Isn’t this the “banality of evil?”
…I think a trans person should rightly consider a streamer who streams the fascist wizard game as someone who probably isn’t an ally. But they wouldn’t even think that a janitor doing a job at probably minimum wage would be complicit.
And while the levels of complicity is different at different levels (for example Troy Leavitt does not get a pass) it doesn’t really matter. For many trans people, the sheer scale of the onslaught of abuse, harassment, and support of the Gender Critical movement that JK Rowling is responsible for outweigh most other concerns here.
That’s incredibly debatable. I imagine the kids would be reading something else instead. It’s not like Rowling invented reading.
A lot of this I suspect is that some people don’t want to be associated with a repugnant human being. Whatever you may or may not find repugnant varies from person to person, but there’s probably something out there for everyone.
…transphobia isn’t just “old-fashioned ideas.” Its just transphobia.
From today:
https://twitter.com/josephjames94/status/1625161673941176323
Just another person forced to bend the knee in order to avoid a lawsuit, thanks to UK Libel laws. Its just one of many examples of JK Rowlings vile behaviour. For a more detailed deep dive, I recommend Jessie Earl’s article that she wrote for Gamespot.
The harms her views cause out weight her contributions to child/tween/teen reading by a significant margin. And that is very important. It isn’t about “cringey tweets.” And she supports LG rights without the T and probably without the B. She isn’t MAGA. Because she is Gender Critical. And at this point there really isn’t much difference.
I’m sorry: are you blaming trans people for JK Rowling’s transphobic rhetoric? Rowling has over 14 million followers on Twitter. Do you think that nobody would have noticed the things that she tweeted if nobody had “yelled” at her?
Can I suggest you investigate organizations like the LGB Alliance: organizations that claim to support LGB rights but spend almost all of their time attacking trans people.
Once again, I object to the framing. The issue with Rowling and Hogwarts Legacy is not about dislike or disagreement. The issue at hand is whether one should give money to someone who is current activist successfully promoting bigotry and causing harm to millions of people.
It’s not even an issue of someone who may have some bigoted beliefs but is otherwise good. Rowling is a full on anti-trans activist, and actively promoted withholding vital medical care to trans children, and got a law past forbidding such.
So the equivalent situation would be more like if some author got a law passed that prevented black children from getting treated for, I dunno, sickle cell disease or something. And they are fighting for far more, even up to and including recreating segregation.
Would it be okay to purchase a video game that will fund their activism? I think most people would say no.
Honestly, I think that a lot more people would think about it this way save for one thing: they really want this game. It allows them to do something they’ve dreamed about since they first learned of the world–they get to be themselves as a wizard in Hogwarts. They get the huge nostalgia rush. So they want to find some way to justify it, rather than accept that they think their own pleasure is worth the small amount of their purchase that will go to Rowling.
What gets me is the attempt to reframe it as “disagreement.” Sterling isn’t against this because she disagrees with Rowling. She’s against it because Rowling is actively fighting to harm the rights of her and people like her. She is a threat to Sterling’s wellbeing.
…this.
As a bit of an aside but also on topic at the same time the YouTuber Videogamedunkey has lampooned what the OP is about (2.5 minutes):
As a person on the libertarian right if I refused to enjoy entertainment by people I felt had ‘wrong’ beliefs, I’d have almost nothing to watch or read, since 90% of entertainment and literature comes from the left.
I love Pink Floyd. Roger Waters is an ass, and always has been. Now he seems to enjoy being Putin’s suck-up. But I still enjoy and will continue to enjoy Pink Floyd.
I like Billy Bragg’s music. But Billy was a hard-core socialist, which is pretty mich diametrically opposite of me. Hell, I can even enjoy his left-wing songs if they are done well.
The way I look at it, life is too short and talent too sparse to limit yourself only to those people who fit narrowly within your own worldview or even ethical system. I love Warren Zevon, but he was very hard on his friends and family. I can love someone’s misic or acting while knowing perfectly well that in his personal life he’s an ass.
I get what you are saying but I suspect it is different for someone who is under attack on a regular basis. As in laws are being passed to oppress you (not to mention opprobrium from society).
I’d guess that is not you.
I want to clarify that I’m not choosing artists to enjoy based on their agreement with my ideology - I am very far left, and not a liberal, so even most liberal artists are to the right of me. It’s not ideological agreement I have a problem with - I read libertarian sci-fi authors, for example, whose politics I absolutely abhor.
It’s morally repugnant artists I don’t fuck with. Rapists, homophobes, transphobes, racists, misogynists, etc.
For me I think it’s about not giving my money to people whose views I deem harmful to society, even if the impact of this is absolutely tiny. For example, I recently started to listen to The Stone Roses on YouTube, not having done so in the past - then I discovered Ian Brown, their lead singer, is a vocal anti-vaxxer/covid denier, so I stopped. I know that the fraction of a penny this denied him is completely insignificant, but the principle is important to me. Similarly, I avoided watching or discussing anything to do with the the FIFA World Cup in Qatar, as a stance against corruption, homophobia, sexism, and treatment of workers.
But although I had a couple of conversations about this with my son, I didn’t prevent him from watching and enjoying it - I figure that’s his decision to make, when he’s older (he’s 8). Similarly, I don’t think I’ll avoid reading the HP books to him in due course - I bought them all years ago. At some point we might have a conversation about the author’s views on gender (with which I strongly disagree) but I think I’m OK with separating that from what was created before that all came out.
I generally would argue in favor of separating art from the artist. I would even go so far as to say that I think that Hitler’s paintings look pretty nice even if the man himself was a genocidal tyrant.
Okay, but are you going to hang one in your living room?
For me the method of consuming the art is the determining factor. Would I listen to an album, read a book, or look at a painting by an artist who has some morally repugnant views? Yes. Would I go to a concert, attend a book signing, or an art gallery opening featuring the artist in question? No.
That makes sense. And I think the distinction there is between engaging with the art and engaging with the person who created the art.
People should do whatever their concience tells them to do, but my concience is in a no win situation against my love for the music of Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, Phil Spector, and a legion of other notorious assholes.
I worked PT at Borders, during the heyday. Kids lined up at midnite with their parents to buy a big fat book, then coming back to ask for other books like that. New customers.
Just how long ago was it accepted that not all people born a XX female can be some other gender sometimes? Maybe a decade?
…transphobia isn’t just “old-fashioned ideas.” Its just transphobia. Anything else I suspect is outside the realms of discussion here. Rowling is a dangerous bigot. That’s all that needs to be said.
In broad outline, yes, although it depends.
Would I attend a Donald Trump rally, to see what the vibe is like? In theory, yes, but only if it was free. (In practice, I’m not going, but only because I think Trump appearances involve a lot security-related waiting around.)
Would I buy a book by Ron DeSantis? No, but if nominated, I’ll probably borrow one from the library. I’ll do this knowing that DeSantis does get a little extra revenue when enough people borrow his books from a public library.
Most of the time, I think that bad people getting more money isn’t harmful. If they use it to fund a war, that’s harmful, but if they use it to, say, enlarge a mansion, I’m not going to be upset.
I can’t bring myself to play Hogwarts Legacy. I was looking forward to it a long time ago (I still like the HP books, and I’m still playing the Hogwarts Mystery phone game, though I don’t give them any money). It’s not just the anti-trans stuff, which would be bad enough all on its own.
I’m surprised nobody has brought up the antisemitic aspects of the game (if they did, I apologize for missing it)–the portrayal of the goblins, the use of an object that’s clearly patterned after a Jewish horn called a shofar, the blood libel references (goblins accused of stealing children and using it in a ritual to destroy their enemies)…I didn’t know any of this, but several Jewish friends pointed it out and I looked it up. Here’s an article that describes the details:
Between that and the anti-trans stuff, I can’t bring myself to play it, even though I’d like to. Supporting my trans and Jewish friends is more important to me than playing some game that will be forgotten when the next big thing comes out.