Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
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User ID: 297
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
2d ago
Most of the Jewish population of Israel would find its bearings in the West very quickly
Maybe, but why should they accept being turned out of their country to become refugees somewhere else? In what world would a people who won every war waged against them surrender to their defeated enemies and abandon what is now their homeland? What other descendants of colonists are ever asked to do this? Even Americans are told we should make reparations to Native Americans, not all pack up and move back to Europe. This just seems like a very non-serious proposal.
And this is just taking your premise at face value, that anti-semitism in the West is basically over and 4 million Jews would quickly be assimilated and their new hosts would be happy to have them. I'm sure our Joo-posters here would have some things to say about that.
In more realistic and less edgy terms, I think that radically redrawing the borders of Israel and Palestine for a two-state solution that hurts both of them, perhaps surrendering half of Jerusalem and everything to the south of a line linking Gaza to it to a Palestinian state in return for everything north of it, performing full population transfer and deploying international troops enforcing the border (and possibly also a temporary "colonial regime" to "dehamasify" the Palestinian state, run not by the Israelis but by some far-removed and suitably ruthless third party like the Chinese, or even the Saudis), would in fact be achievable and likely solve the problem.
Again, this is the sort of solution that works if you are King of the World and can wave a wand and make it happen. It's not something that can happen in the real world where Israelis actually have something to say about this. At some point you need to accept reality on the ground: Israel has enough power that telling them "You've won every war ever fought against you, but you should do the right thing and hand over your power to people who hate you" is just not a serious proposal.
The "easing up" looked like thousands of Palestinians being killed in retaliation for a single-digit number of Israelis killed every few years.
The "disproportionate response" argument has never seemed very relevant to me. There is no Rule of War that you're only "allowed" to kill a similar number of people in response to some of your people being killed. Palestinians only kill fewer Israelis because they have fewer weapons - you can bet if Hamas could level Tel Aviv they would. It's not "deescalation" when they simply don't have the capability to kill as many Israelis as they would like.
Of course thousands of civilian deaths is bad, but if you accept that Israel and Hamas are at war, wars always kill a lot of noncombatants. What is Israel's alternative win condition? Other than your fanciful idea that they should, essentially, surrender?
Yet this is somehow being painted into an emotional picture of the Israelis trying to make peace, as the Palestinians escalate and push for war.
I think this picture is largely accurate. Not universally - certainly some Israelis really don't want peace, and some Palestinians do, but if you look at history, it's mostly been Israelis saying "How can we make a deal?" and Palestinians saying "Fuck you."
It is very hard to avoid the temptation to interpret this reframing as stemming from an underlying feeling that in terms of weregeld an Israeli is worth about a thousand Palestinians.
Palestinians seem to think so, since they typically demand hundreds or even thousands of Palestinian prisoners be released for each Israeli (a price Israel has paid in the past). If that's the price you set, unfortunately you set yourself up for the same equation in war.
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
2d ago
No one says this immediately today. The question is what is the statute of limitations on historical land grievances? We discourage conquest and colonization today, but we cannot roll back or atone for every conquest that ever happened.
(This is why I find the Israelis' argument that Israel was "theirs" 2000 years ago to be completely irrelevant.)
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
1d ago
I don't know why you keep dunking on rationalists when most people here are not rationalists and don't claim to be. But I don't think even rationalists would claim that "the side that suffers more" automatically carries greater moral legitimacy.
We have a few people in a very similar spot here. To them 'jews and Israel > The rest'. But getting to that point would break their own perception of themselves so we get to play this game of words instead.
A strange observation. I can see who you think you're talking about, but I cannot see the actual arguments you are describing. I do find it ironic that you speak of "transparent intentions," given that you speak with shuddering horror of Palestinians crushed beneath rubble and yet, I must admit I find myself having a very hard time believing that you really care overly much about Palestinian lives per se.
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
1d ago
In reality, yes. But the comparison is frequently made (because all "indigenous" folks are the same), to the extent that some leftists on Twitter have said things along the lines of "Actually, Native Americans would totally be justified if they started suicide bombing white people."
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
3d ago
How snail-brained gullible are you exactly?
This was an unnecessarily antagonistic comment in an otherwise fine post.
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
1d ago
I don't know why you reply to my comments when I do. I also don't know why people here rail against their outgroup when most of them are not here. Yet that's been happening forever... A strange observation.
You were clearly directing your comment at other people here. I think you understand the distinction and the point of my observation.
I don't feel the need to earmark a 6 year old with missing legs as anything in particular to feel revolted by the suffering on display. Are things different for you?
No, I'd actually have a different impression of you if I believed you were genuinely distressed by the suffering of 6-year-olds regardless of where in the world they are and who caused it.
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
2d ago
I don't know of anyone claiming Israel is deescalating. Obviously they aren't.
And personally, I'd be fine with the US reducing its support for Israel. But that isn't what you were asking.
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
6d ago
This is very low effort. If you take issue with what someone has said, actually make an argument, or at least a direct statement like "I think that's wrong, do you have any evidence?" Dropping "Really dude?" is like "I can't even." We don't want or need performative outrage one-liners here.
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
6d ago
You should stop acting as if you are a mod for a reddit sub and trying to enforce left wing ideology on everyone
Practice what you preach. You report anyone who expresses a left-wing opinion you disagree with. People making arguments you don't like are not "enforcing ideology," they are making arguments you don't like. Stop publicly attacking people for making arguments you don't like. Attack the arguments, not the person.
It is actually the case that white women are more attractive than black women. Less obese too. So it can't be applied to white women which aren't seen as unattractive.
Opinions about who is more attractive, especially when dropped as flaming bombs on your outgroup for CW purposes, are not objective statements of fact but statements about preferences (in this case, yours). "Black women tend to be rated as less attractive than others." while somewhat weak and vague, is fine as an assertion - "It is actually the case that" is not.
You've been told repeatedly to dial down your personal antagonism, and you seem unable to engage with anyone who holds an opinion that outrages you (which seems to be essentially any opinion you don't agree with) without turning vitriolic.
It's been a few months since your last ban, but I have noticed you ramping up the bad behavior again recently, so take three days to cool off and decide if you can/are willing to engage with other people here like a grown adult.
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
1d ago
Anyways look at the results and ask yourself the question about your rules bringing you to this -- what good did this ban do the forum?
We always ask that question. This is not the first time a well-liked and generally positive contributor has been (temporarily) banned. This is also not the first time that @JTarrou, specifically, has been banned. At one point he even wrote a long post about how he expected to get permabanned, no hard feelings, because he just couldn't comply with the rules about not shitting on his outgroup.
I realize there is a substantial contingent here who would like people to be allowed to post freely about how women are hypergamous bots, blacks are low IQ crime-monsters, Jews are invidious parasites, libtards should all be given helicopter rides, etc. etc. If that is the forum you would like, advocate for that but be clear about it. Maybe if that's what everyone wants, we will change our moderation and let the shit fly. But until now, the consensus has been that that is not what (most) people want, and hence that's why we mod people who cannot keep their seething hatred in check when posting. It's not like you aren't allowed to talk about women, blacks, Jews, liberals, etc., in a negative fashion. @JTarrou wasn't confused or caught unawares at crossing some invisible line he didn't understand. He knew what he was doing because he's done it (and been warned about it) before. So have 90% of our regulars who get rapped for breaking the rules, no matter how much they complain about it.
That said, sometimes there are phases where the mods all happen to be moderating more strictly or less strictly for a while. It's usually not an intentional or coordinated thing (we have not had a "reign of terror" recently, and no plans to do so). Remember those? When the forum would get so heated and antagonistic that we had to start issuing bans even for small infractions to get people to chill out? Some people thought that was necessary and some people hated it. Usually the people who hated it were the ones who wanted to shit on others. If you think we've been stricter lately, maybe it's because people have been shittier lately.
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
5d ago
That's enough.
You've filled the mod queue with these low-effort comments. Many people are reporting you with some variation of "Does he need help?"
You either do indeed need help or else you're trolling. If this is a bid for sympathy, you are in the wrong place. If you just came here to spew nihilistic doomerism, you are also in the wrong place.
You've earned multiple warnings and your posting has not improved. I'm banning you for a week and next time will move straight to a permaban if you repeat the pattern.
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
1d ago
I don't think our moderation has changed, I know our rules haven't, and clearly it is not just Nazis who are able to write effortful posts without catching bans.
We've been hearing "You guys are ruining this place with your nannying speech patterns" since before we left reddit.
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
1d ago
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
10d ago
You're not saying anything that hasn't been said for years - since before we left reddit.
The median poster here is not a MAGA Trump supporter, but a disaffected former liberal. Actual MAGAs, or even old-school Republicans/conservatives, are almost certainly a minority, albeit a vocal one. We have some (former) alt-righties and DRs and a few actual fascists, and a few lefties. But most are still somewhere in the center and only appear "right wing" simply because, as others have pointed out, we don't ban people for supporting Trump or preaching white supremacy or complaining about Jews or saying trans women are men, and thus we tend to attract people who really want to talk about those things.
Honestly, what would you like? More left-leaning opinions? Bring in some more (higher quality, non-trollish) left-leaning posters. Maybe you are right and we're doomed to eventually become a Nazi bar. But you aren't helping when most of your contributions read like shitposts too.
By the way, there is quite a dedicated core of left-wing posters who consistently downvote and report every right-wing post, and vice versa. Despite people claiming they don't want an echo chamber, empirically quite a few people do want an echo chamber. So we're always fighting against that too.
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
4d ago
You've already gotten a response from two mods, but let me add mine:
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We don't claim to be "neutral." We claim to (attempt to) be fair. Not the same thing.
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You are bitching about a post not being modded when in fact it was modded. As we have told people many times (and you're not new here), we sometimes don't get to posts right away. Sometimes we want to see what another mod thinks, sometimes we don't want to deal with a borderline low-effort shitty post because we're not feeling in the mood to deal with annoying anklebiters and we're hoping some other mod will shin up. Sometimes we're all busy and no one has gone through the queue in a day or two. If a post is less than 24 hours old and hasn't been modded yet, it's premature to start hollering about how the mods are totally biased.
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
2d ago
This is a boo-outgroup generalization that needs a lot more behind it than you dropping it as a sneer.
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
10d ago
If you don't like the commentary, yes, go do something else. And I did not read the OP as suggesting or advocating for assassination, which makes your pot-shot seem disingenuous and contrived.
Your constant low-effort sneers and pointless posts (and self-admitted drunkposting) are becoming very annoying, and if you don't stop, you're going to get banned.
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
3d ago
This is all dependent on the Venn Diagram that constitutes "White People" being what you say it is, and not what other people (including Jews) say it is.
You want White People to identify as a single group - Anglo-Saxons, Scandinavians, Iberians, Gauls, Germanics, Caucasuses, etc. However, Jews who might occupy or overlap with any of those circles should definitely not be considered part of them. So yes, it's not surprising that when you say "Jews can identify as Jews, and Germans can identify as Germans but also as White, but Jews definitely should not identify as either German or White (because they are the enemy and we hate them)," Jews treat your ideologically-crafted category as a weapon to be used against them, because that's exactly what it is.
"Why, oh why, do the Jews so strongly resist us trying to form an identity movement specifically dedicated to making war against The Jew?" asks the identify movement specifically dedicated to making war against The Jew.
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
9d ago
afaik, the only effect of getting consistently downvoted here is that the poster will keep winding up in the new user filter, which means we mods have to manually approve their posts. This happened to @guesswho, despite his having been a regular poster for months, and now it's happening to @AhhhTheFrench.
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
9d ago
Much as I hate to affirm French's passive-aggressive non-report report, he's right that throwing ad hominems is not allowed, and you've been warned enough that you know this. The only reason you're not getting a ban for this namecalling, given your track record, is that I don't want to reward either of you for flinging shit.
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
4d ago
You are still in the new user filter, which means your posts have to be manually approved by a mod. After you've been posting for a while, this will stop happening.
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
1mo ago
You know man, you get reported a lot and even the other mods have a hard time with you because a lot of people think you are and always have been a bad faith borderline troll who just says things to get under people's skin, without regard to truth or accuracy. And I have always leaned towards leniency, maybe because I'm a quokka and too willing to assume people actually believe the things they are saying and are sincere in their argumentation, even if they're really annoying. But I have frequently argued against banning you because it's too easy to find things you say that are moddable when most of the forum is trying to get you banned.
I guess this is the point where I say "Goddamn, I get it now," because frankly, you are either being astoundingly clueless or just flat out disingenuous.
(Let me also be clear, this response is with my mod hat off, and I am not threatening you with mod action for the above post, because I found it merely aggravating, but not in violation of any rules.)
You have actually spouted a ton of bullshit about something I know a lot about (for my sins), so let's go through this.
Well, someone has to, if this forum is going to be anything other than a complete echo chamber.
Also 'reflexively' and 'intentionally, as an intellectual exercise' are different things.
Just for starters, and not strictly on topic, we get accused of being an echo chamber so often it's tiresome. You are right that you're an outlier here, as an unabashed leftist. You are definitely not some unique snowflake with views unrepresented by anyone else. And "intentionally taking a contrarian position" is pretty close to trolling. I mean, if you really believe the things you are saying, fine, argue them, but if you're just doing it as an "intellectual exercise" (or to "own the righties") you should know that most people do not like feeling like they are being treated as NPCs in your roleplaying game, and this is perhaps a reason why you generate so much resentment and hostility.
First of all, there's a reason I said 'People like Rowling' and 'they' in that sentence. The whole post, if you read the rest of the post and not just that sentence, is about different factions on the conservative side of this issue, and the differences and disagreements between them.
Okay, that's a hell of a waffle. If you say "People like Rowling want to eradicate trans people" and I rebut that by pointing out that Rowling emphatically does not want to eradicate trans people, it is not a credible defense that "You meant people like Rowling." I mean, I could say "People like guesswho want to literally guillotine landlords, redistribute the property of all rich people, and disenfranchise whites." (Because some of your fellow travelers certainly do.) If you objected, reasonably, that you want no such thing and have never endorsed that, I don't think you would be satisfied if I said "Well, there's a reason I said 'people like you.'" You'd find it disingenuous and evasive. We are talking about JK Rowling, not everyone who has ever expressed an anti-trans sentiment.
While it's mildly true that Rowling plays a careful balancing act with her public image by not being too extreme in her own personal rhetoric,
It is not "mildly true," it is absolutely true. Her personal rhetoric is not "extreme" by any reasonable definition. Again I will ask you to cite an example if you think otherwise.
she is very much a part of a faction that does use rhetoric of that level of extremity (including onstage at national political conventions),
What do you mean "part of a faction"? If you mean "Everyone who is gender-critical/trans-skeptical," well, that's a hell of an umbrella and she would reasonably reject it, as would I. I have in fact seen absurd allegations online that she literally donated to the Texas GOP (!!) just because they are anti-trans, an accusation that makes no sense on multiple levels. If you're trying to lump JK Rowling with the Texas GOP just because they are both critical of trans activists, your idea of what constitutes a "faction" is just frankly ridiculous. I believe IQ is a real measurable thing and there are racial differences in IQ; by this standard, I guess you would put me in the same "faction" as white nationalists and holocaust deniers, because they also believe that.
and she very much supports and promotes (through valuable social media links and personal defenses and endorsements on her hugely popular accounts, through partnerships and collaborations, and by selectively endorsing and promoting the rhetoric of) people who famously do express those extreme views.
Show me. Show me her endorsing someone who literally wants to "eradicate trans people." The most extreme example I can think of coming anywhere close to this is Maya Forstater, a gender critical feminist whom Rowling has famously supported. Forstater's public statements are mostly pretty mild (you could more legitimately accuse her of carefully curating her public statements than Rowling) while she has occasionally, in public and private, gone full mask-off with rather derogatory language about trans people. But even Forstater has never, to my knowledge, said anything remotely close to advocating violence or eradication of trans people. It's probably fair to say she thinks they are all perverted AGP men. Maybe Rowling actually believes that herself in private too. She famously got in a spat with Ben Shapiro because Shapiro endorsed her trans-critical views and Rowling was quick to point out that mildly agreeing about one thing does not make them allies.
I don't think you can actually show Rowling endorsing the views you claim she does. Even with this wide net you are casting where anything she has ever touched, by transitive property, is endorsing any statement by anyone else who is touched by it.
But this many years later, that's not a tenable position. She's not that dumb, at this point she understand who her bedfellows are and what their political program is about, and wholeheartedly assists them at every turn. At this point, the fact that she maintains a veneer of respectability in her own public statements is more cowardice and manipulation and intentional pipeline-creation than it is a sign of a mild position.
Again: show me. No, one person on the Internet who says something nasty about trans people who is also a Harry Potter fan does not by transitive property mean Rowling is endorsing anything they say. This is the kind of nutpicking that LibsOfTikTOk does. LoTT regularly finds some trans person being accused of rape or child abuse and blasts it to the Internet, the implication clearly being that this is typical trans behavior. I'm pretty sure you don't appreciate LoTT's tactics and would consider it offensive and disingenuous for them to say "But these are their bedfellows, this is the faction they are part of." So no, you don't get to do this either.
And, like, come on, you're obviously underselling what she says herself and what the implications of that are.
This is not obvious to me, as I think I am very accurately describing what she says herself, and the "implications" seem to be irrational projections you have made up.
She wrote a whole book about a serial killer pretending to be trans to prey on women in women's spaces.
You are referring to Troubled Blood and you are taking her most hysterical critics' claims about the book at face value, most of whom never read it and just repeated what other people said in a game of Chinese whispers, until it became "a book about a serial killer pretending to be trans." That's not a remotely accurate description. I can post a whole damn book review if you want, but a serial killer who in one scene disguises himself as a woman is not something any reasonable person would read as some sort of metaphor for trans people. The killer never "pretends to be trans" (I don't think trans people are ever even mentioned in the book, but I can't remember for certain) he does not "try to get into women's spaces," and the cross-dressing scene is a single incident that's there as a red herring.
My point here is that you haven't read Troubled Blood, and you're just repeating the bad faith accusations of Rowling's haters who also haven't read it, and this is how you arrive at nonsense claims about Rowling being a literal fascist who wants to genocide trans people and Jews. (I mean, you didn't say that. But people "like" you have! You know, people in your faction.)
She says that she is glad trans didn't exist when she was growing up because she might have been socially infected with it and it would have ruined her life. Etc.
This is possibly true, and while you may find it offensive, the belief that trans social contagion is a real phenomenon and that many troubled girls today are embracing trans identity as a way of escaping what they perceive to be an unpleasant existence as a female, and that other kids adopt it because it's "cool" and trendy and rebellious, is one I share. So does that mean I also want to eradicate trans people?
These types of things are the blood libel of the trans debate; they are all part of building a worldview in which trans women are just perverted men intentionally trying to prey on women and destroy them, and where trans identity is merely an infectious meme that needs to be stamped out before it takes more lives.
"Blood libel" would be something that's wholly untrue (like "Jews drink the blood of Christian children").
My personal belief is that the "blood libel," as you put it, does accurately describe a significant number of trans women today, especially the ones who are going out of their way to be public activists. I also believe many trans women are sincere in their gender dysphoria, and even if not, they are sincere in wanting to live as women and be left alone, and they should be allowed to. I can't speak for JK Rowling but I am pretty sure that's reasonably close to her position. This is a far cry from spreading "blood libel" because you believe trans people should be "stamped out."
The fact that, after establishing that worldview and narrative, you don't vocally take the next step of saying 'and therefore we need to eradicate transgender people from the culture as a whole' is sort of irrelevant. You've spent decades carefully constructive a narrative in which that is the obvious and inescapable conclusion, if you convince people of your narrative then they will come to that conclusion without you needing to say it, that was the whole point of the narrative.
Nothing I or JK Rowling have said (that trans women are not the same as women, that they shouldn't be in women's prisons, that social contagion is real, that children probably shouldn't be put on puberty blockers and SRS) leads to the "obvious and inescapable" conclusion that we need to eradicate transgender people.
Anyway, if you want me to go find you links on all the Breadtube Rowling videos so you can comb through them for receipts, I guess I can.
Yes, I do want you to do that. But before you go to the trouble, let me be clear that the "receipts" I want are JK Rowling actually saying or endorsing any of the things you've claimed. Not shaun or contrapoints (whom I've watched) constructing a fallacious argument like you have that her statements "imply" or "inevitably lead" to this, not guilt-by-association where someone whose tweet she once Liked might have said something extreme. You seem to think I am unfamiliar with the charges against her and why trans activists claim these things about her. I am not.
Honestly I bet if you google 'JK Rowling anti-trans statements' you will find a comprehensive list pretty quickly, if you actually want to know it doesn't take me to do the googling for you.
Sure, let's play!
Top result: A Complete Breakdown of the J.K. Rowling Transgender-Comments Controversy.
Reading through that post, I see a rehash of all the statements I am already familiar with (from her snarky "people who menstruate" tweet to her long "TERF Wars" blog post in 2020). And this example of her "hatred of trans people":
The idea that women like me, who’ve been empathetic to trans people for decades, feeling kinship because they’re vulnerable in the same way as women—i.e., to male violence—‘hate’ trans people because they think sex is real and has lived consequences—is a nonsense.”
She continued, “I respect every trans person’s right to live any way that feels authentic and comfortable to them. I’d march with you if you were discriminated against on the basis of being trans. At the same time, my life has been shaped by being female. I do not believe it’s hateful to say so.”
Most of the other links are similar collections of snarky tweets and her trying to defend her views while emphasizing the same things I have said above.
GLAAD's summary is predictably uncharitable, if not outright dishonest. They repeat your bad faith summary of her books, and say things like:
07.05.2020—Tweeted false information equating trans-related medical care with mental health care, writing: “Many health professionals are concerned that young people struggling with their mental health are being shunted towards hormones and surgery when this may not be in their best interests.” In the same thread, falsely equated transitioning with a “new form of conversion therapy for young gay people” and suggested that gender transition is “driven by homophobia.”
So "Many health professionals are concerned that young people struggling with their mental health are being shunted towards hormones and surgery when this may not be in their best interests" is false information? Or just something you and GLAAD disagree with? Likewise, you may disagree with her about trans social contagion and homophobia, but that does not substantiate the extremism you claim is so obvious and well-documented. GLAAD's page is full of "Falsely claimed" accusations, followed by a tweet by Rowling simply asserting something they disagree with (but nothing that resembles "blood libel").
The Cut's Here's what J.K. Rowling has Actually Said About Trans People is mostly just repeating everything GLAAD said, and statements like:
No, she simply doesn’t seem to believe that trans women really are women — an attitude that denies the validity of their existence.
I mean, that's just describing how their viewpoints differ. Where is the extreme rhetoric, the "inevitable conclusion" that trans people must be eradicated?
I scrolled through a lot more results, and got the same thing. Nowhere did I find any quote of Rowling actually saying anything more extreme than what I've mentioned, implying it, or endorsing it.
So, got anything else? Bring it.
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
1mo ago
Sometimes I think you just read posts, decide who's expressing the "conservative" (bad) position, and reflexively argue the opposite.
Whereas people like Rowling aren't fully committed to that broader conservative project, they just want to slander and eradicate trans people
All right, you have hit one of my pet peeves, because I hear this shit all the time from my nice progressive friends. It's just repeated ad infinitum, as an article of faith, as a proven, established fac, that JK Rowling "hates trans people," that she "wants to slander and eradicate them," etc. In unrelated hobby spaces, I've seen it argued unironically, in all seriousness, that she literally advocates "genocide of trans people" (and also that Harry Potter goblins were intended to be metaphors for Jews because she also hates Jews).
I have been a Rowling fan since before she got on Twitter. Yes, I actually like the Harry Potter books (despite being way too old for them). I've read all her Cormoran Strike novels, and even The Casual Vacancy. I follow her on Twitter and I read her blog. So I know whereof I speak, though I won't claim I can remember every single thing she's ever said in public.
I have never seen her say anything that approaches "hate" or "wanting to eradicate" trans people. She has said the opposite many times. She is a standard issue very liberal second wave feminist.
What does she say?
- She does not believe trans women are women.
- Therefore she does not believe trans women should play in women's sports or go to women's prisons.
- She believes trans people should be free to live their lives in peace without harassment.
- Some so-called trans women (like the sexual predators she highlighted) are bad faith opportunists claiming trans status for political purposes or because they would prefer to go to women's prison rather than men's prison.
I think all of these points are reasonable, and even if you disagree with some or all of them, none of them resemble anything like "hate" or wishing for a "trans genocide."
I would love it if you could point to me any public statement of hers, or even a reliable second-hand account of some alleged private statement, in which she's said anything that resembles what you are claiming.
I've been reading a lot about this conflict, and the history of Israel and Palestine. I've read books by Israeli historians and by Palestinian historians and by American historians and journalists. I've followed pro-Israeli channels and pro-Palestinian channels. I've also spoken to no small number of Arabs (since I am studying Arabic).
It's messy and complicated all around. What strikes me in every narrative is that most of them tell a more-or-less accurate version of known historical events, but always leaving out a few bits that make their side look less noble and less like the victim. The Israelis talk endlessly about how five Arab nations declared war on them the day after they declared independence, and they offered full citizenship rights to those Palestinians who stayed instead of fleeing (in the expectation that the Jews would soon be exterminated and they could return home). They don't talk about how there were explicit plans to remove even peaceful Palestinians and some of those expulsions were performed under presumed military necessity and with the full foreknowledge that they were uprooting locals from their land. They don't talk about some of the outright terrorist actions of their predecessors, and some of the atrocities that Israelis committed. (It was war, the Israeli army mostly conducted itself in a modern, disciplined fashion, but there were some civilian massacres, and other war crimes. The Israelis will retort that the Arabs did far more and far worse, which is probably true but doesn't make what they did not happen.)
The Palestinians talk endlessly about the Nakba and how 750,000 Palestinians were forced off their land. They don't talk about the fact that yes, many of them did explicitly leave so the Arab armies could exterminate the Jews, and thus they obtained the fate of a people who lost a war they started.
Dig into that event, and then you have to dig deeper - why did the Jews arrive in the first place, who was behind it, did they acquire land legally or did they forcefully occupy it? (They mostly acquired the land legally by purchase, prior to 1948, but Palestinians will then retort, accurately, that the Jews often bought the land from wealthy absentee Turkish (former Ottoman) landlords and then expelled the villagers who'd been living on that land for generations.) Was the Zionist movement an organic Jewish nationalist movement or was it a "Colonialist-Settler project" by Europeans whose motivation was essentially to get Jews out of Europe? (Answer: a little of all this and more.)
"It's complicated." People who want a clear right-and-wrong narrative hate that phrase, but it is. Move forward into all the many failed peace processes; Israelis claim Palestinians have been handed opportunities for peace over and over and rejected them. Palestinians claim all those peace offers were either made in bad faith or were very bad deals for the Palestinians. Who's right? A little of both. Palestinians have turned down deals that would have been objectively far better for them than what they have now, or have ever had. These agreements have also always been, at best, offers of divided rump territories with very little chance to ever develop into real countries. Many Palestinians feel that the offers themselves are fundamentally illegitimate because Palestine was stolen from them and only full restoration can make things right again. Regardless of whether you think this is a morally correct argument, it unfortunately carries the logical conclusion that there is literally no peace agreement they will accept that allows Israel to continue to exist. No matter how convincingly you argue that your people and your ancestors were screwed over and robbed and are entitled to reparations, if it ends with "... and therefore Israel must cease to exist," it's just a non-starter. But Palestinians (and many of their supporters), either out of stubbornness, or a belief that somehow either Hamas and Iran will actually succeed in destroying Israel, or else Israelis will somehow all be persuaded that they must dissolve the nation-state of Israel, persist.
You basically have three options: one state, two state, no state. The latter ("no state") is basically one side exterminates the other. Israelis are being accused of trying to do this now. I don't really think that's true, but certainly some elements of Israeli society and the government would not mind literally wiping out the Palestinians if they thought they could get away with it. Hamas is pretty explicit about wanting to eradicate Israel. Some of their more savvy apologists will say no, they just don't want Israel to exist "in its current form." Usually, if you pin them down, what they propose is something like the "one state" solution, where "From the river to the sea," the entire country becomes a multi-ethnic non-Jewish state with Jews and Arabs having full equal citizenship rights. Essentially, merge Israel and Palestine into one country. In theory, doesn't sound like a terrible idea (as long as you're not a Jew who is invested in a Jewish nation state), but it just sort of assumes that at that point, all the Palestinian Arabs (who outnumber the Jews considerably), who for generations have been openly calling for the literal extermination of all Israelis and claiming that every last Israeli is living on stolen land that must be given back, will say "Okay, we're cool now, you can live here with us. Let's all build a progressive multicultural society together." Let's just say I cannot blame the Israelis for considering that a non-starter.
That leaves the two state solution, which was fraught and unlikely before October 7 and pretty much impossible now, at least for a generation or two. The various schemes to apportion land to a new Palestinian nation have always struggled with Palestine being divided between Gaza and the West Bank - obviously not much of a country if you're divided between two regions with a historically hostile neighbor controlling all the land and travel between them. Also there's the problem of whether the Palestinian nation gets to have its own military, and build whatever they want in the way of weapons. Israelis have pretty good reasons to say hell no to that, at least until maybe we have a generation or two of peace convincing them that any new Palestinian army will not promptly start lobbing rockets and artillery shells at them. So the Palestinians argue (with some justification) that every offer they've been given has been for a fragment of a country that will still for all practical purposes be a protectorate under the military control of Israel, and the Israelis argue (with some justification) that the Palestinians have to prove they aren't going to keep trying to kill Israelis before they can have more.
Bringing us to today. Most people in the West are more sympathetic to the overall perspective of the Israelis, because we can see that yes, historically the Arabs really have been trying to kill them for decades now, and the Israelis have made at least some attempts to ease up on the Palestinians and let them try to build a society, and every such easing up has resulted in more suicide bombings or October 7. Leftists say, well, the Palestinians are an oppressed people, they are entitled to armed resistance. I always try to get them to say the unspoken part, to reveal their power level (just like I do with our friend @SecureSignals): okay, what is the end goal? Tell me what you really, really want to happen if you "win"? Most leftists won't come out and say "I want Israel to be destroyed." Some of them will give some sort of pie-in-the-sky one state answer, like above. But the reality is that the literal destruction of Israel is the only real "win condition" for them.
For those people like you (@4bpp) who I assume does not actually want the destruction of Israel, what do you see as a solution? Besides just "Stop the bombing now," which I can sympathize with, but let's say Israel stops the war in Gaza today and withdraws, and promptly allows unlimited international support in to rebuild. What happens next? What I think happens next is that Hamas grabs as much of that as they can and plans the next October 7, which will happen sooner rather than later. As much as I would like to see Gazan civilians not being bombed (and I do not care if "80% of them support Hamas," which is a frequent justification for why, essentially, we should not feel bad about them being slaughtered), I can understand why Israelis are not willing to accept a stopping point that just returns to the status quo and another October 7.
The more peaceful leftists will then say "They should cease fire now and then negotiate a real peace that gives Palestinians a real state so there is no need for Hamas etc etc etc." Okay, great idea. Everyone's been trying to do that for decades. See above.
So, simply saying "The Palestinians have a clear moral case," even if you're right, does not solve the current problem. Unless you are willing to bite the bullet and say "Yes, actually, I think Israel needs to cease to exist." Followed by either how you think peaceful coexistence between former Israelis and Palestinians will be accomplished, or your plan for forcibly resettling all the Israelis to another continent. Some would at this point show their power level and say "Yeah, actually, just let them slaughter all the Jews, they have it coming." But that would make the Palestinians' clear moral case a little less clear.
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