I guess all the twitter drama around the author matters less to the real world. It’s impressive to see how a vocal minority can completely distort what is happening offline.
Yeah, and the fact that people basically can’t talk about this game without mentioning it got boycotted because one of the people who makes money from it is a massive piece of transphobic shit is a small step forward all on its own
In that sense, it worked. Let’s face it: The people who don’t care about the author’s raging bigotry were never going to be convinced regardless, but there were a lot of us who didn’t even consider playing it because of the TERF.
Anecdotally, everyone I’ve talked to about it doesn’t care. They don’t like she’s a TERF and some even condemn her for it, but every single person I’ve talked to separates the world of Harry Potter from her. It basically has a life of its own and they couldn’t care less about JKR now, that’s what I’ve been able to surmise of people’s view of it now. It’s like having racist parents but not being labeled as one because you’re a separate entity.
I’m a big gamer, and was a massive HP fan. I did not buy the game, or even consider it, specifically because of JKR’s bullshit.
I may be in the minority, but I guarantee I’m not the only one in this boat. So now you’ve talked to someone who cares, if you count this as talking.
And just to say a little more, no I didn’t crusade against the game, nor do I villainize people who bought it and enjoyed it. I do think it’s possible to enjoy art without liking the artist. Hell, my favorite book series of all time is the Ender’s Game series, and Orson Scott Card is probably just as bad as JKR, though maybe not quite as famous/public about it.
But I can’t bring myself to buy it. I’m trans, and her rhetoric, and how public it is, has been specifically harmful to me, directly. But that’s just me. I won’t tell other people how to live their lives or enjoy their free time, so long as they’re not actively hurting others. And no, I don’t consider buying a game where one person who is profiting from it might spend a sliver of that profit on anti-trans BS to be actively harming others, especially when she already has enough money to do whatever the hell she wants anyways.
This doesn’t make a dent, and ethical consumption under capitalism is impossible anyways. I just hope that some portion of people who bought the game heard about the protests and maybe donated a fraction of what they paid for the game to some pro-LGBTQ groups. I have to believe there’s at least a handful of people like that. I do believe that people are mostly good, and want to do good.
Yeesh, I wrote a lot more than I planned to here. I’ll stop now lol.
I mean I’m sure it’s a lot more cheerful for the to imagine the number as really high, but the fact of the matter is that in the end it still sold really well, becoming the top seller of that year.
I’d expect it to meaningfully affect the sales and the maker/seller/whoever behind it. Being the most sold game of the year and presumably making a fat profit, I don’t think it really did either.
Did any of the other HP games ever top the charts?
If not, then there must be something special about this one other than IP. Especially since most of the other HP games came out before there was any JKR controversy.
Other than mobile games or Lego versions, there hasnt been a proper Harry Potter game since 13 years ago and from memory they were extremely average movie tie in games.
Its not a series like Pokemon or Zelda that sees frequent releases. It being the first real game, and done beautifully (graphics/ recreation wise) is certainly the biggest selling point.
Sure call me a bigot. The point I was making is this is an echo chamber issue for people who want to eat others because they are not pure enough. And on that you come out swing with the same incessive echo put stuff I was pointing to.
No matter how much you hurt the people you say you are fighting for. Go ahead, run your inquisition on people to see if they match your purity standards, don’t be surprised if one day you end up in front of the inquisition yourself accused of being impure.
You spend time fighting with someone who might disagree with you in this fringe of society but still takes on the biggest fights out there… and you would rather burn them than focus on better, easier, more impactful targets.
It happens every time. Pokémon Sword/Shield and Scarlett/Violet had the biggest launch in the franchise’s history despite being (justifiably so) heavily criticized by pretty much everyone online.
People shit on microtransactions and always-online games but the top charts always show online multiplayer games are among the most played.
It doesn’t make the criticisms any less valid; it just means that the general public is usually ignorant of them.
JKR is a very vocal TERF that basically wants trans people to dissappear. A lot of people dont want to financially support her because of that. That most people seemingly either dont care about trans erasure or even worse, bought the game specifically because theyre the type to do shit just because people with a conscience told them they shouldn’t, says more about most people than it does that “vocal minority”
Oh pipe down, I read the entire thing when it was recent and in no way does she want what you claim. She has an open letter on her own website outlining her views.
Over the course of the years since this happened it has grown, morphed and people are now probably also saying she would be the one herding the trans people into the gas Chambers.
This right here is why Lemmy is often a shitshow. You’re absolutely right, but since you’re going against the hive mind it’s nothing but downvotes. No one’s even bothered to reply because there’s nothing to argue against in good faith. Just angry downvotes because your facts are getting in the way of fake outrage.
It’s OK, people can read the content themselves. I have a lot of (maybe misplaced) confidence in most people.
And I personally don’t see a lot of hivemind but plurality of opinion luckily. The angry downvotes without response is usually telling enough, although someone did reply to tell me to “fuck off” this time.
Nah. Both of you just haven’t kept up with her history of equating trans women with sexual predators and trans men with poor brainwashed little girls, some of which was hinted, if disguised in polite words, in the article where she talked about the situation and defended how she totally didn’t mean any harm to anybody.
Did you see when she said she’d march with trans people if they truly were persecuted? Their rights have been challenged and undermined many times since, and she didn’t show any sign of that.
Because, you know, sometimes people aren’t completely honest and taking them at their word is not the ultimate measure of their characters.
So don’t confuse disagreeing with people here and getting downvoted with being the one clear-minded contrarian. However much internet bandwagons are a thing, you won’t get the clear picture unless you go look into it. Sometimes you might get that reaction because you are wrong and that’s it.
Seriously! If I say something stupid, others are supposed to show up and educate me on why what I said is stupid! That is how public discourse is supposed to works!
Wait, why aren’t the people tired of my ignorant shit jumping to help me learn? Oh I know, that means I’m actually super smart, totally correct and fully informed. Everyone else is just being stupid and mean to me for no valid reason.
Honest feedback (for honest ppl): there are ways to ask people what they think so they’ll be inclined to reply earnestly. Starting with “pipe down” ain’t it… ya fuckin dingus. lol
Thats just one example. There are many others but I feel like if the point isn’t made it never will be.
She makes a number of claims about transitioning and detransitioning that are straight up lies, tries to conflate trans women with predators that must be denied entry to womens’ bathrooms, claims that the change in societal views toward trans issues threatens to erase women etc.
The reality is that JKR seems to have never dealt with the trauma of her rape and abuse so she denigrates trans women as being little more than predatory men in skirts. Thats why she brings that up in her post. She’s explaining why she is so concerned with trans issues and those reasons go back to that trauma never being processed in a healthier way.
On one level, my interest in this issue has been professional, because I’m writing a crime series […].
When I started taking an interest in gender identity and transgender matters, I began screenshotting comments that interested me, as a way of reminding myself what I might want to research later. On one occasion, I absent-mindedly ‘liked’ instead of screenshotting. That single ‘like’ was deemed evidence of wrongthink, and a persistent low level of harassment began.
Sure, Joanne. “My interest in this was only professional, because I was writing a book where the serial killer is a man cross-dressing as a woman that kills other women”. We know how it ended.
She then proceeded with a very weird anti-trans statement:
When I read about the theory of gender identity, I remember how mentally sexless I felt in youth. […].
As I didn’t have a realistic possibility of becoming a man back in the 1980s, it had to be books and music that got me through both my mental health issues and the sexualised scrutiny and judgement that sets so many girls to war against their bodies in their teens. Fortunately for me, I found my own sense of otherness, and my ambivalence about being a woman […]; it’s OK to feel confused, dark, both sexual and non-sexual, unsure of what or who you are.
I want to be very clear here: I know transition will be a solution for some gender dysphoric people, although I’m also aware through extensive research that studies have consistently shown that between 60-90% of gender dysphoric teens will grow out of their dysphoria.
“I felt non-binary too, but I’m not trans, so you aren’t either!”.
For reference, desistance is a real term that refers to people who changes their mind about their gender dysphoria, and, although further research is still needed, she is probably citing real sources. It’s also strange to insert that knowledge in a post where she’s supposedly trying to convince people that she’s not a TERF, among the “five reasons she’s worried about the new trans activism”, whatever that means. “I don’t hate trans people, but anyway, they aren’t real and you are preying on children”.
She then ended her wall of text by alluding that all trans women are actually men who want to prey on women (never mind that, if a man wanted to become a sexual predator, he could just… Do that, instead of faking gender dysphoria? Like, a man who wants to sexually harass someone isn’t stopping at the “girls only” sign. He’s not a vampire). But hey, before that she said that she cares about trans women, so I’m sure it’s just a misunderstanding.
So I want trans women to be safe. At the same time, I do not want to make natal girls and women less safe. When you throw open the doors of bathrooms and changing rooms to any man who believes or feels he’s a woman – and, as I’ve said, gender confirmation certificates may now be granted without any need for surgery or hormones – then you open the door to any and all men who wish to come inside. That is the simple truth.
That’s the simple truth of a person who should really talk to their therapist about her trauma instead of writing bullshit online.
If agreeing with known transphobes, erasing trans identity, and putting trans women and sexual predators on the same level isn’t transphobic, I really don’t know what is.
I hadn’t read this before, and I am honestly shocked that this is the what the uproar is over. This isn’t a call to action to hurt anyone. It is basically a statement that there is a difference between a transwoman and a woman, that distinction needs to be made, and this is mainly due to society rushing to a solution without due diligence. This is not 1/100th of what it has been made out to be. If this is all it takes for someone to never want to associate with someone else, then I don’t think he should associate with anyone. Everyone is going to differ from your opinion on one topic or another, you can’t escape it.
No This is it, after a relatively lengthy twitter conversation she ended up writing this blog post.
And the anger and vitriol boils down to “why do animal rights activists throw paint on rich ladies wearing fur, because bikers in leather jackets will punch you in the mouth”.
I think that the masses are mostly disengaged with terminally-online type discourse. The only reason I knew JK Rowling was TERF was because of reading it on here, so if you are only on social media to follow your old high school classmates on facebook, you’d probably never find out
The masses are largely disengaged with LGBT rights in general, but the declining rights of transgender people in the UK (and the US) shows this is not just a “terminally-online” kind of issue. She is not the only one responsible, of course, but her outspoken antagonism towards transgender people is influencing people.
It concerns me when people can’t differentiate “this issue does not affect me” from “this issue does not exist”. Even calling matters “terminally-online” in general is a bit questionable when whole ass presidents get elected by meme campaigns these days.
Just because a minority is depicted in a work of art does not mean that depiction was made in good faith. Americans are familiar with that concept because of our dark history of minstrel shows and blackface performances.
When the trans woman character’s name is Sirona Ryan, it calls into question whether she is meant to be a character or a caricature.
I guess all the twitter drama around the author matters less to the real world. It’s impressive to see how a vocal minority can completely distort what is happening offline.
Hogwarts came out a quarter of a year earlier and released on every platform compared to Zelda only being on one.
I wouldn’t take that as a indictment that J.K.'s terf bullshit didn’t have an impact on sales.
Yeah, and the fact that people basically can’t talk about this game without mentioning it got boycotted because one of the people who makes money from it is a massive piece of transphobic shit is a small step forward all on its own
In that sense, it worked. Let’s face it: The people who don’t care about the author’s raging bigotry were never going to be convinced regardless, but there were a lot of us who didn’t even consider playing it because of the TERF.
Anecdotally, everyone I’ve talked to about it doesn’t care. They don’t like she’s a TERF and some even condemn her for it, but every single person I’ve talked to separates the world of Harry Potter from her. It basically has a life of its own and they couldn’t care less about JKR now, that’s what I’ve been able to surmise of people’s view of it now. It’s like having racist parents but not being labeled as one because you’re a separate entity.
I’m a big gamer, and was a massive HP fan. I did not buy the game, or even consider it, specifically because of JKR’s bullshit.
I may be in the minority, but I guarantee I’m not the only one in this boat. So now you’ve talked to someone who cares, if you count this as talking.
And just to say a little more, no I didn’t crusade against the game, nor do I villainize people who bought it and enjoyed it. I do think it’s possible to enjoy art without liking the artist. Hell, my favorite book series of all time is the Ender’s Game series, and Orson Scott Card is probably just as bad as JKR, though maybe not quite as famous/public about it.
But I can’t bring myself to buy it. I’m trans, and her rhetoric, and how public it is, has been specifically harmful to me, directly. But that’s just me. I won’t tell other people how to live their lives or enjoy their free time, so long as they’re not actively hurting others. And no, I don’t consider buying a game where one person who is profiting from it might spend a sliver of that profit on anti-trans BS to be actively harming others, especially when she already has enough money to do whatever the hell she wants anyways.
This doesn’t make a dent, and ethical consumption under capitalism is impossible anyways. I just hope that some portion of people who bought the game heard about the protests and maybe donated a fraction of what they paid for the game to some pro-LGBTQ groups. I have to believe there’s at least a handful of people like that. I do believe that people are mostly good, and want to do good.
Yeesh, I wrote a lot more than I planned to here. I’ll stop now lol.
Lol I said the same thing a bit ago and was down voted for it.
Doesn’t seem to have had a big impact I’d say
You csn say all you like, we literally have zero idea how many lost sales they had.
We know it didn’t prevent it from becoming the year’s most sold game, so whatever the impact it’s pretty easy to shrug off
Buddy, its the worlds 5 largest IP, id be shocked if it didnt sell millions of copies regardless.
For all we know it could have lost out on 20 million sales, but its an untrackable metric.
I mean I’m sure it’s a lot more cheerful for the to imagine the number as really high, but the fact of the matter is that in the end it still sold really well, becoming the top seller of that year.
A bit of a ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ situation
Its nothing to do with cheerful, its to do with not knowing how effective a boycott was.
No one in their right mind would expect it to sell zero copies.
Tell me, how do you tell if a boycott was successful?
I’d expect it to meaningfully affect the sales and the maker/seller/whoever behind it. Being the most sold game of the year and presumably making a fat profit, I don’t think it really did either.
So again, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Did any of the other HP games ever top the charts?
If not, then there must be something special about this one other than IP. Especially since most of the other HP games came out before there was any JKR controversy.
Other than mobile games or Lego versions, there hasnt been a proper Harry Potter game since 13 years ago and from memory they were extremely average movie tie in games.
Its not a series like Pokemon or Zelda that sees frequent releases. It being the first real game, and done beautifully (graphics/ recreation wise) is certainly the biggest selling point.
Echo… Echo… echo…
Bigot…Bigot…bigot…
Why, because they point out that the entire thing was a lound minority running in their own echochamber?
Sure call me a bigot. The point I was making is this is an echo chamber issue for people who want to eat others because they are not pure enough. And on that you come out swing with the same incessive echo put stuff I was pointing to.
No matter how much you hurt the people you say you are fighting for. Go ahead, run your inquisition on people to see if they match your purity standards, don’t be surprised if one day you end up in front of the inquisition yourself accused of being impure.
You spend time fighting with someone who might disagree with you in this fringe of society but still takes on the biggest fights out there… and you would rather burn them than focus on better, easier, more impactful targets.
And how’s your moral compass?
You didn’t play Harry Potter, but are you a vegan? You know animals have feelings right?
Have you volunteered this week? You have time to bullshit with randoms on lemmy, why not use the time to make the world better?
What other games do you play, do you like Blizzard games?
Maybe you have an Xbox, you know what Bill Gates is up to right?
Do you use Amazon? Ever heard of their CEO?
I can go on and on and on. Get over yourself.
It happens every time. Pokémon Sword/Shield and Scarlett/Violet had the biggest launch in the franchise’s history despite being (justifiably so) heavily criticized by pretty much everyone online.
People shit on microtransactions and always-online games but the top charts always show online multiplayer games are among the most played.
It doesn’t make the criticisms any less valid; it just means that the general public is usually ignorant of them.
Or just don’t care that much
JKR is a very vocal TERF that basically wants trans people to dissappear. A lot of people dont want to financially support her because of that. That most people seemingly either dont care about trans erasure or even worse, bought the game specifically because theyre the type to do shit just because people with a conscience told them they shouldn’t, says more about most people than it does that “vocal minority”
Oh pipe down, I read the entire thing when it was recent and in no way does she want what you claim. She has an open letter on her own website outlining her views.
Over the course of the years since this happened it has grown, morphed and people are now probably also saying she would be the one herding the trans people into the gas Chambers.
This right here is why Lemmy is often a shitshow. You’re absolutely right, but since you’re going against the hive mind it’s nothing but downvotes. No one’s even bothered to reply because there’s nothing to argue against in good faith. Just angry downvotes because your facts are getting in the way of fake outrage.
It’s OK, people can read the content themselves. I have a lot of (maybe misplaced) confidence in most people.
And I personally don’t see a lot of hivemind but plurality of opinion luckily. The angry downvotes without response is usually telling enough, although someone did reply to tell me to “fuck off” this time.
Nah. Both of you just haven’t kept up with her history of equating trans women with sexual predators and trans men with poor brainwashed little girls, some of which was hinted, if disguised in polite words, in the article where she talked about the situation and defended how she totally didn’t mean any harm to anybody.
Did you see when she said she’d march with trans people if they truly were persecuted? Their rights have been challenged and undermined many times since, and she didn’t show any sign of that.
Because, you know, sometimes people aren’t completely honest and taking them at their word is not the ultimate measure of their characters.
So don’t confuse disagreeing with people here and getting downvoted with being the one clear-minded contrarian. However much internet bandwagons are a thing, you won’t get the clear picture unless you go look into it. Sometimes you might get that reaction because you are wrong and that’s it.
Seriously! If I say something stupid, others are supposed to show up and educate me on why what I said is stupid! That is how public discourse is supposed to works!
Wait, why aren’t the people tired of my ignorant shit jumping to help me learn? Oh I know, that means I’m actually super smart, totally correct and fully informed. Everyone else is just being stupid and mean to me for no valid reason.
Honest feedback (for honest ppl): there are ways to ask people what they think so they’ll be inclined to reply earnestly. Starting with “pipe down” ain’t it… ya fuckin dingus. lol
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deleted by creator
I’m out of the loop on this whole thing because JK is a writer and doesn’t know anything about gender.
Can you specifically quote something she has said to prove your claim or is it really hearsay like the guy above claims?
https://www.jkrowling.com/opinions/j-k-rowling-writes-about-her-reasons-for-speaking-out-on-sex-and-gender-issues/
Thats just one example. There are many others but I feel like if the point isn’t made it never will be.
She makes a number of claims about transitioning and detransitioning that are straight up lies, tries to conflate trans women with predators that must be denied entry to womens’ bathrooms, claims that the change in societal views toward trans issues threatens to erase women etc.
The reality is that JKR seems to have never dealt with the trauma of her rape and abuse so she denigrates trans women as being little more than predatory men in skirts. Thats why she brings that up in her post. She’s explaining why she is so concerned with trans issues and those reasons go back to that trauma never being processed in a healthier way.
I read that today already, it is a lot milder than “wanting trans people to disappear”. Where are all the hateful tweets I have heard about?
Edit: nothing? Anyone?
I mean, she lied about liking transphobic tweets:
Sure, Joanne. “My interest in this was only professional, because I was writing a book
where the serial killer is a man cross-dressing as a woman that kills other women”. We know how it ended.She then proceeded with a very weird anti-trans statement:
“I felt non-binary too, but I’m not trans, so you aren’t either!”.
For reference, desistance is a real term that refers to people who changes their mind about their gender dysphoria, and, although further research is still needed, she is probably citing real sources. It’s also strange to insert that knowledge in a post where she’s supposedly trying to convince people that she’s not a TERF, among the “five reasons she’s worried about the new trans activism”, whatever that means. “I don’t hate trans people, but anyway, they aren’t real and you are preying on children”.
She then ended her wall of text by alluding that all trans women are actually men who want to prey on women (never mind that, if a man wanted to become a sexual predator, he could just… Do that, instead of faking gender dysphoria? Like, a man who wants to sexually harass someone isn’t stopping at the “girls only” sign. He’s not a vampire). But hey, before that she said that she cares about trans women, so I’m sure it’s just a misunderstanding.
That’s the simple truth of a person who should really talk to their therapist about her trauma instead of writing bullshit online.
If agreeing with known transphobes, erasing trans identity, and putting trans women and sexual predators on the same level isn’t transphobic, I really don’t know what is.
I hadn’t read this before, and I am honestly shocked that this is the what the uproar is over. This isn’t a call to action to hurt anyone. It is basically a statement that there is a difference between a transwoman and a woman, that distinction needs to be made, and this is mainly due to society rushing to a solution without due diligence. This is not 1/100th of what it has been made out to be. If this is all it takes for someone to never want to associate with someone else, then I don’t think he should associate with anyone. Everyone is going to differ from your opinion on one topic or another, you can’t escape it.
Yeah I have to say what she says made a surprising amount of sense after what I was led to believe.
I still think she has no authority on the topic though and should stick to her domain.
No This is it, after a relatively lengthy twitter conversation she ended up writing this blog post.
And the anger and vitriol boils down to “why do animal rights activists throw paint on rich ladies wearing fur, because bikers in leather jackets will punch you in the mouth”.
I think that the masses are mostly disengaged with terminally-online type discourse. The only reason I knew JK Rowling was TERF was because of reading it on here, so if you are only on social media to follow your old high school classmates on facebook, you’d probably never find out
The masses are largely disengaged with LGBT rights in general, but the declining rights of transgender people in the UK (and the US) shows this is not just a “terminally-online” kind of issue. She is not the only one responsible, of course, but her outspoken antagonism towards transgender people is influencing people.
It concerns me when people can’t differentiate “this issue does not affect me” from “this issue does not exist”. Even calling matters “terminally-online” in general is a bit questionable when whole ass presidents get elected by meme campaigns these days.
The game has a minor character who is trans too. It uses the world she invented but does not borrow her real world views
Just because a minority is depicted in a work of art does not mean that depiction was made in good faith. Americans are familiar with that concept because of our dark history of minstrel shows and blackface performances.
When the trans woman character’s name is Sirona Ryan, it calls into question whether she is meant to be a character or a caricature.