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Rowling, Rushdie and Atwood warn against ‘intolerance’ in open letter

theguardian.com

1–10 of 20 posts

Re: Rowling, Rushdie and Atwood warn against ‘intolerance’ in open letter

#3
“Rowling, whose beliefs on transgender rights have recently seen scores of Harry Potter fans distance themselves from her [...]”

That’s an understatement. She’s effectively canceled for rest of her writing career for even thinking what she ended up writing.

Looking forward to the next chapter though - the best is yet to come.

Re: Rowling, Rushdie and Atwood warn against ‘intolerance’ in open letter

#5

“Rowling, whose beliefs on transgender rights have recently seen scores of Harry Potter fans distance themselves from her [...]” That’s an understatement. She’s effectively canceled for rest of her writing career for even thinking what she ended up writing. Looking forward to the next chapter though - the best is yet to come.

>She’s effectively canceled for rest of her writing career for even thinking what she ended up writing.

No, she isn't. Her views on transgender rights, offensive as I and many others find them, are still comfortably mainstream. She lost a lot of Harry Potter fans, but a lot of fans have also chosen to divorce their love of her work from her politics, and many others simply couldn't care less. I seriously doubt publishers are going to refuse to publish her, bookstores to stock her, or studios to turn down piles of money from franchising her work. I seriously doubt that she's going to be wanting for fame, readership or money in the forseeable future.

Re: Rowling, Rushdie and Atwood warn against ‘intolerance’ in open letter

#7

The letter https://harpers.org/a-letter-on-justice-and-open-debate/

Thanks for sharing the original letter!

Many good points therein, can we still able to have a conversation about conversations, are we too far gone, can we course correct?

Re: Rowling, Rushdie and Atwood warn against ‘intolerance’ in open letter

#8
post #5

“Rowling, whose beliefs on transgender rights have recently seen scores of Harry Potter fans distance themselves from her [...]” That’s an understatement. She’s effectively canceled for rest of her writing career for even thinking what she ended up writing. Looking forward to the next chapter though - the best is yet to come.

>She’s effectively canceled for rest of her writing career for even thinking what she ended up writing. No, she isn't. Her views on transgender rights, offensive as I and many others find them, are still comfortably mainstream. She lost a lot of Harry Potter fans, but a lot of fans have also chosen to divorce their love of her work from her politics, and many others simply couldn't care less. I seriously doubt publis…

Unfortunately, her concerns are still far from "mainstream". Most people have no idea that "detransitioning" is actually a thing for quite a few trans folks, or that "rapid onset" gender-dysphoric identity is a serious concern as relating to a minority of young people whose self-perception and orientation seems to be strongly influenced by their "progressive" social milieus.

Re: Rowling, Rushdie and Atwood warn against ‘intolerance’ in open letter

#10
> We need to preserve the possibility of good-faith disagreement without dire professional consequences.

All fine and good, but the authors need to specifically say what topics good faith disagreement can be had on or this is just special pleading on behalf of their particular point on the ideological spectrum.

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