As I wrote yesterday, the organ of the entertainment industry, Variety, featured an article earlier this week by Adam Vary titled HBO Says ‘Harry Potter’ Series Will ‘Benefit’ From J.K. Rowling’s Involvement: She ‘Has the Right to Express Her Personal Views.’ Rowling appears to have responded to it without mentioning it by name in at least one tweet, perhaps two.

In the article, Vary quotes from interviews he had with Kat Miller, the “Creative Director” at MuggleNet, and Melissa Anelli, the long-time leader of the Leaky Cauldron website, best-selling author, and fandom convention entrepreneur. Each spoke about how difficult it is to be a Potter fan today because of Rowling’s supposed “transphobia” and “bigotry.” Vary ended his piece with a quotation from Miller:

Ironically, while Rowling’s actions have undermined many Potter fans’ dedication to her, they also appear to have strengthened those fans’ solidarity with each other. “Abandoning the fandom and shutting it down is not the place we wanted to be,” Miller says. “We see the value in the community that the fans created. We can love and enjoy that without the author.”

This has been something of a mantra among the Genderistas who are Potter-philes for the last five years: “We can enjoy the books and each other’s company while ignoring the poisonous opinions of the author.” Rowling’s tweet yesterday let her feelings be known about this sort of reader:

The timing of this post, in the wake of the Variety piece, leads me to think it possible, even likely, that it is Miller and Anelli specifically that Rowling is calling “dickheads.” [Read more…]

As part of America’s post election post mortem, liberal commentators are lining up to explain away the Republican loss. As a liberal in my later years, (a socialist in the UK, where we are less squeamish about using the word), I too am frustrated about the Harris campaign loosing the popular vote. Many have pointed to the push to eliminate sex as a category, instead of poorly defined and fluid gender, as one reason for Trump’s popularity among people less able to insulate themselves and their family from the effects of this policy. Popular comedian and commentator on Last Week Tonight, John Oliver, blamed Harris’s failure to respond to this question:

It was frustrating to see the Harris campaign fail to formulate a response, and its basically because its pretty easy to do… watch, I’ll do it for you right now…

As we have discussed before, there are vanishingly few trans girls competing in High Schools anywhere. Even if there were more, trans kids, like all kids vary in athletic ability, and there is no evidence they pose any threat to safety or fairness. It is very weird for you to be so focused on this subject, and finally if you genuinely what to address the biggest concern for most girls who play High School sport, you would be less worried about this, and more about the creepy assistant volleyball coach who keeps liking their posts from f*****g Instagram.

Mr. Oliver may believe that this is some fresh perspective, but in Britain, the – It doesn’t happen – Even if it does happen its not a problem – Even if it is a problem, its weird (and bigoted) of you to be focused on it – is depressingly familiar, and utterly unconvincing. Oliver has some history with J. K. Rowling, she was in the audience for his first appearance on US television, so it wasn’t a surprise when she responded:

Nothing about this feels good, because John Oliver generously gave his time for my charity Lumos and I liked him very much when I met him, but God knows, if you ever need an example of motivated reasoning and confirmation bias, this video’s for you. An undoubtedly intelligent person spouts absolute bullshit to support something he wants to be true, but isn’t.

According to the UN, female athletes have lost nearly 900 medals to trans-identified men competing against them in women’s sporting categories. Girls have been ousted from teams to make way for boys. Women have suffered serious injury playing against trans-identified men (see Payton McNabb, mentioned below).

Again and again I’ve come up against men who argue exactly what Oliver does here, using the very same talking points. With a straight face, the ‘believe the science’ guys will say ‘actually, we don’t yet have enough data to say whether men and boys are stronger and faster than women and girls’. The ‘be kind’ crew can’t see what the issue is. ‘Why are you bothered, it only affects a tiny minority of females?’

To prove to their progressive credentials – and (coincidentally, I’m sure) indemnify themselves against repercussions from cultural elites in the media, academia and publishing who’ve showed themselves more than ready to kick people to the kerb for failing to mouth the approved mantras – people with a lot to lose are currently prepared to make idiots of themselves. They’ll stare unabashedly into a camera and insist that their audiences’ eyeballs are incapable of seeing what’s plain as day, and that there’s something wrong with the great unwashed for believing that girls are being robbed of opportunities and put at physical risk.

If you want to tell the world you’re happy to watch females suffer injury, humiliation and the loss of sporting opportunities to bolster an elitist post-modern ideology embraced by a minute fraction of the world’s population, fair enough; you’re allowed your opinion. But if you’ve just told girls they don’t deserve fair sport, maybe rethink using all too real and common sexual predation against young women as a punchline for your ‘edgy’ closing joke.

No lengthy post on Twitter, in British English, is complete without someone forgetting that not everyone is American. This does however provide a rare example of someone receiving new information and accepting the correction. A great example to liberals and conservatives everywhere.

On the down side of these messages, Rowling-Galbraith is still hard at work writing or revising Hallmarked Man.

The up side is definitely the caption to the cartoon on the mug. Beneath a picture of a puritan man with a lit torch in his hand and a woman tied to a post and standing on a pile of kindling, the cartoon has the guy about to light up a lady’s world say, “Let me start by saying that no one is a bigger feminist than me.”