a trans girl friend send it to me and we were mutually of the exact same two thoughts
1 - this did not happen, this is "after I came back from vietnam" level shit
2 - if it DID happen, Rowling's social skills are so eroded she genuinely thinks she made a point being weird and uncomfortable
she’s fell off. i don’t think harry potter has the timelessness of a lot of what we now call young adult books but the first few were decent enough boarding school novels that got bad and her fiction writing was awful but it keeps getting worse
I know her books were really important to a lot of people, and very genuinely I do not mean to shit on them. That whole phenomenon hit just a little bit late for me but if that had been different I would very likely been super into it.
But her writing has really never been very good.
It's just good enough that people who haven't read a lot of good writers won't think about it too much. For me it was the first book series I ever gave up on. People hyped it so much, yet it was decidedly average with some way too annoying and grating plot points.
Yeah, it feels like someone is authentically creeped out by her obsessive theories of mass sexual pathologies.
That's a normal reaction, like when Elon Musk starts talking about populating the earth with white babies. Just freak shit. You want to immediately leave the room.
it's possible but I can't shake the feeling that this is another story where she heroically and bravely stood up to the TRA agenda even when it was personally dangerous to do so, complete with the "This is how far it's gotten, I am not safe" radfem paranoia and anxiety
She'd write him as more patronising her if she wanted that. Or as aggressive. The way this sounds exactly like someone being effectively sexually harassed and unable to escape, while she clearly has no idea that's what she's admitting to, has the ring of telling on oneself to me.
Again, I don't disagree, but terfs are always fabulists. Literally any degree between "made up" or "really happened" is as bad as binaries too. I don't discount any step of the process.
Yeah it sounds like, "I was being really weird about trans women and my straight male friend was dying waiting for me to talk about literally anything else."
I mean, she went way past even being weird about trans women! "TELL ME ABOUT YOUR FRIENDS' SEXUAL HABITS!! WHY ARE YOU ACTING LIKE THIS IS A WEIRD THING TO ASK??!! IT IS VERY TELLING THAT YOU CLEARLY DON'T WANT TO TALK ABOUT SEX WITH ME!!!!"
Yeah it's basically a nightmare conversation. And then she blames the poor dude for being bummed out about it. "Oh I guess MEN can't handle me screaming at them about cross dressing for 45 minutes."
And then later they go on to say “everyone I talk to says this is a huge problem”.
Yeah, because your weird obsession has driven everyone normal out of your life.
I 1000% think it's #2 and that this dude, like anyone else would have, was just silently wishing that this manic lady would just leave him the fuck alone.
1 - guy was freaked out when Rowling started spouting TERF bullshit? That sounds entirely probable to me.
That she failed to properly identify the source of his discomfort? Also likely.
That's she's terrible at reading people? I'm not surprised.
I can more so beleive it's real because when biggots make up stories, the person they talk to is always a caricature of whoever they dissagree with. In this, the guy simply stopped talking to her after she went on a disturbing tangent.
I had to go look it up to see if it was real because it reads so much like parody.
And so many replies to her are TERFs recounting similar anecdotes of people being uncomfortable as they won't shut up about their obsession. Each and every one as oblivious to what the situation actually is as JKR.
Sounds like some dude out there tried to be like, "I don't know JK maybe I don't get it but people should be allowed to do what they want" and then she launched into the most unhinged rant ever while he silently thought "I should definitely not have talked to her about this."
lol exactly
like she clearly weirded this person out and she's touting that as proof of basically everything except the real cause: she was being creepy and weird!
I cornered a friend at a social event and ranted about trans people and how 100 out of 100 sexhavers with men would agree with me and he got all uncomfortable … because of the trans people not because of me.
given how trans hate makes you isolate there's no way it wasn't someone forced to find a diplomatic way out of a conversation they didn't want to have.
When I read that, I kept thinking of the bit in Dr. Strangelove when it noticeably dawns on Group Captain Mandrake that General Ripper is a) deadly serious and b) there's no escape.
I think if it were someone who worked for her, they wouldn't let her know about their political views.
Her kids are in their 20s. Wonder if she cornered one of their friends...
