No. As an English major and a transgender person, no. We do not take this attitude.
Harry Potter is a culturally important work and JK Rowling wrote it.
So many culturally important works of literature were written by people with bad views by today’s and even their time’s standards. Shakespeare? Racist, sexist, islamophobic, xenophobic, anti-Semitic. But we don’t erase his name from those plays. Because if we try and claim that those plays were authorless it gives us an awfully convenient excuse to ignore all of the flaws within them and how we may or may not agree with those flaws on a subconscious level.
In the world of literary analysis these days the author is no longer dead. We don’t do that anymore. The author is a ghost hanging over your shoulder. You can interpret their work any way you want and they can have no say in it. But you as a reader must also acknowledge that their original intentions are there. Their personal history and the times they lived in are there.
JK Rowling wrote that series whether you like it or not. Whether that makes you comfortable or not. Harry Potter is one of the most culturally important book series of the last century and it was written by a transphobe. It was written by JK Rowling. Face up to it. Look it dead in the eye. Recognize its flaws and like it anyways if you still want to. But don’t. I repeat don’t. Do not claim that it is authorless. No work of literature is.
We’re holding JKR accountable like mature adults and embracing the reality though it hurts us to admit something we love was written by someone who continues to dig her grave but we must
You can identify a fake redneck by their passionate support of “blue lives matter.” Real rednecks have been in at least one physical fight and/or high-speed chase with police officers and would do it again
I feel like this is pretty important to realize: the cops are becoming exhausted, and there’s a limited supply of them. NYPD has every cop on duty working full days every day. We have an unlimited capacity to rotate in fresh fighters that they simply do not have. We can take shifts. They can’t.
This is also why we’re starting to see bare minimum concessions now. The powers that be have realized they’ve made a grave miscalculation. A week into it, and ideas that seemed utterly impossible even a month ago are on the table- LA is talking about a hundred and fifty million dollar budget cut for the LAPD, every cop directly involved in George Floyd’s murder has been arrested and Chauvin’s charge has been raised to second degree murder, parts of the Minneapolis city council is pushing to permanently disband the Minneapolis police department.
What could we win with two weeks? Three? An organized general strike that brings the entire economy to a crashing halt? It is difficult to feel hopeful in such brutal times, but there is profound hope to be had in the realization that a week of getting our asses kicked has advanced the mainstream narrative around police so much further than electoralism would’ve dared to dream in 100 years.
its like a siege from within! we need to keep going until theyre completely out of energy, supplies and have no other choice but to make change
