[ SECRET POST #4963 & 4964 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #4963 & 4964 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.


01.



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02.


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03. [SPOILERS for season 6 of 'the blacklist']
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/710880568237096991/737542265806913556/rjksfntjk4as21.png
[embed broken but working link]


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04. [SPOILERS for Avatar the Last Airbender]



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05. [WARNING for discussion of rape]



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06. [WARNING for discussion of homophobia/biphobia]



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07. [WARNING for discussion of sexual assault]



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08. [WARNING for discussion of transphobia]



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09. [WARNING for discussion of rape]























Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 03 pages, 52 secrets from Secret Submission Post #711.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 1 (warning for pedophilia, suicide) - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Oh, there are so many reasons, my innocent and not at all shit-stirring friend, but here are the top three:

1. In his wildest, wide-hipped dreams Butch Hartman has never had the kind of influence or social media presence that JKR has. Seriously, go ask 30 random people on the street who Butch Hartman is and then ask them who wrote the Harry Potter books.

2. Back when Butch Hartman was relevant, social media was not the behemoth it is now. If a creator said/did something stupid back then, it was to a relatively small group of fans and didn't really leave the fandom circle. When JKR talks shit it's to the entire world and it makes the news. That ups the stakes and makes Fandom's reaction more of a public thing as well.

And 3., for better or for worse, the way that Fandom reacts to drama has changed. Mockity mock mock has fallen out of favor. There are still plenty of corners of HP fandom that are firmly in the "Jo doesn't deserve them, so they're ours now" camp. Some of them are going full Chuck Tingle with it, some are just carrying on as usual and pretending JKR doesn't exist anymore. But there's an equally large and loud part of part of fandom that's either washing their hands of JKR entirely or re-reading the books with JKR's latest behavior in mind and flinching at all the bad stuff that had previously been ignored and glossed over with nostalgia.

As for what this means for you? You don't have to be ashamed of liking whatever you want, but you're probably not going to be able to pretend that the sketchy parts don't exist if you want to talk about it outside of very curated circles. It'll happen to most people at some point until the world reaches perfect enlightenment and society has nothing left to learn.

[(Anonymous)]

I think what a potterhead chooses to do on this issue, good or bad, is going to have minimal effect on me as a trans person.

But I mean, unfortunately there is this very real thing of people grabbing onto the social justice issue of the week for the sake of creating fandom wank or justifying online abuse. So I honestly question whether the energy spent on this issue is really for the benefit of trans people, rather than the dopamine hit of saying that someone else was wrong on the internet.

[(Anonymous)]

NAYRT

I think it's a common pattern that this is just how politics on the Internet works now, across the board.

[(Anonymous)]

I don't think anyone ever thought it was for the benefit of trans people.

I do think some of it is just a natural reaction to someone you kind of liked being a raging asshole in public. Sometimes when that happens, all the other questionable stuff they did that you either didn't notice or didn't think was that big of a deal gets thrown into relief. I mean, after Orson Scott Card made it clear that he was an asshole whose major problem with the Bush Administration was that they weren't catering to the Religious Right enough, not only did it kind of suck the fun out of his books for a lot of people, but it also made the existing flaws in those books much more obvious.

And OSC's "platform" was his website and an opinion column that only nerds read.

[(Anonymous)]

OSC sat on the board of the National Organization for Marriage, the most important lobbying group against marriage equality. So he, at least, wasn't just a cranky person on the internet.

[(Anonymous)]

Your implication that Jo's just some crank on the internet with no real influence, rather than an accomplished businesswoman with enduring media presence and one of the most successful living authors in the world, is sexist.

[(Anonymous)]

NOM ran campaigns that successfully deprived people of marriage equality in multiple states, including California. If you can provide evidence that Rowling has actively funded or organized anti-gay or anti-trans political organizations, I'll change my mind. Until then, I'm not obligated to take "someone said something wrong on the internet" as an existential threat, no matter if it's Rowling or even Trump for that matter.

[(Anonymous)]

Where did this "existential threat" idea come from? Who said anything about an existential threat? That's something that you brought up as an arbitrary standard for what people should be allowed to care about.

People don't have to pose an existential threat to be harmful. For that matter, I don't see how anti-marriage equality campaigners were an "existential threat" either.

[(Anonymous)]

Anti-marriage campaigners successfully passed laws and constitutional amendments blocking marriage-equality or any equivalent recognition in a majority of states. The latter clause is significant because it meant that private and piecemeal rights such as private adoption, legal and medical powers of attorney, insurance benefits, and other benefits. For example, Janice Langbehn was denied hospital visitation for her partner under a Florida law that refused to recognize same-sex power of attorney. The Obergefel decision documented that confusion about the arbitrary distinction between marriage and domestic partnership created clear legal harms for same-sex people.

So yes, NOM's political activities clearly harmed LGBTQ people in the states where they were active and successful. Which was why OSC's active involvement in NOM resulted in a boycott.

And as I've said, if you want to boycott or scold Rowling for her tweets, whatever. It's not like I'm buying her work anyway. We don't have to work on the same things.

[(Anonymous)]

"harmed people" is not the same as "posed an existential threat to people" and you must know this

legal recognition is also a problem for trans people and opinions like Rowling's, espoused loudly by powerful and influential people like Rowling, play a significant role in that

[(Anonymous)]

I think you need to ask yourself why you're so insistent on scolding a queer trans person for prioritizing policy issues that have an immediate impact on my health and safety.

[(Anonymous)]

Until then, I'm not obligated to take "someone said something wrong on the internet" as an existential threat

Seconding this heavily. One of the most frustrating things about politics in 2020, to me, is that people are so bad at gauging the threat levels of the shit they hear about. We all run around reacting to shit that poses next to no actual, real-world threat to us, and then end up too exhausted or apathetic to give more than lip service to shit with significant real-world threat levels.

It's not like picking our battles has even been human beings' strong suit, but man, the internet took something important we were weak at, and said, "Let's make this twenty times more challenging for you mofos."

[(Anonymous)]

I mean, even if we grant that Rowling's attitudes may have some nebulous and indirect effect on anti-trans policy, those bills are sitting in the statehouse right now and are platform planks in this November election.