Rowling and Cancel Culture: Why She is Just Plain Wrong - ShanniiWrites

Rowling’s tirade against trans rights and cancel culture is highly irresponsible. Here’s why she’s wrong and how her words are causing so much damage.

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Oh here we go…I love Harry Potter, but I hate this…

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Incredible, Shannii. Thank you for writing a blog about something so relevant in writing and mass-media today. I loved reading about your own reflection on the topic too. (wink)

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JK Rowling? Pfft, now I see what the JK in her name means…

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I’m surprised she even said the things she did even if she didn’t know it was controversial, I guess she is aware that she won’t be the one suffering from it. :eyes: This blew over rather quickly in the media, compared to other dramas like the Jophrey Polaris, Tatiana and Jum Curl thing.

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Yup

I feel like all of this, since the whole Harry Potter is gay thing was all for attention, to get back into the spotlight. Sure, it created controversy, but what was that controversy about? Harry Potter, something she created…bad press is still press, you have the people talking about you.

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At first I thought she had just not explained wat she meant properly.

Until she started to dig a hole and stuff got worse

Harry Potter wasn’t the gay one haha. It’s Dumbledore. He’s supposed to be in love with Grindelwald but they’re too chicken to show it on the big screen, as if there’s something wrong with being gay :roll_eyes:

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JK Rowling? Wasn’t she the same one who tried to convince us Dobby was Chinese, Hermione was black, and Dumbledore is gay for f-cks sake? And said only woman get their periods? Yeah no…

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we love using diversity for clout and brownie points :grin::ok_hand::gun: (using the Nick creepy smiling emoji sorry)

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Wait Dobby’s Chinese?

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I was wondering the same thing…

that’s what she said on Twitter…

About her hiding Dumbledore and Grindelwald’s relationship, I originally thought that the way she made it implicit helped convey the passion they had for each other. In Crimes of Grindelwald, the actors did an amazing job conveying the intimacy through looks and speech, which would make even more sense since the relationship in question is over. It’s an unpopular opinion -and I’m not up to date with what she has said recently, so I completely understand if people presume that she’s just hiding it based on other things she might have said.

I’d love to discuss this, though I’m not sure this is the right thread to do so, since it’s not exactly the main focus of the article (it’s only mentioned). But what do you think ? In my opinion, non-explicit relationships can have a more powerful impact than explicit ones in conveying profound love and intimacy -regardless of the sexual orientation of the characters. Then again, one might argue that being explicit about gay relationships is particularly important nowadays in order to promote acceptance.

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I think that’s on topic! I’m gonna reply as soon as I get on my laptop!

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Rowling cracks me up. So my school is filled with gay and trans people and stuff and we had a day in my lit class where we were playing celebrity Jeopardy. Its basically the game but all the contestants are celebrities and they’re incredibly stupid so the questions are incredibly stupid. I played JK for that and one of the questions was, “What was Richard Nixon’s occupation” and I said “He co-wrote my book!” and then someone else said, “That actually makes a lot of sense” lmao.

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That sounds like a great school!

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Tbh I don’t really like cancel culture. I think it’s good to call out people (when they’ve actually done someone wrong) but I think that there are more important things to bring our energy to. Especially since the people being “called out” don’t even get a proper conversation! People are just like - “FROM THIS ONE MESSAGE YOU SENT YOU’RE A TERRIBLE PERSON!”. And then the whole internet goes against them… like why can’t we use that energy for good? Why are people like this?

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In terms of implicit relationships, in some ways I agree with you. In particular, I agree with you when it comes to heterosexual relationships! However, as a result of film standards and censorship up until the 1990s, almost all homosexual relationships in mainstream film were implicit relationships! So, I think that seeing an explicitly gay relationship in a family film – and one that has so much global popularity – would have been a great step in the right direction for gay representation in film.

Even more than that, though! I have a few issues with the way it was presented. I feel like I wouldn’t have had a problem if they were actually more subtle about the nature of their relationship. The problem was the very obvious attempts to erase it for the sake of homophobic people, in my opinion!

I think that the line “they were like brothers” really undermines the representation that Dumbledore provides, even when he follows it up with “closer than brothers”. On top of that, the whole creating a McGuffin ends up being the reason why Dumbledore can’t face Grindelwald undermines their sexuality even more!

If subtlety was what they were going for, I would have much rather seen Dumbledore admit to Scamander that he just simply can’t face Grindelwald, not that he has some weird blood promise where they said they’d never hurt each other. If he’d said something like “It’s too much for me” or insinuated that Grindelwald reminds him of times he’d rather forget, that would have been a lot better. It would have left it ambiguous for people who couldn’t take the whole homosexual thing, but also been enough to nod to the fact that they were gay.

But instead, they give him another reason why he can’t face Grindelwald and imply that is the only reason (he’s fine fighting Grindelwald once the token thing is destroyed). They’re erasing their relationship, in my opinion! You don’t see Dumbledore ever coming to terms with the fact that he has to fight him or anything. It just undermines the whole them being gay thing. Especially when Rowling releases a statement about them having an “intense sexual relationship” afterwards. If that’s the case, I want to see how that impacts Dumbledore, even if subtly!

Also, Rowling has done a lot of things that have actively harmed the LGBTQ+ community of late. The whole attack on the statement “people who have periods” and saying that only women can have periods. The fact that she has a “trans” character (someone who’s actually a cis man but dresses up as a woman to kill victims) as the murderer in her recent book. The tirade she went on about how trans people supposedly hurt cis women and put women’s spaces at risk. It’s disgusting

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