Harry Potter and the Bully as Victim

 So everyone's favourite dictator is moaning that the world is being unfair to his culture that only wants what's best, right and fair. Russia doesn't deserve to be bullied by an expansionist West, just like poor JK Rowling whose adherence to the noble and just cause of transphobia leads her to face the opprobrium of so many. Poor Vladimir, poor Joanne, both oppressed by nasty 'cancel culture'.

I could write an essay but ... just gimme a break here, will you?

You can always tell the bully. Deep down they are not the confident persona they throw around but empty souls terrified of being discovered to be mediocrities living in a false reality of their own devising. The bizarre and depressingly childish lies of the Putin regime about Ukraine, democracy, NATO and all the rest of it make you wonder about the sort of people we regard as leaders. I have just read Mary Trump's biography of her uncle Donald, and it's the same thing, an utterly false narrative that drives the life of that fraud. I should know: my aggressive, supremacist father is the same.

Probably the world's best known transphobe, J K Rowling, has her narrative. Beaten by her husband and near destitute, it goes, she wrote Harry Potter in a café and it just happened to be a success. But I know authors - I have several published books myself - and it is almost impossible to earn a living from being creative. Yet she is nearly a billionaire. No writer has ever achieved this - Walter Scott and Charles Dickens, equally bestselling in their day, struggled with money. 

That's because, first and foremost, Rowling is a canny businesswoman who, despite the ferocious narcissism and moneyspinning of Hollywood, has managed to keep a firm proprietorial hand on her creation. That is not a skill normally associated with creative types as their introverted visions are not consistent with the need to market themselves. Aggressive artists have limited qualities as artists but are good at selling themselves; really skilful and genuine creatives usually fail to be known widely by virtue of that very soul-searching that makes their artistry great but leaves them with little social boldness. So much of what we see in art galleries, read on bookshelves, watch on TV, is not the best of creativity but art that has been marketed successfully. What is pop music if not music that's popular by direct reference to its position in the market in any given week, rather than music that may actually be any good? Rowling is extraordinary in combining a knack for writing books that kids want to read with promoting her very firmly controlled business that derives from them.

So her success has made her an establishment figure, a rich and famous person who is known for supporting charities, especially women's charities, and who is also known for taking on political bullies (her tweets against Trump were among the best). And yet she insists on the false narrative that male-to-female trans people are dangerous, which I have previously referred to as a racket. In so doing, she now has the support of other transphobes in churches, the ones who were only too glad in the early days to condemn her books as encouraging witchcraft and unchristian beliefs. Phobia and bullying never require consistency, merely the opportunity to find a victim and damage them, all the while claiming that the victim they have picked represents a danger to them and that they are only defending themselves. 

So Ukraine is Nazi (ah yes, the country whose president lost his uncles in the Nazi Holocaust), NATO is aggressive (it's defensive), the Russian president is elected by the Russian people (since the opposition are killed or in jail), and so on. Similarly, MtF trans people are a danger to women (MtF trans people want nothing more than to be treated as women), trans people have suddenly emerged (trans people have always existed), there is a subversive trans agenda (no agenda, nature creates us), etc.

The bully as victim: the age-old story of the delusional aggressor trying to justify their hate by accusing their target of the very aggression that the bully is perpetrating. I am so sick of it. Having largely failed in discriminating against ethnic minorities, having largely failed in bashing gays, the phobics are turning to ever smaller minorities to try to crush someone, anyone. It happens to be trans people at the moment. If we stand firm they'll eventually move on to some other group, some other bunch of harmless folks, no doubt. 

But at least Putin publicly associating himself with Rowling finally does more to discredit her transphobia than anything else, despite her robust and just response to his linking her with his mania. An own-goal for bullies and transphobes, I'd say.

(This meme is doing the rounds and I am unable to credit the creator)

 

Sue x