Quote:
Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield
Okay. The thread goes over a bunch of things Rowling said. It flags where Rowling was or may be wrong. I imagine another thread somewhere would argue with this thread.
Is this a basis to make Rowling a pariah? Is this a basis to boycott her?
Or is the more adult thing to do what this author has done - coolly take issue with numerous of her points? (Assuming he's not playing loose with studies and cherry picking points to attack and ignoring others where Rowling may have a point - a tactic many of these Twitter takedowns seem to employ.)
The crux of this "free speech" debate is right here:
1. Is it acceptable to meet views, facts, data, with countering views, facts, or data? Yes. In fact, it's desired. It's how debate and exchange of ideas enriches our understanding. It's a basic part of education.
2. Is it acceptable to meet views, facts, or data with demands that the speaker be made a pariah? In the case of someone like David Duke, yes. In very rare cases where a speaker has gone way beyond the pale and is clearly acting in bad faith for odious ends, you may demand he be deplatformed. But it's still smarter to simply ignore the person. In the case of someone like Rowling, who has merely stated an impolitic, partially flawed position, no. In that instance, the correct reply is to counter it and explain where and why it is incorrect.
This is not to say that people who wish to flip out and scream at Rowling do not have the right to do so. They do. That is free speech. They can advocate boycotts, and claim such infantile behavior is okay because they've been marginalized and this somehow confers them a unique right to behave like an ass (it doesn't, btw), but they're still asses, and they should be ignored.
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In some circles, especially Trans communities that suffer actual real harm from viewpoints like hers, absolutely. In others, no so much.
Again, this is a hill she's chosen to die on. Everyone can decide for themselves on how they're going to react. But she has a massive, massive platform that sucks the air from the room, and now she's thrown that "I'll sue your ass for libel if you cross me" grenade out there to further quell objection or even a discussion about it.
Her book sales are UP right now, because parents are reading the books to their kids as they try to fill the time during lock downs. Aside from isolated threats, which everyone can agree are beyond the pale, she's not suffering at all from the backlash, aside from her ego, which admittedly is pretty damned big.
If someone wants to take the position that they're not going to further support JK Rowling because of this* and tell their friends, family, the studios, publishers, etc why, I don't have a problem with that.
*She's been on thin ice for awhile. Retroactively making a character gay and another who could go either way as black or white, plus a bit character no one has ever heard of as Jewish. Embarrassingly bad cultural appropriation in her stuff that's based in North America with little or no research. See also racism in North America. She was way out of her league and got called to the carpet for her. The Johnny Depp problem, which probably isn't a problem for you but is for a lot of other people and had an effect on the box office, which makes it a problem for Warner Brothers. Plus, her post-Potter books and movies and plays haven't been as good as the Potter stuff.
