Harry Potter defined so much of my young life. I’m confused as to if Rowling has always been this way, or if something changed. I first found out about this kind of behavior around 10 years ago
My experience reading the Sinfest comic taught me that people start out as feminists (believe in the equality of the sexes) then turn to radical feminists (believe that women are superior to men), which causes them to see Trans women as men realizing the truth and trying to stay in the superior sex, and trans men as women being tricked by doctors (terfs).
This leads to both demonization of sex work (swerfs) and distrust in doctors in general (anti-vax), and finally leading to the distrust in all science and fact and full blown narcissim.
You have wildly misunderstood what TERFs are. They’re buddies with anti-abortion activists. Politically they are aligned in interests with misogynists. They believe that gender is innate and unchangeable, which is the same thing that misogynists think. They believe that women are and will always be subjugated by men because men are biologically inclined towards rape and are categorically stronger than every single woman. They dont actually seek to change this in any material way. They just dont want to have to be around people they consider disgusting. They want to be upheld by white men the way they were in the 40s. There’s a reason TERFs skew middle class and white.
Fun fact that during the build up to world war 2 a mass exodus of former suffragettes to the side of fascism took place in Britain. Even though fascists wanted to take their right to vote away again. The fascists upheld white British women as the pinnacle of femininity, and upheld them as an ideal in their state of subjugation. This presented a position of privilege over other women. It afforded them status and protection that being a political radical did not.
Not necessarily directly related to TERFs, just wanted to point out that if incentives exist to become a misogynist then some women will take the incentive.
I think it may have more to do with the current of gender essentialism that runs through many radical-feminist beliefs. Some of them are directly derived from old sexist beliefs: women are pure, women are born into the world to suffer (or to be victims), men are all rapists. But the foundation of gender essentialism is the immutability of gender, and the inevitable association of fixed attributes to each gender. The existence of trans people calls both those into question. For similar reasons, TERFs tend to despise and distrust bisexual people. It’s a brainlessly static view of the actual rich diversity and mutability of human sexuality.
Setting aside the content, the art style on Sinfest changed so much. I read some of the early stuff, and every time I glance at it, it seems like the art style’s significantly different. Not like, say, Peanuts or some other long-running comic strips.
Twokinds is like this. The artist cheated and redid a bunch of his first pages, but even the redone ones are a bit crunchy. The originals are very…early art. The new stuff is insanely detailed. One time he spent 8+ hours drawing a house. The story also evolved a lot too, from his teenage years experiencing racism to his adult life over 20 years or so.
She was already very conservative during her upbringing. Her ‘feminism’ amounted to performative success for affluent women under capitalism. She has never been a progressive. She retconned her characters to minorities while doing literally no work to write the characters as minorities with the experiences of minorities. Feminism to her is an aesthetic.
She did later on, claiming that Hermione “could have been black” and that “she never specified her race”. As though being black was so inconsequential that it would go entirely unmentioned through 7 books (when other black characters absolutely did have their race mentioned).
Yeah, I never understood that one. I am not obscenely wealthy, but I’ve gone the opposite direction. I make combined over 200k between myself and my wife, and im more left leaning than I think I’ve ever been at any point in my life.
I was in the same boat (though I made some changes a few years ago that reduced my income in order to improve my quality of life). There’s a huge gap between a houshold income of $200k/year and the life of billionaires, for whom $200k isn’t even the interest on the interest.
It’s a vibe, not an actual analysis of political economy.
People don’t magically change their worldview because they have more money, but a person’s economic relationship (e.g. owning a business, or being an employee) will guide their class interests - someone like Rowling who primarily makes money from ownership rather than work will materially benefit from conservative economic interests. And since capitalism rewards profit over social contribution, those of the business owners who don’t care about other people enough to sacrifice profitability are (generally) more able to build wealth, so there are more right-wing types in mega-wealthy circles, not simply because they have wealth (this also includes those feigning left-wing ideals, like rainbow capitalism and philanthrocapitalism, to exploit real social movements for reremovedtion and profit).
This Wikipedia page gives a quick rundown of how a person’s politics and their role in the economy intertwine, although it’s probably more useful to learn the concept through pamphlets or books which provide historical evidence, examples and related concepts. My recommendation - Not pointlessly academic or dated, relatively general, has nice and neat chapters for specific questions.
No, people who were already selfish get more conservative the wealthier they get. When they have nothing, they want everyone to share and help each other. As they get more of their own wealth, their true beliefs come out and they expect everyone to get their own.
No, people who were already selfish get more conservative the wealthier they get.
Also, people who started out narcissistic, greedy and/or status-seeking pursue wealth more diligently than those who are decent, well-adjusted human beings. So there’s some self-selection going on. Another way of putting that is that capitalism disporportionately rewards sociopathy. Dark Triad personality traits confer a selective advantage in a capitalist system.
Harry Potter defined so much of my young life. I’m confused as to if Rowling has always been this way, or if something changed. I first found out about this kind of behavior around 10 years ago
My experience reading the Sinfest comic taught me that people start out as feminists (believe in the equality of the sexes) then turn to radical feminists (believe that women are superior to men), which causes them to see Trans women as men realizing the truth and trying to stay in the superior sex, and trans men as women being tricked by doctors (terfs).
This leads to both demonization of sex work (swerfs) and distrust in doctors in general (anti-vax), and finally leading to the distrust in all science and fact and full blown narcissim.
You have wildly misunderstood what TERFs are. They’re buddies with anti-abortion activists. Politically they are aligned in interests with misogynists. They believe that gender is innate and unchangeable, which is the same thing that misogynists think. They believe that women are and will always be subjugated by men because men are biologically inclined towards rape and are categorically stronger than every single woman. They dont actually seek to change this in any material way. They just dont want to have to be around people they consider disgusting. They want to be upheld by white men the way they were in the 40s. There’s a reason TERFs skew middle class and white.
Fun fact that during the build up to world war 2 a mass exodus of former suffragettes to the side of fascism took place in Britain. Even though fascists wanted to take their right to vote away again. The fascists upheld white British women as the pinnacle of femininity, and upheld them as an ideal in their state of subjugation. This presented a position of privilege over other women. It afforded them status and protection that being a political radical did not.
Not necessarily directly related to TERFs, just wanted to point out that if incentives exist to become a misogynist then some women will take the incentive.
I think it may have more to do with the current of gender essentialism that runs through many radical-feminist beliefs. Some of them are directly derived from old sexist beliefs: women are pure, women are born into the world to suffer (or to be victims), men are all rapists. But the foundation of gender essentialism is the immutability of gender, and the inevitable association of fixed attributes to each gender. The existence of trans people calls both those into question. For similar reasons, TERFs tend to despise and distrust bisexual people. It’s a brainlessly static view of the actual rich diversity and mutability of human sexuality.
Setting aside the content, the art style on Sinfest changed so much. I read some of the early stuff, and every time I glance at it, it seems like the art style’s significantly different. Not like, say, Peanuts or some other long-running comic strips.
Here’s a Sinfest comic strip from 2000:
From 2005:
Here’s from 2010:
From 2015:
From 2020:
From 2025:
Twokinds is like this. The artist cheated and redid a bunch of his first pages, but even the redone ones are a bit crunchy. The originals are very…early art. The new stuff is insanely detailed. One time he spent 8+ hours drawing a house. The story also evolved a lot too, from his teenage years experiencing racism to his adult life over 20 years or so.
https://twokinds.keenspot.com/
I have to ask because someone posted actual comics below and the topic seems unrelated:
Is it a change in the comic author or the content of the comics that taught you this?
People tend to get more conservative the wealthier they get.
So money happened to her.
She was already very conservative during her upbringing. Her ‘feminism’ amounted to performative success for affluent women under capitalism. She has never been a progressive. She retconned her characters to minorities while doing literally no work to write the characters as minorities with the experiences of minorities. Feminism to her is an aesthetic.
Wait what? When did she retcon races? I feel like that would have thrown up red flags if I had read the those inconsistencies
She did later on, claiming that Hermione “could have been black” and that “she never specified her race”. As though being black was so inconsequential that it would go entirely unmentioned through 7 books (when other black characters absolutely did have their race mentioned).
Yeah, I never understood that one. I am not obscenely wealthy, but I’ve gone the opposite direction. I make combined over 200k between myself and my wife, and im more left leaning than I think I’ve ever been at any point in my life.
Well, to put it bluntly, 200k is nice, but it’s not the wealth they are taking about.
I was in the same boat (though I made some changes a few years ago that reduced my income in order to improve my quality of life). There’s a huge gap between a houshold income of $200k/year and the life of billionaires, for whom $200k isn’t even the interest on the interest.
It’s a vibe, not an actual analysis of political economy.
People don’t magically change their worldview because they have more money, but a person’s economic relationship (e.g. owning a business, or being an employee) will guide their class interests - someone like Rowling who primarily makes money from ownership rather than work will materially benefit from conservative economic interests. And since capitalism rewards profit over social contribution, those of the business owners who don’t care about other people enough to sacrifice profitability are (generally) more able to build wealth, so there are more right-wing types in mega-wealthy circles, not simply because they have wealth (this also includes those feigning left-wing ideals, like rainbow capitalism and philanthrocapitalism, to exploit real social movements for reremovedtion and profit).
This Wikipedia page gives a quick rundown of how a person’s politics and their role in the economy intertwine, although it’s probably more useful to learn the concept through pamphlets or books which provide historical evidence, examples and related concepts. My recommendation - Not pointlessly academic or dated, relatively general, has nice and neat chapters for specific questions.
No, people who were already selfish get more conservative the wealthier they get. When they have nothing, they want everyone to share and help each other. As they get more of their own wealth, their true beliefs come out and they expect everyone to get their own.
Also, people who started out narcissistic, greedy and/or status-seeking pursue wealth more diligently than those who are decent, well-adjusted human beings. So there’s some self-selection going on. Another way of putting that is that capitalism disporportionately rewards sociopathy. Dark Triad personality traits confer a selective advantage in a capitalist system.
Real Notch hours too