westlondonmist Posted April 16 Share Posted April 16 Sorry, I'm confused, Warhammer players actually know what a woman is? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members ReturnOfTheMack Posted April 16 Paid Members Share Posted April 16 1 hour ago, westlondonmist said: Sorry, I'm confused, Warhammer players actually know what a woman is? My wife attempted to go into a Warhammer store when she was about 19. She knew she was a geek and wondered if maybe that would be something she would be in to, she was basically driven out by the only other girl in the store. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members BomberPat Posted April 16 Paid Members Share Posted April 16 1 hour ago, Tamura said: Was Tomb Raider "woke" in 1996 for having Lara Croft as the protagonist rather than some Indiana Jones-ish male character? This is an interesting one, because I've seen a few things pop up recently about Tomb Raider, with the developers giving really reasoned explanations about why they made the main character a woman, and how important that was to them. Back in the '90s, I distinctly remember one of them saying to Official Playstation Magazine that they did it because they "didn't fancy looking at a bloke's arse for the whole game". It reminds of a time during the Gamergate shitstorm, when someone on the shit side of things tried to argue that actually there's loads of feminist games, but their definition of "feminist" boiled down to "has a woman in it", so half of their list was stuff like Dead or Alive that's entirely built on over-sexualising every single female character for the male gaze. As much as a lot of this stuff is built on simple old-fashioned misogyny, the complete lack of media literacy among a sizable percentage of the population has to shoulder some of the blame too. You're absolutely right that it's about capitalism. Corporations don't give a toss about inclusivity and equality, they want to capture the widest possible market - they're not tailoring products to women because they're "woke", they're doing it because they want more people to buy what they have to sell. They're not putting mixed race couples and queer representation in adverts out of some grand conspiracy to minimise white men in media, they're doing it because it increases the chances of a wider audience finding it relatable, and then buying whatever they have to sell. And at the end of it all, they've realised that there's more money to be made in catering to surface-level messages of inclusion and equality than to the opposite - and while it's important to recognise that they're doing so for shallow capitalist reasons, it's equally important to recognise that it's a good thing because they recognise that the majority of people fall on that side of the line, not on the angry bigot side. I saw a Facebook post yesterday making fun of the "go woke, go broke" meme, and asking for one example. The comments were flooded with people saying some variation on "Disney, Bud-Lite and the NFL". Aside from the America-centrism of it, it's just bollocks, isn't it? Disney, Budweiser and the NFL went broke, did they? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Chris B Posted April 16 Paid Members Share Posted April 16 Worth noting that Rowling has threatened a lawsuit against a (Jewish) writer who accused her of holocaust denial after she claimed trans people weren't targeted - so the writer issued a denial. As a result of what's been perceived as a SLAPP, a lot of people are angry, and the accusations have been all over twitter since yesterday. Very much a case of the Streisand Effect in action. But it could also turn it into a much bigger story, not least since there's precedent for exactly this being classed as denial in Germany. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Devon Malcolm Posted April 16 Paid Members Share Posted April 16 There's plenty of evidence that Rowling is an anti-semite from her books (I believe) and now this. She should be thankful that she's the world's most famous terf as it's covered up her other prejudices. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
westlondonmist Posted April 16 Share Posted April 16 3 minutes ago, Devon Malcolm said: There's plenty of evidence that Rowling is an anti-semite from her books (I believe) and now this. She should be thankful that she's the world's most famous terf as it's covered up her other prejudices. I've never read or seen a film based on any of her books, any elaboration on this? Does she have tight fisted characters with big noses and stuff? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Devon Malcolm Posted April 16 Paid Members Share Posted April 16 3 minutes ago, westlondonmist said: I've never read or seen a film based on any of her books, any elaboration on this? Does she have tight fisted characters with big noses and stuff? Something to do with the goblins in her books resembling offensive Jewish caricatures. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members BomberPat Posted April 16 Paid Members Share Posted April 16 1 minute ago, westlondonmist said: I've never read or seen a film based on any of her books, any elaboration on this? Does she have tight fisted characters with big noses and stuff? from what I can gather, the depiction is worse in the films than in her books, but her world's banking system is run exclusively by hook-nosed money-grubbing goblins. As with a lot of Rowling's work, I think it's laziness above all else. The Harry Potter books are a hodgepodge of ideas pilfered from other fantasy stories and folklore, and she's simply not a good enough or introspective enough writer to look at the tropes she's playing with and consider where they might have come from or what they might mean, or what she as a writer could do to subvert them. So because there's a long history of goblins and fantasy creatures modelled on antisemitic stereotypes, she just continues to play around with the same imagery and concepts, probably without ever once thinking about them as antisemitic - contrast that to a writer like Terry Pratchett, who specifically used the supposed limitations of fantasy tropes, creatures and races (e.g. with Dwarves and gender, Golems and self-identity and free will). And then by the time there were people publicly calling her out on this shit, she was in too deep in her TERF rabbit hole to ever admit fault, and has likely been surrounded by yes men and sycophants for so long that she hasn't had to accept criticism in twenty years. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Chris B Posted April 16 Paid Members Share Posted April 16 At least she only did that kind of lazy trope for fantasy characters and not human characters of other ethnicities like Cho Chang, Kingsley Shacklebolt or Anthony Goldstein. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SuperBacon Posted April 16 Share Posted April 16 A reminder of the most unintentionally funny thing she's ever said. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vamp Posted April 16 Share Posted April 16 Normally I'm of the opinion that you should cast whoever the best person is for the role, but I'm less sure about James Bond. I think there's absolutely room in the market for action movie franchises with a black lead. But I'd be worried that narrow minded studios would think Bond has already ticked that box if Bond were to do it and I think you could do something far more interesting than "Bond is black now." It feels like whitewashing. If the movies are going to continue to be navel gazing, than it'd be more enjoyable if they leant into the ridiculousness of the white British super spy that critics identified and understood back in the 60s. That joke was in the films from the start. If you're a book fan, part of the joy (at least now) is that they're partly a result of a paranoia about a decline in upper-class British white heteronormative men and their power. That's even funnier now. And perhaps, most importantly, I find the more recent Bond movies more politically troubling than the older ones. The older ones, maybe excluding oddities like License to Kill, were aware that they were a joke. The newer ones are heritage movies and have all the baggage that comes with that. They genuinely feel mournful of the idea that Bond is ridiculous rather than understanding that Bond has always been ridiculous. There's a weird sort of nostalgia about Britishness and white masculinity (I'd argue the two concepts are very intertwined in the Bond movies and books) which makes me uncomfortable with the idea of them now producing Bond movies with a black actor as Bond. They'd either do nothing with it, which feels ignorant, or handle it badly.  Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Devon Malcolm Posted April 16 Paid Members Share Posted April 16 'JK Rowling is a Holocaust' has been trending for about 2 days now. She's out-Streisaned Streisand. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators Chest Rockwell Posted April 16 Moderators Share Posted April 16 I'm struggling to find any decent sources of news on all the jk rowling stuff that are genuinely informative on her position and what others have said etc. I'm somewhat motivated, but can't say from what I've read whether I really agree wholeheartedly with all the accusations against her (I don't agree with her position but am unclear on the presence of malicious intent). So at this point I find myself in a position where I couldn't blame anyone for just continuing to consume her product and line her pockets. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SuperBacon Posted April 16 Share Posted April 16 2 minutes ago, Chest Rockwell said: (I don't agree with her position but am unclear on the presence of malicious intent). I know you don't "do Twitter" but interested to see whether you have looked at her Twitter account and still don't see the presence of malicious intent. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr_Danger Posted April 16 Share Posted April 16 10 minutes ago, Chest Rockwell said: I'm struggling to find any decent sources of news on all the jk rowling stuff that are genuinely informative on her position and what others have said etc. I'm somewhat motivated, but can't say from what I've read whether I really agree wholeheartedly with all the accusations against her (I don't agree with her position but am unclear on the presence of malicious intent). So at this point I find myself in a position where I couldn't blame anyone for just continuing to consume her product and line her pockets. I know what you’re saying and for a long time I was uncomfortable with so many blokes telling a woman how to feel on this subject but it’s become pretty clear she’s fully in on the culture war now and has gone the way of Glinner. She is completely unwilling to take any of this as a learning experience and is just burrowing in on her ideals that seem to get a bit more controversial with each tweet.  Im still on the side of letting people consume what they want and letting them live by their own decisions but I do think she’s left the grey area now on her way to professional provocateur. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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