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JK Rowling prefers two years in jail over using correct pronouns
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this post was submitted on 19 Oct 2023
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Using the correct pronouns is an issue of respecting others, and seeing Rowling doubling down on her smug and bigoted views in public is a revelation, because during a re-read, you start seeing these views reflecting everywhere in her writing. It's a deeply prejudiced and irrational world, and it stayed that way all the way to the ending with nothing in that world really changed.
I think being an adult is realizing that I don't love Harry Potter as much as I used to, because (I can't believe I'm saying this) I've finally outgrown it. It's time to move on.
Being a grown-up is painful.
A big part of that is context, I think. When we were children, we didn't have the knowledge or developed brains to recognize these things. And the lossy nature of our memory leads us to skew towards remembering things in more idealized manners, probably because it is easier to recall things as "concentrates" of reality. The parts that we, as adults, recognize as problematic don't tend to be remembered as significant because, when making the initial memories as children, we lacked the context to flag them as such.
On other hand, this realization frees you in a way and may potentially inspire you seek out or create another piece of art to love (and potentially share with others). While I disagree with a significant section of the population and believe that art is inseparably and indelibly linked to the artist, it is important still to be kind to our past selves and not judge them for what they didn't know. That still doesn't entirely soften the blow of "breaking up" with a piece of art that one has loved but, it can help with accepting it.
It's also joyful, terrible, wonderful, enraging, sorrowful, and countless other feelings and possibilities. I think it's beautiful, even if not always comfortable. And the uncomfortable bits provide contrast to the positive, letting them seem to shine a bit more brilliantly. Though, that could also be the near-pathological optimism that I adopted to cope with depression in my younger years.
I think we did a pretty good job on that recently. :)
If you're referring to the recent film, I think that you did indeed and hope your colleagues and yourself are proud of it. Nice to have a film that's a bit more light-hearted (without being too saccharine) and, especially considering the thread topic, that embraces a diverse set of people in the cast and supports universal agency.
The world is fine (if flawed and sometimes generic). The real issue is there isn't a single good character in them. Hermione is alright, with her desire to free the elves and generally no accepting of the status quo. Even she seems to stop caring about this after they're free and capable of doing something about it. There's not a single progressive person in those worlds. There are only not totally evil (but accepting of banal evils) people. Being against Hitler doesn't make you a good person, it only makes you not a literal Nazi.
Neville is the only somewhat progressive character. It's just a transformation from loser to hero, but at least he never tossed his core values.
All adults in the HP universe are terrible people, the only adult with a lick of integrity is McGonagall.
A broken clock is right sometimes. I don't believe never being good it says anything about the author, the author just forgot to fuck him up..
The first few HP movies around the holidays don't hurt nobody!
Unless a certain someone you know never stops reminding you that he was in thoses movies...
Does Daniel keep pestering you about it too? God he's such a drama queen.
If someone doesn't want to respect others who cares?
Well, as others in this thread have said, misgender him back. Give him a taste of his own medicine.