From "Trigger warning slapped on Harry Potter for ‘outdated attitudes’/Students at the University of Glasgow are also being warned about Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll and The Treasure Seekers by Edith Nesbit" (London Times).
Maybe college students need to be warned to move on beyond children's books.
Posts
82 comments:
Coleridge, mostly a moral philosopher and op-ed essayist, mocked "moral discoveries."
Up next on U-Gov Glasgow's University Radio 100 -
'Wet Ass Pussy.'
Rowling violated the first rule of social liberal club.
"Maybe college students need to be warned to move on beyond children's books."
LOL. Yes.
Ha! A pussy parade. Cats in hats.
So, using leftist logic, these are now banned books?
Anyway, clever way to get the masses to read them by telling them not to.
"Trigger Warning" - df: Those in need of a pacifier, a burp blankie, a safe space, and a gulag officer to arrest the guilty offender. How dare you!
While the triggered carve "Hey Fascist, catch" on their bullets.
Universities cannot die fast enough.
Move beyond children's books, you say?
Leftist college students hardest hit.
Harry Potter was the series that launched a 1000 ships.
Harry Potter started a lot of things that made people mad.
Maybe in the near future, copies of Harry Potter available in the EU will be mostly redacted, except for the parts that include Dolores Umbridge.
A professor teaching remedial math discovered that one of his college students did not know what a negative number was, and how to work with them.
I’m ready to take the whole of Gen-Z and start them over in kindergarten.
Back when the books hit the market - the Harry Potter series got kids and parents reading together. Oh no!
Leftists purged conservatives and religion from public institutions 50 years ago beause...?
The lefty's grandchildren either never learned about this or forgot why it mattered, and then reinvented rigid dogmatic moralizing with a left-wing woke coat of paint.
The true change leftists will soon stop trusting anyone over 30 and rebel once again. Conservative movements grow by adopting liberals who tire of change. Welcome Ronald Reagan. Welcome Donald Trump. Welcome Elon Musk. Welcome Tulsi Gabbard. Welcome JK Rowling. Welcome RFK Jr.
Serious Question for the UK..
Does the Bible require Trigger Warnings?
or do you just pretend it doesn't exist?
NOW, for the Kicker!
Does the Koran require Trigger Warnings?
or do you just accept that it's GOD's OWN WORD?
Alice in Wonderland is hardly a children's book. Lewis Carroll (ne CL Dodgson) was an Oxford maths professor. The book is full of allusions only adults would understand. Kind of like early Sesame Street. I could see a decent university-level course built around Alice and Carroll's other similar books.
Of course, Carroll also liked photographing young girls in various stages of undress. Which should make him a...hero? Villain? to postmodern academia. So hard to keep track - what party did he vote for? CC, JSM
Big Mike said...
..what a negative number was, and how to work with them..
Well i'd assume we'd want to work on that number's self image,
and help it understand its OWN identity.
WHO THE HELL ARE YOU?
To be dissing numbers and calling them NEGATIVE?
RACIST!
We all know this is about JK Rowling, not Harry Potter. That said, I'm not that familiar with the series, so can somebody point to what these lunatics consider "outdated attitudes, abuse and language"
People have been posting on X, that they are buying new copies of Harry Potter books; just to burn them..
JK Rowling's responce was: "Okay, do what you need to do"
(she gets royalties after all)
Face it. As a category YAF is just a very triggering enterprise.
I loved going to the midnight releases of the Harry Potter books.
My favorite memory, though, was sitting in Einstein’s Bagels with friends the morning after one of those releases. At the next table, a woman was sitting with her young son, who was already deep into the seventh book. She turned to us with this proud little smile and said, “We got it at midnight, and he’s been reading it ever since.”
It was so sweet.
Good story telling and Biblical morality = the Collective Universal Soviet left demand it be banned.
Thank you, Gilbar (9:03)
Rowling isn't anti-gay at all.
She is pro-Children. she is pro-female. She is anti child abuse. She is anti- men pretending to be women and bullying females in female spaces.
Oh no!
Self-loathing leftists adore Islamic males.
Trigger warning slapped on Harry Potter for ‘outdated attitudes’...
Sounds micro- or even mega-aggressive.
Lewis Carrol (Charles Dodgson) was a Tory.
"Outdated attitudes" eh? You mean like enthusiasm for NEW choo choos on a fixed track? Or excitement about the collective finally proving marxism can work without killing half the population?
Those two ideas were outdated last century. There should be a trigger warning on them
Sonny Bunch recently spent a couple of amusing paragraphs attempting to figure out why "The Wicker Man" (of all things) now sports a "historical attitudes" warning.
A big part of the problem is far too many people go to university, certainly in the US, and probably in the UK too.
Buwaya: "Lewis Carrol (Charles Dodgson) was a Tory."
Then deplatform the pedo! CC, JSM
Do people want to read cautioned books the same way they want to read banned books?
I recommend the annotated version of the Alice stories (available from Amazon through the Althouse portal) if you are interested in the political and social commentary in the books.
Proper modern approved leftist attitudes are.... Wet Ass Pussy.... and bearded trans men in the women's locker room undressing your young daughters. Get with it, prudes.
Yes the annotated Alice. Annotations by Martin Gardner, the Scientific American "Mathematical Games" columnist. Excellent. CC, JSM
Burning books releases all that nasty CO², plus VOCs, heavy metals, etc. Can't compost them, though some have tried that. Burning books is so Fahrenheit 451. What's a rebel to do?
1984 was just a book... but the UK has now made it a manual. You are 'subjects' over there folks... not CITIZENS... remember that. You have no rights.
I remember the amazement many years ago at the discovery that my older brother's college roommate was reading the same Narnia book as my 11-year-old younger brother, but "Harry Potter" is a cultural touchstone for under-40s. Remember janky government censor Nina Jankowitz and her Harry Potter themed musical? He love for Mary Poppins was even more well-known.
Weird. I always thought the Harry Potter books were just Lord Of The Rings for Dummies. In fact, I still think that.
"Gilbar said
Well i'd assume we'd want to work on that number's self image, and help it understand its OWN identity."
Well, I'd like to know the identity of the square root of a negative number. I think we've got to do something a little better than calling it "Imaginary." Talk about hurtful.
So what would be the warning for "The Gulag Archipelago" by Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn? A total emotional breakdown by the university censors and students forced to read what communism is really about?
I got zero warnings when I was in college.
Probably why I'm so screwed up today. Having to read outdated books like "Heart of Darkness" and "Huckleberry Finn" obviously warped me forever.
I couldn't find out which part of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone included "outdated attitudes." The Dursleys claimed there was no magic which might be outdated in Scotland because there are plenty of self-identifying witch covens there. But Harry Potter claims to go to school to learn to be a magician which is outdated throughout the United Kingdom because schools are not intended to teach a trade. So perhaps it's that. Inquiring minds want to know.
"Jupiter said...
Weird. I always thought the Harry Potter books were just Lord Of The Rings for Dummies. In fact, I still think that."
I always thought they were the rip off kids version of Unseen University of Prachett's Discworld. Very much bowdlerized.
On the matter of outdated attitudes, again the government is severed from the people. Dolores Jane Unbridge does not represent outdated attitudes, not by any means, yet she is more unpopular than Lord Voldemort among Harry Potter readers.
It seems that 60% of Charles Dodgsons (Lewis Carrols) photographs were deliberately destroyed. Makes one wonder what he was up to. He was a genuine pioneer in photography.
Maybe college students need to be warned to move on beyond children's books.
Thumbs up!
wildswan said...
"Well, I'd like to know the identity of the square root of a negative number. I think we've got to do something a little better than calling it "Imaginary." Talk about hurtful.”
I was going to post that its identity is simply i. But then I looked imaginary unit on Wikipedia (I know), which said that using i can sometimes be problematic.
But the leftists all get violent if you dare put warnings on graphic rape and sex stories in gradeschool libraries...
Saw the comment about “Alice” and maybe others not being children's books but I’d hazard that’s not necessarily the case. Students today don’t read anything like students back with many of the classics were written (Alice, LOTR, Grimm, etc), heck most don’t even read at the same level as students did when the first Potter book dropped.
My kid was born in 2007 but we’ve been blessed that I make enough to send him to a nice traditional Jesuit high school in Dallas, following private elementary and middle school (we live IN Dallas near an excellent elementary school but very low scoring middle/high schools). Starting when he was still in swaddles, I would read to him every night until he was out like a light until maybe 5th or 6th grade. I read him lay Seuss stories very early on and we even had a little Geisel artwork in his room. But at some point I was reading him Tolkien’s Hobbit and LOTR, Narnia but also Lewis’ fantastic Space Trilogy, classic Mark Twain (you have not read Twain to a kid until you have mastered high volume “n-word” replacement), the Potter Series and at some point, due to mutual space and astronomy interests, adult layperson astrophysics and astronomy books as well as more adult war and sci fi dramas such as Wouk’s 2 volume War novels (Winds of War. War and Rembrance) and Ender’s Game, the Hyperion Cantos and the first several Dune novels.
My kid just received his Congressional letter of nomination to the USNA and has also applied to other Service Academies, several feeder preps and Universities with ROTC programs. I’ll note that never did a push come from us about service- it’s a genuine drive of his to serve in one of the services regardless of admittance for school.
He’ll be extremely cognizant of trigger warnings in his future but thankfully it will be totally unrelated to any reading interests he has or will have in the future.
No correlations or inferences intended but I’m going to think that some of the “outdated attitude, abuse and language” he encountered had zero impact on his mental and emotional development and instead the critical and analytical that he has been taught, with a healthy dose of good ole parental involvement in extra-curricular 3R’s activities, have contributed to the case he is making for entrance to one of the academies: 1430 SAT, 4.0 GPA, BSA Eagle Scout and several years/hundreds of hours of community and conservation service through his schools and scouts. He’s a crack shot with a rifle on the deer lease as well, no trigger warnings needed!
@Phaedrus, congratulations on raising a fine son. Just make sure he also can do trig and calf and work with negative numbers.
(Yes, I’m sure he can.)
Weird. I always thought the Harry Potter books were just Lord Of The Rings for Dummies. In fact, I still think that."
I always thought they were the rip off kids version of Unseen University of Prachett's Discworld. Very much bowdlerized.
There is nothing new under the sun. No matter how derivative you may find these stories, Rowling writes a good stick, and many, many kids developed a love of reading from her books. Considerably better outcome, on my opinion, than, for example, my oldest's attempt to turn in a book report on a Captain Underpants book.
"It seems that 60% of Charles Dodgsons (Lewis Carrols) photographs were deliberately destroyed. Makes one wonder what he was up to."
Back in the 80's, I came across a collection of Dodgson's photographs in the University of Oregon Knight Library (I swear, I was researching something completely unrelated). It was a very large, hard-cover book in a landscape format, maybe 12" X 24". This was because the subjects of the photos were all reclining. They were extremely young girls, no older than six, on their backs but tilting towards the camera, with their rather elaborate, very adult clothing opened to expose their genitals. With big smiles. Really, almost a kind of pin-up format.
I was astonished then, and I am even more astonished now, thinking back on it. Apparently, the girls' parents were well aware of what he was doing, and some were present when the pictures were taken. I wonder if that book is still there? I certainly am not going to try to find out.
@gilbar, try solving this pair of equations without using imaginary numbers:
X + Y = 6
XY = 36
“But Harry Potter claims to go to school to learn to be a magician which is outdated throughout the United Kingdom because schools are not intended to teach a trade.”
In Harry Potter, you go to Hogwarts to learn how to do magic in order to become a well rounded witch/wizard. Yes, you do have to have the aptitude for magic. But it is a set of skills and disciplines to be mastered. You get a magical version of a classical education, more or less.
Maybe college students need to stop being treated like thumb-sucking toddlers.
wildswan said...
“On the matter of outdated attitudes, again the government is severed from the people. Dolores Jane Unbridge does not represent outdated attitudes, not by any means, yet she is more unpopular than Lord Voldemort among Harry Potter readers.”
Add in the unflattering portrayal of the MSM, too, with Rita Skeever being the worst example.
Remember when we used to make fun of historical figures who bowdlerized novels? Good times, man. Good times.
Rita Skeeter, not Skeever.
I thought it had been concluded that Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) was not, in fact, a pedo. Taking pics of young girls was just part of the culture... I mean, how many "artists" also painted nudes? Early days of photography were probably more art than not.
Plus: different culture, different times. I was shocked a year or two ago to be watching an episode of Poirot, and they had a scene with Poirot interviewing a female art student posing nude... in 1930s era England, and no one cared. Just a Brit culture thing, I guess.
Also: If they are banning Harry Potter, is anything by C. S. Lewis still allowed? Roald Dahl?
"Maybe college students need to be warned to move on beyond children's books."
Well, that would kill my plans of majoring in Muggle Studies and my planned thesis describing how it was Muggles who invented magic in the first place.
mindnumbrobot said...
We all know this is about JK Rowling, not Harry Potter. That said, I'm not that familiar with the series, so can somebody point to what these lunatics consider "outdated attitudes, abuse and language"
12/9/25, 9:09 AM
Yes, exactly this. I've read the books and watched the movies several times, and am not sure what 'outdated attitudes' they are referring to.
University faculties across the global are staring at outdatedness. Glasgow's warning about Harry Potter books is an obvious ploy intended to delay the spreading shadow of extinction that will soon engulf them.
"Maybe college students need to be warned to move on beyond children's books."
Maybe college students need to be warned that if they can't handle children's books, they're too emotionally immature to be in college.
And the same applies to college "professors"
Yancey Ward said...
"Well, that would kill my plans of majoring in Muggle Studies and my planned thesis describing how it was Muggles who invented magic in the first place.”
I would recommend you try to get Hannah Nikole-Jones as your faculty advisor.
mindnumbrobot said...
We all know this is about JK Rowling, not Harry Potter. That said, I'm not that familiar with the series, so can somebody point to what these lunatics consider "outdated attitudes, abuse and language"
I am familiar with the series, and I can't figure out what they have to bitch about in the first novel. So I asked Grok:
Racial and Ethnic Stereotypes: The goblin bankers at Gringotts (e.g., Griphook) are often criticized for evoking antisemitic tropes
Classism and Gender Norms: The Dursleys' suburban middle-class disdain for "abnormal" people (like wizards) reflects 1990s British class snobbery. Vernon's bullying of Harry and Petunia's neglect highlight rigid gender roles (e.g., women as homemakers, men as providers), which can feel dated in discussions of family dynamics.
Ableism: Casual references to characters or situations implying physical or mental "defects" as punchlines, though subtler in the first book.
Offensive or Derogatory Terms: Mild slurs or insults like "freak" (used by the Dursleys toward Harry and his parents) or casual fat-shaming/body-shaming toward characters like Dudley or Hagrid. There's also classist language (e.g., sneering at "common" people) and potentially outdated phrasing around magic/queerness (e.g., "queer" as in "strange," which has reclaimed connotations today).
Jesus wept
They want dumb kids. Dumb kids pay more. College is the best scam supporting our insanely easy lifestyles that older Americans are running on the younger crowd since government borrowing.
Older people have been and are living high off the hog and will be dead when the bill these kids have to pay comes due.
Just "prove" Harry Potter was created by Rowling's Nigerian lesbian maid and the stickers can come right off.
“ Maybe college students need to be warned to move on beyond children's books.”
Hee…yeah, assign “A Clockwork Orange” and watch them melt down.
“ Big Mike said...
@gilbar, try solving this pair of equations without using imaginary numbers:
X + Y = 6
XY = 36”
Many intro algebra courses today simply teach that there is no solution.
"Hop on Pop": family violence
"One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish": colorism
"Horton Hears a Who!": sizeism
"How the Grinch Stole Christmas!": religious intolerance
"The Cat in the Hat": glorifying a cult leader
"Green Eggs and Ham": cholesterol
The only one I hadn't heard of was Noughts and Crosses which appears to be a 6 book series and a play. Doesn't look like one I would enjoy though.
So I guess Rudyard Kipling is right out, then.... and oh my, what about "Huckleberry Finn"?
“ Big Mike said...
@gilbar, try solving this pair of equations without using imaginary numbers:
X + Y = 6
XY = 36”
So I get 3 plus or minus 3 times the square root of -3
Do I pass? :-)
I have to agree with the University here. In the first Harry Potter Book; students are told at the beginning of classes that there are areas of the campus off limits to students, including parts of the library. Students are punished for violating these warnings. Ultimately, but not in the first book, we learn that the students that violated the warning are the only ones capable of protecting themselves when the school ultimately fails to protect them, but that's in a later book. So yes, the first book contains outdated material that may be harmful.
I wonder what they think of Philip Dru: Administrator by Edward House. Probably love it. Wilson used it as a how to manual.
John Henry
So I asked Grok:
Racial and Ethnic Stereotypes: The goblin bankers at Gringotts (e.g., Griphook) are often criticized for evoking antisemitic tropes
Classism and Gender Norms: The Dursleys' suburban middle-class disdain for "abnormal" people (like wizards) reflects 1990s British class snobbery. Vernon's bullying of Harry and Petunia's neglect highlight rigid gender roles (e.g., women as homemakers, men as providers), which can feel dated in discussions of family dynamics.
Ableism: Casual references to characters or situations implying physical or mental "defects" as punchlines, though subtler in the first book.
Offensive or Derogatory Terms: Mild slurs or insults like "freak" (used by the Dursleys toward Harry and his parents) or casual fat-shaming/body-shaming toward characters like Dudley or Hagrid. There's also classist language (e.g., sneering at "common" people) and potentially outdated phrasing around magic/queerness (e.g., "queer" as in "strange," which has reclaimed connotations today).
Back when I was in college (actually before that, when I was in high school), the issues with "stereotypes" and "cultural norms" in novels and other works from previous times were what we students, as readers, were supposed to figure out, analyze, deal with and comment upon. It's called "learning."
I think this is the course. There's an undergrad version also.
It's a bit more than just reading children's books.
@Greg, test it yourself. Without loss of generality, let X = 3 + 3 times the sqrt(-3) and let Y = 3 - 3 times sqrt(-3). Do X + Y = 6? (Yes, because the two imaginary terms cancel each other.) Does XY = 36? Exercise left to the reader.
@Big Mike:
(a + b) x (a - b) = a^2 - b^2
a = 3 -> a^2 = 9
b = 3(3^.5)I -> b2 = 9 * 3 * -1 = -27
9 - -27 = 36
Assuming I can still do math :-)
Are the rumors true, about the Glasgowian students actually being seen Kipling?
Post a Comment
Please use the comments forum to respond to the post. Don't fight with each other. Be substantive... or interesting... or funny. Comments should go up immediately... unless you're commenting on a post older than 2 days. Then you have to wait for us to moderate you through. It's also possible to get shunted into spam by the machine. We try to keep an eye on that and release the miscaught good stuff. We do delete some comments, but not for viewpoint... for bad faith.