I enjoyed reading it as a parent on bedtime duties until the kids could do so themselves. The plotting is excellent, genuinely exciting at times, like in The Prisoner of Azkaban and Rowling has an inventive gift for characters like Hagrid or Dobby that intensely seize the imagination and the emotions. I also thought the films were very well realised with fantastic artwork. As a whole universe, the creation sucks a biggie though. It’s elitist, pay school fantasy that proclaims the supremacy of an imaginary arcane Britishness freed of all that dreadful business of actually being involved with modern Britain. Quidditch is probably the most stupid thing ever committed to print. It pays not to look at it too deeply. It’s fantasy, derivative at that and probably best not to over laud it.
I disagree for a number of reasons. People change their minds so need to be challenged in compassionate ways. From my experience, albeit with children and adolescents, until people were given medical intervention, people with incredibly certain views would change their minds of complete transition with biological treatment/ official name change etc. on their own. They generally really valued clinicians giving them space to contemplate their own views and what they really wanted. Once people are recognised by professionals however, i.e. receiving medical treatment, they tended to become more extreme in their identity and less willing to explore. This is especially important as something very specific is happening culturally right now. Clinics went from seeing around 100 kids a year (70%) males at birth, the vast majority of whom decided not to transition, to thousands with 70% now females at birth, and a significant amount of the new referrals having other problems (autism, body image problems, depression). Many pointed to how perfect those transitioning on instagram looked, and saw it as a way of being more confident and attractive. There are a few key reasons I noticed for the massive shift. Social media, greater societal acceptance, body image problems, a pushback on/ liberation from ridiculous gender norms pushed by brand marketing, the ability to put a break on puberty, periods and sexualisation which is a very difficult time (especially for those of the female sex), and a breakdown of local mental health services referring on any patient who mentions gender to alleviate pressure. There are obvious safety questions which need to be addressed before any new bill is introduced, both around physical safety and also national security that comes around self identification to change passports. Going through psychological assessment and support is vital to ensuring people don't make huge irreversible mistakes they later regret, put themselves or others in compromising or dangerous positions and put off the small percentage of the population that will always seek to take advantage of new untested laws. The only thing hard and humiliating about professional assessment is the current wait times, which trap people in a horrible, never ending void of uncertainty. Solve that, and I don’t see any real argument for self identification, and generally see it as more, rather than less, dangerous.
Whilst we’re not looking at it too deeply… it’s not a pay school. The Ministry of Magic picks up the costs for the students, and offers to support poor kids to support them pay for books etc. So funded by taxation with no entrance criteria = state school. Also, one of the three main characters is poor, the other was a neglected orphan (albeit one who did come into money) and the main baddie is old money rich. I don’t think it’s this anti-working class story that you claim, just that it doesn’t make a lot of sense to have very poor people or a run down inner city state school in a world where most things are free as they can be conjured up by magic.
I agree with you on this. Not just elitest, but positively supremacist. Even the less extreme 'good' characters are very secure in their sense of superiority over the 'muggles' which is even more apparent in Fab Beasts. The Weasley family is poor, but they are country aristocracy with access to high places. There is a very real parallel there with many modern day landed gentry. The films played it down, but the books were clearer on it, with Ron's Dad getting a load of the best seats for the Quiddich world cup, through his connections, being reversed in the movies, and many references to their pure blood status and blood tretchery. I agree, again, the game is ridiculous. But it is escapism, and the characters are good people within their flawed environment. I wouldn't have any problem with communism, fascism and the nazis if it wasn't for the subjugation, racism, authoritarianism and murder. So a few benevolently arrogant upstarts that don't really exist are fine in my book.
The Weasleys are given the World Cup tickets because Arthur Weasley sensitively dealt with a muggle artefact issue for Ludo Bagman, a Boris Johnson-like Sports Minister. It has nothing to do with aristocratic access.
But they are pure bloods, and for such a poor family, they are well connected enough to have family working at the ministry and the premiere banking facility But it's just a book. I'll bow to your superior knowledge on this one.
Good to see that only women will be able to compete in women's athletics events and geezers who think they're gals have been told that they have to line up with the other blokes. We'll done Seb Coe
Hard to argue against the decision, which is at least clear and was sensitively delivered. I don’t think ‘geezers who think they are gals’ is helpful though. This seems to be the line being settled upon by those anti-trans rights, to consider transgender women as no more than that and transition merely deep transvestism. Every transwoman akin to a Monty Python sketch. Interestingly, World Athletics also ruled that women with different sex development, ‘intersex’ and other genetic expressions would be required to reduce their testosterone to compete.
There’s been transgender people since the 1950s (and gender dysphoria, though it didn’t have a name, forever). People mostly got on with it fine, it rarely impinged on anyone else, until that is, four years ago when a certain political current needed a new wedge.
And it was that 'political current', I suppose, that caused something like a 400% increase in the number of people declaring themselves transgender, and the Tavistock to start referring children for unethical and untested drug therapies? Political currant more like. Do trans gender now have the right wing to thank for enabling them to identify as trans? Something tells me that is not the response you were hoping for, but, none the less, it would appear to be the logical conclusion of your claim. And it did happen under the tories, after all. I'm not sure what is the most absurd part of it. That you might actually believe what you are saying, in light of reality, or that you expect others to believe it. Once again. For all the decent and more meaningful arguments you might make, you come out with the self defeating 'culture war' narrative. It is as if you intend to undermine the thing you are allegedly arguing for by making it look petty and political, rather than a worthy social cause.
