J.K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter books and architect of the franchise, has been doing herself no favors lately.
Twitter is not the place to voice or discuss difficult and nuanced positions on delicate topics – something that the author herself acknowledges in her subsequent essay addressing the furor over her tweet. The echo chamber is too loud and powerful and emotional for anything other than blind agreeance with the hivemind.
Rowling got into trouble on Saturday with the following tweet:
There is no question that her delivery was glib and she should have chosen her words more carefully and sensitively.
However, in today’s world it is just not true anymore that only women menstruate. In fact there are natal women who cannot menstruate due to medical issues or procedures or who never have due to the way they were born, and insisting that “Only women menstruate” forces the counter-argument of “well I guess they aren’t women if they don’t menstruate.”
I consider myself a relatively conservative and traditional female for someone my age, but with modern, Millennial sensibilities and the understanding that the world and its society can and does change. Science itself changes, history changes. The science and history that I learned in school is not the same science and history that teenagers today are learning – this is not a bad thing, this is just the nature of our world. We are constantly discovering new things about our existence, world, galaxy, and universe that must change what and how we think about everything.
It is not the nature of humans to stay the same – thus we cannot expect everything around us to remain static as well.
I do understand what Rowling is trying to say, and she clarified and expanded on her views in an excellent mic-drop essay on her website.
What it seems most people have failed to realize is that her message is not anti-trans, but pro-women – all women – and concern for the pushing aside of women and girls – trans included – by the attempted eradication of the fact of biological sex by extremist “trans activists” who, in point of fact, are not representative of the trans community as a whole – just as a few violent protesters are not indicative of the protests as a whole, and cops who abuse their power are not indicative of every police officer.
The problem is that our entire society has its emotions on a hair-trigger and that is what we base our decisions on, rather than thought or reason. It’s easy to read a headline, think we know the details of the situation, get angry, and hit the share button or retweet that information until it snowballs out of control. It is a giant game of telephone that goes horribly wrong for the person with the original message. No one gets to say “let me clarify” before being tarred and feathered.
Rowling went on to say the following which clarifies and honestly clears up – for a rational, reasonable person – what she means. And while you may not agree with her opinion, between these tweets and her essay she is not transphobic or anti-trans people (and before you make a judgment on that, go read the essay.)
We all want instant gratification, all want to add our little voice to the crowd and be observed to be agreeing for fear of being accused of not supporting X, Y, or Z.
It has come to the point where, if you do not voice your adamant support, you are automatically against that cause. And this is wrong.
As the title says, it is dangerous to disregard a dissenting opinion.
So often these days a person who dares to disagree or even question something that the Twitter Police deem WOKE is immediately vilified, their credibility becomes nil and they are shouted down before their point was even made.
When did discourse become something that was discouraged? Since when are people not allowed to have civil discussions about their opposing views? Why do we all have to blithely agree with what the Mainstream Media and the Social Justice Warriors deem “right?” This is leading to groupthink and this is dangerous.
It is becoming so that anyone who does not subscribe to groupthink is guilty of wrongthink and thus a thoughtcrime.
We are truly in the beginning stages of Orwell’s 1984: I suggest we all give that book a read again right now, and then re-evaluate how our society is going forward.
It is important to have dialogue with those who have differing opinions. Just because someone doesn’t agree with you doesn’t mean they are wrong, doesn’t mean they are not allowed to speak, or that they don’t deserve to have an opinion. You don’t have to like that opinion, but rather than decrying them as evil, racist, bigoted, etc – just ignore it, or better yet – engage in a civil, thoughtful discussion instead of shouting them down.
No one is going to listen to you when you are screaming at them; they are just going to want to get away from you and then neither of you will have learned or gained anything meaningful and you both will have behaved like children.
C
Obviously, opinions that are criminal in nature or threatening violence do not have to be tolerated and should be reported – but those kinds of opinions are not the ones I am discussing here.
Politics to Potting Mix 