Culture J.K Rowling Megathread

All Articles and Discussion Regarding The English Author J.K. Rowling belong here. If you're looking to discuss the Harry Potter series itself, this thread is for you. If you know about any potential cow material in the Harry Potter Fandom, go here. If you're here to bitch about transsexuals' in general, we already have threads for that here, here, and here.

Backstory of the Author



J.K. Rowling is one of the most well known authors in the world today. She was living as a single mother on welfare in England before her first published novel, Harry Potter and the Sorcerers Stone skyrocketed her to international fame and acclaim. The following six novels, movie and various video game franchises, spin off books, and merchandise, made her the wealthiest author in history. As her books gained international attention many criticized and even protested her works. With feminists claiming her novels conform heavily with gender stereotypes about men and women, and are racist, religious organizations stating that the books contain actual dangerous spells children use to hurt each other, and even a literal book burning back on February 4th of this year because the books are 'demonic'.

These examples and many others over the past two decades exemplify just how divisive even the most innocuous things can be, and how people with irrational thinking, extreme political views and a platform to spread them can cause a worldwide discussion. This is just her first seven novels however. Many people have criticized J.K. Rowling herself for her political views, which are essentially left wing, though of a decidedly less extreme stripe than those coming up. Keep that in mind.

J.K. Rowling's political views have been consistent throughout her life. She believes in social healthcare, welfare, women's rights, gay rights, ect. Her views are garden variety left-wing from the early 2000's. While she has garnered criticisms for these views a number of times, like when she donated a million British Pounds to the Labour Party, which gained some criticism from British Conservatives who felt her books were decidedly Conservative in nature. She has also spoken out against American President Donald J Trump on a number of occasions, earning her the ire of many American Conservatives, and a variety of YouTube grifters such as Paul Joseph Watson. In addition to her political views, Rowling made a number of statements to Harry Potter fans on social media, angering hardcore fans by saying that she imagined characters being different races, and one character being gay when no allusion in the books ever existed. Her pandering to the hyper left-wing, intersectional inhabitants of Twitter would lead to one of the largest and most insane public freak outs ever seen on the platform. Before this meltdown, she was a darling in left-wing circles, and quoted constanly, much like her books themselves.

In response to a woman saying that biological sex is real, and being subsequently fired for it, J.K. Rowling tweeted the following

Tweet | Article about it

This one Tweet was enough to ignite a firestorm. Transsexuals' and their 'allies' all across social media dog-piled Rowling spectacularly, and unlike every other celebrity that's been faced with this witch trial style burning at the stake for 'Transphobia' she refused to bend the knee, and argued further. This, predictably, only fanned the flames.

Excerpt from the article showing various Twitter reactions

One said: “I believe this case is a vitally important landmark. We must treat this in the same way we have treated sexism, racism, homophobia.

“Nobody is suggesting she isn’t allowed her opinion but it’s dangerous language that harms people. She should be held accountable for it.”

Freddy McConnell, who became a voice for the trans community after making his film “Seahorse”, about being a dad who gave birth, said: “It’s a dog whistle, Joanne.”
A parent said: “My daughter, who is trans, is a big fan of yours. It breaks my heart to see you post something indicating that discrimination against her is perfectly fine behaviour for an employee.

“The world’s most credible medical orgs affirm trans people. Please catch up.”

Another person said: I grew up as a trans child reading your books as an escape. I would often pick out names from characters to give to myself, before I ever felt comfortable in who I was.

After the various Twitter exchanges J.K. Rowling went quiet for a while, taking a break from the mental illness inducing website Twitter (Something she says she does occasionally, as social media in general is bad for your mental health). All the while various Harry Potter fan sites figuratively exploded, many users arguing over her statements. During her break she wrote a 3,600 word essay on her website (Children's Portal | Adults Portal) that further explains her position. Again, she refused to apologize, or change her view, which would further incense the lunatics she angered online, even cast members of the Harry Potter Films denounced her, and because of this she didn't attend or involve herself in the filming of the HBOMax documentary about the film series(This article is very salty).

Here's the full essay, spoilered for length.

Spoiler: Full Essay

This isn’t an easy piece to write, for reasons that will shortly become clear, but I know it’s time to explain myself on an issue surrounded by toxicity. I write this without any desire to add to that toxicity.

For people who don’t know: last December I tweeted my support for Maya Forstater, a tax specialist who’d lost her job for what were deemed ‘transphobic’ tweets. She took her case to an employment tribunal, asking the judge to rule on whether a philosophical belief that sex is determined by biology is protected in law. Judge Tayler ruled that it wasn’t.

My interest in trans issues pre-dated Maya’s case by almost two years, during which I followed the debate around the concept of gender identity closely. I’ve met trans people, and read sundry books, blogs and articles by trans people, gender specialists, intersex people, psychologists, safeguarding experts, social workers and doctors, and followed the discourse online and in traditional media. On one level, my interest in this issue has been professional, because I’m writing a crime series, set in the present day, and my fictional female detective is of an age to be interested in, and affected by, these issues herself, but on another, it’s intensely personal, as I’m about to explain.

All the time I’ve been researching and learning, accusations and threats from trans activists have been bubbling in my Twitter timeline. This was initially triggered by a ‘like’. 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.

Months later, I compounded my accidental ‘like’ crime by following Magdalen Berns on Twitter. Magdalen was an immensely brave young feminist and lesbian who was dying of an aggressive brain tumour. I followed her because I wanted to contact her directly, which I succeeded in doing. However, as Magdalen was a great believer in the importance of biological sex, and didn’t believe lesbians should be called bigots for not dating trans women with penises, dots were joined in the heads of twitter trans activists, and the level of social media abuse increased.

I mention all this only to explain that I knew perfectly well what was going to happen when I supported Maya. I must have been on my fourth or fifth cancellation by then. I expected the threats of violence, to be told I was literally killing trans people with my hate, to be called cunt and bitch and, of course, for my books to be burned, although one particularly abusive man told me he’d composted them.

What I didn’t expect in the aftermath of my cancellation was the avalanche of emails and letters that came showering down upon me, the overwhelming majority of which were positive, grateful and supportive. They came from a cross-section of kind, empathetic and intelligent people, some of them working in fields dealing with gender dysphoria and trans people, who’re all deeply concerned about the way a socio-political concept is influencing politics, medical practice and safeguarding. They’re worried about the dangers to young people, gay people and about the erosion of women’s and girl’s rights. Above all, they’re worried about a climate of fear that serves nobody – least of all trans youth – well.

I’d stepped back from Twitter for many months both before and after tweeting support for Maya, because I knew it was doing nothing good for my mental health. I only returned because I wanted to share a free children’s book during the pandemic. Immediately, activists who clearly believe themselves to be good, kind and progressive people swarmed back into my timeline, assuming a right to police my speech, accuse me of hatred, call me misogynistic slurs and, above all – as every woman involved in this debate will know – TERF.

If you didn’t already know – and why should you? – ‘TERF’ is an acronym coined by trans activists, which stands for Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist. In practice, a huge and diverse cross-section of women are currently being called TERFs and the vast majority have never been radical feminists. Examples of so-called TERFs range from the mother of a gay child who was afraid their child wanted to transition to escape homophobic bullying, to a hitherto totally unfeminist older lady who’s vowed never to visit Marks & Spencer again because they’re allowing any man who says they identify as a woman into the women’s changing rooms. Ironically, radical feminists aren’t even trans-exclusionary – they include trans men in their feminism, because they were born women.

But accusations of TERFery have been sufficient to intimidate many people, institutions and organisations I once admired, who’re cowering before the tactics of the playground. ‘They’ll call us transphobic!’ ‘They’ll say I hate trans people!’ What next, they’ll say you’ve got fleas? Speaking as a biological woman, a lot of people in positions of power really need to grow a pair (which is doubtless literally possible, according to the kind of people who argue that clownfish prove humans aren’t a dimorphic species).

So why am I doing this? Why speak up? Why not quietly do my research and keep my head down?

Well, I’ve got five reasons for being worried about the new trans activism, and deciding I need to speak up.

Firstly, I have a charitable trust that focuses on alleviating social deprivation in Scotland, with a particular emphasis on women and children. Among other things, my trust supports projects for female prisoners and for survivors of domestic and sexual abuse. I also fund medical research into MS, a disease that behaves very differently in men and women. It’s been clear to me for a while that the new trans activism is having (or is likely to have, if all its demands are met) a significant impact on many of the causes I support, because it’s pushing to erode the legal definition of sex and replace it with gender.

The second reason is that I’m an ex-teacher and the founder of a children’s charity, which gives me an interest in both education and safeguarding. Like many others, I have deep concerns about the effect the trans rights movement is having on both.

The third is that, as a much-banned author, I’m interested in freedom of speech and have publicly defended it, even unto Donald Trump.

The fourth is where things start to get truly personal. I’m concerned about the huge explosion in young women wishing to transition and also about the increasing numbers who seem to be detransitioning (returning to their original sex), because they regret taking steps that have, in some cases, altered their bodies irrevocably, and taken away their fertility. Some say they decided to transition after realising they were same-sex attracted, and that transitioning was partly driven by homophobia, either in society or in their families.

Most people probably aren’t aware – I certainly wasn’t, until I started researching this issue properly – that ten years ago, the majority of people wanting to transition to the opposite sex were male. That ratio has now reversed. The UK has experienced a 4400% increase in girls being referred for transitioning treatment. Autistic girls are hugely overrepresented in their numbers.

The same phenomenon has been seen in the US. In 2018, American physician and researcher Lisa Littman set out to explore it. In an interview, she said:

‘Parents online were describing a very unusual pattern of transgender-identification where multiple friends and even entire friend groups became transgender-identified at the same time. I would have been remiss had I not considered social contagion and peer influences as potential factors.’

Littman mentioned Tumblr, Reddit, Instagram and YouTube as contributing factors to Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria, where she believes that in the realm of transgender identification ‘youth have created particularly insular echo chambers.’

Her paper caused a furore. She was accused of bias and of spreading misinformation about transgender people, subjected to a tsunami of abuse and a concerted campaign to discredit both her and her work. The journal took the paper offline and re-reviewed it before republishing it. However, her career took a similar hit to that suffered by Maya Forstater. Lisa Littman had dared challenge one of the central tenets of trans activism, which is that a person’s gender identity is innate, like sexual orientation. Nobody, the activists insisted, could ever be persuaded into being trans.

The argument of many current trans activists is that if you don’t let a gender dysphoric teenager transition, they will kill themselves. In an article explaining why he resigned from the Tavistock (an NHS gender clinic in England) psychiatrist Marcus Evans stated that claims that children will kill themselves if not permitted to transition do not ‘align substantially with any robust data or studies in this area. Nor do they align with the cases I have encountered over decades as a psychotherapist.’

The writings of young trans men reveal a group of notably sensitive and clever people. The more of their accounts of gender dysphoria I’ve read, with their insightful descriptions of anxiety, dissociation, eating disorders, self-harm and self-hatred, the more I’ve wondered whether, if I’d been born 30 years later, I too might have tried to transition. The allure of escaping womanhood would have been huge. I struggled with severe OCD as a teenager. If I’d found community and sympathy online that I couldn’t find in my immediate environment, I believe I could have been persuaded to turn myself into the son my father had openly said he’d have preferred.

When I read about the theory of gender identity, I remember how mentally sexless I felt in youth. I remember Colette’s description of herself as a ‘mental hermaphrodite’ and Simone de Beauvoir’s words: ‘It is perfectly natural for the future woman to feel indignant at the limitations posed upon her by her sex. The real question is not why she should reject them: the problem is rather to understand why she accepts them.’

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, reflected in the work of female writers and musicians who reassured me that, in spite of everything a sexist world tries to throw at the female-bodied, it’s fine not to feel pink, frilly and compliant inside your own head; 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. Again and again I’ve been told to ‘just meet some trans people.’ I have: in addition to a few younger people, who were all adorable, I happen to know a self-described transsexual woman who’s older than I am and wonderful. Although she’s open about her past as a gay man, I’ve always found it hard to think of her as anything other than a woman, and I believe (and certainly hope) she’s completely happy to have transitioned. Being older, though, she went through a long and rigorous process of evaluation, psychotherapy and staged transformation. The current explosion of trans activism is urging a removal of almost all the robust systems through which candidates for sex reassignment were once required to pass. A man who intends to have no surgery and take no hormones may now secure himself a Gender Recognition Certificate and be a woman in the sight of the law. Many people aren’t aware of this.

We’re living through the most misogynistic period I’ve experienced. Back in the 80s, I imagined that my future daughters, should I have any, would have it far better than I ever did, but between the backlash against feminism and a porn-saturated online culture, I believe things have got significantly worse for girls. Never have I seen women denigrated and dehumanised to the extent they are now. From the leader of the free world’s long history of sexual assault accusations and his proud boast of ‘grabbing them by the pussy’, to the incel (‘involuntarily celibate’) movement that rages against women who won’t give them sex, to the trans activists who declare that TERFs need punching and re-educating, men across the political spectrum seem to agree: women are asking for trouble. Everywhere, women are being told to shut up and sit down, or else.

I’ve read all the arguments about femaleness not residing in the sexed body, and the assertions that biological women don’t have common experiences, and I find them, too, deeply misogynistic and regressive. It’s also clear that one of the objectives of denying the importance of sex is to erode what some seem to see as the cruelly segregationist idea of women having their own biological realities or – just as threatening – unifying realities that make them a cohesive political class. The hundreds of emails I’ve received in the last few days prove this erosion concerns many others just as much. It isn’t enough for women to be trans allies. Women must accept and admit that there is no material difference between trans women and themselves.

But, as many women have said before me, ‘woman’ is not a costume. ‘Woman’ is not an idea in a man’s head. ‘Woman’ is not a pink brain, a liking for Jimmy Choos or any of the other sexist ideas now somehow touted as progressive. Moreover, the ‘inclusive’ language that calls female people ‘menstruators’ and ‘people with vulvas’ strikes many women as dehumanising and demeaning. I understand why trans activists consider this language to be appropriate and kind, but for those of us who’ve had degrading slurs spat at us by violent men, it’s not neutral, it’s hostile and alienating.

Which brings me to the fifth reason I’m deeply concerned about the consequences of the current trans activism.

I’ve been in the public eye now for over twenty years and have never talked publicly about being a domestic abuse and sexual assault survivor. This isn’t because I’m ashamed those things happened to me, but because they’re traumatic to revisit and remember. I also feel protective of my daughter from my first marriage. I didn’t want to claim sole ownership of a story that belongs to her, too. However, a short while ago, I asked her how she’d feel if I were publicly honest about that part of my life, and she encouraged me to go ahead.

I’m mentioning these things now not in an attempt to garner sympathy, but out of solidarity with the huge numbers of women who have histories like mine, who’ve been slurred as bigots for having concerns around single-sex spaces.

I managed to escape my first violent marriage with some difficulty, but I’m now married to a truly good and principled man, safe and secure in ways I never in a million years expected to be. However, the scars left by violence and sexual assault don’t disappear, no matter how loved you are, and no matter how much money you’ve made. My perennial jumpiness is a family joke – and even I know it’s funny – but I pray my daughters never have the same reasons I do for hating sudden loud noises, or finding people behind me when I haven’t heard them approaching.

If you could come inside my head and understand what I feel when I read about a trans woman dying at the hands of a violent man, you’d find solidarity and kinship. I have a visceral sense of the terror in which those trans women will have spent their last seconds on earth, because I too have known moments of blind fear when I realised that the only thing keeping me alive was the shaky self-restraint of my attacker.

I believe the majority of trans-identified people not only pose zero threat to others, but are vulnerable for all the reasons I’ve outlined. Trans people need and deserve protection. Like women, they’re most likely to be killed by sexual partners. Trans women who work in the sex industry, particularly trans women of colour, are at particular risk. Like every other domestic abuse and sexual assault survivor I know, I feel nothing but empathy and solidarity with trans women who’ve been abused by men.

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.

On Saturday morning, I read that the Scottish government is proceeding with its controversial gender recognition plans, which will in effect mean that all a man needs to ‘become a woman’ is to say he’s one. To use a very contemporary word, I was ‘triggered’. Ground down by the relentless attacks from trans activists on social media, when I was only there to give children feedback about pictures they’d drawn for my book under lockdown, I spent much of Saturday in a very dark place inside my head, as memories of a serious sexual assault I suffered in my twenties recurred on a loop. That assault happened at a time and in a space where I was vulnerable, and a man capitalised on an opportunity. I couldn’t shut out those memories and I was finding it hard to contain my anger and disappointment about the way I believe my government is playing fast and loose with womens and girls’ safety.

Late on Saturday evening, scrolling through children’s pictures before I went to bed, I forgot the first rule of Twitter – never, ever expect a nuanced conversation – and reacted to what I felt was degrading language about women. I spoke up about the importance of sex and have been paying the price ever since. I was transphobic, I was a cunt, a bitch, a TERF, I deserved cancelling, punching and death. You are Voldemort said one person, clearly feeling this was the only language I’d understand.

It would be so much easier to tweet the approved hashtags – because of course trans rights are human rights and of course trans lives matter – scoop up the woke cookies and bask in a virtue-signalling afterglow. There’s joy, relief and safety in conformity. As Simone de Beauvoir also wrote, “… without a doubt it is more comfortable to endure blind bondage than to work for one’s liberation; the dead, too, are better suited to the earth than the living.”

Huge numbers of women are justifiably terrified by the trans activists; I know this because so many have got in touch with me to tell their stories. They’re afraid of doxxing, of losing their jobs or their livelihoods, and of violence.

But endlessly unpleasant as its constant targeting of me has been, I refuse to bow down to a movement that I believe is doing demonstrable harm in seeking to erode ‘woman’ as a political and biological class and offering cover to predators like few before it. I stand alongside the brave women and men, gay, straight and trans, who’re standing up for freedom of speech and thought, and for the rights and safety of some of the most vulnerable in our society: young gay kids, fragile teenagers, and women who’re reliant on and wish to retain their single sex spaces. Polls show those women are in the vast majority, and exclude only those privileged or lucky enough never to have come up against male violence or sexual assault, and who’ve never troubled to educate themselves on how prevalent it is.

The one thing that gives me hope is that the women who can protest and organise, are doing so, and they have some truly decent men and trans people alongside them. Political parties seeking to appease the loudest voices in this debate are ignoring women’s concerns at their peril. In the UK, women are reaching out to each other across party lines, concerned about the erosion of their hard-won rights and widespread intimidation. None of the gender critical women I’ve talked to hates trans people; on the contrary. Many of them became interested in this issue in the first place out of concern for trans youth, and they’re hugely sympathetic towards trans adults who simply want to live their lives, but who’re facing a backlash for a brand of activism they don’t endorse. The supreme irony is that the attempt to silence women with the word ‘TERF’ may have pushed more young women towards radical feminism than the movement’s seen in decades.

The last thing I want to say is this. I haven’t written this essay in the hope that anybody will get out a violin for me, not even a teeny-weeny one. I’m extraordinarily fortunate; I’m a survivor, certainly not a victim. I’ve only mentioned my past because, like every other human being on this planet, I have a complex backstory, which shapes my fears, my interests and my opinions. I never forget that inner complexity when I’m creating a fictional character and I certainly never forget it when it comes to trans people.

All I’m asking – all I want – is for similar empathy, similar understanding, to be extended to the many millions of women whose sole crime is wanting their concerns to be heard without receiving threats and abuse.

The following Tweet sums up J.K. Rowling's opinions of trans people.


Tweet

Anyone who isn't insane can see that her views are milquetoast at worst. Her criticism on transsexuality legislation and gender in general are very tame compared to even some of the most accepting people who browse the Farms, 4Chan, 8Chan, etc. Her blog garnered a mass of more criticism, including hundreds of articles from online publications that claim she's a hateful bigoted TERF (Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist), attacking her further for 'doubling down' on her bigotry, and a variety of similar screeching diatribes. These articles are written constantly, with some published within days of this thread being written.

Even with all this negative publicity however, J.K. Rowling has received a plethora of support from women across the Western world. One even got fired from her job due to her saying that 'J.K. Rowling is my woman of the year'. Not just women support her either. The actor of fan favorite character from the Harry Potter series Hagrid, Robbie Coltrane, wrote in defense of Rowling. The following quote is from an article by Insider.

"I don't think what she said was offensive really," Coltrane said during an interview with the Radio Times that was seen by Pink News. "I don't know why, but there's a whole Twitter generation of people who hang around waiting to be offended. They wouldn't have won the war, would they?"

He added: "That's me talking like a grumpy old man, but you just think: 'Oh, get over yourself. Wise up, stand up straight, and carry on.'"

Coltrane then continued to say he did not want to speak on the issue any further "because of all the hate mail and all that s--- which I don't need at my time of life."

Rowling's blog post even won the Russel Prize for Best Writing from the BBC. This, shockingly, caused immense online backlash and further articles were written about it. Rowling's next book, about a serial killer pretending to be a woman to get close to victims, incited more backlash. Over the last two years J.K. Rowling has had trans activists show up to her house and dox her (Much like Dear Feeder, actually), received a plethora of death threats, and even had people telling her they hoped her house would be bombed.



Tweet

As shown above, Rowling's refusal to bow to the mob has made her a much hated figure in transsexual and adjacent circles, even though she is widely supported by women across the world who find trans activists and their aggressive, misogynistic actions terrifying. With her stance on the issue unchanging, it brought her into contact with one of the best known pedophile, and horse fucker, with a Kiwi Farms thread.


Vaush Thread (Plz don't shit it up with anymore Rowling talk, that's what this thread is for)

Being the enlightened son of Silicon Valley tech employees, Vaush has been championing the rise of Socialism for years, in addition to lowering the age of consent and wanting to fuck horses. Various screenshots, and audio and video clips show Vaush holding these views, and the thread has archives of them for those curious. The Tweet that got him involved with Rowling is below.



This Tweet did not go well for Vaush, as soon after Rowling responded, and clips of his support for child pornography and fucking horses have been widely circulating across Twitter and other social media sites.


Tweet

The sudden mass attention has been bad for Vaush, whose disturbing takes on children have led to notable publications exposing it to a much wider, normal audience rather than the sycophant's who constantly defend him. One article from the Post Millennial even states in it's title that he's a 'Suspected Pedophile'. Predictably, grifters from the right wing sphere of Twitter hopped in and sent more clips to these publications. Ian Miles Cheong sent clips of Vaush to the publication and it was featured in the article itself.

Despite him being a freak, Vaush is correct about Rowling in his first Tweet. All she had to do to avoid this was bend the knee to the trans mob. She could have just gone on as is with no issues for her personally. She's immensely wealthy, is re-married and her children are doing very well in their respective fields. She could have just said nothing and avoided this shitshow from the start, but she didn't, and the meltdowns and tantrums have been a near constant for going on three years now. Rowling is, however, heavily invested both financially and personally with children's charities in the UK, and it seem that she genuinely sees the problems arising from the cascade of gender affirming nonsense that has absolutely plagued public life in the last half decade. She stated her views, and unlike so many other people she refused to back down. Perhaps it's only because she's in a position of immense financial privilege, and unlike many others whose lives have been utterly destroyed by this same mob she is immune from their attempts at de-platforming and public stigmatization. Regardless of what her wealth affords her to do, many are glad she's taken the stance she has.

If you have any material that concerns J.K. Rowling herself post it for discussion. This includes news articles, YouTube videos and vids from YT alternative sites like Odysee, livestreams, social media posts, etc. If the last couple years are anything to go by there won't be a drought in content anytime soon.

J.K. Rowling Socials and General Information
Her Official Website
Twitter
Facebook
Wikipedia

Thank you so very much @Pyre for the new OP

 

[East_Clintwood]

View attachment 4614338

9 hour download. Ugh. Hopefully I get to connect to some faster seeders.

EDIT: Removed the limit for number of connections. Getting 10MiB speeds now and will have it downloaded in 2-3 hours.
EDIT2: 25MiB/s. Nice. Gonna be done in little over half an hour.

Dodi has a repack that's like 2/3 the size of the full empress torrent once you skip the optional language packs, might be a quicker download

So now the people that want to play Hogwarts but didn't want to pay Rowling have to wait for another cracker?

Unfortunately they're gonna be waiting a long fucking time since there are no other crackers than Empress doing Denuvo these days.

 

[Snekposter]

That stereotype was still incredibly relevant in the 90s, due to the fact the IRA were still regularly fucking blowing things up:

"Some of you are okay. Don't ride your broomsticks to Hogsmeade tomorrow."

 

[Desu Mountain]

Dodi has a repack that's like 2/3 the size of the full empress torrent once you skip the optional language packs, might be a quicker download


Unfortunately they're gonna be waiting a long fucking time since there are no other crackers than Empress doing Denuvo these days.

I use games for language learning, so I actually want the language packs. Hitting 30MiB speeds now.

 

[Alter Ego]

The Onion is seething.

The Onion’s Exclusive Interview With J.K. Rowling

archived 23 Feb 2023 19:23:14 UTC

archive.is

They're really trying to maximize clicks by spreading it out into a "slideshow" with over twenty separate webpages.

 

[Well Intentioned]

The Onion is seething.

The Onion’s Exclusive Interview With J.K. Rowling

archived 23 Feb 2023 19:23:14 UTC

archive.is

They're really trying to maximize clicks by spreading it out into a "slideshow" with over twenty separate webpages.
View attachment 4616632 View attachment 4616638 View attachment 4616646

From 'Fun Toy Banned Because of 3 Stupid Dead Kids' to....this.

Sad.

 

[SteelPlatedHeart]

The Onion is seething.

The Onion’s Exclusive Interview With J.K. Rowling

archived 23 Feb 2023 19:23:14 UTC

archive.is

They're really trying to maximize clicks by spreading it out into a "slideshow" with over twenty separate webpages.
View attachment 4616632 View attachment 4616638 View attachment 4616646

https://twitter.com/plebcomics/status/1629155879944613888

 

[DoubleD]

The Onion is seething.

The Onion’s Exclusive Interview With J.K. Rowling

archived 23 Feb 2023 19:23:14 UTC

archive.is

They're really trying to maximize clicks by spreading it out into a "slideshow" with over twenty separate webpages.
View attachment 4616632 View attachment 4616638 View attachment 4616646

The Onion's hit on Rowling was so bad, it's attracted coverage of its own. From UnHerd:
Link to article, Archive

The Onion’s J.K. Rowling ‘interview’ isn’t satire
Humourless personal attacks are now the basis for comedy, apparently

Source: The Onion.
Satire is supposed to be funny. It can be shocking, like Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal, and it is sometimes cruel. What it shouldn’t be is a cover for an outpouring of envy and malice. You might think that the publishers of a satirical magazine would know that, given that it’s their stock-in-trade. But the current top ‘story’ on the website of The Onion is a fabricated ‘interview’, with the author J.K. Rowling, whose sole purpose is to launch a series of attacks under the guise of satire. This isn’t the first time the site has mounted a lazy attack on her, either.

The interview opens with Rowling, or at least the website’s imagined version of her, demanding to know “which genitals you have right now”. The joke is actually on The Onion, because it’s trans activists who are obsessed with pronouns and how people ‘identify’; I’m sure Rowling belongs to the mass of humanity that is able to correctly recognise someone’s sex without even thinking about it, let alone believing it requires a discussion.

An obsession with her wealth and success is not even thinly disguised, while the ‘questions’ are just an excuse to insult her. (“Why are you such a huge fucking hateful dork?”) The whole thing could have been written by a 14-year-old with mummy issues who thinks it’s clever to throw around words like ‘penis’ and ‘vagina’.
At one level, it’s just further evidence of how far gender ideology has spread in the US, where The Onion is published. Preposterous figures such as Dylan Mulvaney, a man who posts TikTok videos of himself posing and pouting in a caricature of teenage femininity, are treated as icons and even get invited to the White House. It would take a brave author or producer to laugh at a group of people who have acquired a sort of secular sainthood.

It’s much easier and safer to take aim at women who oppose gender ideology, pretending that sarcasm and ageism are a species of wit. It’s not the first time that satire has been used to excuse misogynist attacks, as the suffragettes discovered to their cost. An image from 1900 showed a bawling baby above the phrase ‘Mummy’s a Suffragette’, while another from 1909 has a husband up to his elbows in a washing tub. ‘I want to vote but my wife won’t let me,’ the caption says.

The ideas behind them are as old as the hills — a woman’s place is in the home and men are emasculated by feminism — but they can always be recycled. It’s a familiar reversal, attributing excessive power to women who actually don’t have much, and it’s traceable all the way back to Juvenal’s sixth Satire — a great resource if you like Roman mother-in-law jokes.

Satire works when the target has something to hide or is guilty of hypocrisy. Neither is true of Rowling or most gender-critical women, who offer a reasoned critique of the claims of trans activists. It’s not feminists who threaten to kill or rape people they disagree with, while attacks on Rowling’s wealth look ridiculous in light of her huge charitable donations.

Mean-spirited personal attacks are not satire. Social media is full of trans-identified individuals claiming to be ‘better’ women than those of us who were born female. That’s a subject for satire if ever I saw one, but I don’t expect The Onion will publish that interview.

From 'Fun Toy Banned Because of 3 Stupid Dead Kids' to....this.

Sad.

I never really found satirical news articles that funny beyond the initial headline. But damn if their Youtube channel wasn't one of the funniest things on the platform.

A respectable production company could not make a video like that nowadays. Partly for budgetary reasons (early Onion videos cost a lot to shoot, which they weren't making back), but partly because of its content. The joke was at the expense of 9/11 conspiracy theories, though not overwhelmingly so. Nowadays those ideas are considered too dangerous to even dignify with a joke, unless the joke outright condemns them.

And this one is a perfect example of how you could joke about racism back in the day.* Racism (and systemic racism, at that) is clearly the butt of the joke here. But a big part of what is makes it funny is the subtext: black people are big ugly brutes and the last thing you'dwant is to look like one. But black people are such a protected class nowadays, I don't think jokes like that on the table anymore, at least not in mainstream comedy.

*Fuck, man. And I say that like 2011 is a long time ago, but western culture really changed that fast.

Okay, last one, I promise. The Onion's first ever video from 2008 is a joke about Mitt Romney not being homophobic enough to secure the Republican nomination.

And the joke is clearly at the expense of Republicans and people who say the word 'faggot', but you were actually allowed to say the word to mock the attitude it represents. One reporter says it twice, and the mockery is all the more effective for it.

The Onion hasn't fundamentally changed who it makes jokes about. But western culture has since turned gay, black, and trans people into protected classes, such that the full weight of the system comes down upon people who offend them.

This is why jokes about bigots don't land the way they used to, unless you're one of the dwindling number of retards who still think bigots hold more power in western society. But that is the audience that mainstream comedy is made for, the ones who either cannot or will not see how much social capital there is to be found in playing the victim. Those people still find the Onion funny.

But, and as much as some of you probably can't bear to hear this, the Onion has always had a political slant that was aligned with 'wokeness' (or at least, 2000s and early 2010s versions of the concept) more often than it was not. It was only funny at the time because it was taking jabs against the prevailing cultural norms.

But now that wokeness has become the cultural norm, the Onion cannot reverse its position. And it cannot take jabs against the other side without first building strawman versions of what they believe and passing them off as cultural norms supported by the establishment. This is why the Onion sucks so much now and the Babylon Bee is stealing its lunch.

 

[Well Intentioned]

I don't really agree that the Onion was 'aligned with wokeness.' They took shots at anything and everything and there weren't really any sacred cows. There's been a steady decline and I sorta just started tuning them out.

This one would basically result in the site getting drawn and quartered and the writer probably getting fired if it were published today. Or this Onion radio bit. Now, yeah, coverage is incredibly slanted.

I think it started when the Onion was sold in 2003 to some financial guy and are now owned by G/O Media. Who also own such luminaries as Kotaku, Jezebel and the troon infested A/V Club. They used to be a group doing their own thing, but now are answerable to corporate interests, higher-ups, etc.

It's not so much this stupid 'they're not on my team' tribalism that's ruining the world, and more so just the perpetual lurch of corporate culture lobotomizing and diluting everything it touches. Many such cases.

 

[DoubleD]

I don't really agree that the Onion was 'aligned with wokeness.' They took shots at anything and everything and there weren't really any sacred cows. There's been a steady decline and I sorta just started tuning them out.

This one would basically result in the site getting drawn and quartered and the writer probably getting fired if it were published today. Or this Onion radio bit. Now, yeah, coverage is incredibly slanted.

I think it started when the Onion was sold in 2003 to some financial guy and are now owned by G/O Media. Who also own such luminaries as Kotaku, Jezebel and the troon infested A/V Club. They used to be a group doing their own thing, but now are answerable to corporate interests, higher-ups, etc.

It's not so much this stupid 'they're not on my team' tribalism that's ruining the world, and more so just the perpetual lurch of corporate culture lobotomizing and diluting everything it touches. Many such cases.

If the change of management in 2003 was the event precipitated them going woke then it checks out. Maybe it didn't happen right away, but period I'm referring to begins in early 2008 and ends around 2014-ish. I've not been able to find any video they made prior to that. But it's hard to deny the videos made in this period represent the Onion at its best. And those glory days were overseen by a team that at least leaned towards the progressive left (or woke, or your preferred term for that ideology).

For what it's worth, you can make fun of both sides and be incredibly funny while doing so, and still make fun of the other side more.

Ever since taking West African History 201, I've been fascinated by the rich cultural tapestry that is Nigeria.

But again, I would argue this is more of a joke at the expense of the ignorant white guy (who took a college course and thinks he knows everything) than it is at the expense of Nigerians.

And I would argue there were plenty of woke lefties (myself included) who saw Clinton as fair game to criticise pre-2016 because they didn't even regard him as left-wing.

Speaking of things that happened in 2016, I remember people saying that the company that bought them in 2016 had ties with the Clintons. Don't know if that was the reason, but I actually recall by that point the videos had already begun to decline production-wise. And I didn't really watch too many after that.

 

[Well Intentioned]

If the change of management in 2003 was the event precipitated them going woke then it checks out. Maybe it didn't happen right away, but period I'm referring to begins in early 2008 and ends around 2014-ish. I've not been able to find any video they made prior to that. But it's hard to deny the videos made in this period represent the Onion at its best. And those glory days were overseen by a team that at least leaned towards the progressive left (or woke, or your preferred term for that ideology).

That's because they didn't start ONN til like 2007/2008 or so. They'd been running since 1988. You're looking at like the last 10 years or so of their (admittedly) shit production and thinking it speaks for the entirety of what they'd done.

For what it's worth, you can make fun of both sides and be incredibly funny while doing so, and still make fun of the other side more.

But again, I would argue this is more of a joke at the expense of the ignorant white guy (who took a college course and thinks he knows everything) than it is at the expense of Nigerians.

It's more the describing anywhere in Africa as a 'hellhole.' That's haram as fuck these days.

And I would argue there were plenty of woke lefties (myself included) who saw Clinton as fair game to criticise pre-2016 because they didn't even regard him as left-wing.

Speaking of things that happened in 2016, I remember people saying that the company that bought them in 2016 had ties with the Clintons. Don't know if that was the reason, but I actually recall by that point the videos had already begun to decline production-wise. And I didn't really watch too many after that.

Clinton was 'fair game' in the fucking 90s, dude. I get the sense that you're maybe in your 20s?

The reason the videos were declining was because a lot of big deals they had made were falling through (IIRC, they had movie rights optioned, some tentative shit with CBS or ABC, another potential deal with HBO, etc.) and/or their own ventures weren't being profitable, so they had to scale back. It also coincided with them moving from NY to Chicago. It's been a while since I read about the Onion, but I believe they lost a lot of their original staff members when that was decided (they had already moved from uhh...Nebraska or Wisconsin to New York and then had the rug pulled out from under them with a surprise announcement of the Chicago move.)

It's generally the result of most creative works. Continue long enough and it's going to turn to crap because there's only so many ways you can peel a potato or skin a cat. Yeah, political bias can skew things (I appreciate a lot of what comes from Babylon Bee, but not all of it is great, whereas I tend to hate the Canuck version of the Onion, the Beaverton, because it's lazy hack writing 99% of the time, despite it generally aligning with my political views) but this is more just a case of an entity running out of steam, the originators moving on, and it becoming a bloated corporate mess.

 

[DoubleD]

That's because they didn't start ONN til like 2007/2008 or so. They'd been running since 1988. You're looking at like the last 10 years or so of their (admittedly) shit production and thinking it speaks for the entirety of what they'd done.

And being Bri'ish, I never came across the Onion's print edition, encountering them for the first time through their website. Wasn't there a time when they made their videos available for free but articles were paywalled for non-Yanks? To me, the Onion basically is ONN.

It's more the describing anywhere in Africa as a 'hellhole.' That's haram as fuck these days.

Key words being these days. That article was written in a time when you could say that living in the third world sucks or get away with saying 'faggot' to make fun of homophobes. And both were considered acceptably progressive takes that punched up at the establishment.

Clinton was 'fair game' in the fucking 90s, dude. I get the sense that you're maybe in your 20s?

Kinda my point though. If that was one of your go-to examples of the Onion punching left, then dare I say that it never went that hard in the first place.

Not a huge issue though. I more or less agree that partisan bias is rarely the only thing that kills a creative work. But it often weakens it enough for something else to finish it off.

 

[Well Intentioned]

And being Bri'ish, I never came across the Onion's print edition, encountering them for the first time through their website. Wasn't there a time when they made their videos available for free but articles were paywalled for non-Yanks? To me, the Onion basically is ONN.

I know there was some paywalling stuff that was tied into geoblocking, yeah. I think that was when I stopped straight up following the site.

I don't know about the particulars, but there was a lot of interesting stuff that was going on. I still maintain that Sex House was one of the funniest things they did. I also like Clickhole, and find that they tend to be more hit than miss.

Key words being these days. That article was written in a time when you could say that living in the third world sucks or get away with saying 'faggot' to make fun of homophobes. And both were considered acceptably progressive takes that punched up at the establishment.

Yeah, I may have misinterpreted what you were saying or talking over you, but my take is that you were saying they were always progressive/super-left/whatever. Apologies if I was off the mark. They had an edge to them that just sort of got worn down as time went on, and they took shots at everyone and nothing. A lot of their early stuff that I thought was good was their parodies of 'local news.'

Kinda my point though. If that was one of your go-to examples of the Onion punching left, then dare I say that it never went that hard in the first place.

I chose that one specifically cos it was both mentioning Clinton and had a nice bit of "misogynistic" language as well. There was a site that reviews old issues of the Onion and 'Clinton stories' was a featured category. Another one that I recall was Clinton naming himself dictator for life, complete with him photoshopped like a third world dictator.

The mockery of Clinton basically became a cottage industry back in the 90s. There was Norm McDonald's barely veiled utter contempt for Bill and the "First Bitch", as well as Jay Leno basically beating the Clinton horse into paste.

And yeah, the Onion was very much left-leaning. But it wasn't anywhere near the shrill REEEing that was that Rowling "interview" """satire.""" Satire generally speaks to some sort of truth or point by couching it in utter absurdity (like Swift's Modest Proposal--the whole point was to highlight the issue of the Irish starving and indifferent British attitudes towards them, but folks just sorta latched onto the whole cannibalizing the children thing.)

I know we're more or less aligned in that, just ranting. It irritates me that someone basically goes "This is you: Durr durr durr" and claims it is parody or satire.

A "good" parody of Rowling would be writing an article talking about how Rowling is championing her new book: an ironclad dictionary where we can only use existing words and no more new words can be created and are 'stuck' with the words we've got. (It's ludicrous on numerous levels because language evolves, English language has so many fucking loanwords, and Rowling herself is responsible for the creation of a bunch of words, like muggle.) Or something, but at least that's grounded in shit she's said/done, rather than Seething and Dilating: The Onion Article.

Not a huge issue though. I more or less agree that partisan bias is rarely the only thing that kills a creative work. But it often weakens it enough for something else to finish it off.

I kinda disagree. Straight up partisan attitudes kills shit dead if they sink their talons into things. The greater issue is an unwillingness to be introspective (something which, troons, or people who are vocal/ardent left/right, for example, full on fucking lack the ability to do) or laugh at themselves.

I know this is gonna be met with disagreement, but part of what made the Daily Show with Stewart so popular is that he was willing to take potshots at 'his' guys. Yeah, he predominantly shit on Bush and more or less built his own cottage industry around bashing Dubya, but compare that to his successor, Trevor Noah, and the approach he took and the subsequent ratings decline makes sense (same thing with that dude who followed Colbert and had his show cancelled in short order.) Smug and condescending rarely work well with comedy and has a far greater likelihood at turning people off.

 

[Sinner's Sandwich]

Is this the Onion thread now?

 

[GamerGateSurvivor]

The Onion is seething.

The Onion’s Exclusive Interview With J.K. Rowling

archived 23 Feb 2023 19:23:14 UTC

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They're really trying to maximize clicks by spreading it out into a "slideshow" with over twenty separate webpages.
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Why are you such a huge fucking hateful dork?

I prefer the term 'fantastical bigot.'

I'll admit, the idea of her saying this to these faggots while they eat shit and cry did get a chuckle out of me.

 

[DoubleD]

And yeah, the Onion was very much left-leaning. But it wasn't anywhere near the shrill REEEing that was that Rowling "interview" """satire.""" Satire generally speaks to some sort of truth or point by couching it in utter absurdity (like Swift's Modest Proposal--the whole point was to highlight the issue of the Irish starving and indifferent British attitudes towards them, but folks just sorta latched onto the whole cannibalizing the children thing.)

I know we're more or less aligned in that, just ranting. It irritates me that someone basically goes "This is you: Durr durr durr" and claims it is parody or satire.

I wish it were that simple. But even the goddawful Rowling interview is satire, just very delusional satire. The Onion is still following its principles to make jokes that reflect its partisan view of reality. The main difference is the level of delusion with which that position is held. We see through the delusion, but we lived in a world where trannies are genuinely victims and Rowling actively roots for their victimisation* then the Onion's observations about her would be funny and inciteful, if perhaps a little too on the nose. The slideshow format would still suck balls, but the soul of the joke would be there.

*But don't take my word for it. Take it from the people who genuinely think we live in that world.

Spoiler: The Onion is no longer satire!!! 😱

But maybe I'm just jaded because it keeps being pointed out to me that every sci-fi franchise that I used to love has been 'woke' (read: left-leaning with a tendency to moralise in that direction, but at least somewhat subtle about it) before it went woke.

Is this the Onion thread now?

Alright, back on topic - let's talk sales figures.

From notable TERF publication the New York Times:

Hogwarts Legacy Sells 12 Million Copies During Dispute Over Rowling​

The video game generated $850 million in sales in two weeks. Online discussion before its release was largely about the “Harry Potter” creator J.K. Rowling’s comments on transgender issues.

Hogwarts Legacy was released for computers, the PlayStation 5 and the Xbox Series X and Series S. It will come out for older consoles in April and July.

The Hogwarts Legacy video game, set a century before the story of Harry Potter, has sold more than 12 million copies in two weeks, Warner Bros. Games said on Thursday.

The early sales figures for the role-playing game, which has generated about $850 million, come amid a revived debate over J.K. Rowling, the author who created the fantasy world and has drawn waves of criticism for her comments on gender identity issues.

Some critics who have called Rowling’s positions anti-transgender — a sentiment she denies — called for a boycott of Hogwarts Legacy, which Warner Bros. Games has said she was not involved in creating. The back-and-forth over Rowling’s positions grew particularly heated in the gaming community, where members tend to be deeply invested in online controversies and harassment can run rampant.

Although Hogwarts Legacy quickly broke one million concurrent viewers on the streaming site Twitch, some streamers refused to play it, and a few websites devoted to gaming coverage decided not to review it. Others sought to find a middle ground in which they engaged with the game while including caveats about Rowling or pledging to donate to L.G.B.T.Q. organizations. On forums dedicated to Hogwarts Legacy, the topic was front and center, with moderators seeking to tamp down talk about Rowling in favor of the game itself.

Elden Ring, one of last year’s most popular role-playing games, sold 12 million copies in roughly two weeks. It sold more than 20 million copies in its first year on the market, its developers announced on Wednesday.
Warner Bros. Games, which has published games in the Batman: Arkham and Mortal Kombat franchises, said it was the company’s biggest video game launch.

Joost van Dreunen, a gaming investor, adviser and New York University professor who studies the business of video games, called the sales numbers a “massive success,” putting the game in the same league as blockbuster franchises like Call of Duty and Grand Theft Auto.

“It is evidence of the appeal of strong intellectual property to mainstream gaming audiences,” he said in an email, adding that the longevity of the game was in question because it is a single-player format, most likely leading some players to “burn through the content and move on.”

It is not possible to determine whether online opposition to the highly anticipated game has affected its sales. The game has been released for computers, the PlayStation 5 and the Xbox Series X and Series S and will come to the PlayStation 4, the Xbox One and the Nintendo Switch later this year.

The release of Hogwarts Legacy revived discussion of Rowling’s views on transgender people, which have been scrutinized since 2018, when she liked a tweet that referred to transgender women as “men in dresses.” In 2020, Rowling self-published an essay in which she said a movement of transgender activists was “seeking to erode ‘woman’ as a political and biological class and offering cover to predators.”

Rowling has continued to be vocal on the subject, rallying against Scottish legislation that was intended to make it easier for people to legally change their gender.

Warner Bros. Games and the developer of Hogwarts Legacy, Avalanche Software, have avoided substantially addressing Rowling’s comments. After fans concluded that one of the side characters in the video game is transgender, a representative for the developer told the entertainment website IGN, “It has been a high priority throughout the development of Hogwarts Legacy to create a game that is representative and diverse, aligning with our wonderful fan community.”

Link to Article, Archive

12 million copies in 2 weeks invites comparisons to Elden Ring, which also sold 12 million copies in its first 2 weeks. I've seen someone genuinely try to argue that the latter is more impressive since Dark Souls/Fromsoft has less normie recognition, but that is literally all they've got. And unless something absolutely huge comes along, Hogwarts Legacy will go down as the biggest game release of 2023.

Keep in mind that it's only been released so far on PCs and current generation consoles. The PS4 and XB1 release is still over a month away, plus the Nintendo Switch. Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't Elden Ring have a simultaneous release on all of its platforms?

 

[Wy4M]

I guess it made her happy too.

Emily on Twitter: "I am delighted to share that I am officially the G…

archived 21 Mar 2023 09:40:50 UTC

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Edit - Also a special thanks to Baily from Madison for making this possible.

Emily on Twitter: "Thanks to Bailey from Madison for making this poss…

archived 21 Mar 2023 09:46:54 UTC

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[The Skeksis Emperor]

I guess it made her happy too.

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Emily on Twitter: "I am delighted to share that I am officially the G…

archived 21 Mar 2023 09:40:50 UTC

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Edit - Also a special thanks to Baily from Madison for making this possible.
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Emily on Twitter: "Thanks to Bailey from Madison for making this poss…

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That's pretty cringy but not nearly as cringy as painting troon propaganda on the road, so fair play to her.

 

[Molesting the Decapitated]

Every time I check this thread I like her even more

 

[Flaming Carrot]

The Onion has announced they're going to be attacking J.K. Rowling some more over her stance on trannies. I'm sure she's devastated.

In Case You Missed It, 'The Onion' Is Going Nuclear Against J.K. Rowling And Anti-Trans Rhetoric

After posting a series of withering articles about J.K. Rowling and her anti-trans rhetoric, the Onion told BuzzFeed that the author is "a billionaire with a penchant for spreading misery" and that they "regret only that it took this long for us to find a pointed manner to highlight her...

www.buzzfeed.com

The Onion Is Going Nuclear Against J.K. Rowling And Anti-Trans Rhetor…

archived 29 Mar 2023 09:42:36 UTC

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"I Regret Only That It Took This Long For Us To Highlight Her Unthinking Hatred": The Onion Is Launching A Crusade Against J.K. Rowling's Anti-Trans Bigotry
After posting a series of withering articles about J.K. Rowling and her anti-trans rhetoric, the Onion told BuzzFeed that the author is "a billionaire with a penchant for spreading misery" and that they "regret only that it took this long for us to find a pointed manner to highlight her unthinking hatred."

Alice Lahoda
by Alice Lahoda
BuzzFeed Staff

295 comments
Editor's Note: This article includes mentions of anti-trans rhetoric. BuzzFeed unequivocally supports trans rights and opposes anti-trans bigotry. If you, like us, feel impassioned about trans rights, learn more or donate here.

Surely you've heard of the Onion, best known for their whip-smart satire and hilarious headlines. They also have a long history of going hard against politically conservative and bigoted values — and J.K. Rowling just became the Onion's latest target.

You probably know J.K. Rowling as the author of the Harry Potter series — or, more recently, as a billionaire who uses her massive platform to spread hateful, bigoted rhetoric against trans people.

The author's public anti-trans rhetoric dates back to 2014, when she published a crime novel, The Silkworm, about a trans woman who is "portrayed as conspicuous and unable to pass," according to a detailed timeline of Rowling's anti-trans behavior in Vox.

On June 10, 2020 — just four days after writing a Twitter thread denying any anti-trans beliefs — Rowling railed against "the new trans activism" in a 3,600-word manifesto, causing many Harry Potter actors to publicly denounce Rowling.

Rowling claimed that language like "‘menstruators’ and ‘people with vulvas’ strikes many women as dehumanizing." However, trans-inclusive language does not harm cis women, nor is it "dehumanizing" to refer to "people with vulvas" as "people" (another word for "human").

In 2023, Rowling's anti-trans rhetoric reemerged in the public discourse, reaching a fever pitch on Feb. 16, when the New York Times published an op-ed by columnist Pamela Paul entitled "In Defense of J.K. Rowling."

In the column, Paul asserts that "nothing Rowling has said qualifies as transphobic." She also defends the author's right to speak out against her detractors, citing one of Rowling's interviews on the podcast The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling in which she claims that "the attempt to intimidate and silence me is meant to serve as a warning to other women."

In response, a Human Rights Campaign press release criticized the New York Times for "publishing stories that harm the transgender and non-binary community," called Pamela Paul "one of their most consistently anti-transgender opinion writers," and referred to J.K. Rowling as "one of the most famous transphobic writers in the world."

The press release also highlighted the irony that Paul's column "was published merely one day after 100+ journalists, organizations, community leaders and influencers sent an open letter calling on the Times to improve their coverage of transgender people and issues."

The following day, the Onion satirized the Times op-ed in their own opinion piece, "It Is Journalism’s Sacred Duty To Endanger The Lives Of As Many Trans People As Possible." In it, the Onion boldly asserted that "it is against free speech to stop us from fixating on the genitals."

Though the op-ed primarily targeted the Times' defense of Rowling, the satirical publication took aim specifically at Rowling later that same day, poking fun at the author's overzealous litigation strategy with "‘Harry Potter’ Fan Always Dreamed Of Receiving Magical Defamation Letter From J.K. Rowling."

Before 2023, the Onion only sporadically wrote about J.K. Rowling or anti-trans politics, rarely publishing more than one article in a month. But in the weeks following their initial op-ed on Feb. 17, the site published six articles directly targeting major perpetrators of anti-trans rhetoric — starting with the Times' defense of J.K. Rowling before shifting focus to the author.


Although the Onion is one of several satirical news outlets that occasionally wrote about Rowling and anti-trans bigotry, the Onion's recent onslaught is the first time a major satire publication launched a sustained campaign against the author.

At this point, people started realizing just how intensely the Onion was gunning for J.K. Rowling.

In the following days, the Onion published several more stories targeting Rowling's anti-trans rhetoric, including "Evangelical Leaders Announce J.K. Rowling Finally Bigoted Enough That It’s Okay For Kids To Read About Witchcraft" and "Conservatives Defend Their Anti-Trans Bigotry."

One article, "What To Know About ‘Hogwarts Legacy,’" also targeted the antisemitic tropes in Hogwarts Legacy, a video game released in 2023. A central plot arc in the game revolves around crushing a rebellion of oppressed "Gringotts goblins," the hook-nosed bank workers in Rowling's wizarding world that align with offensive antisemitic tropes.

In particular, "The Onion's Exclusive Interview With J.K. Rowling" garnered buzz as a brutal takedown of Rowling's anti-trans rhetoric.


BuzzFeed reached out to the Onion's senior managing editor, Jordan LaFlure, who explained the reasoning behind the publication's recent shift in focus. "The discourse around trans rights has never suffered from an abundance of clear, logical thinking from mainstream media. And anti-trans sentiment is no more thoughtless and hateful now than it ever was. All that’s changed around this topic is the fevered pitch the discourse has reached."

As for why anti-trans rhetoric is such an ideal satirical target, Jordan said that it "relies heavily on misinformation and ahistorical beliefs about 'the way things have always been.' It comes from a place of fear and willful ignorance. It makes it easy to pick apart, even if it is horrifying to watch in real time."

"J.K. Rowling, a billionaire with a penchant for spreading misery, has long been a worthy target. I regret only that it took this long for us to find a pointed manner to highlight her unthinking hatred."

Having recently poked fun at J.K. Rowling's litigiousness, the Onion writers are clearly aware that she uses threats of legal action to silence opposition, primarily in the UK. However, libel laws require a higher burden of proof in the US, which means the threat of litigation isn't as persuasive a tool for silencing J.K. Rowling's American critics.

Some people have even speculated that the Onion's recent actions might bait J.K. Rowling into a legal battle in the US. But when asked if he's hoping Rowling will take the Onion to court, Jordan shot down the theory with a definitive "no."

That doesn't mean the Onion won't defend parody in court if necessary — in fact, it already has. In 2022, the Onion submitted an amicus brief to the Supreme Court, which demonstrated the publication's willingness to defend satire and parody in the US legal system.

Jordan concluded, "We’re in a golden era of non-credible people making credible threats. Until they’re soundly defeated, all anti-free speech threats should be taken seriously."
Do you think the Onion is doing a good job calling out J.K. Rowling and anti-trans rhetoric?

 

[PS1gamenwatch]

What, they gonna do a mass shooting?