rowling’s common sense position that chemical castration and genital mutilation of children and adolescents is not a good idea, a position she clarified through this re-tweet of a thread on that subject:

The humorous tweet about the effectiveness of co-codamol and whiskey in combination as a pain delivery system for coal miners mystery writers with overdue books was paired with another jab at India Willoughby ( a “jab” in her “lady balls;” Willoughby is a “transgender woman,” which is to say, a biological male). [Read more…]