I'm reading "Listening to ‘The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling’ is exhausting work/A podcast promised clarity from Harry Potter author on how she feels about trans issues. But it falls to the audience to fact-check her" by Monica Hesse (WaPo).
Journalism is a business for sticklers. Reporters are discouraged from calling anyone transphobic, or homophobic, or racist, because doing so requires knowing what’s in their hearts when the only thing we can know with certainty is what comes out of their mouths. So what I can say is that what comes out of her mouth, or goes onto her Twitter account, has a fuzzy aura of harmful rhetoric.
Rowling might indeed believe she has transgender friends. But taken as a whole, her body of communication on the issue, such as the things she chooses to retweet and the provocative language she uses while doing so — cumulatively, it sucks. Her communications have implicitly conflated being trans with being a predator.... The communications have implied that many trans men are confused, and that some trans women are actually just dangerous men in drag....
Rowling’s tweets are exhausting. They are exhausting because they require constant vigilance, because they are not screaming out obvious bigotry, a la 'I hate trans people.' Rather, they are whispering a curated plausible deniability, the kind that purports to be just asking reasonable questions with simple answers....
Hesse has got herself twisted up the fuzzy aura! She needs to be a stickler. Journalist demands! So she can't just say that Rowling is homophobic. She has to keep looking for evidence, but cagey old Rowling won't just come out and confess. Oh! For the good old days, when you could torture the witch into saying it clearly. Instead, Hesse must exhaust herself, picking through the twisty wispy strands of Rowling's tweetings.
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64 comments:
some trans women are actually just dangerous men in drag....
So, we are supposed to ignore reality then? Cause that is an obvious, easily observable fact.
To our esteemed hostesses, this Monica Hesse is one of your people, a third rate wanna be intellectual, twisting language to propagandize the gullible. Keep avoiding the red pill, BAMN.
Just a side note. I'm listening to these as well and have NEVER heard music used so well on a podcast. The production values on these sets a new standard.
They are attacking J.K, because she tells the truth, and Progressives CAN'T handle the truth, as we can see by the way they attack any city that doesn't agree with their sickness.
The naming is wrong in the first place. A transwoman ought to be a woman pretending to be a man. Otherwise it's impossible to keep track of the narrative.
"As some warn victory, some downfall
Private reasons great or small
Can be seen in the eyes of those that call
To make all that should be killed to crawl
While others say don’t hate nothing at all
Except hatred"
Busy Day?
Busy? I just spent four hours burying the cat.
Four hours to bury a cat?
It wouldn't keep still.
Oh - it wasn't dead, then?
No, no - but it's not at all well, so as we were going to be on the safe side.
Yes, how frustrating that Hesse can't find any actual evidence to support the conclusion that she had so clearly formed before she started. What's a poor journo to do, change her mind?? Really, now.
“Her communications have implicitly conflated being trans with being a predator.... “
This is the “dog whistle” BS they always use. They intentionally misconstrue statements to make them appear as if the speaker is conflating trans or homosexual people with predators. Because they want you to shut up.
Haven’t there been multiple news reports recently of gay couples sexually exploiting their adopted kids ? So clearly SOME gay or trans people are predators. Are there straight predators? You betcha. And gay and trans ones too.
Facts.
The link appears to direct to a blank Althouse page instead of WaPo…
The link doesn't work for me. I was hoping to see comments as sometimes even WaPo readers are willing to call bullshit on the narrative the paper is pushing and if trans isn't one of those issues yet, I expect it soon will be.
Journalists are often the last to know, which gives them some value as bellwethers.
"Reporters are discouraged from calling anyone transphobic, or homophobic, or racist"
That's news to me. See unvarying Homeric epithet "Scott Adams' racist rant".
Correlation is not causation but all things political are correlational. Black women tend to vote for...? White men tend to vote for...?
Correlations form the logical root of both stereotypes and functional HEURISTICS. Humans must make rapid decisions without 100% information, so they use crude and probabilistic rough rules. We all do this. We simply don't have the time, information, or capacity to execute detailed micro analyses, so life is managed through best guesses.
Now, forget about transgendered persons and focus on the history of gay male relationships and actions toward children. Let's revisit the ancient Greeks and pederasty. Let's revisit centuries of the Roman Catholic church and the huge financial settlements a generation ago regarding the sexual treatment of altar boys by Catholic priests, and how the church systematically covered it up. They knew in the 1970s. They let the priests continue and moved them to new locations to sweep events under the rug. Eventually, the church had to sell assets/real estate to pay the boys.
Next, review the similar history of the Boy Scouts of America and how gay scout leaders gained access to underage boys...and how the BSA covered it up for a very long time.
Next, consider how heterosexual males sometimes treat underaged girls. Consider male sex tourism to Thailand, the Philippines, Brazil, etc. Review Jeffrey Epstein and Prince Andrew. Consider that Andrew sold an expensive Swiss chalet to pay off one underaged victim who could produce a photo.
Bottom line: Be pragmatic about the correlational evidence for true sexual predators amongst us and be pragmatic about the correlational evidence for the unjust abuses of straight men and women, gay men and women, and transgendered people in other contexts. Use functional, moderate heuristics and avoid fantasies of utopian perfection unless you wish to fail.
If you demand perfection you will fail. Wake up wokesters!
The eternally offended Trans people demand the punishment of all who don’t believe in their charade. Even Scott Adams nd J K Rowling are attacked for not believing them. Sorry about that.
Reporters are discouraged from calling anyone transphobic, or homophobic, or racist
If only.
Is a "fuzzy aura" the same thing as an "emanation from a penumbra"?
Asking for a friend...
ha ha ha
mind cops are the worst
Rowling, like so many others, needs to get off of twitter. Writers are especially vulnerable to the lure of the pithy comment, which is then completely misunderstood. Complex thoughts deserve complex formats. Her fantastic article arrived after she'd laid down the hot take, cementing forever the wrong opinion of her.
As if monica would recognize journalism
Elizabeth the First said, "I have no desire to make windows into men's souls." Ms. Hesse obviously has no such qualms.
Journalism is a business for sticklers.
Bullshit.
Journa.host is a Mastodon instance for professional journalists. The "sticklers" according to this author.
I was accepted there after submitting my journalistic bona fides. 3 weeks later I was kicked off for posting that Brandon had had his head opened twice and that Hilary had had a stroke in 2012. No reason was given until I protested my banning and was told that my post was "disinformation". When I sent them a link to the YouTube video of Biden talking about his head being opened and as NYT link to Hilary's stroke, they responded that "Yes, that was true but I had implied that they had suffered cognitive impairment and that there was no evidence of this" Thus my post was disinformation.
Some sticklers.
The person who booted me and told me this Evan Urquhart who seems to be the enforcer. His day job seems to be comments editor at Slate and he runs a website called assigned.com providing "Daily coverage of anti-trans propaganda."
In other words, he seems to be a professional disinformationist.
Some sticklers.
John Henry
Beatification of The Other is just as bad as demonization of The Other. In both cases the person doing the generalizing diminishes the identity and agency of human beings.
"Listening to ‘The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling’ is exhausting work"
It's always exhausting when other people don't fit your preconceptions.
Darkisland said...
Journalism is a business for sticklers.
Bullshit.
I had the same thought, but in reality they're sticklers for The Message.
The communications have implied that many trans men are confused, and that some trans women are actually just dangerous men in drag....
Many??
Some??
And, this Isn't true..HOW???
"Reporters are discouraged from calling anyone transphobic, or homophobic, or racist" unless the "anyone" is of a different political persuasion. Then it is mandatory.
Thee is none so blind as he who will not open their own eyes.
Rowling’s tweets are exhausting. They are exhausting because they require constant vigilance, because they are not screaming out obvious bigotry, a la 'I hate trans people.' Rather, they are whispering a curated plausible deniability, the kind that purports to be just asking reasonable questions with simple answers....
I think by "vigilance" she means "favorable (to me) interpretation." As in the snippet quoted by another commenter, this journalist's version of fact-finding makes the word "implicit" do a whole lot of work.
I also liked "Rowling may think she has transgender friends."
What does that sentence reveal about (a) the reporter's state of mind on this topic? (b) transgender people's truthfulness, in the mind of this reporter?
“ Just a side note. I'm listening to these as well and have NEVER heard music used so well on a podcast.”
Interesting. I was just listening to the new episode and thinking the music was badly done.
J.K. Rowling: What did I say?
Monica Hesse: I don't like your tone, young lady.
The whole "Trans" thing is an example of mass hysteria. I've seen obvious trans people in the store. Six feet tall and size 12 shoes in a dress. A friend of mine, when he was a first officer for American Airlines, flew with a captain who was a transgender. That was years ago. Nobody made a fuss about it and life went on quietly. I've read Deirdre McCloskey's book, "Crossing" It's kind of sad. He was wearing his wife's clothes before he decided to go the whole way. At least these are adults and make the decision as such.
The mutilation of kids is unconscionable.
Ouch! Only listened to the first two - now really want to do the third one. That they are putting so much effort into it might make it easier to go too far.
She misspelled "slackers".
"some trans women are actually just dangerous men in drag...."
It's an iron rule that if any group is declared beyond questioning, all of the bad people will claim membership in that group.
Losing the lede in the weeds.
Searching for a viable construct to social distance from the transgender spectrum and a novel albinophobic symbol adopted by the politically congruent ("=").
Let's Face Facts!
people like JK Rowling are OPPOSED to current dogma.. That MEANS; Those people are committing Genocide!
Opposition to current dogma is Not Just Wrong.. it is EVIL! ALL People are REQUIRED to believe current dogma!
Something I figured out several years ago is there is a significant number of people (who generally learn toward one end of the cultural-political spectrum) who do not react to what people say and do. They react to what they *imagine* those people say and do. And that explains why some people react in ways the rest of us think are unhinged, unstable, and (please excuse me for using this term) hysterical.
This journalist clearly is one of these people. The entire edifice of her article is constructed of what she *imagines* Rowling thinks, based on her wildly subjective interpretation of what Rowling says/writes/tweets.
These people are not dealing with reality. They are dealing with their own nightmare projections. And frankly the rest of us are sick of this nonsense.
Why can't Rowling just throw herself into a river so we can see if she floats?
Below are the first two sentences in the most liked comment on the article:
"The attacks on Rowling, including this one, are oddly personal. Rowling is no DeSantis, who is doing actual harm."
Does that seem familiar?
"a fuzzy aura of harmful rhetoric" = dog whistle?
It's a lowly pursuit, deciding whether the insult "homophobe" applies.
What's important here — and I'm saying this after listening to the first 4 episodes — is whether Rowling has an important issue to bring to public discussion or whether there is in fact good reason to see it as something not worth the aggravation of talking about openly.
As I see it, her issue is the female body, not the human mind. The human mind is entitled to freedom, including to believe things that may not be true, and deciding how you feel in terms that you understand as gender or sexual desire belongs to you and not to the government, to the majority, or to expert opinion.
Some of your beliefs are about your body, and these beliefs might be accurate or inaccurate, but that's still your mind.
I think Rowling is concerned with the experience of growing up and living amongst human beings while having a body that is female and therefore subject to physical domination, abuse, and distinctive suffering. She wants, I think, to be able to put that female-body-experience ahead of other concerns or at least to be able to speak about it clearly and separately without having to include trans women.
Hesse and others are essentially saying that the experience of trans people is so important that Rowling ought to give up her interest in being about to isolate the question of the female-body-experience. Rowling seems to believe that she deeply understands and cares about young girls going through puberty and feeling confused and vulnerable in the world and she's clearly worried that girls will be drawn into escaping from the difficult ordeal by opting into masculinity.
Rowling thinks the danger of young girls wrongly understanding their own suffering is a great emergency because of the powerful medical procedures that not only change the body permanently — causing infertility and (is this true?) the likelihood that one will never have an orgasm — and because other problems — such as depression and anorexia — may go untreated.
She said in Episode 4 that she realized she had to speak up or she could not live with herself, that she saw a special moral obligation.
Hesse ought to take all of that seriously, not go around and around over whether the particular insult "homophobe" applies!
men in drag
Trans/social. Maybe trans/gender with a homophobic orientation.
The politically congruent ("=") want to abort the baby, cannibalize her profitable parts, sequester her carbon pollutants, and have her, too, thus the progress of psychiatric dysphoria under a depressed banner and Pride alienation.
Rowling could put this whole witch controversy to bed by volunteering for the dunking chair. Does she float or does she sink? Her anguished accusers are desperate for the opportunity to burn her at the stake, but she's just being a poopy head about it all. Be a sport and get in the chair.
Is anyone else as amused as I by "Constant vigilance!" Because that is the refrain of Prof. "Mad-Eye" Moody in the later Harry Potter books. (OK, technically for the fourth book, when he first appears, he's represented by an impostor on the other side, but in later books he's the genuine Moody, until he gets killed off.)
Althouse, the argument about orgasm is one I have heard from Andrew Sullivan re: MTF trans. It might well be so in the other direction as well. Messing about with one's own genitalia is, IMO, unlikely to end well in either direction.
This is off-topic (apologies in advance) but regarding the picture at the head of this topic: bull thistles are EVIL and should all be destroyed.
Carry on.
There's a reason The Streisand Effect was named after a woman.
"Journalism is a business for sticklers." When anyone reads a sentence like that they should realize that everything that follows is either another lie or absolute nonsense.
"Journalism is a business for sticklers."
Yeesh, what's that awful small in the newsroom?
Oh, it's that dead concept in the editor's closet.
"Journalism is a business for sticklers." When anyone reads a sentence like that they should realize that everything that follows is either another lie or absolute nonsense.
"a fuzzy aura of harmful rhetoric" sounds like crap you make up when you can't argue facts.
"Is anyone else as amused as I by "Constant vigilance!" Because that is the refrain of Prof. "Mad-Eye" Moody in the later Harry Potter books."
Hesse talks about that in the article.
"Listening to “The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling” is exhausting. It’s exhausting because it requires constant vigilance. And it’s exhausting because the phrase “constant vigilance,” I’ve just realized, entered my own lexicon via Mad-Eye Moody, a beloved Harry Potter character. Because Rowling is a brilliant and beloved storyteller who is astonishingly good at entering lexicons, manipulating language and telling fantasy stories. It’s how she became famous. It’s why events surrounding Rowling these past few years have felt like a godawful mess."
ThICEtles!
"It’s why events surrounding Rowling these past few years have felt like a godawful mess."
"We thought she was one of us!" she cried, despairing.
Sounds to me like Hesse is caught in the JKR vortex.
Maybe it's time for a new acronym: RDS.
Rowling Derangement Syndrome.
"We thought she was one of us!" she cried, despairing.
[Politically congruent ("=")] we can rebuild [her]
We have the technology
We have the capability to make the worlds first [trans/neo] man
[JKR] will be that man
Better than [she] was before
[Progressive], [Fabulous], [Masculine]
Don't call her, Surely.
Six Million Dollar Trans/Neo-Man
Just Kidding, Rowling
I'm an admirer of Jan Morris and Wendy Carlos and they aren't harming anyone. Telling young girls and boys that their unhappiness stems from a physical fact that can't really be changed instead of helping them deal with physical facts and reconciling to them is evil and should be condemned. Allowing men to invade women's privacy and impinge on their safety at their whim is wrong and should not be allowed. I bow to Ms Rowling for her courage and commitment.
Althouse asked: "because of the powerful medical procedures that not only change the body permanently — causing infertility and (is this true?) the likelihood that one will never have an orgasm."
It's absolutely true. Puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones are guaranteed to sterilize you if taken for any length of time. When puberty blockers are given such that the individual never reaches a certain stage of puberty, sex organs never develop and the ability to orgasm is lost forever. Fun fact: children like Jazz Jennings who had plenty of hormones early in their lives never develop an adult-sized penis. So when they attempt surgery to create a "vagina," the usual conversion (by inversion) of an adult-sized penis is impossible. The surgeons create a fauxgina by taking part of the stomach or intestines. The details and the severe risks of complications are the stuff of nightmares.
They expect that children will be able to make a mature decision to forego ever being able to have a sex life, or to have children.
You're right about the music!!! Just tried to listen to the third episode and couldn't stick with it. It's become invasive and distracting, whereas before it helped me not get tired of just talk, talk, talk. Too bad.
People who I never thought read anything have read the whole Harry Potter series and know a lot about JK Rowling.
The only thing I knew about Monica Hesse is that her novel was in the remainders bin at the dollar store for years.
I did look her up just now and she sounds like a vindictive harpy (or whatever the non-gendered, non-binary version of "vindictive harpy" is).
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