And trans men, don't forget about us!
Real bloody fun to be arrested by police srripped and humiliated or run out by security guards or assaulted by patrons all while being treated like perverts for following idiot laws to the letter by peeing in the "correct" bathroom...
Cis folk... Are you doing okay? We of the trans community are getting concerned for you.
This is a very America centric veiw and even if it is a steel man it deserves a counterpoint.
After WWII most of the nations who were old empire builders were decimated. The general feeling was even those on the winning side didn't feel like they'd won. The rebuilding was slow and economic austerity lasted for decades.
The American prosperity of the 1950's and 60's wasn't "normal". America didn't have international competition it otherwise would have and that power gave them bargaining rights which made them both culturally dominant as they projected a sense of prosperity and politically powerful due to the resources at their disposal. Opposition to America was potentially disastrous and America threw their weight around like crazy. They expanded their military with these resources and established bases in countries too weak to oppose them.
America came out of the war with something of a Big Damn Hero complex. Communism, for all it's perceived threat was also a handy excuse to pursue expansion and in keeping American supremacy in place. Whether countries wantes to be "protected" or not really has a lot of across the board nuance. A lot of American political will was coercive and a lot of the things done in the fight for "democracy" were disproportionate and horrific.
Really a lot of the American supremacy at bottom was might makes right. With the world finally recovering economically and now able to speak as equals the US is using measures that demand a return to that economic supremacy and stranglehold. The larger sore points are growing. The world doesn't need one big power in charge. They don't need a king with a standing army. They want to make their own choices and have freedoms to not conform to whatever America wants and the attitudes Americans show to disregard that will is garnering response.
Her last name is Wilson... Is there some really terrible Wilson I don't know about?
Trans people just need to be loved and accepted like everyone else but unfortunately a lot of people really suck.
Point of order. Trans people do not just need to be loved and accepted. Sometimes when this discussion point comes up it's under the context that if everyone was playing ball with pronouns and being nice then medical transition would be unnecessary. That is not the case.
While it's true that one of the effects of medical transition means that strangers are more likely to read and not misgender you - being trans the feedback system isn't dependent on outside observers. What a lot of people seem to think is that gender as understood by cis people, as a largely performative construct, is by and large not how trans people interact with gender.
I personally wish we would stop looking at trans healthcare from the sour perspective of needing to justify itself being a worthy endeavor or not strictly on the basis of suicide rates as though if something is not provably strictly lifesaving in every case it isn't worthy.
So here's where the whole "but kids shouldn't make these decisions" arguement kind of falls apart... You are assuming it's the kids making the decisions.
The reality here is there is a bar that trans kids need to pass to be eligible which requires the signoff of a whole panel of adults based on the observed behaviour, self descriptive process and recorded outcomes of thousands of trans people in the past creating a rubric that professionals draw on. Being trans and the way gender is processed by trans people is actually more different from being cis than a lot of cis people are aware and the presentations of transness are actually pretty consistent. The regret rate is astronomically low - kind of to the point where it is actually unusual because of the level of care taken to predict and assess potential harm.
To get puberty blockers you need first a child who wants them, then all guardians of the child to agree it is worth pursuing. Then you require the endorsement of a psychiatrist with years of consultation and a social worker to make sure the home situation is above board and nobody is being coerced. Then you need a pediatrician to sign off on the standing health of the paitent, and endocrinologist to assess the safety of pursuing blockers...
It's not a one time thing either, you have to have routine check ins once things start and if any of these adults remove their endorsement of the paitent then it doesn't matter what the kid wants. It's not happening.
If anything medical starts going wrong long term health remains priority.
So can we please not pretend it's dumb children showing up to a tattoo parlor? It's a panel of professionals working off predictions based off of a nigh century of diagnostic data in conjunction with parents making informed decisions on behalf of their incredibly dedicated child- because these kids need to self advocate like fucking crazy at all points of the process... Which in itself tends to disqualify kids who don't absolutely need this because it's a job and a half.
This is designed as ironclad ethical assisted decision-making as can be made and people are being tricked into thinking that somehow this process is not as rigorously checked for flaws or deals with consent of minors differently than any other form of pediatric medicine. Why is that?
Yes... but the "how you get there" stage never actualizes which means maybe there's something more fundemenally wrong with the theory.
To overthrow the resting state of a government you need power. That power generally doesn't work if it isn't organized so like it or not the efficiency of hierarchy ends up being key to creating the resistance able to take over and have the ability to enforce the set of ideals.
Now Communism wants a society that is laterally structured as possible which means that any new hierarchy that attempts to assemble itself is antithetical to the whole idea. The minute a hierarchy appears it is more structured and more efficient in disseminating it's directives because it works off of deffering the stages of debate and arriving at concensus... So the first hierarchy that forms in a lateral system has game advantage right off the bat unless it is stopped.
Now humans in a lateral power structure don't always agree. You can't count on all of them being conditioned to unilaterally and naturally oppose these hierarchies as they emerge. People are generally unhappy if government is slow and doesn't appear to be addressing their concerns - which is basically a problem with every Government because the allocation of resources and expertise is finite. Dissidents are going to happen and they are going to organize.
...But in a political landscape weak against emerging hierarchy and dependent on hierarchy not appearing how do you stop an emerging hierarchy from upsetting the apple cart? You have a standing force in place. Every attempt thusfar has either been capitalism with a red coat of paint or whatever revolutionary force overthrew the standing power remaining in place and exerting force against a population to keep the power of the masses atomized in the name of a system "without hierarchy" ignoring the hierarchy of the standing power because they are supposed to hand over the power at some point.
That point never actualizing is the bit Communist writers never really address. If the former revolutionaries let up the force used to keep people from organizing themselves Communism as it works in practice falls apart and the things they do to keep themselves in power are authoritarian because it is directed to stop the political will of others outside of their official hierarchy. Once you remove personal wealth from individual hands you also lock people inside the system because they have to accept that to move outside the boundaries they to leave to pursue life under other systems they will need do so with virtually nothing.
Really not looking forward to a repeat of the time of the Hogwarts Legacy game. Online Trans spaces were being brigaded with every reveiw or JKR tweet and comment sections filled unchallenged with tacit endorsements after the trans voices fell silent because we were all just hoping the abuse would stop. That the HP targeted adds and their companion transphobic political adds riding on the wake of the high on queer creators would dry up. The media, the platforms the people coming into places proclaiming they are gunna buy multiple copies of the game to show us what is what. The suicidal ideation of our most vulnerable friends as they deal with feelings of being targeted and feelings of being unwanted or ignored by the world...
Most people not caring might not be "valid" but it will feel like the truth again.
Maybe? The fear of clowns is often rooted in the uncanny. The obscuring makeup of clowns makes their emotions and expressions either so overly exaggerated or difficult/impossible to read which messes with the lizard brain and makes them seem to some people, particularly ones who have issues with reading facial cues, as inhuman. It's sort of the same principle that freaks people out about dolls and mannequins. That almost but decidedly not quite human alarm.
Drag makeup generally serves the opposite purpose. It is exaggerated but in such a way as to be easier to read the performer's face at a distance.
The short answer is it's not books. It's mostly licencing deals in the form of video games and merchandise... However HBO is about to put forward a new series that JKR will have executive control and an executive sized pay check for.
It's the "well it already exists and licencing deals are already paid, might as well watch it/play it/own it" that keeps the whole engine rolling on. Every time there's a little bit of advocacy to disengage from the fandom it is always spun as "too late" or focuses on the books or death of the author... But all that's really required is ambivalence.
Inevitably the new HP thing will come out and whether or not trans people mention anything people will drag up the controversy, use the reminder to brigade the spaces trans people connect online, try and goad their trans coworker for a commentary and set off yet another flurry of right wing backlash that makes elevating the franchise a patriotic duty to "stick it to the moralizing trans people to show them who is boss". All of this causes more cultural pressure on a population already underwater with being chased out of the public sphere but it will be framed as a just retaliation for a perceived slight.
It's a song and dance that will continue ad infinitum as long as it's profitable because appearantly nostalgia is worth turning a blind eye to the where the money goes.
Your premise seems to have little regard for scale. Yes people are shitty but how they allocate the resources given to them matters.
Your argument here is nebulous fictional supposed evil people are probably doing bad things which allows you the comfort of not figuring out who is doing little harm vs a lot of harm because under your framework it doesn't matter. As long as any actors real or imaginary in the system are bad you are absolved from participating in trying to alter market forces in your own small way.
To others on here there's a difference between someone who did a shitty thing or has a shitty belief and one whom is tied into a direct political action block they are funding off of the proceeds they get from licencing their intellectual property to video-games and HBO series they are producing right now. This isn't really about reading the books you already own or the DVDs you already have. It's about killing the public interest that is keeping the author relevant and making her megaphone louder and the lawyers she funds to fight Supreme Court cases to disenfranchise trans people richer.
Scale is the main consideration.
As a trans guy who is sort of non-binary as a shorthand explanation and mental crutch for a complicated resting state of not physically transitioning because of my long-term partner's phenotype preferences I feel this so hard. My physical body does not sort easily into people's gender code. I ended up going with they/them pronouns more as a defensive move.
In my case it's the daily sacrifice in the name of love but fuck if it doesn't destroy my confidence regularly and feel like a fey curse.