I was surprised by how much I agreed with Coates in that debate, even though I've read very little of his work. Klein sees politics almost exclusively through the lens of cutting deals to "win," all political positions are negotiable as if we were haggling over the price of a used car. I was in total agreement when you asked what winning even meant It frustrates me to no end that centrists like Klein use "winning" as some kind of carte blanche justification for all political decisions with no concern for how any of them hollow out that same victory, even if it renders it functionally meaningless.
Coates' politics are deeply informed by his racial background, something which fundamentally can't be negotiated away. It's not like he could ever stop being black, even if he hypothetically wanted such a thing. He spent a lot of energy trying to get Klein to see that there are concrete human costs to throwing people over the side of the ship to lighten the load on the path to some empty victory. It's worse, because centrists control the Democratic party virtually unopposed and have taken no accountability for their electoral failures which supposedly justified these actions. The victory that was their excuse for all this never even materialized.
There is a not insignificant number of supporters of the current regime who do so merely because at least it appears to stands for something, even if it is evil.
Humans evolved to cooperate, so it is natural to seek a middle ground in conflict. But when you compromise with a fascist, they aren’t compromising with you; they are accepting your capitulation, and will soon demand you compromise further. You become more fascist, but they don’t become less fascist. This is why we shouldn’t give them an inch, and yet we’ve already given them yards.
I really appreciated reading all this, I’m really tired of all efforts I see toward appearing apolitical or neutral, when there is just no such thing at a time where critical infrastructure of civil life are systematically attacked
beautiful writing. i do think rowling had...initially...a fair point to make and one misquoted. the rage this engendered against her has hardened her and polarised her stance and, in turn, that of those who disagree. that's a real shame. because there is room for all concerns to be voiced and accomodated in tolerent ways that hurt nobody. nobody except the truly ignorant bigots, which i would not label rowling as.
how rowling is labeled matters less to me personally than the effects of her political crusades. she was one of the loudest "labour" voices smearing corbyn, repeating the "he's unelectable" myth, weaponising the claims of anti-semitism and criticising the "momentum" labour movement. she was a blairite multibillionaire who continuously sabotaged the first, decent left-wing labour candidate in modern history. her lil wizarding books granted her a lot of good-will through that scenario. when she started moving on trans women--it was first ‘liked tweets’ her fans started to notice. much of the rage came from the fact she was trying to tightrope-walk some centrist line of being transantagonistic but civil. she'd fixate on the most heinous comments towards her and completely ignore any measured, good faith interactions. so many people tried to meet her with kindness. but rowling's political ambitions have always focused on punitivity. she wanted to punish corbyn. she wants to punish trans people. the narrative she'd love us all to believe is that her genuine and reasonable concerns (and shifty support of transphobes) weren't met with equally reasonable debate and so she was pushed into becoming someone who spends her entire waking moment chastising, misgendering, and dedicating sums of her vast fortune to making the lives of trans people observably more terrible. she had no choice! the horrible trans meanie's made her do it! the truth is: she was the mean-spirited one, throwing rocks and hiding her hand. you and i agree that people should have room to voice their concerns. the average cis person is rarely exposed to trans people. rather than meeting this topic from a place of curiosity, rowling has helped drive the conversation towards dehumanisation, fear-mongering and bad-faith arguments. she had no business becoming as large a commentator on trans issues or politics as she's been. she's not an expert on political science or biology, she's not a feminist scholar. she's barely an expert on fiction. yet her name recognition has eclipsed so many voices who have been rendered boogeymen. its made this country a far more ignorant and bigoted place.
I confess to not being aware of her broader political stances. I read her wizzid books and caught enough of the trans rights discussions to form a view that people should chill about this and it was a huge shame that people cant accomodate other's views and let people live the lives they want...
Like wel marched for gay rights in the 80s when i was at Uni. it baffles me that the same behaviours we challenged then are being espoused even by some gay people now. its shitty to use influence to harm others but i still think the objective point she made about safe spaces for cis women is a view that can be held and doesnt automatically mean you are anti trans. Its also shitty to receive death threats. I can understand why a person would be fired up to reapond in kind and to feel betrayed.
Your writing comes from a far more well read and considered opinion than mine Inigo and I wouldn't question your motives or your basis for holding or espousing any view about anyone, especially not if they're negative. I don't see your writing as mud slinging...the opposite...you clean off the Mud and then erect a sign explaining exactly what's what...like you see at sights of special scientific interest or nature reserves.
if there's one thing i'd love people to understand, its how bigotry is manufactured. it doesn't spawn from nowhere. it takes a foothold in "understandable" grievances that relocate political issues onto unwitting scapegoats. the government has failed to provide its citizens affordable housing and combat landlordism? corporations are exploiting employment? asylum seekers are "taking" jobs and getting free homes. when someone arrives at the latter justification--even if their grievances come from a valid place of anxiety--it is vital we push back on the framing and advocate for better political management, not launch into demonising vulnerable classes.
the inherent framing of cis women needing safe spaces is a precursor to transantagonism because it predicates cis women's safety on first questioning, then ultimately limiting the public existence of trans women, who make up less than 1% of the population. the framing is emotionally successful because it builds on the same damsel-in-distress narratives that white women have weaponised against black people, which is likely why you and i fundamentally see the "objective point" differently. we agree that the position to want "safe spaces for cis women" is not automatically "anti-trans". but if that opinion doesn't expand into wanting a safe space for all women, then it will inevitably descend into transantagonism. and a lot of the times, the conversation doesn't flow in that direction.
the "trans women in bathrooms" debate has been so successful at trafficking normal people into transphobia because it relies on all the awkward and weird feelings of misunderstanding that cis people have towards trans people. the premise of "if we allow trans women in bathrooms then what's to stop men from pretending to be women and coming in and raping us?" is treated like a valid line of questioning and not an abomination of logic. it relies on seeing trans folks as sexually perverse, pretending, and not real women and that if we just limit trans women from bathrooms, then we'll save cis women from getting sexually assaulted in bathrooms.
this framing, if taken seriously, creates more problems than it solves. the root trauma in all of this is that society is unsafe for women -- cis and trans. if you force trans women out of women's bathrooms, it would mean people like hunter schafer have to use men's bathroom, which would increase her chances of being assaulted. that is the end consequence of this transphobic logic. cis women are expressing that they don't mind sacrificing trans women to the violence they themselves are afraid of. that is no way to lead a political movement. that at the end point, one group comes across significantly worse.
also i am fundamentally indifferent about rowling receiving death threats. tommy robinson probably gets death threats as well. i have trans friends who aren't even public figures who receive not only death threats but literal abuse in the streets *because* rowling's advocacy has shone a floodlight on their lives. every single one of my homies who speak loudly about injustice have received death threats. i understand why she'd be fired up. i just don't care. and she wouldn't care if i got death threats for standing up for trans people.
I think my "safe space" for women view comes from the bitter truth that there are a lot of terrible men. I do not think for a minute that trans women are a threat to anyone but i do think there are men who are absolutely not trans women but who would seek opportunities to exploit any system that allowed them a chance to rape women, including raping trans men that they would still see as women. I completely agree that this angle has been used by people to frame an anti trans agenda for no reason other than prejudice, exactly as racists sieze every opportunity to frame immigrants or brown and black people and ALL muslims as criminals rapists and jihadists and scroungers and any other social ill they can imagine. I too am dismayed at where prejudice comes from...aside from our development as essentially tribal animals, it surely has to be a taught thing --to dislike the "other"-- and also to have (once) perhaps provided some evolutionary benefit to have developed in humans at all.
this is the inherent struggle of society. terrible people will always exploit the system and thus, our duty is to advocate for better systems. a better system is one that makes it harder to exploit and safer for everyone. that isn't the way the conversation is being had regarding cis women's "safe spaces". it's been predetermined that if you let trans women in cis women's spaces then rapes will happen and/or go up. the entire debate is based on empathetic imagination, it says "i can see how people would do this if given the opportunity". the data of men who've dressed up as women to rape them in toilets is never cited, any nuances of that data isn't evaluated, other avenues of correction aren't considered. the data we do have about the lots of terrible men—is that they mostly commit sexual assault in intimate partner relationships or to women/family members they already know in a place they already know. that is a more commonplace, concrete, analysed reality that doesn't rely so largely on empathetic imagination. intimate partner violence is a tangible problem for all women, including trans women who are subjected to internalised transphobic abuse from their partners. these require real policies, social movements and systemic changes to improve society—and genuinely confronting them will help public life, even spaces like toilets and changing rooms, safer by dealing with the root. instead the safe space debate tries to fix a manufactured problem while sucking attention from the overarching reality of male violence. i would go as far to say that it is not about the safety of women but the social maintenance of the patriarchal structure of colonial womanhood, which is why rowling raged against imane khelif when she beat that italian boxer at the olympics and accused khelif of being a man. i say all this to say, many people live in fear and i am sympathetic to cis woman's anxieties as a black man living in a predominantly white country that's descending into fascism. but cis women have weaponised their fear against trans folks and the exclusionary practises have made them less safe and its literally affecting the lives of other cis women. after my mum asked me to cut her hair short, i was in ireland for her 60th birthday. she went to a cafe toilet and the barista shouted "the toilet is women's!" repeatedly at her. cis women have weaponised their grievances in a way that has lead to rising prejudice—all for a slim proportion of cis women to be less than 1% safer.
Inigo...sincerely, thank you for explaining the very close horizon of my viewpoints when there is a lot more to consider just a bit further away that I had not yet seen. 🙏
This is the best description I’ve ever read about the reason I hate Democratic Party politics: “the moral regression at the heart of this moment is an aside, he’s more concerned with figuring out which tactics his own sports team needs to adopt to win the championship next season.“ Thank you, as always, for your excellent analysis.
Would you say the inherent (and necessary) amorality of games and sports that neoliberals co-opt as a political blueprint stems at all from the cultural foothold that sports have in the US especially? It's certainly a psychological paradigm worth investing billions in if you're the oligarchy.
This steady supply of team-versus-team rhetoric, except both are actually just trying to win the favour of a clock, and its rules of engagement demand that the other team be your obstacle. You get laughed at for wondering how many points could be scored if both teams worked together, because then the game would have no point.
I don't know if I'd say the social paraphernalia of sports being used in modern politics *stems* from the cultural foothold of American sports.
As a (largely) patriarchal recreation reaching back to the olympiads of Ancient Greece, sport's place in western culture serves as an outlet for prejudicial binaries (good/evil, black/white and citizen/foreigner) to redirect unrest into something less barbaric than war and/or societal uprising.
In that respect, the link isn't necessarily causal but correlative. If a country is founded on barbaric foundations and sport is a distraction from being barbaric (and in the case of something like the gladiatorial coliseum––an event of controlled barbarism) then treating politics like a game is just the most efficient way for the population to psychically deal with the reality of the barbarism. (This is, obviously, reductive--as barbarism isn't the only factor.)
Binaries, at their core, are useful to oligarchy because manufacturing conflict is the ultimate game. What is worse than playing is the truth that if anyone decides to reject the game (let's say, in the way Trump rejected the decorum of centre-right/right pageantry or "establishment politics") then oligarchs adapt by creating a new game, a new paradigm and enforcing a new binary. So no, not paranoid. Winning means beating the game because you realise the game is what many are invested in while creating new paradigms at the same time.
For sure. I guess I was coming at it from a place of "At what point does that paradigm of distraction/outletting become its own layer of psychological foundation that may or may not be a more practical starting point for decolonization of the self?"
Re: binaries, that's something I think a lot of people don't realize about how hastily trans people in particular are scapegoated. Transness disrupts a binary (men and women) with a paradigm that doesn't originate from the oligarchy, and it directly scrutinizes institutions as a result. Rowling rails on about trans women inmates in women's prisons and the subsequent possibility/threat of rape, but is all too happy for those trans women (including those with bottom surgery) to be sent to men's prisons, where that same endangerment is exponentially higher, if not guaranteed. Our existence screams "Prison reform," but, somehow, the rhetoric that's quietly normalized instead is "Make sure it's the tranny who gets raped."
Build the propaganda, the neoliberal season ticket holders will come.
"At what point does that paradigm of distraction/outletting become its own layer of psychological foundation that may or may not be a more practical starting point for decolonization of the self?" – Can you say more about this question? I don't wanna respond to what I think you mean and misunderstand.
Yes, immigration and transantagonism are a struggle to main order in the face of social entropy. To anti-trans folks, trans people represent a society unravelling, the inevitability of chaos, and if you just neatly fit everything back into a clear, sexual dimorphism that humanity doesn't even really have--everything can go back to normal. Western society spent so much time minimising and recontextualising naziism (using grammar nazi as an insult was possibly the worst thing ever) that people don't even realise that one of the first things Hitler did when he became Chancellor was raid the world's first trans clinic and burn all the books. I understand the discomfort of not understanding other people's experience but trans-antagonism is literally a continuation of Nazi logic. It is weird to see people accept it so rabidly.
There was a subtle but direct association between Nazi antisemitism and the burning of Hirschfeld’s institutional archives. This was very much of a kind with other accusations of the racialised Other perverting and poisoning “healthy” patriarchal environments and endangering both women and men in different ways (women physically, men spiritually) — you’ve already brought that up.
For the sake of clarity, what I explicitly mean is—
One of the “proofs” of Jewish “degeneracy” was framed around the otherwise neutral fact that even as we assimilated and integrated into European society, we maintained our own identifiable culture(s), complete with a very different approach to gender roles. Those norms obviously got caricatured and vilified and all kinds of invented nonsense was tacked on to them (like the claim that all Jews menstruate, and Jewish men use Christian blood to relieve the symptoms of monthly blood loss — and of course the implicit claim was no Jews can be “real” men).
Hirschfeld, as much as he himself was racist and also paternalistic towards trans women, was viewed by the Nazis as evidence of Jews “exporting” our “degeneracy” to undermine Aryan manhood. But at the same time, the mere presence of Jews was viewed as a vector of contamination. Daniel Boyarin, may he be well, goes into all of this in Unheroic Conduct in a much more comprehensive fashion, though I don’t recall if he addresses Hirschfeld in specific. He does address the case of Freud (another Inner Other who internalised and expressed the colonial and imperialist norms of the dominant culture while also never contriving to be accepted by it, and doing at least some things that, to a lesser or greater extent disrupted those norms … and also to a lesser or greater extent upheld those norms; his case is elucidative though not strictly parallel when it comes to Hirschfeld — Freud was an Ostyid, and Hirschfeld a Yekke, and the situations of Polish/Lithuanian/Russian/Hungarian/etc. Ashkenazim was a universe away from that of the German Ashkenazim in some ways.)
Systemic transantagonism in the West is just inextricably racist at its core, and the specific antisemitic elements are probably far from dead, given JKR’s antisemitism was evident even in the early books. She did get worse in that respect, I think. But in her case, it’s not that one necessarily caused the other.
Sure! All I really mean there is that, in my head, it seems that sports are at a point where they directly reinforce the psychological paradigm of tribalism; a sort of mutation of its role as the outlet for barbarism. My question is, does that -- by way of sports being a relatively accessible context -- create a vulnerability in the wider cultural vice grip of tribalism that's more exploitable by those looking to decolonize themselves?
The answer, I believe, is yes – the psycho-cultural attitude around sports can offer an insight into political tribalism and reveal vulnerabilities. But in the same breath, I feel like those vulnerabilities unexploitable when you have a dysfunctional "main" team because exploiting these paradigms means recognising that the game needs winning AND changing simultaneously (or some creative "loophole" that allows for victory) which all requires a conduit and/or organised entity. It doesn't need to be unified. Just organised. (I hope I'm answering this correctly)
I suspect the whole array of your, and Charlotte's, arguments may explain, or at least frame, Rowling's particularly vicious and continued hatred -- and dehumanising -- of non-white sport stars
Amazing analysis as always. I have been thinking about this a lot, particularly in recent years, as the sides have been consistently outlined in ever-sharper relief and the fence has been growing ever more precarious. I think I was sort of raised on the fence for multiple reasons - information presented to me as I was growing up, slow and laborious development of deeper critical thinking, lack of exposure to or experience with certain social injustices that comes from being born in the unaffected social group - being part of ‘the norm’ - white, straight, middle class (sort of), in a country focused on other things (our own wars and political struggles).
But once out of that milieu and integrated into this western one, the questions of the fence immediately arise. And two things become clear - one, the fence is not the place to be if you aren’t gifted at ignoring glaring hypocrisy. And two - not being on the fence will bring a lot of friction.
As another commenter pointed out how, between Coates and Klein, Coates can never not have the experiences of being a Black man, all the heavy reality that brings with it, so his inevitable pain opens his eyes to the pain of others in his position and builds that empathy and confidence that there is no real way forward but to fight for liberation, even if ‘sometimes we lose’.
Klein on the other hand lacks this perception, instead his life will have taught him that getting off that fence (down on the correct side, of course, the one that doesn’t endanger) is actually a net loss for him personally. The oppressed gain from collective liberation while the privileged lose. We often say when you’re privileged, equality looks like oppression and we say it as a criticism but at one level it is materially true. Those who have a lot have to be willing to give things up so others could have them, and unsurprisingly they are not keen.
One thing I find in my own friend circle, as a white woman who doesn’t want to endanger, but rather to protect, but who is also profoundly entrenched in a pretty ordinary middle class existence of job, autistic kid, sick dad, mortgage, and thus lacking both gumption and drive to life a life of radical love and revolution, is that even at my most petty and pedestrian attempts of not endangering - telling friends I am looking to invest in socially conscious enterprises, wearing a shirt that says ‘land back’, donating to Doctors Without Borders, boycotting certain brands and purposely buying from small creators - these less than nothings, these smallest attempts are met, from otherwise educated, reasonable, and empathetic-seeming people, with a weird amount of derision and contempt. Immediately labeled as ‘pfft you think you’re BETTER than everyone, well where do you buy your food?? Who’s your phone provider? Is your money in a bank? You’re the same shit as everyone!’
And, like, yeah of course I’m the same shit as everyone. My scope of ‘activism’ is small and threadbare and I am the first to agree. But the fact that even that tiny bit immediately gets vitrioled down really makes me think about the height, and weight, and breadth of the fence. It is immediately seen as threatening to the fence, and immediately met with anger, even though I never present it as a call to action even, just ‘hey I started looking into this recently’ ‘man you’re so full of shit like your little effort is gonna change anything, bah! I’m sure Starbucks is crying because you’re no longer going there!’ It’s… really, really weird.
But I guess it makes sense in that context of ‘people on the fence would have to shed privileges in order to come down from the fence’. They would have to actively usher in a world that will stop putting them first.
And hey, I totally think we fucking should. But I understand why they’re clinging to the fence like hissing cats.
appreciate your thoughts and listen, you say the scope of your activism is small but i think everyone needs to do something small. even if you just change one person's mind–a friend, a lover, a family member–you're doing something. i think that the thing about the fence is, if you don't get off it on your own, circumstances will force you to. if you turn a blind eye to ICE or UK asylum riots or pro-palestine activists getting thrown in jail, deported today, one day you'll find yourself capitulating to a reality that you never thought you'd cheer for. in that respect, i don't see privilege being lost in the pursuit of collective liberation (and of course, i've already spoken about my rejection of the word in "when words wither"). i think in much of my work, i try to articulate that standing up for what's right is never a true loss. whatever anyone might lose in materiality, you gain in spirit. i know that doesn't fill hungry bellies, i know its not secure. but there is a pride that comes with standing against you believe in and there's also a shame in turning away. you get to live a little lighter without that shame. the animosity you've faced at the hands of small deeds is people's shame cropping up. it's happened to me, i used to have such knee-jerk reactions about veganism. very bostonite "you think ya better than me!" type outbursts. i felt shame because veganism wasn't something i was willing to practice even though i knew it was wrong. today, i try to be more conscious overall about what i put in my body and what i patronise. we're never always gonna get it right. but having conviction is infectious and for some people it makes them sick. but for a lot of people, they find it admirable.
Yep, totally agree with all of that. I think small things are sometimes all we have, and sometimes they’re a gateway to bigger things, getting ready, so to speak. Yeah I also think of veganism and all the vitriol it attracts and sure some of it can be down to people being sanctimonious - ‘ugh, you’re eating FLESH?!?’ - but a lot of the time it’s exactly that - I feel you’re judging me because I am judging me. I will probably never make it all the way to vegan but it has literally physically become harder for me to handle raw meat in the kitchen and reconcile my family’s eating habits with what I know about how that food is grown. And it’s not that I don’t understand the sentiment behind wanting to insist how everything is bullshit and thus we don’t have to try because it doesn’t change anything so we can just let ourselves do what we know isn’t good and sneer at those who try better. But I can’t quite embrace that any more than I can embrace the cold comfort of religion and the promise of some glorious afterlife obscuring the fear of death. Maybe it would be nice to be more gullible.
I absolutely agree with you also that the value of maintaining principles is greater in some sense than the value of maintaining privilege. But I also understand why some people go ‘yeah blah blah kumbaya, I would rather be feeling empty in my yacht jacuzzi than feeling joy and connection under a dinky-ass blinking kitchen light in a dirty-ass apartment I don’t know how to cover rent for. It’s tough. Over the years I have asked myself a million times over how can we go around having savings and investments when people are in the streets, people are dying with nothing. But then you get to the other side of reality, I have a disabled kid who might not navigate life with huge success, I need to set him up with something, my dad needs help, I will grow old, you don’t want to have nothing.
And so you swing back and forth between wanting to give more and to believe others will give too and you will meet in the middle in a better society where everyone is more giving, and wanting to hold on to more in the fear that everyone else will also keep holding on to what they have and you will only have yourself to rely on once things get rough. And weirdly both those beliefs are sort of self fulfilling.
It’s weird, man. Like a lot of people on ‘our side’ are not really on our side, you know? Not sure where to go with that.
Good question. Getting off the fence would look like: not capitulating to unreasonable demands, standing firm in one's stated beliefs, and forming beliefs that require firm stance.
There's an approach to answering this where I recommend, "read x, watch y, sign up for z."
I'd prefer people explore more internally. If you're someone who watched films or TV shows growing up and rooted for the underdog--you saw Luke, Leia, Han and Chewy in Star Wars and wanted them to win--then you have an innate understanding of injustice.
Identify--in the pressing situations of our times--who is the suffering in the power imbalance. Who is being demonised? Who's treatment feels unfair? Have the courage to support that person, even if you don't understand them, even if they don't look like you.
You can have compassion for everyone--but I am someone who preserves my finite well for those experiencing classism, islamophobia, ableism, transphobia, anti-blackness, racism, fatphobia, queerphobia, etc. They are who I care to protect and who I take care not to endanger.
That is extremely basic but becoming increasingly hard. Power imbalances aren't always obvious, propaganda is rife, tensions are high. There is a base-level of camaraderie I will always have with the marginalised and the oppressed--even when I disagree with how they might conduct themselves. It isn't necessarily about right/wrong but the pursuit of fairness. It is about who has the power, who is abusing it and who is being abused.
Lastly, fence-sitters like Klein have glaring hypocrisies. Identify what yours are in yourself. Where do you find yourself conceding out of fear or agreement?
A better exercise might even be to watch the video of Klein and Coates and see where Klein's hypocrisies are--the ones that informed me to write this post. Can you see them? Are they obvious? Are they not so obvious? Read his piece on Kirk, then Coates' and interrogate your agreement or disagreement.
Look inward to land on a side where you're more sure of yourself.
I really appreciate the depth and effort of this writing. I relate to the examination of this subject and the difficulty in getting this reality through to people who are so mired in their own self service to see the situation clearly and account for their behavior.
Different patterns of the same culture, essentially co dependent.
Fence-sitting is privilege sugar-coated under the guise of “compassion”. Nobody who has anything to lose from a political position can afford neutrality. I find it akin to the pedestaling of forgiveness as a concept. “Forgive your assailant, forgive your oppressor, forgiveness will set you free.”
It’s like a double-erasure at that point.
The truth is, you can accept someone’s humanity without centring it, or pandering to it. Call it like it is — it doesn’t make you morally inferior to choose a side. It doesn’t make your lens less nuanced, or your character less compassionate. But none of that is the point anyway.
People are not good or evil. People are complex. Most people fall somewhere in the middle. Accepting this nuance, imo, actually takes off the pressure of constantly having to put a disclaimer for it, thereby supplying ammunition for the opposition.
The idea that we can fit into neat little boxes like that distorts how we interact with people. The number of times I’ve met people making blatantly racist comments or pedalling misogynistic ideologies, and someone’s quipped, “but they’re a good person though” or “but they helped me or showed me love” or “they didn’t mean to, they just don’t know better”.
So. Fucking. What?
It’s not about you. They’re still racist and misogynistic. Their humanity doesn’t make them any less bigoted. Call it what it is.
Except it’s easy not to when you’re not the victim.
Funnily enough, Harry & Snape’s relationship in the books embody so much of this lol. In a way, Harry idolizing him after finding out his whole story is exactly the same olive branch Emma offered JKR — and the cop-out she is counting on.
This grown-ass man bullied a child FFS, but forgiveness was Harry’s MO, so forgive he must at all costs… even if it means naming his own son after the man who punished a son for the sins of a father.
Also, after reading your piece, Dumbledore turning down Minister of Magic is giving Einstein. (Not that your piece had anything to do with the book, but I couldn’t help draw the parallels 🤣)
I was surprised by how much I agreed with Coates in that debate, even though I've read very little of his work. Klein sees politics almost exclusively through the lens of cutting deals to "win," all political positions are negotiable as if we were haggling over the price of a used car. I was in total agreement when you asked what winning even meant It frustrates me to no end that centrists like Klein use "winning" as some kind of carte blanche justification for all political decisions with no concern for how any of them hollow out that same victory, even if it renders it functionally meaningless.
Coates' politics are deeply informed by his racial background, something which fundamentally can't be negotiated away. It's not like he could ever stop being black, even if he hypothetically wanted such a thing. He spent a lot of energy trying to get Klein to see that there are concrete human costs to throwing people over the side of the ship to lighten the load on the path to some empty victory. It's worse, because centrists control the Democratic party virtually unopposed and have taken no accountability for their electoral failures which supposedly justified these actions. The victory that was their excuse for all this never even materialized.
Really good post.
There is a not insignificant number of supporters of the current regime who do so merely because at least it appears to stands for something, even if it is evil.
Humans evolved to cooperate, so it is natural to seek a middle ground in conflict. But when you compromise with a fascist, they aren’t compromising with you; they are accepting your capitulation, and will soon demand you compromise further. You become more fascist, but they don’t become less fascist. This is why we shouldn’t give them an inch, and yet we’ve already given them yards.
https://pickleglitch.substack.com/p/things-fall-apart-the-center-cannot
I really appreciated reading all this, I’m really tired of all efforts I see toward appearing apolitical or neutral, when there is just no such thing at a time where critical infrastructure of civil life are systematically attacked
beautiful writing. i do think rowling had...initially...a fair point to make and one misquoted. the rage this engendered against her has hardened her and polarised her stance and, in turn, that of those who disagree. that's a real shame. because there is room for all concerns to be voiced and accomodated in tolerent ways that hurt nobody. nobody except the truly ignorant bigots, which i would not label rowling as.
how rowling is labeled matters less to me personally than the effects of her political crusades. she was one of the loudest "labour" voices smearing corbyn, repeating the "he's unelectable" myth, weaponising the claims of anti-semitism and criticising the "momentum" labour movement. she was a blairite multibillionaire who continuously sabotaged the first, decent left-wing labour candidate in modern history. her lil wizarding books granted her a lot of good-will through that scenario. when she started moving on trans women--it was first ‘liked tweets’ her fans started to notice. much of the rage came from the fact she was trying to tightrope-walk some centrist line of being transantagonistic but civil. she'd fixate on the most heinous comments towards her and completely ignore any measured, good faith interactions. so many people tried to meet her with kindness. but rowling's political ambitions have always focused on punitivity. she wanted to punish corbyn. she wants to punish trans people. the narrative she'd love us all to believe is that her genuine and reasonable concerns (and shifty support of transphobes) weren't met with equally reasonable debate and so she was pushed into becoming someone who spends her entire waking moment chastising, misgendering, and dedicating sums of her vast fortune to making the lives of trans people observably more terrible. she had no choice! the horrible trans meanie's made her do it! the truth is: she was the mean-spirited one, throwing rocks and hiding her hand. you and i agree that people should have room to voice their concerns. the average cis person is rarely exposed to trans people. rather than meeting this topic from a place of curiosity, rowling has helped drive the conversation towards dehumanisation, fear-mongering and bad-faith arguments. she had no business becoming as large a commentator on trans issues or politics as she's been. she's not an expert on political science or biology, she's not a feminist scholar. she's barely an expert on fiction. yet her name recognition has eclipsed so many voices who have been rendered boogeymen. its made this country a far more ignorant and bigoted place.
I confess to not being aware of her broader political stances. I read her wizzid books and caught enough of the trans rights discussions to form a view that people should chill about this and it was a huge shame that people cant accomodate other's views and let people live the lives they want...
Like wel marched for gay rights in the 80s when i was at Uni. it baffles me that the same behaviours we challenged then are being espoused even by some gay people now. its shitty to use influence to harm others but i still think the objective point she made about safe spaces for cis women is a view that can be held and doesnt automatically mean you are anti trans. Its also shitty to receive death threats. I can understand why a person would be fired up to reapond in kind and to feel betrayed.
Your writing comes from a far more well read and considered opinion than mine Inigo and I wouldn't question your motives or your basis for holding or espousing any view about anyone, especially not if they're negative. I don't see your writing as mud slinging...the opposite...you clean off the Mud and then erect a sign explaining exactly what's what...like you see at sights of special scientific interest or nature reserves.
if there's one thing i'd love people to understand, its how bigotry is manufactured. it doesn't spawn from nowhere. it takes a foothold in "understandable" grievances that relocate political issues onto unwitting scapegoats. the government has failed to provide its citizens affordable housing and combat landlordism? corporations are exploiting employment? asylum seekers are "taking" jobs and getting free homes. when someone arrives at the latter justification--even if their grievances come from a valid place of anxiety--it is vital we push back on the framing and advocate for better political management, not launch into demonising vulnerable classes.
the inherent framing of cis women needing safe spaces is a precursor to transantagonism because it predicates cis women's safety on first questioning, then ultimately limiting the public existence of trans women, who make up less than 1% of the population. the framing is emotionally successful because it builds on the same damsel-in-distress narratives that white women have weaponised against black people, which is likely why you and i fundamentally see the "objective point" differently. we agree that the position to want "safe spaces for cis women" is not automatically "anti-trans". but if that opinion doesn't expand into wanting a safe space for all women, then it will inevitably descend into transantagonism. and a lot of the times, the conversation doesn't flow in that direction.
the "trans women in bathrooms" debate has been so successful at trafficking normal people into transphobia because it relies on all the awkward and weird feelings of misunderstanding that cis people have towards trans people. the premise of "if we allow trans women in bathrooms then what's to stop men from pretending to be women and coming in and raping us?" is treated like a valid line of questioning and not an abomination of logic. it relies on seeing trans folks as sexually perverse, pretending, and not real women and that if we just limit trans women from bathrooms, then we'll save cis women from getting sexually assaulted in bathrooms.
this framing, if taken seriously, creates more problems than it solves. the root trauma in all of this is that society is unsafe for women -- cis and trans. if you force trans women out of women's bathrooms, it would mean people like hunter schafer have to use men's bathroom, which would increase her chances of being assaulted. that is the end consequence of this transphobic logic. cis women are expressing that they don't mind sacrificing trans women to the violence they themselves are afraid of. that is no way to lead a political movement. that at the end point, one group comes across significantly worse.
also i am fundamentally indifferent about rowling receiving death threats. tommy robinson probably gets death threats as well. i have trans friends who aren't even public figures who receive not only death threats but literal abuse in the streets *because* rowling's advocacy has shone a floodlight on their lives. every single one of my homies who speak loudly about injustice have received death threats. i understand why she'd be fired up. i just don't care. and she wouldn't care if i got death threats for standing up for trans people.
thank you for your kind words as well, Nick!
“i understand why she’d be fired up. i just don’t care.”
I’m not even religious, but bless your soul for this entire discourse 🙏🏽
I think my "safe space" for women view comes from the bitter truth that there are a lot of terrible men. I do not think for a minute that trans women are a threat to anyone but i do think there are men who are absolutely not trans women but who would seek opportunities to exploit any system that allowed them a chance to rape women, including raping trans men that they would still see as women. I completely agree that this angle has been used by people to frame an anti trans agenda for no reason other than prejudice, exactly as racists sieze every opportunity to frame immigrants or brown and black people and ALL muslims as criminals rapists and jihadists and scroungers and any other social ill they can imagine. I too am dismayed at where prejudice comes from...aside from our development as essentially tribal animals, it surely has to be a taught thing --to dislike the "other"-- and also to have (once) perhaps provided some evolutionary benefit to have developed in humans at all.
this is the inherent struggle of society. terrible people will always exploit the system and thus, our duty is to advocate for better systems. a better system is one that makes it harder to exploit and safer for everyone. that isn't the way the conversation is being had regarding cis women's "safe spaces". it's been predetermined that if you let trans women in cis women's spaces then rapes will happen and/or go up. the entire debate is based on empathetic imagination, it says "i can see how people would do this if given the opportunity". the data of men who've dressed up as women to rape them in toilets is never cited, any nuances of that data isn't evaluated, other avenues of correction aren't considered. the data we do have about the lots of terrible men—is that they mostly commit sexual assault in intimate partner relationships or to women/family members they already know in a place they already know. that is a more commonplace, concrete, analysed reality that doesn't rely so largely on empathetic imagination. intimate partner violence is a tangible problem for all women, including trans women who are subjected to internalised transphobic abuse from their partners. these require real policies, social movements and systemic changes to improve society—and genuinely confronting them will help public life, even spaces like toilets and changing rooms, safer by dealing with the root. instead the safe space debate tries to fix a manufactured problem while sucking attention from the overarching reality of male violence. i would go as far to say that it is not about the safety of women but the social maintenance of the patriarchal structure of colonial womanhood, which is why rowling raged against imane khelif when she beat that italian boxer at the olympics and accused khelif of being a man. i say all this to say, many people live in fear and i am sympathetic to cis woman's anxieties as a black man living in a predominantly white country that's descending into fascism. but cis women have weaponised their fear against trans folks and the exclusionary practises have made them less safe and its literally affecting the lives of other cis women. after my mum asked me to cut her hair short, i was in ireland for her 60th birthday. she went to a cafe toilet and the barista shouted "the toilet is women's!" repeatedly at her. cis women have weaponised their grievances in a way that has lead to rising prejudice—all for a slim proportion of cis women to be less than 1% safer.
Inigo...sincerely, thank you for explaining the very close horizon of my viewpoints when there is a lot more to consider just a bit further away that I had not yet seen. 🙏
Thank you. Some of us are too much in grief to be able to say these things half so coherently.
It's my pleasure, wishing you well.
This is the best description I’ve ever read about the reason I hate Democratic Party politics: “the moral regression at the heart of this moment is an aside, he’s more concerned with figuring out which tactics his own sports team needs to adopt to win the championship next season.“ Thank you, as always, for your excellent analysis.
Would you say the inherent (and necessary) amorality of games and sports that neoliberals co-opt as a political blueprint stems at all from the cultural foothold that sports have in the US especially? It's certainly a psychological paradigm worth investing billions in if you're the oligarchy.
This steady supply of team-versus-team rhetoric, except both are actually just trying to win the favour of a clock, and its rules of engagement demand that the other team be your obstacle. You get laughed at for wondering how many points could be scored if both teams worked together, because then the game would have no point.
But maybe that's paranoid. Go Dortmund 🟡⚫
I don't know if I'd say the social paraphernalia of sports being used in modern politics *stems* from the cultural foothold of American sports.
As a (largely) patriarchal recreation reaching back to the olympiads of Ancient Greece, sport's place in western culture serves as an outlet for prejudicial binaries (good/evil, black/white and citizen/foreigner) to redirect unrest into something less barbaric than war and/or societal uprising.
In that respect, the link isn't necessarily causal but correlative. If a country is founded on barbaric foundations and sport is a distraction from being barbaric (and in the case of something like the gladiatorial coliseum––an event of controlled barbarism) then treating politics like a game is just the most efficient way for the population to psychically deal with the reality of the barbarism. (This is, obviously, reductive--as barbarism isn't the only factor.)
Binaries, at their core, are useful to oligarchy because manufacturing conflict is the ultimate game. What is worse than playing is the truth that if anyone decides to reject the game (let's say, in the way Trump rejected the decorum of centre-right/right pageantry or "establishment politics") then oligarchs adapt by creating a new game, a new paradigm and enforcing a new binary. So no, not paranoid. Winning means beating the game because you realise the game is what many are invested in while creating new paradigms at the same time.
For sure. I guess I was coming at it from a place of "At what point does that paradigm of distraction/outletting become its own layer of psychological foundation that may or may not be a more practical starting point for decolonization of the self?"
Re: binaries, that's something I think a lot of people don't realize about how hastily trans people in particular are scapegoated. Transness disrupts a binary (men and women) with a paradigm that doesn't originate from the oligarchy, and it directly scrutinizes institutions as a result. Rowling rails on about trans women inmates in women's prisons and the subsequent possibility/threat of rape, but is all too happy for those trans women (including those with bottom surgery) to be sent to men's prisons, where that same endangerment is exponentially higher, if not guaranteed. Our existence screams "Prison reform," but, somehow, the rhetoric that's quietly normalized instead is "Make sure it's the tranny who gets raped."
Build the propaganda, the neoliberal season ticket holders will come.
"At what point does that paradigm of distraction/outletting become its own layer of psychological foundation that may or may not be a more practical starting point for decolonization of the self?" – Can you say more about this question? I don't wanna respond to what I think you mean and misunderstand.
Yes, immigration and transantagonism are a struggle to main order in the face of social entropy. To anti-trans folks, trans people represent a society unravelling, the inevitability of chaos, and if you just neatly fit everything back into a clear, sexual dimorphism that humanity doesn't even really have--everything can go back to normal. Western society spent so much time minimising and recontextualising naziism (using grammar nazi as an insult was possibly the worst thing ever) that people don't even realise that one of the first things Hitler did when he became Chancellor was raid the world's first trans clinic and burn all the books. I understand the discomfort of not understanding other people's experience but trans-antagonism is literally a continuation of Nazi logic. It is weird to see people accept it so rabidly.
There was a subtle but direct association between Nazi antisemitism and the burning of Hirschfeld’s institutional archives. This was very much of a kind with other accusations of the racialised Other perverting and poisoning “healthy” patriarchal environments and endangering both women and men in different ways (women physically, men spiritually) — you’ve already brought that up.
For the sake of clarity, what I explicitly mean is—
One of the “proofs” of Jewish “degeneracy” was framed around the otherwise neutral fact that even as we assimilated and integrated into European society, we maintained our own identifiable culture(s), complete with a very different approach to gender roles. Those norms obviously got caricatured and vilified and all kinds of invented nonsense was tacked on to them (like the claim that all Jews menstruate, and Jewish men use Christian blood to relieve the symptoms of monthly blood loss — and of course the implicit claim was no Jews can be “real” men).
Hirschfeld, as much as he himself was racist and also paternalistic towards trans women, was viewed by the Nazis as evidence of Jews “exporting” our “degeneracy” to undermine Aryan manhood. But at the same time, the mere presence of Jews was viewed as a vector of contamination. Daniel Boyarin, may he be well, goes into all of this in Unheroic Conduct in a much more comprehensive fashion, though I don’t recall if he addresses Hirschfeld in specific. He does address the case of Freud (another Inner Other who internalised and expressed the colonial and imperialist norms of the dominant culture while also never contriving to be accepted by it, and doing at least some things that, to a lesser or greater extent disrupted those norms … and also to a lesser or greater extent upheld those norms; his case is elucidative though not strictly parallel when it comes to Hirschfeld — Freud was an Ostyid, and Hirschfeld a Yekke, and the situations of Polish/Lithuanian/Russian/Hungarian/etc. Ashkenazim was a universe away from that of the German Ashkenazim in some ways.)
Systemic transantagonism in the West is just inextricably racist at its core, and the specific antisemitic elements are probably far from dead, given JKR’s antisemitism was evident even in the early books. She did get worse in that respect, I think. But in her case, it’s not that one necessarily caused the other.
Sure! All I really mean there is that, in my head, it seems that sports are at a point where they directly reinforce the psychological paradigm of tribalism; a sort of mutation of its role as the outlet for barbarism. My question is, does that -- by way of sports being a relatively accessible context -- create a vulnerability in the wider cultural vice grip of tribalism that's more exploitable by those looking to decolonize themselves?
The answer, I believe, is yes – the psycho-cultural attitude around sports can offer an insight into political tribalism and reveal vulnerabilities. But in the same breath, I feel like those vulnerabilities unexploitable when you have a dysfunctional "main" team because exploiting these paradigms means recognising that the game needs winning AND changing simultaneously (or some creative "loophole" that allows for victory) which all requires a conduit and/or organised entity. It doesn't need to be unified. Just organised. (I hope I'm answering this correctly)
I suspect the whole array of your, and Charlotte's, arguments may explain, or at least frame, Rowling's particularly vicious and continued hatred -- and dehumanising -- of non-white sport stars
Amazing analysis as always. I have been thinking about this a lot, particularly in recent years, as the sides have been consistently outlined in ever-sharper relief and the fence has been growing ever more precarious. I think I was sort of raised on the fence for multiple reasons - information presented to me as I was growing up, slow and laborious development of deeper critical thinking, lack of exposure to or experience with certain social injustices that comes from being born in the unaffected social group - being part of ‘the norm’ - white, straight, middle class (sort of), in a country focused on other things (our own wars and political struggles).
But once out of that milieu and integrated into this western one, the questions of the fence immediately arise. And two things become clear - one, the fence is not the place to be if you aren’t gifted at ignoring glaring hypocrisy. And two - not being on the fence will bring a lot of friction.
As another commenter pointed out how, between Coates and Klein, Coates can never not have the experiences of being a Black man, all the heavy reality that brings with it, so his inevitable pain opens his eyes to the pain of others in his position and builds that empathy and confidence that there is no real way forward but to fight for liberation, even if ‘sometimes we lose’.
Klein on the other hand lacks this perception, instead his life will have taught him that getting off that fence (down on the correct side, of course, the one that doesn’t endanger) is actually a net loss for him personally. The oppressed gain from collective liberation while the privileged lose. We often say when you’re privileged, equality looks like oppression and we say it as a criticism but at one level it is materially true. Those who have a lot have to be willing to give things up so others could have them, and unsurprisingly they are not keen.
One thing I find in my own friend circle, as a white woman who doesn’t want to endanger, but rather to protect, but who is also profoundly entrenched in a pretty ordinary middle class existence of job, autistic kid, sick dad, mortgage, and thus lacking both gumption and drive to life a life of radical love and revolution, is that even at my most petty and pedestrian attempts of not endangering - telling friends I am looking to invest in socially conscious enterprises, wearing a shirt that says ‘land back’, donating to Doctors Without Borders, boycotting certain brands and purposely buying from small creators - these less than nothings, these smallest attempts are met, from otherwise educated, reasonable, and empathetic-seeming people, with a weird amount of derision and contempt. Immediately labeled as ‘pfft you think you’re BETTER than everyone, well where do you buy your food?? Who’s your phone provider? Is your money in a bank? You’re the same shit as everyone!’
And, like, yeah of course I’m the same shit as everyone. My scope of ‘activism’ is small and threadbare and I am the first to agree. But the fact that even that tiny bit immediately gets vitrioled down really makes me think about the height, and weight, and breadth of the fence. It is immediately seen as threatening to the fence, and immediately met with anger, even though I never present it as a call to action even, just ‘hey I started looking into this recently’ ‘man you’re so full of shit like your little effort is gonna change anything, bah! I’m sure Starbucks is crying because you’re no longer going there!’ It’s… really, really weird.
But I guess it makes sense in that context of ‘people on the fence would have to shed privileges in order to come down from the fence’. They would have to actively usher in a world that will stop putting them first.
And hey, I totally think we fucking should. But I understand why they’re clinging to the fence like hissing cats.
appreciate your thoughts and listen, you say the scope of your activism is small but i think everyone needs to do something small. even if you just change one person's mind–a friend, a lover, a family member–you're doing something. i think that the thing about the fence is, if you don't get off it on your own, circumstances will force you to. if you turn a blind eye to ICE or UK asylum riots or pro-palestine activists getting thrown in jail, deported today, one day you'll find yourself capitulating to a reality that you never thought you'd cheer for. in that respect, i don't see privilege being lost in the pursuit of collective liberation (and of course, i've already spoken about my rejection of the word in "when words wither"). i think in much of my work, i try to articulate that standing up for what's right is never a true loss. whatever anyone might lose in materiality, you gain in spirit. i know that doesn't fill hungry bellies, i know its not secure. but there is a pride that comes with standing against you believe in and there's also a shame in turning away. you get to live a little lighter without that shame. the animosity you've faced at the hands of small deeds is people's shame cropping up. it's happened to me, i used to have such knee-jerk reactions about veganism. very bostonite "you think ya better than me!" type outbursts. i felt shame because veganism wasn't something i was willing to practice even though i knew it was wrong. today, i try to be more conscious overall about what i put in my body and what i patronise. we're never always gonna get it right. but having conviction is infectious and for some people it makes them sick. but for a lot of people, they find it admirable.
Yep, totally agree with all of that. I think small things are sometimes all we have, and sometimes they’re a gateway to bigger things, getting ready, so to speak. Yeah I also think of veganism and all the vitriol it attracts and sure some of it can be down to people being sanctimonious - ‘ugh, you’re eating FLESH?!?’ - but a lot of the time it’s exactly that - I feel you’re judging me because I am judging me. I will probably never make it all the way to vegan but it has literally physically become harder for me to handle raw meat in the kitchen and reconcile my family’s eating habits with what I know about how that food is grown. And it’s not that I don’t understand the sentiment behind wanting to insist how everything is bullshit and thus we don’t have to try because it doesn’t change anything so we can just let ourselves do what we know isn’t good and sneer at those who try better. But I can’t quite embrace that any more than I can embrace the cold comfort of religion and the promise of some glorious afterlife obscuring the fear of death. Maybe it would be nice to be more gullible.
I absolutely agree with you also that the value of maintaining principles is greater in some sense than the value of maintaining privilege. But I also understand why some people go ‘yeah blah blah kumbaya, I would rather be feeling empty in my yacht jacuzzi than feeling joy and connection under a dinky-ass blinking kitchen light in a dirty-ass apartment I don’t know how to cover rent for. It’s tough. Over the years I have asked myself a million times over how can we go around having savings and investments when people are in the streets, people are dying with nothing. But then you get to the other side of reality, I have a disabled kid who might not navigate life with huge success, I need to set him up with something, my dad needs help, I will grow old, you don’t want to have nothing.
And so you swing back and forth between wanting to give more and to believe others will give too and you will meet in the middle in a better society where everyone is more giving, and wanting to hold on to more in the fear that everyone else will also keep holding on to what they have and you will only have yourself to rely on once things get rough. And weirdly both those beliefs are sort of self fulfilling.
It’s weird, man. Like a lot of people on ‘our side’ are not really on our side, you know? Not sure where to go with that.
What would getting off the fence look like? What does one do to no longer be a fence-sitter?
Good question. Getting off the fence would look like: not capitulating to unreasonable demands, standing firm in one's stated beliefs, and forming beliefs that require firm stance.
There's an approach to answering this where I recommend, "read x, watch y, sign up for z."
I'd prefer people explore more internally. If you're someone who watched films or TV shows growing up and rooted for the underdog--you saw Luke, Leia, Han and Chewy in Star Wars and wanted them to win--then you have an innate understanding of injustice.
Identify--in the pressing situations of our times--who is the suffering in the power imbalance. Who is being demonised? Who's treatment feels unfair? Have the courage to support that person, even if you don't understand them, even if they don't look like you.
You can have compassion for everyone--but I am someone who preserves my finite well for those experiencing classism, islamophobia, ableism, transphobia, anti-blackness, racism, fatphobia, queerphobia, etc. They are who I care to protect and who I take care not to endanger.
That is extremely basic but becoming increasingly hard. Power imbalances aren't always obvious, propaganda is rife, tensions are high. There is a base-level of camaraderie I will always have with the marginalised and the oppressed--even when I disagree with how they might conduct themselves. It isn't necessarily about right/wrong but the pursuit of fairness. It is about who has the power, who is abusing it and who is being abused.
Lastly, fence-sitters like Klein have glaring hypocrisies. Identify what yours are in yourself. Where do you find yourself conceding out of fear or agreement?
A better exercise might even be to watch the video of Klein and Coates and see where Klein's hypocrisies are--the ones that informed me to write this post. Can you see them? Are they obvious? Are they not so obvious? Read his piece on Kirk, then Coates' and interrogate your agreement or disagreement.
Look inward to land on a side where you're more sure of yourself.
I really appreciate the depth and effort of this writing. I relate to the examination of this subject and the difficulty in getting this reality through to people who are so mired in their own self service to see the situation clearly and account for their behavior.
Different patterns of the same culture, essentially co dependent.
Like a punch to the gut ❤️🔥
every word is ❤️🔥
Very interesting read, thanks for writing
Incredible read 👏🏽
Fence-sitting is privilege sugar-coated under the guise of “compassion”. Nobody who has anything to lose from a political position can afford neutrality. I find it akin to the pedestaling of forgiveness as a concept. “Forgive your assailant, forgive your oppressor, forgiveness will set you free.”
It’s like a double-erasure at that point.
The truth is, you can accept someone’s humanity without centring it, or pandering to it. Call it like it is — it doesn’t make you morally inferior to choose a side. It doesn’t make your lens less nuanced, or your character less compassionate. But none of that is the point anyway.
People are not good or evil. People are complex. Most people fall somewhere in the middle. Accepting this nuance, imo, actually takes off the pressure of constantly having to put a disclaimer for it, thereby supplying ammunition for the opposition.
The idea that we can fit into neat little boxes like that distorts how we interact with people. The number of times I’ve met people making blatantly racist comments or pedalling misogynistic ideologies, and someone’s quipped, “but they’re a good person though” or “but they helped me or showed me love” or “they didn’t mean to, they just don’t know better”.
So. Fucking. What?
It’s not about you. They’re still racist and misogynistic. Their humanity doesn’t make them any less bigoted. Call it what it is.
Except it’s easy not to when you’re not the victim.
Funnily enough, Harry & Snape’s relationship in the books embody so much of this lol. In a way, Harry idolizing him after finding out his whole story is exactly the same olive branch Emma offered JKR — and the cop-out she is counting on.
This grown-ass man bullied a child FFS, but forgiveness was Harry’s MO, so forgive he must at all costs… even if it means naming his own son after the man who punished a son for the sins of a father.
Also, after reading your piece, Dumbledore turning down Minister of Magic is giving Einstein. (Not that your piece had anything to do with the book, but I couldn’t help draw the parallels 🤣)
Lovely piece as always, Inigo! I’m genuinely so happy I’m able to read your writing.