I think you kind of need to compartmentalize it - a little. Harry Potter was written by a woman on welfare, who had no money, and was struggling. She wasn't highly educated, and she wrote basically about class issues in much the same way as Ronald Dahl.
Dahl is no saint, he was an ass at times and not at all nice to his wife. Kind of misogynistic. But he wrote brilliant class satire.
I can kind of see why she has issues with transgender - she's not educated. And she's from a background that sees things a specific way. Transgender is really hard for people to wrap their head around. She's also just a writer. And has a right to be an asshole.
I've had to explain transgender to co-workers who had a similar take to Rowling. One co-worker that I like a lot, said something highly derogatory about transgender. And I responded, "Can you imagine what it would be like to be in a body that does not fit what you feel inside? You think like a man, you feel like a man, but you are in a woman's body? I mean, I get how hard that is to understand, but you see yourself as male and yet your body is female..."
People are very judgemental and hypocritical - none of us are saints, and we all have our ingrained prejudices and we all like to demonize people who disagree or hurt us. I listened to this song today, entitled "Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven, But No One Wants To Die by Ellie McEwen." I found it HERE. It kind of says it all.
I read the Harry Potter books - are they feminist? No. They are a boy's coming of age story and what hit me about them at the time I read them is that Rowlings has problems with women. She has a kind of ingrained sexism true of people of her generation. Women fit in a specific role for her - and she has issues with them not being in that role. Same-sex relationships - no issues. But she has a very binary view and somewhat sexist view of gender.
I think demonizing her the way so many people on twitter and DW have - have unfortunately give her more power than she deserves. She's just a novelist. That's it. A novelist who wrote a lot of popular children's books. Kind of overrated children's books...but eh..mileage varies.
no subject
Dahl is no saint, he was an ass at times and not at all nice to his wife. Kind of misogynistic. But he wrote brilliant class satire.
I can kind of see why she has issues with transgender - she's not educated. And she's from a background that sees things a specific way. Transgender is really hard for people to wrap their head around. She's also just a writer. And has a right to be an asshole.
I've had to explain transgender to co-workers who had a similar take to Rowling. One co-worker that I like a lot, said something highly derogatory about transgender. And I responded, "Can you imagine what it would be like to be in a body that does not fit what you feel inside? You think like a man, you feel like a man, but you are in a woman's body? I mean, I get how hard that is to understand, but you see yourself as male and yet your body is female..."
People are very judgemental and hypocritical - none of us are saints, and we all have our ingrained prejudices and we all like to demonize people who disagree or hurt us. I listened to this song today, entitled "Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven, But No One Wants To Die by Ellie McEwen." I found it HERE. It kind of says it all.
I read the Harry Potter books - are they feminist? No. They are a boy's coming of age story and what hit me about them at the time I read them is that Rowlings has problems with women. She has a kind of ingrained sexism true of people of her generation. Women fit in a specific role for her - and she has issues with them not being in that role.
Same-sex relationships - no issues. But she has a very binary view and somewhat sexist view of gender.
I think demonizing her the way so many people on twitter and DW have - have unfortunately give her more power than she deserves. She's just a novelist. That's it.
A novelist who wrote a lot of popular children's books. Kind of overrated children's books...but eh..mileage varies.