(source: dagny-hashtaggart @ tumblr.com)I feel like J.K. Rowling did a real double whammy of incalculable damage to the discourse by becoming a vocal TERF. On the more obvious side, she introduced a bunch of her followers to TERFism, and has served as a prominent (if often inarticulate and self-important) voice for transphobia. On the other, she’s created the perfect storm of “actually what media you consume and enjoy is the most important determinant of your moral standing, much more so than how you treat the people around you or who you vote for”-flavor magical thinking among her opponents. I feel like we were just getting over all the consumption-as-morality shitstorms of the mid-20teens and then we relapsed hard over her bullshit.
I don’t even like Harry Potter and it still creeps me out.
(source: dagny-hashtaggart @ tumblr.com)Also, as a point of clarification, since tumblr’s vaunted reading comprehension skills tend to fizzle out a bit around statements about the morally permissible and the morally obligatory: I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with people getting soured on Rowling’s writing because of her politics. Frankly, I think that’s pretty reasonable. What I’m saying is that regarding disliking her work as a moral obligation incumbent on every decent person is creepy and fucked up.
yeah. the damage Rowling has done is undeniable and her actions are reprehensible, but i also detest the way people act about Harry Potter now. i also agree that everything surrounding it seems to have, at least in the corners of the internet i choose to inhabit, revived the moral purity police assigning morality to which media you choose to consume. i am saying this even as a trans person who is wary of harry potter's fanbase: the media you consume does not dictate your morality or how "good" you are as a person. watching the right tv shows and reading the right children's books cannot and will not magically make you a better person, and people who choose to read Problematic things are not magically transformed into universally vile people.
christ. the older i get the more i become allergic to this childish nonsense. the words are wasted on far too many people for my liking so i don't really expect this tiny journal nobody will read to sway anyone, but it feels better to say these things even just to myself. it can't really protect me directly from other peoples' scorn for my Problematique interests, but it does ground me in reiterating how ridiculous people can be and how much they seem to think their own interests are beyond reproach.
i don't know. i don't even want to care about any of this Moral Purity Police garbage honestly, it's just something that keeps coming up and forcing me to care as people become increasingly reactionary and hyperconservative. (because if anyone had any doubts, that's all Media Consumption as Morality really is. hyperconservative Christianity and The Irreversible Taint of Sin seeping into fandom. again.) and you can't even discuss it with any nuance without people clutching their pearls and making up a Guy to be angry about in your argument about how you secretly support the Evil Bad Things in the media or that the creator has done or whatever. like yeah i do believe people should pirate the harry potter books if they want them at this point or something similar and people who loathe harry potter now are generally justified, but also people pirating harry potter books isn't inherently more harmful than people writing danganronpa fanfiction or drawing sexy Bowsette or whatever. (and yes, even as someone who both loves Nintendo's IPs and also actively despises everything to do with danganronpa i am bringing both of these up pointedly.)
i'm just so tired and so done with most fandoms because of bullshit like this creeping into everything. it's so hard to find any kind of solace even in fiction with other fans when people act like this over shit. FF14 players act like this about WoW too, and will recoil in horror if you even suggest their emotional support multi-billion dollar game company square-enix has ever done anything wrong. i'm so done with this shit. just leave me alone about it. i can't even block these people fast enough, there's always one more i wasn't aware of whose litany against the evils of watching the wrong tv show i have to experience before reaching for the block button. ugh...