This guy just keeps getting more and more wonderful ❤️
Pascal has been a vocal ally of the transgender community, frequently using his platform to advocate for trans rights. At the UK premiere of “Thunderbolts,” he wore a shirt reading “Protect the Dolls,” a term of endearment for transgenderism.
I wonder if the author of the article realizes “transgenderism” is a right-wing, anti-trans term?
Good spot! Trans+ would have been better
Considering dolls is a term applied only to trans women, he should have just said “a term of endearment for trans women”. The only reason he didn’t is because he’s anti-trans, and maybe he doesn’t even understand that “dolls” is a term specific to trans women (or that trans men even exist, a lot of anti-trans bigots are obsessed with trans women, but never consider that there are equal numbers of trans men as trans women).
I think the anti-trans movement wants to claim that the entire idea of trans people is ideologically driven, but they have it in reverse - the gender binary and anti-trans movement is ideologically driven, the science shows reality is much more complicated than the gender binary, and that being trans is biologically determined, genetically inherited, and part of natural human variation throughout our history as a species.
So it seems acknowledging the reality and gender of trans people is not so much ideologically driven as much as it is more aligned with reality than the status quo of assigning gender according to a model of binary sex inferred by a quick inspection of genitals at birth, which we know is ideologically driven. The only reason to reject the undisputed science is for religious and political reasons, there is no actual debate or ambiguity about the science.
there are estimated to be equal numbers of trans men as trans women, they just don’t get the same attention.
And this is a stunning example of the power of male privilege.
and the fact that transphobia is mostly motivated by misogyny (see Julia Serano’s concept of “transmisogyny” outlined in Whipping Girl).
Even transphobia against trans men is misogynistic, e.g. when trans men are treated as just vulnerable / hapless women or girls that need to protecting from “trans grooming”, which is patronizing and conventionally sexist, or when
content warning
corrective rape is used on trans men to re-assert their assigned gender, e.g. Sam Nordquist and Brandon Teena.
The violence trans men face is ultimately connected to violence against women, even if it is being applied to men to deny them their gender.
Wow. People really sicken me.
yeah, tough to stomach some aspects of humanity - but it’s worth keeping it mind it’s only a small minority of people, I try not to generalize the exceptional violence of the worst of us onto the rest of humanity.
I hear you, and I do try to practice that. I find so many to be disappointing, though. It definitely helps to remember that I can’t control others, just my own actions/reactions.
Erasure is not a privilege
I’d like to take a moment to acknowledge #occupotty
anti-trans activist want trans women to use men’s restrooms, but they aren’t thinking about the fact that those same laws and policies force trans men women’s restrooms, leading to this kind of situation
Oh, that’s the point.
See, it’s about men protecting women from bad things. Not about women feeling uncomfortable.
It’s the same as the justification for Christian rejection of empathy (as opposed to more reserved compassion): the undertone is “women are more vulnerable to ‘falling for’ the empathee’s sin.”
Womens’ perspectives may be where the thoughts stop, but that is no accident.
I think the anti-trans activists coming up with the policies are aware of trans men and have crafted this policy to stoke moral panic and to keep trans people out of public life. I guess in my mind, the naive anti-trans person who doesn’t know about trans men were more like the average person duped by anti-trans propaganda.
The actual people running the movement know a trans man realistically won’t be comfortable going to the women’s restroom, so their intention isn’t really to force them in there either - it’s to increase risks for trans people so they either face violence in the wrong bathroom or face criminality, maybe with a long term goal of using the prisons to forcefully detransition trans people.
That some trans people are going ahead and complying with the bathroom law is maybe an unintended side effect, but it still achieves the effect of increasing risks for trans people - trans women are at much greater risk of violence in a men’s restroom or in a men’s prison than in a women’s restroom or a women’s prison, and thus achieving the genocidal goal of eradicating trans people.
See, it’s about men protecting women from bad things. Not about women feeling uncomfortable.
Womens’ perspectives may be where the thoughts stop, but that is no accident.
I completely agree, women’s safety was never the actual priority - nor does it accord with reality, the empirical evidence shows that trans inclusive policies do not increase crime and the idea that trans people pose any real threat are not based in reality.
Women never mattered here, and even the anti-trans “gender-critical” movement that claims feminist roots have distanced themselves from feminism, with increasing focus on targeting trans women and prioritizing anti-trans policies even when it contradicts feminist goals or beliefs.
I think the anti-trans activists coming up with the policies are aware of trans men and have crafted this policy to stoke moral panic and to keep trans people out of public life.
I think it really depends. There are some leaders/influencers who know exactly what they’re doing, and are using this moral panic as a engagement tool. Maybe some do have the idea of forcefully detransitioning the incarcerated, with a kind of Mike Pence attitude to it (who is much more supportive of conversion therapy than most people are aware of).
But (speaking as someone with some very evangelical southern US family), I think some supporters really are thinking of this from the “protect vunerable women” perspective. This thread weaves through everything, their whole ideology and perception of people… Women are supposed to need and accept men’s protection and direction. So of course these scary “biological men” should be removed from their bathrooms, while being with “biological women” still fits that idealistic fantasy until they actually look at a picture like this. But that will never often happen because staying intellectually sheltered is part of the culture. Women are conditioned to not bluntly point out stuff like this.
Yes, I was trying to differentiate the kinds of anti-trans people, the clergy from the flock so to speak. The politicians like Mike Pence and activists like Matt Walsh are more likely to be strategic and knowledgeable about the issues.
The lay people who are influenced by those activist leaders are more likely to be ignorant and have different perspectives.
Whether leaders or lay people, I don’t take them seriously when they say they are trying to “protect vulnerable women” any more than I think conservatives actually care about small government or states rights, everything is just rationalization and rhetoric to justify a less pleasant and less defensible position (like taking food stamps away from the poor, or eradicating trans people).
Joanne’s really milking this cash cow for all it’s worth, and then some. Guess that’s your only option when you’re a one-hit wonder, though. Must not have stumbled across any new content she’s interested in plagiarizing.
You say that like anyone else wouldn’t. If life gives you a golden cow, milk the shit out of it. Lol
Let’s focus on her being a terrible person instead of making up nonsense reasons to further dislike her. There’s no need.
No, I think most people wouldn’t. Most people would be happy with literally becoming a fucking billionaire, and would be satisfied at that point.
I don’t know any billionaires myself, but judging from what I read and see online that is not what people do when they literally become a billionaire.
Yeah I guess it’s one of those things, where most people would be satisfied with becoming a billionaire, but generally, the type of people able to become a billionaire, are terrible people that wouldn’t be satisfied with becoming a billionaire.
TIL People who would be satisfied with being a billionaire feel satisfied long before they actually become a billionaire.
Money has high diminishing returns on happiness long before a billion. It wouldn’t be surprising if literally nobody was satisfied by crossing 1,000,000,000. Some people will never be satisfied and they’re the only ones who would keep trying.
Sounds… terribly logical.
I think most billionaires are not very visible.
one-hit wonder,
Yeah, no kidding, I had tried everything else she did before she started getting really noisy, none of it was remotely interesting.
Stopped me from buying the books for my kids quickly enough, though.
I mean, you could tell the point in book 4 where they said “Fuck it, bring in the ghost writers”.
I doubt she’s probably written anything in 30 years that wasn’t drunkenly pounded out on Twitter
Makes sense, since I think it’s a lot better than the previous books.
CouLd you point me to what original she plagiarized? I need some light reading material and this sounds promising.
Here is a pretty decent list: https://elftor.medium.com/harry-potter-and-the-possible-plagiarism-of-one-j-rowling-c19f1b05595c
I’m not a fan of Harry Potter, and don’t like Rowling, but I read that whole damn essay and was not at all convinced. Half the examples could be said to be plagiarising each other by the standard they’re using. They say at the start the coincidences are too strong to be attributed to tropes, but I really disagree with that. Almost everything they list are common tropes, many even outside magical wizard settings. Mean adoptive family? Did she also plagiarise Cinderella?
Sure, her books generally aren’t original themes, but to say they’re so similar that they are direct plagiarism is a real stretch in my opinion. Especially when you have to list like 30 books that have one or two things in common each, and mostly in a general sense.
The first two or three books felt far more like a Roald Dahl novel than any standard issue YA novel.
She’s clearly been influenced by other children’s books. But yeah, so much of the “Rowling plagiarized!” critique boils down to how bland and generic the story was.
I never thought she was a plagiarist, just a hack.
Exactly. It shouldn’t be considered a crime to use and build on eternal tropes. That’s what culture is about. The terrible things about JKR lie elsewhere.
I think they’re referring to A Wizard of Earthsea? It’s been on my reading list for a few years now, but I still haven’t gotten around to it.
And especially “the worst witch” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Worst_Witch?wprov=sfla1
She’s a terrible person, but saying she’s a one-hit wonder is unfair. Here’s a list of famous and acclaimed authors who only wrote one novel. And she wrote several, even if all in the same series. Criticize for for her true faults: being a hateful hag that makes the world a worse place and isn’t worth the O2 she consumes.
I don’t think the existence of other one-hit wonders affects her status as one-hit wonder, but I’ll accept the argument that she wrote ~7 popular books.
HBO previously did a adaption of The Casually Vacancy. I never watched it but I read the book which is terrible.
Oh, what did you find terrible about the book? I thought it was sad but written with a lot of empathy. I liked the gray characters. It was even worse for me to realize what JKR was like after reading this book that seemed so right to me. But maybe I overlooked something.
Harry Potter is already dead to me. Fuck JKR.
There are… other ways
I assume you mean piracy, but I think you misunderstood. I have no desire to give JKRs works any of my attention and I regret my past love of HP. She is a disgusting bigot and her legacy is forever tainted for me. I’m simply not interested.
more like Bae-dro Pascal amirite
daddy pascal
Papi Pascal
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i have no clue who this guy is,
Well essentially, he’s one of the most qualified guys to turn straight males gay. I know that because I’m a straight dude and it’s basically him and Henry Cavill that I have a mancrush on. That’s the complete list.
Anyway, things you may have seen, or heard of, where he’s played a role, ordered from least important character to most: Game of Thrones, Narcos, The Last of Us, The Mandalorian and he’s set to play Mister Fantastic in the upcoming Fantastic Four movie.
Most importantly, he’s just a very charming actor who seems like a great down to earth guy. Might be because it took him about a decade and a half to score his first moderately big role, rather than reaching peak fame at the age of 20. Bits I just found out while fact-checking myself: He also has a queer best friend (Sarah Paulson) and his little sister is a trans rights activist who says he’s been hugely supportive.
Polygraphs are bullshit, but this is a fun watch.
TL;DR: One of the coolest/nicest people in Hollywood
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I never watched or read any Harry potter media (except for the parody Harry is a Pothead and the Sorcerer’s stoned), so this boycott is easy for me.
It’s be interesting how the fascist agitprop will boost this show. We’ve seen many cases of feminist or pro trans themes in shows incurred massive backlash from influencers and their hordes. Part of the “culture war”. I’d expect a lot of hype and praises for the show no matter how good or bad it is.
Arent you guys sick of the same 4 franchises? Marvel, Star wars, Lord of the rings, Harry Potter.
It’s a bit unfair to rope LOTR into this, it only has a single spin-off series which is pretty great. Which is pretty great if you’re not a fascist or hardcore nerd of the books. And hardcore nerds only have “fun” criticism discussing how the story spanning 3000 years is being adapted.
Mmmmmm. LOTR has 6 movies running 18hrs theatrical, 22hrs extended cut.
Multiple anime, TV show, comics, graphic novels, books, spin offs and more…over done. Over cooked. Trite.
Star wars has 9 mainline movies spanning 20hrs.
Multiple anime, TV show, comics, graphic novels, books, spin offs and more…Disney is literally wearing this franchise as a skin suit to keep it going.
The Marvel Infinity Saga core movies, 19 hours…etc…blah blah blah…Disney. Morning Erection…something something, cum daddy.
Haha forgot about the Hobbit and didn’t know about the anime. Comics, well, whatever. But I don’t think it can be compared to the constant marketing and big screen content of the other franchises. Tolkien estate is pretty careful not to turn out endless pulp.
Okay I’ll give it to you. But there are still significant and painful advertisement campaigns that are beating us over the head with the other 3 franchises
I actually think often about how franchises are (miss)managed and how IP laws suck and should work. Just watched “Dune Prophecy” yesterday, which I avoided so far because it’s partially based on Frank Herbert’s hack writer of a son’s novel (it was ok though). Besides the profit motive, there it seems more like a psychological need to bastardize the franchise. Marvel was never serious so I don’t mind it much, it’s just annoying. Star Wars sequels suck but again, never was serious literature. I do hate the new Star Trek Kelvin timeline with a burning passion though because Star Trek was a cultural touchstone.
And that is why (along with being an amazing actor) that he is the favorite
I’m kind of the opinion that Harry Potter should have just ended with the deathly hallows book and 2 movies.
you drag out and milk an IP for too long and you just become star wars. and that isnt a compliment.
But making something new comes with the risk of it not working, much easier to just keep milking the same thing infinitely.
It seems like Rowling has been pushing for the series to be made because she doesn’t like the OG movie cast members for calling her out on her bigotry. Anytime Radcliffe or Watson tweet in support of humanity, Rowling gets all twisty-knickered and pouty because people still call them Harry Potter and Hermione.
But the line must go up!
Does it count as a boycott if never intended to watch it in the first place? Or that I haven’t watched any of them except the first one when it was new?
If he really wants it to do badly, he should join the show and then get killed off two episodes in. Apparently this makes shows do pretty badly…
This sucks. I mean, I read Harry Potter as an adult, and still loved the stories, even if some parts were problematic (Cho Chang? The Irish kid blows stuff up? REALLY?). But I refuse to give that woman any of my money to do more evil with.
IMO she’s already rich, and more of your money goes to an evil multi-billion dollar corporation than to her. If you enjoy the world fuck it, enjoy the shows, have, books, etc… There is no ethical consumption under capitalism and we’re in dark times. You need to covet the things that bring you joy.
Side note: She plagiarized most of the first book from Anthony Horowitz’s “Groomsham Grange”. I understand there’s a lot of books about magical schools but seriously if you read them back to back it’s clear. This isn’t important to the conversation other than to supply another reason to hate the bitch.
No ethical consumption means: it’s hard to arrange for there to be clear alignment in people to boycott a particular entity, meaning many things that ought to go boycotted don’t. Therefore, when such a heinous person as Rowling or Musk arises that we can cohesively land a boycott, we ought to take advantage of it.
You can’t boycott Rowlings at this point though, she’s made her fortune off the IP already. You’re essentially virtue signaling.
Musk on the other hand has most his wealth tied to the stock of his company. They aren’t remotely similar.
What was wrong with cho chang?
it sounds like CHING CHONG, just reworded to make it sound like its not offensive. theres also the issue her labeling goblins as bankers, aka greedy jews, by nature and lore goblins are greedy.
I can get Irish people blowing things up as problematic, but surely cho Chang and the goblins are people just trying to make problems out of nothing?
Where do you get Jews from?
I think we can all agree that a stereotype is that bankers are greedy
it just follows a trend of jkr using really shitty stereotypical names and sometimes just using down right offensive names. the only Asian character is cho chang, the only black character is literally named kingsley shacklebolt, etc. in Hogwarts legacy they named the first trans women in the series sirona ryan.
Jfc those are all so fucking racist holy shit
Dafuq
My brain right now.
The Indian chicks being fucking patels.
TBH the magic system seems low-effort too. You need a wand and pseudo-Latin, but neither are strictly necessary?
no complex spell casting with rare ingredients, like some other shows that uses magic, kinda like SCARLETS witches no-words spellcasting , yea because its low effort cuts corners.
Harry Potter is one of the few IP’s that I 100% pirate guilt-free. In many cases, I use piracy to “try out” things before I buy them. For instance, I have the *arr stack running on my Jellyfin server, but most of the media on it is from my old DVD/Blu-ray collection. I have a few pirated games, but end up buying most of them if I enjoy them.
But not with Harry Potter. That shit gets pirated and stays pirated. I have the e-books and movies torrented, and will never spend a dime on them. I’ll never buy anything with a Hogwarts house on it. I’ll never stream any of the movies on Max. As far as capitalism is concerned, I have a full Harry Potter blackout.
Might be better to just let it go entirely.
OK let me defend Cho Chang specifically. Qiū Cháng is a perfectly valid chinese name. It is pronounced “Cho Chang.” Cho would not be standard (pinyin), but Chinese people historically have not always use Pinyin to transliterate their names. (And I assume a wizard might not use muggle pinyin.)
don’t forget the white washing of lavender brown
The Last of Us spoilers
What are they gonna do? Kill him off?
Defeating the Terf queen, rowlings
!I he shows up throught the second game in flashbacks, I think he will be done after this season, unless they keep bringing him back…but after this? He is 100% gone lol!<
FYI your spoiler tag didn’t work on this comment. Also I heard they’re adapting Last of Us Part II into 2 seasons of the show, since it’s so much longer plot-wise.
Odd, I see it blacked out on my side. Apologies to all.
I don’t see Pedro even working for HBO going forward. He is attacking another HBO show, and you know it’s all about bottom line. Could be wrong.
Regardless, Pedro is the man.
I just read that… You should edit to either remove or correct the tags. Anyway, I will remember that so no worries… But for others.
Meh, I don’t think character shows up in flashbacks after their death is something that’s spoiler tag worthy imo.
There is the whole episode of season 1 with Otterman that’s a flashback
Last of us season 2 spoiler
I’d be more bummed about “after his death” then “flashbacks”
I want to see it… But imagine if pirates made it so accessible it was easier to view without buying it. Saturated to the point YouTube recommends the full episodes.
Watching/playing/acquiring media without paying for it only sends the message that the demand is there; it’s just that the anti-piracy enforcement schemes haven’t been perfected yet.
If 100 million people watch this show on day one, but only 1 million paid to do so, the question is going to be “How can we force those other 99 million people to pay for this?” But if zero people watch this show, the immediate red flag will be “People used to love Harry Potter? Why aren’t they watching it now?”
You want to show that Joanne Rowling’s bigotry isn’t to be tolerated? You don’t show her that her content is still wanted; you shut her out completely.
How would they know that 99 million people pirated it?
They track torrent file downloads so they can send threatening DMCA takedown letters to people that don’t use VPNs to obfuscate their IPs. Even if you do use a VPN, they may not know who you are, but they can count the download.
Does pirating a show via streaming site circumvent this or does that get tracked too?
I don’t think a third party can track your steaming without the allowance of the site you are using. With torrents, it’s the nature of Peer to Peer transfers that your client or connecting to other clients to share the files, which is how they get your IP. With a streaming service, there is no open Peer to Peer download, so they could only track your streaming via cookies on the website or something like that. That is my understanding anyway.
The company doesn’t care about popularity lmfao. They only care about money
Lots of media are popular that didn’t make money, but there’s no media that made lots of money that wasn’t also popular.
Money directly correlates with popularity when talking about films/books/television. Why do you think, for example, that there was only one Eragon movie despite there being four books? And yet Twilight also had four books, but had five movies made?
You seriously think the suits spending tens or hundreds of millions of dollars making movies or tv shows don’t care about what’s popular? Then why the hell are they remaking Harry Potter?
Counter point. If there’s a drop in subscriptions and a spike on piracy after they release, they can conclude that the best approach is to drop the show and J. Terf Rowling.
That, and have all the discourse of the show be around her bigotry.
I have to interest on the show
Counter point. If there’s a drop in subscriptions and a spike on piracy after they release, they can conclude that the best approach is to drop the show and J. Terf Rowling.
Media execs don’t see piracy as an economics or social issue. They believe it’s a technological issue and they just need to find the right silver bullet to force you to watch the content that the know you want to watch (why would you be pirating it otherwise?) while paying them for it.
No corporation has seen an increase of piracy of their content and thought anything other than “We need stricter anti-piracy measures.”
