The worst of us ruin it for everyone else. It’s just like how everyone reasonable hates microtransactions in gaming, but enough unreasonable people love them that microtransactions are still more profitable than traditional income streams so they’re shoved into every game.
Reasonable people didn’t want to pay for the deeply mediocre Hogwarts Legacy, but enough dumb motherfuckers ruined it for the rest of us by making it one of the most popular games the year it released.
Note: I only know it’s deeply mediocre because I pirated it so I could critique how bad of a fucking game it is without putting money into JK Rowlings pockets. Seriously, I do no understand the love for that fucking game, it’s narratively and gameplay-wise a pile of shit for real.
Pure nostalgia injected into the first parts of it from what I heard. It was many people’s fantasy to travel to that world, from both casuals and terminally online people alike. Mediocrity doesn’t matter when the presentation fully exploits deep personal connections people have with the material.
not up to date… what’s the haps with gaiman?
overview: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_Gaiman#Sexual_assault_and_misconduct_allegations
some reporting: https://www.vulture.com/article/neil-gaiman-allegations-controversy-amanda-palmer-sandman-madoc.html
note: content warning, NSFL
thanks for the links!
Harry Potter is so ubiquitous that most people who consume it do so without really knowing much about the author beyond their name and then there’s a decent chunk that don’t care because it doesn’t affect them and they think it’s culture war stuff that doesn’t matter.
Making people care about things that don’t directly affect them is always the hardest task.
Doesn’t season 2 of the sandman come out in a couple weeks? Doesnt really seem like he’s being boycotted.
I can’t tell if I’m allowed to be excited about it because I love Sandman but Gaiman is a creep.
I love the sandman. I have yearned for an adaptation for years. Then we get one and it’s actually good. Not good for comic book TV. Actually GOOD good.
And then the show goes and gets himself and the show cancelled because he’d a fucking sex creep. Fuck you Neil.
Also, fuck you Amanda fucking Palmer. It took a while before we found out, but you’ve been complicit in this fucking stuff for ages.
Honestly, I’m developing massive trust issues, I’m starting to reflexively fear liking stuff because I’m pretty sure one of the people involved with it is going to turn out to be a massive predator any minute now.
As someone who loves the graphic novels, the show just didn’t do it for me. I don’t think any show could do it justice.
It wasn’t bad or anything, but it was lacking something that made the books so special imo
While still a bad person, what Gaiman did limited to a number of people, not a number of countries, also his work is actually good, not half-baked garbage only held up by nostalgia.
it’s easy to complain about death of the author when you don’t care about their work.
but even you do, even just enjoying it a bit, it’s a bit harder.
you can pirate it, you get to enjoy it and they get no revenue from it. but then engaging with the content is free advertising, so just watch it and keep it to yourself.
i’m a believer that we should just consider the works forfeited to the public domain and let the author’s name be forgotten to time, let the future think of it as we think about german fairytales.
we should bring back old copyright limits of 14 years. or probably less, like 5 years.
then it wouldn’t matter at all what an author says.
Kudos for Tom Lether for putting all his songs into the public domain so it doesn’t get bounced around for 70 years after his death.
If you’re an adult and you’re still a fan of Harry Potter, you should try reading some novels written for adults.
I know this sounds snarky, and I guess it kind of is, but it is true…
You’re obsessed with books written for literal children.
deleted by creator
Harry Potter wasn’t very good, but if you read it as a kid and got invested in the setting it’s easy to forget that the writing was kinda shit. The argument that it’s “for children” is a (possibly unintentional) misdirection, but following it up with a recommendation to actually good fiction is valid and worthwhile.
Meanwhile, I’m a grown ass man and watched Gravity Falls a few weeks back, and it was fucking good. Good fiction is still good even if you’re not the target age range.
I think I’m agreeing with you.
deleted by creator
I stand by my position of the harry potter books being bad, but I will concede on two points:
-
it’s an opinion not a fact.
-
it’s not that important to the larger discussion of rowling being a shitty person who’s shittiness shouldn’t be supported.
I would also like to say that my criticism of the quality of the books is NOT an attack on the fans of the work (at least it’s not when I do it, can’t speak for anyone else). It is ok to like bad writing, it would be hypocritical of me to say otherwise as I do enjoy reading a lot of amateur writing from time to time. To further this point, I’d like to say that there are aspects of rowling’s creation that I actually do like. The setting of the wizarding world is quite interesting, and I’d love to dig through lore regarding the characters and the history and just how the setting got to where it is by the timeframe of the books.
Actually, speaking of the wizarding world and of crappy amateur writing, I think imma go read Thinking in Little Green Boxes again.
deleted by creator
-
I mean, I am. Bronies are an embarrassment.
Put Marvel and most of Star Wars also in the same category.
Alan Moore agrees:
“I haven’t seen a superhero movie since the first Tim Burton ‘Batman’ film. They have blighted cinema, and also blighted culture to a degree,” Moore said. “Several years ago I said I thought it was a really worrying sign, that hundreds of thousands of adults were queuing up to see characters that were created 50 years ago to entertain 12-year-old boys. That seemed to speak to some kind of longing to escape from the complexities of the modern world, and go back to a nostalgic, remembered childhood. That seemed dangerous, it was infantilizing the population.”
Yeah, it’s not wrong. Escapism is a way to hide from reality, even if only for an evening.
A) many harry potter adults are still proud that they read a book once when they were kids, they haven’t read much since.
B) “Kids” literature can be for everyone, just because they are kids, doesn’t mean it has to be shit. The Hobbit was written for kids and it is among my favourite books. And the little prince is still amazing and a must read for every adult who never read it.
I really hate when “Stuff made for kids” is an excuse to make shitty slop. kids deserve and need quality literature.
Ever since I can (abusive ex didn’t allow it), I’m reading my kids at night, and we’re reading good stuff, we done: The Hobbit, Psalm for the Wildbuilt (not aimed at kids, but I think everyone needs to read it, even children), the Wild Robot series… and they love it.
PS: I really hate when children are treated as a target for slop.
I mean, I still love American Gods, Good omens and Neverwhere. I just stopped recommending them to people.
They’re great books, but I just can’t enjoy them anymore. American Gods was my favorite of the three.
I still enjoy his writing, but I’m not sure how to engage now. I want to separate the artist from the art and let the legal system do its thing as a separate thing and I don’t know what ‘right’ looks like as a reader
tbh my feelings seem to be guiding things before anything like rational morality does - I feel cognitive dissonance about his art because of the association with him as a rapist, and that’s enough for me to ditch his art without having to justify it as a moral necessity that others must do as well.
I can’t separate artist and art. I feel guilty and angry. But I also don’t want to. Money to them is money to their deeds. Paying for anything Harry Potter is paying for anti-trans movements. Paying anything Gaiman goes to the “fix your image” firm he has hired. Then I start thinking that firm is probably out there with messaging convincing people to separate art from the artist.
Heres what you can do:
Encourage people to pirate his shit
Remind people what he did. In detail.
Start with me! I know he did… Some rapey shit? Pro ably wizard flavored?
Here’s the sanitized AP reporting: Woman’s lawsuits say sci-fi author Neil Gaiman repeatedly sexually assaulted her
Here’s the full account from the victim (ALL the trigger warnings): “There is no safe word” - Vulture
Wow that’s…
What strikes me is how boring the abuse was. Like, boiler plate horror. Maybe this does make me think less of him as an author, not just as a person.
Well I haven’t looked into the 8 other women. But at least one of the others was absolutely raped, and another was paid off in exchange for an NDA
Right but like ‘call me master’ DUDE
Fucking do better. Not even be less a piece of shit, but a more interesting piece of shit.
Like ‘i hired a PI to learn the song you had your first kiss to, then spent a week practicing, so just as the acid and molly kick in…’
Or, idk, a choir? Some chanting?
Absolutely agree with pirating. Even buying second hand will keep money from going to their pockets/estates.
Buying used copies and pirating his stuff so he never sees a penny, and talking about what a pile of shit he is. I do the same with David and Leigh Eddings. Who locked children in cages in their basement and beat them, among other things.
Holy shit, what the fuck? I think I read one edding’s book and didn’t think much of it, but what the fuck?! Where’s my interrobang button!?
Yeah, their books are a decently good romp overall, but some of their ideas about how to ‘properly discipline’ a child definitely leak through from time to time.
bury his name, rip the story and setting out of his creepy hands and reclaim it. Write fanfiction that specifically shits on rapey shitheads.
Well ultimately you didn’t do anything wrong, he did. So proceed how you wish. If you read some of his work nothing changes and that’s the same if you choose not to.
The thing that really pisses me off re: Good Omens in particular is that it took Pratchett out with him. And we don’t get any more of the TV show because of it, either. Even though it’s only half-Gaiman, it got ruined anyway.
american gods, good omens, sandman.
He isn’t entirely gone, the second season of The Sandman is about to release on Netflix in a few weeks…
ick, I wouldn’t be surprised if that fails commercially … I mean, I watched the first season before all this stuff came out and I’m certainly not returning for a second season - I doubt I’m alone.
Fuck these fuckers. Also thanks for their contribution to our culture. But again: fuck them
no thanks for their contributions, take the contributions but don’t thank them for it.
You made this? nope, you’ve forfeited your right to claim authorship of it, it’s ours now, get fuckedI wonder if there is any real relationship between influence and immorality, or if it’s just a salience error (those with influence are more likely to be scrutinized and immorality brought to everyone’s attention, and we just don’t notice the people who aren’t a problem while we do notice those who are).
deleted by creator
gaiman is at least actually brilliant and well-studied. rowling is a hack and her work sucks.
but yes, fuck them both. they are monsters.
Thing is Gaiman pissed off all feminists with the SA allegations so of course he has disappeared from the online world because the cross over between Neil Gaiman readers and SA-appologists is very small.
Whereas a sect of the feminists support her gatekeeping opinion that the only thing that can describe if you’re a woman is being born with a cunt. This one very vocal audience is not unified.
On top of that Rowling is more mainstream than Gaiman is and the general public is more willing to ignore the mudslinging world of gender politics and not get involved if it means more content from a popular mediocre scribe.
GERM’s is a better term I’ve seen around lately, stands for Gender Exclusionary
RadicalRegressive Misogynists.Edit: thank you for the correction!
oo, I didn’t know about this, thank you - GERM is much better than TERF, lol
I prefer the term “Genital Worrier” or more accurately because they only really worry about one type of transgender person “Penis Panickers”.
Irk? Keeps them nicely sectioned off from being associated with feminism too.
I believe it was coined by Kate Nash for her song - https://youtu.be/q2MoQJP-PhA
I’ve heard the R standing for Regressive since there’s nothing rad about being a bigot
You’re right, that’s what I’ve seen too, and I’ve seen ‘reactionary’ used as well.
Lmao, in my haste to share the new thing I confused the ‘R’ with the one in the original acronym.
I’ve also seen FART being used. Feminism Appropriating Ridiculous Transphobes
yeah, agreed - Gaiman’s fans are far less willing to tolerate his SA, HP fans are more general public and transphobia is more socially acceptable than SA.
Basically this post is essentially saying, “it’s a shame transphobia is so acceptable to people”
Also, I think that the fact that Harry Potter was a big part of people’s childhoods made them more reluctant to abandon it when the creator turned out to be garbage. See: Nintendo.
Bigotry, rape, and stick drift. Yup, totally comparable.
Jfc I missed this one. Is it bc we glorify them? Or do they get where they are bc they’re always like this deep down?
Partially it’s that we glorify them, which gives them opportunity. Plus, decades of fame goes to their heads.
Partially, it’s also that average nobodies are abusive shit heads too, we just don’t write articles about them.
Yeah… I think this is just the water we swim in now.
Is what’s new, just visibility? Like all these Gen x and boomer rock gods and comedians that have aged poorly… If David Gilmour was never on social media, I’d never know Roger Waters is a Nazi. If victims weren’t connected in community, would we know about Diddy et al?
I feel like visibility yeah but also the way we label behavior is in the middle of being updated. Aside from legit sex pests, you might have people like Louis CK who genuinely believed they were creepy yet ultimately benign.
40 years ago they would have been, if not right, then less out of line with the general morality.
I don’t know… I think we’re in a weird time right now. And I feel like fundamentally our thinking on sexuality and consent are missing some revolutionary thinker. Like we should not have progressed to this point historically without figuring this shit out but coincidentally all the people who could have captured that zeitgeist diet off in potato famines or something.
Anyway. Just a feeling. Not real.
If anyone is looking for some
goodfucking amazing books by an awesome and genuinely fun and good natured dude, check out Jason Pargin, he is awesome and not problematic and his books are all bangers, and he also enabled and actively supports the careers of many other super awesome and creative people. Also, listen to Bigfeets.The tiktok guy?
The very same
If we’re recommending authors, my favorite is Jasper Fforde. He wrote this book called Shades of Grey (which unfortunately came out around the same time as that book) that’s about people who can only see one color (sorry, colour), and the hue that they can see determines their social standing. I have been waiting over a decade for the sequel and he just released it (Red Side Story) last year. My brain has been bad at letting me read books, so it sits on the shelf but I loved the first one.
I really hope there’s no problematicism around him (as that’s the subject of the thread), but reading his books it’s hard to imagine there could be.
I also love Jasper Fforde, and it is because he was guest of honour at a Jodi Taylor event that I also got into her books. She writes a series about time-travelling historians which I would recommend.
She also writes at a much faster pace than Fforde does these days, so that’s a plus. I was never half as annoyed waiting for GRR Martin to write A Dance With Dragons as I was waiting for Red Side Story!
ooo, thank you for the recommendation. I look forward to it. i was recently gifted Grady Hendrix’s The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires. I know they say don’t judge a book by its cover, but i judged this one by its title and d(-_☆).
The last three books that weren’t technical manuals i tried to read, i got 100 pages in and realized i hadn’t retained anything. working on it, but i’m not exactly excited about reading so much. goddamn grad school broke my brain.
Thats a really cool concept, thanks for the rec, I’ll check them out.
I’ve been wanting to read his books for a while. I have quite a few that I own and still need to read, though. Any particular book recommendations from him? John Dies at the End? Zoey Ashe series?
There really are no wrong answers. The JDATE books are cosmic reality bending lovecraftian horror, and the Zoey books are a Bladerunner-esque sci-fi about a future you can see from here. The first thing i read of his was John Dies At The End, and I think that is a really good place to start.
not problematic
I love the guy but I’m sure you could find an instance of him being problematic. Like his pen name, David Wong, is questionable given he’s not asian.
Stephen King is Scots-Irish and he used the pen name Richard Bachman despite not being German.
there is a long and respected history of mocking germans.
Mocking Germans is okay but using a traditionally Chinese name isn’t?
Yes, that aligns with my understanding of the word problematic.
Why is that questionable?
Stolen Valor
Stolen valor refers to the act of falsely claiming military service or awards that one did not earn, often to gain respect, money, or other benefits.
?
How does being or not being Asian plays into this?
“Stolen valor” can be used in a humorous way beyond its original meaning as someone pretending to be a veteran. For example, there’s a funny Youtube video about a tradesperson encountering a hipster wearing Carhartt workwear and using the phrase “stolen valor” to describe him.
Ok, so it was a joke?
English is not my first language so I’m asking for clarification not trying to be snarky.
I like to think my comment qualifies as clarification. I’m not trying to be snarky either.
OK, maybe a little snarky.
He stopped using it for that very reason, and took accountability. People are allowed to self correct, if he understands the problem with what he did and course corrected without being called out for it what would throwing more stones accomplish?
Edit: Also, not a big enough deal to say you shouldn’t read his books. Especially considering the narrative reason as to why he was using it.
I’m not throwing any stones, yo. I’m just pointing out you can’t exactly say he’s not problematic. I have a tolerance for problematicity so it’s of no bother to me.
The word problematic is kind of weasely used this way. The pen name had an in-universe rationale that made sense and was funny because of the incongruity. Merely alluding to the existence of ethnicity isn’t “problematic” in itself.
I’m not the on who brought the word problematic into this conversation. But I bet you if I put a poll on, say, tumblr, asking about different potentially problematic things, “pretending to be asian” would score highly on the problematic scale.
He wasn’t pretending to be asian, though, the book John Dies at The End makes that very clear and gives a silly in universe reason for the now dead pseudonym. It really was not problematic, even at the time of it being used.
Then I will rephrase – asking tumblr “is it problematic for a white person to go by an obviously Asian name as a pseudonym,” I feel that even phrased that way they would still say “yes.”
I don’t really use the word ‘problematic’ in the social justice sense myself because it’s incredibly vague, but if you’re going to specifically use the word problematic and claim that Jason Pargin isn’t, then I feel that it’s a pretty cut-and-dry “yes that was ‘problematic’” scenario.
Just a few comments up you said
He stopped using it for that very reason, and took accountability. People are allowed to self correct, if he understands the problem with what he did and course corrected
Now that you were pushed on it a bit you’re saying
It really was not problematic, even at the time of it being used.
Something about this interaction feels really dishonest.
Was there a problem he needed to take accountability for or not?
If he was still using the pseudonym and making excuses to keep using it, sure, but I’m of the opinion that once someone understands what they have done wrong and took the opportunity to learn from it and do better there is no more wrong doing. There are, of course, exceptions to this, but a pseudonym that someone came up with in their 20’s and had the wherewithal later to say, “That’s not ok, I need to stop doing that” and stopped doing that for the right reasons is pretty far from a reason to call them problematic, especially when it wasn’t a decision made under any form of duress and he has made no attempt at defending his choice to have used that pseudonym and stated it was not ok for him to have used that pseudonym.
Edit: Also, it was used in a narrative context of the main character trying to throw off his identity, if They’re looking for David Wong then they wouldn’t assume it’s the burnt out white dude.
I’ve heard him on a bunch of podcasts and keep meaning to try his books. I’ve got a copy of this book is full of spiders, I’ll have to give it a go.
Where’s a good place to start with his stuff?
John Dies At The End was his first book and where I started. It’s also neat to watch his writing style evolve. I’d say John Dies or Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits, those are the first books for his two ongoing series, if you’re feeling more into horror or sci-fi.
What podcasts? Are you a Dog Zone 9000 fan by chance?
Great, cheers I’ll try John dies at the end.
I’ve heard him as a frequent guest on gamefully unemployed and small beans podcasts. They’re focused on movies, he’s full of interesting takes.
Oh John dies at the end is in my top ten all time favorites possibly even #1 and I don’t even like horror.
That whole series is as good as it gets for me, hands down. John, Dave, and Amy are the mother fuckin’ GOATS.
Edit: The Zoey Ashe and The Suits series is every bit as good if you’re into sci-fi, and Black Box of Doom is a fantastic stand alone story set in the modern world. Neither are connected to the reality or events of [UNDISCLOSED]. He’s also currently working on the next book in the JDATE series which will release next year.
hp was a big part of my pre transition life when i was in the closet. i hate jk so i dont buy new things but i still do reread my existing books. leaky, pottercast, and starkid were the first places i fit in.
but i dont actively seek out pro rowling hp fandom tho. fuck rowling.
I think a lot of us trans girls are in the same situation. I learned to read on HP books, and Hermoine was a deeply important character to me growing up 😅 It’s hard for me, but I have gradually moved away from the series as it increasingly becomes associated with Britain’s Top Transphobe.
same! i also got into chris colfers land of stories which is infinitely better too (and he’s a better person too!)
Dunno if you know dimension 20 and their Misfits & Magic mini-series, but it was basically a satire of Harry Potter, really attacking some of the unquestioned tropes in that series.
Anyway, this is a beautiful clip of Erika Ishii, who is NB, at the start of the series, saying what they think of TERFs:
i LOVE d20 and erika! they’re amazing <3
evan kelmp
Yayyyyyy Erika my beloved 🥰
You see, the difference is… Supporting Gaiman makes you seem like a rape enabler… And anything related to rape is bad.
You want to discriminate against gay/trans/black/brown people? It might be distasteful, but it’s not universally considered bad. There’s lots of people out there willing to vote a Nazi into the white house and cheer him on as he breaks the law to deport anyone and everyone he wants to just because they’re “not from here” (or they think they’re “not from here”).
See, they’re
notthe same thing.Yeah but Agent Orange was convicted of sexual assault too, so that argument doesn’t hold.
Maybe, but he had already spun the fake news narrative to his deciples, so it was easy for them to hand wave all of the convictions away as fake news based on absolutely no evidence.
Given the relative intelligence of each set of followers, I’m not surprised that they could do the mental gymnastics to disregard such a verdict.
Meanwhile, I’m not even sure Gaiman has been convicted, but he’s being treated like he’s guilty by the public, so here we are.
I just haven’t bothered to keep up to date with his situation because, though I previously enjoyed things with his name attached, I’ve never been “a fan” so to speak, of the man himself. I neither liked, nor disliked him. Now I have reasons to dislike him. IDK. I’m just some guy.
deleted by creator
Removed by mod
if you think the issue is that she “has an opinion” you’re not even trying. there’s a crazy amount of content available where the controversy is explained in excruciating detail by trans people and our allies. it literally could not possibly be easier for you to inform yourself on this matter without arbitrarily demanding yet another person spend time and effort to loop you into a conversation you don’t actually seem to care much about.
So you are saying that rape and having an opinion on jewish people is the same? Or what is the reason for wanting to cancel Hitler? Sometimes people (also famous ones) will have different opinion than you. Learn to accept that.
Removed by mod
Thats my point, neither does the terfqueen
Removed by mod
it literally could not be easier in TYoOL 2025 for you to open a new tab and find out those details. your own willful ignorance of the facts is a poor argument.
In case you’re genuinely curious https://youtube.com/watch?v=Ou_xvXJJk7k
lol, did you seriously just self-own ?
Removed by mod
Speedrunning Godwins law today
Supporting Gaiman is supporting a rapist; it will negatively impact a couple people directly.
Supporting Rowling is much worse.
such incredible insight, Rowling as an anti-trans activist is engaged in a genocidal movement which has of course a much larger scale of both number of people harmed and the severity of that harm
I hate Rowlings and her stupid and dangerous ideas, but I don’t think it is genocide? Or is it some pro iseaeli stance that makes you say that?
I’m asking because I think it’s important to not use genocide for eveything bad because it just waters down the words meaning, and in the end when there is a “real” genocide people will compare it to lesser evils.
Not saying you’re wrong, but I would like to know the reason behind you saying it!
Genocide is technically a process and a sliding scale. It exists by degrees. It may seem hyperbolic to classify some actions as genocidal particularly when they are slow or the number of deaths do not seem absolute but it is still genocide.
What defines a genocide via international Convention is any of five acts intended to diminish the population of a cultural community. None of these have to be a totality of the group it can be only in part. The important thing is victims are targeted because of their real or perceived membership of a group, not randomly. The five acts of genocide are :
-
Killing members of the group
-
Causing them serious bodily or mental harm
-
Imposing living conditions intended to destroy the group
-
Preventing births
-
Forcibly transferring children out of the group
While a number of countries are full five for five in regards to trans people you only really need one to qualify. Things like the lack of reporting of Trans deaths, the removal of services needed by the group including medical care or critical mental health resources as is happening with the closure of LGBTQIA+ specific crisis support in the US, the labelling of Trans people as pedophiles or removal of children from the custody of supportive parents into state custody by labelling gender affirming attitudes as “child abuse”, the forcing of trans people to endure security risks because of laws that often get them arrested for following them such as bathroom bills… All of these are genocidal measures they just aren’t fast acting.
While it may seem like the point of the word is to be splashy and attention grabbing that need not be the point of it. The cultural expectations that genocide need only be wartime type measures of systematic elimination is a disservice to a lot of other genocides that are happening globally.
-
First of all, yes, I think some people find it controversial to use the term “genocide” to refer to what’s happening to trans people. Part of the debate about the term “genocide” is whether it can apply to non-ethnic groups, for example. I would argue the spirit of the term does apply to any group, but some people disagree. I’m not sure why it’s so important for the term to be limited to ethnicity, I tend to think these arguments are not in the spirit of validating or recognizing very real oppression and violence intended to completely eliminate a certain group.
The motivation to use the term “genocide” is that the anti-trans movement has explicitly stated as their goal the total erasure of trans people:
During his speech on Saturday, Knowles told the crowd, “For the good of society … transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely — the whole preposterous ideology, at every level.”
Knowles subsequently claimed that “eradicating” “transgenderism” is not a call for eradicating transgender people and demanded retractions from numerous publications, including Rolling Stone.
Erin Reed, a transgender rights activist and writer, tells Rolling Stone that it’s an absurd distinction. There is no difference between a ban on “transgenderism” and an attack on transgender people, she says: “They are one and the same, and there’s no separation between them.”
“We are not gonna rest until every child is protected, until trans ideology is entirely erased from the earth. That’s what we’re fighting for, and we will not stop until we achieve it,” he said.
Specifically, the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention has described the anti-trans movement as genocidal:
The Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention and Human Security condemns the anti-trans agenda of the second Trump Administration and warns Americans that the recent spate of executive orders, which are in line with a genocidal process against the transgender community that has been emerging in the United States for over a decade, are meant to pave the way for greater state repression against all individuals and other groups in the future.
…
The Lemkin Institute believes that current anti-trans hysteria within the government is meant to serve three purposes within a wider genocidal process. First, the Executive Orders constitute the paper marginalization and ‘paper persecution’ of an identity group that has recently gained rights and greater acceptance in order to lock in evangelical support for the Trump administration. Second, the executive orders create a fictitious ‘cosmic enemy’ that will justify radicalization of government in general, leading to ever-more power for the executive branch; and third, the executive orders, over time, aim to normalize the destruction of identity groups by desensitizing the public to state-sponsored persecution of people based solely on their identities.
Taken together, the Trump Administration’s executive orders related to trans people would effectively destroy, if fully implemented, trans people as a group, in whole, to summarize the text of the Genocide Convention. The orders begin the process of removing a trans presence from collective life and preventing trans people from existing as themselves, forcing them back into invisibility and isolation. This attack on trans identity is reminiscent in the US context of the Native American Boarding Schools, where the goal was to “kill the Indian … and save the man.” Not only would the effort to deprive trans Americans of gender affirming care constitute a form of torture (and medical malpractice) with terrible mental health repercussions, but also such measures are a common phase in genocidal processes and generally lead to ever greater persecution.
Trans people in Florida prisons are being forcefully detransitioned and forced into pseudo-science conversion “therapy”, I don’t think it’s hyperbolic at this point in time to say the intentions of the anti-trans movement are genocidal, and I think the movement is largely succeeding in their goals.
So far necessary medical care has been denied to trans youth in many states, and the U.S. Supreme Court recently ruled that discrimination against people on the basis of “gender dysphoria” is legal. We already have data that the ban of gender affirming care (and in some cases, forcing physicians to detransition trans youth) has significantly increased the rate of suicide attempts among those trans youth.
We are also seeing tools used in previous genocides, such as “social death” where the concept of being trans is eliminated from the law and thus on a social and legal level trans people cannot “exist”. Laws in some states have already achieved this (which results in trans people never being able to fix their birth certificates or update their legal documents, for example), and now the federal government is operating under executive orders that establish the same (making it impossible for trans people to have accurate passports or federal documents, for example - but the policies impact much more, including forcing male TSA agents to pat down trans women and vice versa).
So the methods and goals are all genocidal, the only problem is that trans people as a group are not a national or ethnic group, so this would fail a narrow definition of genocide that way.
It’s just utilitarianism. Utilitarian generally seems to piss off a lot of lemmites though; I thought people would have a more negative reaction to it here.
(Btw I agree the number of people harmed is larger but I think it’s debatable whether or not the (per-person) severity of the harm is larger.)
utilitarianism: for when you need the worst possible take delivered in the most insufferable manner using the least amount of critical faculty to answer the questions nobody asked.
All that true and it works ™
Now we just need people to listen to our hot takes and we’re set.
funny thing is the last time i bothered thinking about utilitarianism was when i was reading about the zizians using it to justify murdering just whoever they pleased. i’m not convinced it works, it’s a school of philosophy for stupid pedants who want to feel smart and justified in whatever they already think.
well the zizians were obviously insane, nobody likes them. The rationalists disowned them, just like they disowned FTX.
As a moral philosophy, I am not certain about utilitarianism. But outside of morality, if you’re going to have preferences, you might as well do the math.
the anti-trans movement’s achievements like taking away gender-affirming care have directly been shown to result in increased suicides, as far as I know Gaiman’s actions have not directly killed anyone, while Rowling’s advocacy does directly support a movement that results in deaths - I think the per-person severity of harm when a trans person self harms, attempts suicide, or succeeds in suicide (not to mention when anti-trans bigots rape, torture, and murder trans people) are all worse AFAIK
It’s true that Gaiman’s actions haven’t directly killed anyone, but I’m not sure there are enough victims to definitively say that getting raped by Gaiman would cause less propensity for suicide than Rowling’s advocacy against trans people. But… I suspect you are right.
yeah, I agree with you - the harm is severe, it’s just with such a small population we can’t show the concrete harm the way we can with a trans population where deaths are already happening (but that doesn’t diminish the actual harm to Gaiman’s victims, which I would say is extreme).
deleted by creator
You have scope insensitivity. What’s worse, one person being raped or one million transgender people being denied civil rights? A typical bigot is less harmful than a typical rapist, but JK Rowling is not a typical transphobe; she’s many orders of magnitude worse.
deleted by creator
you seem like the kind of person who would let the trolley run over five people.
deleted by creator
If you’re going to be deontologist about it, I can understand why you’d think you don’t need to multiply the scope of JK Rowling’s impact. And I can understand why you’re ok with letting the trolley kill 4 more people than it needs to. Your morality is self-consistent, merely anathema to me. So, yeah, “I just don’t agree with you.”
But – maybe you don’t need to mock me as though my common and standard understanding of the trolley problem is somehow idiotic. “Lemmy.ml everyone! A place where they’d willingly choose to kill 1 person to save 5 others.”
deleted by creator
Does buying Gaiman’s work after he’s dead still benefit him or can I separate him from the art at that point? I don’t wanna support him, but I do wanna read his work someday
Just dont buy it… his work is great but why give any more money to him OR his estate when there are way simoler options.
Just pirate the books and read them now if you want to read them but don’t want to give him money. Don’t feel like you need to pass a purity test when it comes to your reading list, even more so when it comes to books he only co wrote like Good Omens.
pay someone to print you an “illegal” copy, or to get you a DRM-free e-book copy.
deleted by creator
Sail the high seas.
Buying Gaiman’s work after he’s dead won’t benefit him, but it could have the second-order effect of giving the impression to people that people broadly don’t care about boycotting rapists. It’s a lesser sin than supporting him now.