Hollywood is openly threatening to blacklist Harry Potter creator J.K. Rowling over her position on transgender issues.
The top story at Variety, the “bible of show business,” is a blatant threat.
“What J.K. Rowling’s Anti-Trans Views Could Mean for ‘Fantastic Beasts’ Franchise — and ‘Harry Potter’ Fans,” the headline reads.
“The author’s anti-trans tweets, and concerns about stars Johnny Depp and Ezra Miller, could muddle the future of “Fantastic Beasts,” the sub-headline reads.
Over at the far-left Deadline, the threat is even clearer: “J.K. Rowling Corporate Partners Struggle To Respond As Controversy Over Trans Comments Grows.”
Universal Parks & Resorts, home to Harry Potter rides and attractions in Los Angeles and Orlando, said in a statment, “Our core values include diversity, inclusion and respect for all our guests, as well as our team members. Our theme parks are places where people and families of all types are welcome to enjoy their time together. Beyond that, we have no further comment.”
At HBO Max, no changes are currently planned to the Potter lineup. The Harry Potter movies were all promoted last month on the streamer, which offered the full franchise of eight films together for the first time when it launched.
Just the fact that Variety, and all of the far-left entertainment media and news media, are falsely smearing Rowling by describing her as an “anti-trans” bigot, is enough of a threat. Rowling is nothing of the kind, of course. To begin with, on almost every other issue, she is a leftist in good standing. But on this issue, she refuses to budge from the science, compassion, and her feminist beliefs.
And she’s right…
Of course, she’s right…
A man can’t become a woman just by saying so anymore than a man can become Napoleon or a clock radio just by saying so. The whole idea is not only ludicrous, anti-science, and absurd — it’s medically and psychologically dangerous for those suffering with gender dysphoria, which is one of the primary themes Rowling hit on in an essay she published Wednesday.
In the lengthy essay, Rowling revisits the history of how this controversy started. Basically, last year, she defended a woman who was fired from her job for believing biological men will always be biological men. The controversy reignited this week when Rowling tweeted out her belief that — in so many words — that sex is sex, and when you allow men to declare themselves women, that undermines the rights of women. Rowling didn’t specifically mention this, but biological men identifying as women winning sporting events is an excellent example. Her essay goes on:
I’m concerned about the huge explosion in young women wishing to transition and also about the increasing numbers who seem to be detransitioning (returning to their original sex), because they regret taking steps that have, in some cases, altered their bodies irrevocably, and taken away their fertility. Some say they decided to transition after realising they were same-sex attracted, and that transitioning was partly driven by homophobia, either in society or in their families.
Most people probably aren’t aware – I certainly wasn’t, until I started researching this issue properly – that ten years ago, the majority of people wanting to transition to the opposite sex were male. That ratio has now reversed. The UK has experienced a 4400% increase in girls being referred for transitioning treatment. Autistic girls are hugely overrepresented in their numbers.
…
The more of their accounts of gender dysphoria I’ve read, with their insightful descriptions of anxiety, dissociation, eating disorders, self-harm and self-hatred, the more I’ve wondered whether, if I’d been born 30 years later, I too might have tried to transition. The allure of escaping womanhood would have been huge. I struggled with severe OCD as a teenager. If I’d found community and sympathy online that I couldn’t find in my immediate environment, I believe I could have been persuaded to turn myself into the son my father had openly said he’d have preferred.
When I read about the theory of gender identity, I remember how mentally sexless I felt in youth. I remember Colette’s description of herself as a ‘mental hermaphrodite’ and Simone de Beauvoir’s words: ‘It is perfectly natural for the future woman to feel indignant at the limitations posed upon her by her sex. The real question is not why she should reject them: the problem is rather to understand why she accepts them.’
As you can see, Rowling’s opinions are not only backed by science, they are backed by compassion, and these are opinions that, until a few years ago, were widely recognized as mainstream.
But now Hollywood is going to blacklist her over this. She’s being attacked as a bigot everywhere in the corporate media and now Variety is warning her she has only two choices: face blacklisting with the loss of her Fantastic Beasts franchise or publicly confess 1984-style that everything she believes in and knows to be true is wrong:
Indeed, Rowling’s actions could have severe repercussions for the Wizarding World, especially for the “Fantastic Beasts” franchise.
…
Instead, “Fantastic Beasts” was beleaguered with controversy before the first film in the series, 2016’s “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them,” had even opened in theaters, after news broke of Johnny Depp’s surprise appearance in the movie only months after he’d settled his divorce with Amber Heard amid accusations of domestic violence.
Now, between Rowling’s anti-trans tweets, longstanding concerns about the casting of Depp as the series’ main villain, and unresolved questions about a video of actor Ezra Miller — who plays a critical role in the films — choking a woman in April, the future of “Fantastic Beasts” is as precarious as the Defense Against the Dark Arts teaching position at Hogwarts.
Sure, Rowling’s a billionaire who could live out the rest of her life like pharaoh, but she’s also only 54-years-old; she’s still in her creative prime, and she’s a storyteller to the world. To someone like her, the money will never be enough because what truly drives a Rowling is a muse that wants to share her stories, and by extension, her thoughts and ideas, with the world.
To do that, she needs a corporate outlet — a publisher, a movie studio, a distributor — and if she’s blacklisted, she knows that means losing what’s most important to her; not to mention becoming a pariah and forever after being referred to as a bigot.
If she holds firm, and I hope she does, she will not only be blacklisted, she will be hounded from here on. Her publisher will be hounded (see: Allen, Woody). Anyone who does business with her will be hounded to renounce her, as Daniel Radcliffe and Eddie Redmayne have already done.
This kind of corporate pressure is exactly how blacklisting worked in the 1950s, and it is how blacklisting works today.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC. Follow his Facebook Page here.