Right enough, I came across a Wikipedia article “Politics of Harry Potter” yesterday, it was weird to read. Especially under the light of Rowling’s (um… post 2015ish?) transphobic saga, most of the cringe article reads as a complete trainwreck in hindsight, since Rowling had been celebrated by the Left and condemned by the Right at the time. Hilarious.

Some random quotes for your entertainment

Bill O’Reilly joined in the political fray over Harry Potter character Albus Dumbledore’s outing by asking if it was part of a “gay agenda” to indoctrinate children. He called J. K. Rowling a provocateur for telling fans about Dumbledore’s sexuality after the books were written. His guest, Entertainment Weekly Senior Editor Tina Jordan, called his “indoctrination” claims “a shallow argument”, saying “indoctrination is a very strong word” because “we all know gay people, whether we know it or not.”[11] O’Reilly continued the following day, saying that the real problem was that Rowling was teaching “tolerance” and “parity for homosexuals with heterosexuals”. His guest, Dennis Miller, said that tolerance was good and didn’t think you could indoctrinate a child into being gay.[12]

(Replace gay for trans in the statement above and try to not roll on the floor laughing)

Catholic fantasy author Regina Doman wrote an essay titled “In Defense of Dumbledore”, in which she argued that the books actually support Catholic teaching on homosexuality because Dumbledore’s relationship with the dark wizard Grindelwald leads to obviously terrible results, as he becomes interested in dark magic himself, neglects his responsibilities towards his younger sister and ultimately causes her death.[46][unreliable source?]

Rowling herself says:

“I do not think I am pessimistic but I think I am realistic about how much you can change deeply entrenched prejudice, so my feeling would be that if someone were a committed racist, possibly Harry Potter is not going to have an effect.”[21][non-primary source needed]

“People like to think themselves superior and that if they can pride themselves in nothing else they can pride themselves on perceived purity.”[25]

“I’ve never thought, ‘It’s time for a post-9/11 Harry Potter book,’ no. But what Voldemort does, in many senses, is terrorism, and that was quite clear in my mind before 9/11 happened… but there are parallels, obviously. I think one of the times I felt the parallels was when I was writing about the arrest of Stan Shunpike, you know? I always planned that these kinds of things would happen, but these have very powerful resonances, given that I believe, and many people believe, that there have been instances of persecution of people who did not deserve to be persecuted, even while we’re attempting to find the people who have committed utter atrocities. These things just happen, it’s human nature. There were some very startling parallels at the time I was writing it.”[78][better source needed]

Might I add, the latter statement (likening DeathEaters to terrorists) and her expressed belief that the trans movement are like the Death Eaters, leads to the logical conclusion that she thinks trans activism is …terrorism? I would not put it past her, and I can’t fathom what a real Ministry could do with such a false equivalence.

you are still an asshole

Thank you

the error of explaining your post with the typical US

Sure enough going after your colloquotors’ nationality was an ill-chosen angle, since you wanted to criticize the idea of one-gender, reducing it to Americans. Same goes for another asshole who was quick to attribute it to me supposedly being the speaker of a “genderless” language.

This is a bullshit attitude because you are going for the extra step.

“You don’t get the nuances of our language to understand what this is about. It is because you are not German / you are the native of a genderless language / you are a US defaultist who wants to impose his own view”

For one thing I hardly think English is a genderless language, and second has it crossed your mind someone can speak several languages fluently, some of which “gendered”.

I am not responsible for the lamentable state of internet discussions these days, but next time try to formulate and debunk the opponent idea before spewing several extra thought steps, bringing ad hominem and national origins into the mix, if you don’t want to be spoken to like that.

an error to call me nationalist. I am not

Great, Good for you

There you go

Since this vile comment goes against Lemmy etiquette I need not provide a response. But I will.

how other people call themselves

You must be another level of stupid to write this out. Perhaps you mean, I shouldn’t care what other “governments” or “majorities” want their citizens to call or not-call themselves. Only a nationalist would say such a thing, that your government has the right to self-define (or …impose?) how its people call themselves. This is some true Orban-level shit you managed to fit in your, well, fit.

And, yes, this is a politics issue I want to see in the same maps we monitor US gender politics with.

obviously not German

Very proudly not so. I cherish the fact that German nationalists tend to end up shot or hang, as one of the few things that provide meaning to my post-WWII life. The historical equivalent of a narcissist man-child demanding attention to himself, a real small-dick energy nation, that enthusiastically voted for a mustached idiot for the job. So, not German, and so happy about it.

obviously scared about inclusivity

The fact that you fail to understand this is a pro-inclusivity post means that you are so dump that you would have been euthanized in your own country, less than 100 years ago, unless you enrolled to a specific party of anti-intellectual idiots. Ah I forgot, you already are. Sound survival of the fittest strategy.

Now, let’s sit around waiting you to ridicule yourself with another one of these comments ROFL

That is great to hear

If you people meme format enthusiasts, would you be interested in a MemeFormat community here on Lemmy?

Good point

But aren’t all these technicalities to undermine the inclusion of one or more genders on the basis of some linguistic purism?

This makes me smirk, because a single course in college linguistics will persuade you there is not bigger amalgamated bastard in town than a human language, which is any non-formal language.

For example, you say they ambiguity of they/them, isn’t this comparable to the ambiguity between you/you in plural/singular.

Ambiguity is like, an inherent feature of any language and there are hundreds of languages that resolve ambiguities based on context. Plus, the scholars said that singular them is in usage since the Middle Ages or sth.

So to me all this is a tension between A and B, where A is either linguistic purism or typographical convenience, and B is always including women/trans/non-binary folks. At the same time most people won’t accept the feminine gender as all-inclusive because of their fears of emasculation.

It is a deeply laughable situation.

This always makes me wonder why isn’t the feminine that is all inclusive. It occurred to me it is because males would take offense to be called women, where (at least traditionally) this is not the case the other way round.

I am pretty sure gender norms, even strict ones, occur to grammatically genderless languages, like Hungarian IIRC. So if a Hungarian student used a ‘*’ to be non-binary inclusive, this could not have meaning in this society, because their language is genderless? I doubt it.

Definitely

I see. Probably most North-Americans would confuse “gender-neutral” with “non-binary inclusive”.

regularly writing regular expressions

The statement speaks for itself.

Ah Bavaria has right wing extremists? I miss the times when one could flee to the US under similar circumstances.

I understand this is a fine point. What is the status report on gender legislation in Germany then? Is this isolated from broader anti-trans politics as a matter of language puritanism and aesthetics?

I laughed more when I did not get the joke.

The illustration neglects to show how the mass incarceration and death row system will be set up and function in order for death penalty to be inflicted on those littering. Of course it does, it wouldn’t be as pretty otherwise.

I could not care any less for Vausch but since some beg to add political connotation to this because he is leftish, please take your time to visit some old anti-nazi subreddits. You will find some very long lists of right wingers convicted of assaults against women and children, so there is that.

I really did not mean to be insulting. I am just saying chart makers can choose to make a zoom in, and it is not automatically propaganda or something. All this has led people astray of the real issues, like WTF is measuring ‘happiness’ on a 1-10 scale, and what are the metric properties of this 1-10 scale. Then there are all the sampling issues and what have you. I just expected more people discussing this stuff rather than the Y-axis.

Oh sport, and I thought I was the one beating on a dead horse here. I understand why people claim to take issue with the Y-axis range. I am just saying chart makers can zoom in to make a point, and it is not automatically misleading. That is all. Anyway, thanks for writing this. Looks like a lot of effort, and some of it will make sense in my stats coursework, thanks!