yeah the last line of the last book (before the epilogue) is harry thinking “gee, i sure hope my slave brings me a sandwich,” as he lounges in bed. i didn’t talk about the house elf stuff because my focus was on the goblins but it’s just as, if not more, rancid and evil. many such bits in the books, rita skeeter was really the first sign of jkr’s transphobia

This has been debunked time and time again. If you don’t believe me, maybe you’ll believe the actual CAMPAIGN AGAINST ANTISEMITISM. She’s so against antisemitism that the fucking Campaign Against Antisemitism says “So it is with JK Rowling, who has proven herself over recent years to be a tireless defender of the Jewish community in its fight against antisemitism, for which we are immensely grateful”.

Yeah, I don’t think an organization that carries water for the Zionist regime in Israel actually cares about the safety of Jews at all. Israel has been proven to stoke antisemitism abroad and make the situation for Jews outside of Israel worse in order to entice them to emmigrate to Israel. Any organization that doesn’t acknowledge and challenge the racist framing of Jews with the Israeli state is itself incredibly antisemitic, and demonstrates that they don’t really care about the welfare of Jews. I think it’s safe to say that a far right organization would be willing to hold water for other far right figures, and that real Jews like my partner are correct when they say that Joanne’s depicted stereotypes of goblins as essentially Jewish bankers is incredibly hurtful and encourages real life harm against Jews.

One of the most horrifying details in the game too, of which the director for it for most of it’s development was a far right media personality, is that the “goblins” use an “annoying horn” for a status effect that’s directly modeled off of the Shofar. The Jewish Shofar is a very holy and important cultural artifact for Jews which is directly paralleled in the game as an “annoying horn”.

It’s quite racist (and antisemetic) to think that just because things look similar that they were intended to be the same thing. They’re not.

“Oh, you think that this fantasy race that has many of the anti-semitic tropes of Jewish people might in fact be a reference to Jewish people? Well, you’re the one who associates those features with Jewish people, not me. Just saying.”

This is where the moronic “maybe the curtains are just blue” reddit-tier analysis of literature gets you - completely unable to see any kind of allegory or metaphor, especially when bigots say that, no, that person in that book totally isn’t a racist caricature, it’s just a person with those traits!

If I wrote a book about a fantasy world where I used lots of sexist stereotypes about women - that they’re less intelligent; that they’re inherently subservient to men; that they “belong in the kitchen”; that they should be “barefoot and pregnant”; etc, and without ever even making a critical judgement of those traits or showed that the men in that society are bad for maintaining this status quo, then I would rightfully be called a raging sexist by people. They would probably believe I was one of those tradcath, alt-right MGTOW incel people. If I turned around and said “Uh, it says a lot about liberals that they think these traits are stereotypically true of women! Maybe they’re the real sexists, not conservatives?” then you would, hopefully (though I’m not so sure given your lack of sensitivity towards Jewish people) call me a total fucking dipshit.

i don’t know why i’m responding to this, but whatever. doing this all in one post, but i’m responding to both of yours, which is why this is so long. it’s also long because i’m actually responding to the things you say, which isn’t something you seem to know how to do

first things first, that substack you linked. many things wrong there. immediately, you’re invoking ‘i know a jewish person who says it’s fine.’ ok, on my end i know jewish people who think it is extremely not fine. in fact they were the ones who explained to me why the goblins in harry potter are problematic. second, having read the article it just blatantly lies in its base premise.

Goblins, the fantasy creature that has existed in various incarnations for centuries, may have initially been based on antisemitic stereotypes - short, big noses, greedy money-hoarders. Therefore, fantasy that depicts goblins (even if in a complex or sympathetic way that subverts some of the tropes) is automatically inherently antisemitic because goblins are representing Jews, and doing it in the most harmful stereotypical way possible. (note that I have yet to personally see this standard applied to a fantasy series other than HP)

this just isn’t a claim anyone is making. the claims about harry potter are much more specific about that. there are antisemitic tropes in the water surrounding goblins, but jkr ramped that up dramatically. this author just breezes past the fact that the goblins are bankers which is a whole lot more specific than a generic greed! people don’t say that shit about tolkien (as much, because people do rightly point out problematic elements in tolkien’s goblins quite a bit if you don’t ignore that to try and lie about how people are being mean to a bigoted billionaire) because tolkien goblins don’t run the banks!!! this shit is so blatant it’s unsurprising anyone trying to carry water for rowling has to just ignore it

she also claims that there’s no actual child kidnapping in the game, and that if there was it would be fine because other fantasy stories contain bits where people kidnap children to use their blood. i’m pretty sure the first point is untrue, because i can find many references to the goblins wanting to use the main character (who is 15 years old, so firmly a child)'s blood for a ritual, but i haven’t played the game and am not going to so i suppose it’s possible everyone referencing this just made it up in some kind of mass hysteria for some reason. but crucially that second bit is such bullshit it doesn’t matter. the problem is taking all these things together! when you have someone stealing a child’s blood for a magic ritual that is not problematic or blood libel on its own, but it becomes so once you have it done by members of the greedy hook nosed race that run the banks and don’t think it’s possible to own property and prefer to eat raw bloody meat and stab the heroes in the back and have stars of david on the floors of their banks. that shit is antisemitic, a lot more so than the culture broadly already is.

similarly it isn’t a pogrom when violence against goblins happens in other fantasy media because those goblins don’t run the banks and aren’t nearly as coded!!! what are you even fucking talking about!!! anyways as you can see i read her whole piece and it was all wrong and poorly argued. next!

sorry this is so long it had to be split up anyways, despite my efforts. you’re just too wrong to fit into the character limit!

Maybe spend your energy on something else, you’re giving her more mindspace than she is doing actual harm to the community.

Are you trans? If not then maybe shut the fuck up and listen when other trans people tell you what’s harming them and what’s not? Why do you think you even get a say in the matter?

And she’s probably making very very little off of HL as a whole.

She’s literally a billionaire what the fuck are you talking about.

You still haven’t addressed the fact that the game sends money to a rabid TERF of a billionaire who directly lobbies to harm trans people to the British government.

“It’s called the Campaign Against Antisemitism, surely it’s an authority on antisemitism. I also go to the National Endowment for Democracy for my democracy news and the Foundation for Economic Education for etc.”

oh one jewish person said it so everythings alrighty! Great! Ignore the far larger contingent of jewish people on this platform and in the wild world who thinks its FUCKING ANTI-SEMITISM

wait did you just cite a zionist org?

And getting offended by it really isn’t helping your case here.

Yes, rush to the defence of misgendering, that’ll show us uppity transgenders. /s