# Does an author purposely trending PC nonsense irritate anyone else?



## dale

It does me. Like JK Rowling just transforming characters with a "gay reveal", even though completely out of character.


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## DarkGhost

So you mean like making someone something just to make certain groups happy?


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## dale

DarkGhost said:


> So you mean like making someone something just to make certain groups happy?



Just to follow fashion, I guess. I kind of find it stupid and damn near offensive when it's done just to simply appease
some trend that's going on, if the story itself doesn't call for it. Like if shit was popular last week, but honey is popular 
this week? But then you think....hold on. maybe I should dip this shit in a jar of honey.


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## luckyscars

dale said:


> It does me. Like JK Rowling just transforming characters with a "gay reveal", even though completely out of character.





dale said:


> Just to follow fashion, I guess. I kind of find it stupid and damn near offensive when it's done just to simply appease
> some trend that's going on, if the story itself doesn't call for it. Like if shit was popular last week, but honey is popular
> this week? But then you think....hold on. maybe I should dip this shit in a jar of honey.



Oh waah.

1. What makes it 'out of character'? Since when is homosexuality a character quirk as opposed to a normal state of being? Why does designating Dumbledore as gay render him 'transformed'?

2. How do you know the author's motivation? Are you professionally qualified as a mind reader or is it more a recreational pastime?

3. Why does it offend you? 

Looks like before today you did not post for well over a year. Can I suggest if you had a whole year to think up this hot take it might not have been the best use of your time? 

The reason it does not irritate most of us is because most of us don't get irritated by things which are voluntary like books, nor do we see the world through the juvenile prism of 'Why does this have to be gay?'


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## dale

lol. It offends me because it's fake as fuck and everyone can plainly see it.


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## luckyscars

dale said:


> lol. It offends me because it's fake as fuck and everyone can plainly see it.



Please explain what 'fake as fuck' means? Wasn't aware there was some standard of authenticity in a piece of fantasy fiction about wizards...

As far as 'everyone can plainly see it'. No, they really can't. That's why most people didn't have a huge problem with it, certainly not the series' core demographic which is children. Harry Potter remains as popular as ever. Notwithstanding Tucker Carlson and the same old gang of neckbeards, misogynists and snowflakes. The same people who whine about having women in fantasy and a black guy in Star Wars. Nobody else cares.


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## dale

lol. I don't even give a damn about the horseshit you're referring to. And yes....a lot of people have dissed Rowling
over that nonsense. But this isn't about her personally. She was just a good example of what I'm talking about. What
I'm talking about is like.....ok. Say the novel I'm working on now. I'm almost halfway through it. But in mid-book, I decide
because of idiotic pop culture to totally make my character do something or become something that totally doesn't fit
with the first half of the book just for the sake of some stupid trend....THAT is what I'm talking about. It would be a total
insult to the reader's intelligence. And if they didn't realize it was fake? They'd be a fucking idiot.


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## luckyscars

dale said:


> lol. I don't even give a damn about the horseshit you're referring to. And yes....a lot of people have dissed Rowling
> over that nonsense. But this isn't about her personally. She was just a good example of what I'm talking about. What
> I'm talking about is like.....ok. Say the novel I'm working on now. I'm almost halfway through it. But in mid-book, I decide
> because of idiotic pop culture to totally make my character do something or become something that totally doesn't fit
> with the first half of the book just for the sake of some stupid trend....THAT is what I'm talking about. It would be a total
> insult to the reader's intelligence. And if they didn't realize it was fake? They'd be a fucking idiot.



If you wrote something for an idiotic reason and the thing you wrote totally didn't fit with anything else you wrote...I guess that would be pretty idiotic, yeah. Not that I could possibly imagine you being capable of doing anything idiotic, of course.

This is super challenging stuff, dale. Keep it coming.


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## Phil Istine

I did get the feeling that she did that to be trendy, but I suppose it's her story so her call.
I won't be losing any sleep over it though (says the guy who's posting at 5.25 am).


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## Sir-KP

Yea, I can see what OP means with this. 

But on the other hand, it's true that JK Rowling's own work and she has the right to do whatever she wants to do with it.

It doesn't matter. If she just want to please certain group, that's her own problem.


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## dale

I know it's her work and really none of my business. lol. But it just irritates me. Mainly thinking of my own work.
Because if I ever did that? The art would be dead. It wouldn't be "mine" anymore. You create a world like clay. You
splatter it on a page. And then it comes alive. And after that? It kind of takes on a life of its own. And all I can really
do is pray to god it ends ok. But if I were to interfere in the process because some outside influence? pfft. To me?
I may as well throw the shit away. I done cheated my characters. Cheated the reader. And cheated myself. It has ceased
to be art and has become a TV commercial. And I just don't wanna be a fucking progressive insurance ad. lol.


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## Annoying kid

What I really dislike about JK Rowling making Dumbledore "gay" is that its not in any of the stories. At all. It's crazy that you dale, get this reactionary and irritated when none of it is in the actual stories, across any medium, only from some magazine article. 

The only reason JK Rowling would say Dumbledore and Gellert Grindelwald, had a relationship with a “sexual dimension.” in a DVD commentary and not a throwaway line in the actual movie, is because she wants a limited amount of people to see it. And the only reason anyone would want that, is because they're ashamed of it.

But then again I never liked her work anyway. But if I did, I would think the author's word means nothing at all when it comes to canon. If it's not written it's not done.  I refuse to dignify the practice of an author replacing characterization with social media posts about their fictional characters. 

The least a writer can do is commit.


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## Dluuni

dale said:


> It does me. Like JK Rowling just transforming characters with a "gay reveal", even though completely out of character.


We are annoyed at JK Rowling at this because she was _too cowardly to put it in the text_. It's not controversial to have a character attracted to the same gender, or transgender, or asexual, or intersex, because those are things ordinary people are. Some of these characters should pop up now and then just because a sample of normal people will include PoC, disabled, LGBTQIA+, etc. people. It's irritating to have a bunch of characters written in ways that give no hints of any of that, then have an easily deniable note somewhere saying "Suchandsuch character is ____" and act like that's diverse.

It is not. If you don't explicitly define a character as diverse, people will read and cast them as WASP and dyallocishet (dyadic, allosexual, cisgender, heterosexual/heteroromantic). That's actually unrealistic.

Also, JK Rowling retweets TERF propaganda, so she's on my bad list in two ways, but that's a separate concern of staying "on message" with ones media presence.


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## ppsage

Okay Dale, so far we have maybe Rowling and a future you who've supposedly done this. Anyone else?


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## dale

ppsage said:


> Okay Dale, so far we have maybe Rowling and a future you who've supposedly done this. Anyone else?



I've seen King and Rice do it, only not to such an extreme extent. And ok..to be honest? Most of the authors I'm referring to
with this? It generally happens when it's a "series". Some people here keep implying that I'm meaning this interpretation as some kind of
slam on homosexuality. That's not even my point. My point is....they create a character who's very personality changes suddenly for really
no reason at all. The character "Lestat" by Anne Rice is another example. The character "Roland" by King is another. But...i can kind of give 
King and Rice a little more of a pass. Because with King? Roland's character changed right about the time King got sober. His writing in general
changed when he got sober. With Rice? Lestat changed when her husband died. So I guess I'll let those slide to traumatic events in the personal
lives of the authors. There is no excuse for Rowling, though. And I'm sure I could tick off a couple others if I felt like dwelling on it.


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## ppsage

Okay. Well, I don't get the Rowling one at all. My understanding is that she didn't change anything textually? She only offered a new interpretation. In response to social media hectoring? Kinda to hack some people off? I don't quite get her social media presence anyway, generally I agree,but why does she get down there with Kardashian and other of the Twitter ilk? Also, whether posthumously making a character gay is PC or not seems a highly subjective issue.


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## luckyscars

dale said:


> I've seen King and Rice do it, only not to such an extreme extent. And ok..to be honest? Most of the authors I'm referring to
> with this? It generally happens when it's a "series". Some people here keep implying that I'm meaning this interpretation as some kind of
> slam on homosexuality. That's not even my point. My point is....they create a character who's very personality changes suddenly for really
> no reason at all. The character "Lestat" by Anne Rice is another example. The character "Roland" by King is another. But...i can kind of give
> King and Rice a little more of a pass. Because with King? Roland's character changed right about the time King got sober. His writing in general
> changed when he got sober. With Rice? Lestat changed when her husband died. So I guess I'll let those slide to traumatic events in the personal
> lives of the authors. There is no excuse for Rowling, though. And I'm sure I could tick off a couple others if I felt like dwelling on it.



So really your beef is about the speed and manner in which some characters change? That's a fair point for discussion. 

I don't like it when characters change in a way that seems unnatural either. I see that more as a continuity problem than anything to do with political correctness, though. More an issue of the author losing connection with the character(s) developmental arc than an issue of them wishing to kowtow to whatever movement is in vogue.

You may strongly suspect that Rowling acted cynically in announcing that Dumbledore was gay when he isn't gay in the book, but that doesn't make you right. Personally, I didn't have an opinion on Dumbledore's sexuality one way or another so found Rowling's decision to announce it a little odd but not at all jarring - it wasn't like he was sleeping with a ton of women or doing any other 'straight guy' behavior. If I had thought about it at the time, I would have been totally open to him being gay. So...there was nothing about it that troubled me. 

On the other hand...if a character like, say, James Bond - one who had previously been 100% heterosexual to the point of parody - suddenly started having a ton of gay sex in the next Bond movie, then yeah, I would have a problem with that, because in that case it would clearly be a wholesale change and one with no clear purpose other than to be woke. So to that extent, I guess I can agree with you. Plus the guy who created Bond is long dead and the whole thing is just a franchise anyway. There's no 'writers discretion' with Bond as there is with Rowling.

But...it just isn't your or my place to decide what Rowling's characters are or aren't. That's Rowling's job and she has every right to do whatever she wants with her characters just as you have every right not to buy or read her books. So I stand by what I said: Getting irritated by this stuff makes no sense.


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## Dluuni

It's a sore point, because it has been a tactic that people have used to get favor without actually DOING anything. "Oh, but this character is ____." When we read it, they weren't because you didn't SAY anything. There wasn't any representation on the page in the book. Face the music and actually have Dumbledore sucking scruffy face in the book itself. Otherwise, to say "There's a major aspect to this character that you didn't see" is another way of saying "I'm a bad writer because my writing failed to communicate a major aspect of a character to my readers".


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## luckyscars

Dluuni said:


> It's a sore point, because it has been a tactic that people have used to get favor without actually DOING anything. "Oh, but this character is ____." When we read it, they weren't because you didn't SAY anything. There wasn't any representation on the page in the book. Face the music and actually have Dumbledore sucking scruffy face in the book itself. Otherwise, to say "There's a major aspect to this character that you didn't see" is another way of saying "I'm a bad writer because my writing failed to communicate a major aspect of a character to my readers".



Why does Dumbledore's sexuality have to be a _major_ aspect of his character???

Leave aside the fact HP is a children's book and therefore there is almost no open display of sexuality between any characters in it anyway (not until the later books and even then it's pretty vanilla) so Dumbedore 'sucking scruffy face' would have been downright inappropriate...people only want 'representation' when it's fulfilling their expectations don't they?

So, your expectation of a gay man is that in order for him to Represent A Gay Man the character has to do homosexual acts. To which I say: That's some homophobic bullshit.

It's entirely possible to be gay and to be celibate or sexually disinterested. Not providing 'hints of sexuality' (in other words, not fulfilling stereotypical homosexual behavior) does not invalidate one's sexual orientation in real life. So why should this be any different for a fictional character? More stupidly, this is a burden that does not exist for hetero guys. If I said that Kermit the Frog doesn't 'represent' heterosexual men properly (or that he may be gay!) because he generally avoids the sexual advances of Miss Piggy and certainly doesn't try to bang her every chance he gets, that would be pretty messed up.

I do get the argument that retroactively inserting character traits is cheap...but that presumes this character 'trait' was retroactively inserted, as opposed to merely not specified or not addressed. 

Dumbledore was neither gay nor straight. At no point was he defined as either (if I am wrong on that, please correct me, but I don't remember) so that he was later designated gay is not problematic anymore than if Rowling later said 'oh, yeah, he has a wife...I'll cover that in another book'. Clumsy but not-offensive, and utterly unimportant.


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## Squalid Glass

To me, if you are inserting social justice/inclusionary motifs simply to insert social justice/inclusionary motifs, they do not serve the story or social justice in a positive way. For Rowling, retroactively adding these things doesn't feel as authentic as they would have been if they were hinted at in the text in a natural way.

That being said, Wisecrack did a great dive into this just today. Here's the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-QTX2pIRLmE&t=0s


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## luckyscars

Squalid Glass said:


> To me, if you are inserting social justice/inclusionary motifs simply to insert social justice/inclusionary motifs, they do not serve the story or social justice in a positive way. For Rowling, retroactively adding these things doesn't feel as authentic as they would have been if they were hinted at in the text in a natural way.
> 
> That being said, Wisecrack did a great dive into this just today. Here's the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-QTX2pIRLmE&t=0s



Yeah. I think we can all agree that doing anything for the sake of it is generally pretty bad. 

The only part of dale's post that's really annoying, and which he still has not justified in any way I can see, is what gives him the supreme omniscience to tell the difference between something added 'for no reason and all' and something added to clarify what was there all along but he just wasn't personally aware of it.

When JK Rowling announced that Dumbledore was gay, yes, I imagine there were people who were annoyed or at least surprised by it...but, and this is important, there were also a lot of people who said something like 'OMG I knew it! That's amazing!' and a series of fanatics who then re-theorized aspects of the novels with this new 'information' in mind. All you have to do is read the Twitter comments to see it.

My question is this: *Which of these two reactions is correct?* 

It seems obvious that the answer is neither/both. You can read into characters as much or as little as you want. That's part of why reading is the greatest invention of all time. It comes down to how *you* want to read the book. Some people read Lord Of The Rings as being an allegory of the First World War. No real evidence for that, they just see that truth. Others say it's about other wars or no wars at all. 

Thing is, I bet if Tolkien rose from the dead tomorrow and said "Actually, guys, it was about Women's Suffrage" there would be people like the OP calling him a SJW or whatever. It's nonsense, basically. You can't define a book or a book character's identity with that kind of certainty. You _have _to be open to rethink.

If the way *you *want to read the book isn't made possible due to the dishonesty or incompetence of the author, then that's a good reason to put down the book and find another book.


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## dale

luckyscars said:


> Yeah. I think we can all agree that doing anything 'for the sake of it' is generally pretty bad and that's even if the intent is good.
> 
> The only part of dale's post that's really pretty annoying IMO, and which he still has not justified in any way I can see, is what gives him the supreme omniscience to tell the difference between something added 'for no reason and all' and something added because it was there all along and the author felt the need or obligation to clarify.
> 
> When JK Rowling announced that Dumbledore was gay, and yes, I imagine there were people who were annoyed or at least surprised by it...
> 
> ...but, and this is important, there were also a lot of people who said 'OMG I knew it! That's amazing!' and a series of fanatics who then re-theorized aspects of the novels with this new 'information' in mind. All you have to do is read the Twitter comments.
> 
> My question is this: Which of these two reactions is correct? It seems obvious that neither of them is and both of them are.
> 
> You can read into characters as much or as little as you want... and people do. That's part of why reading is the greatest invention of all time. It comes down to how *you* want to read the book. And if the way *you *want to read the book isn't made possible due to the dishonesty or incompetence of the author, then that's a good reason to put down the book and find another book.



Well...I'll explain it to you from my perspective. lol. Although in a way, you're right. It might not be my place to feel I should have any 
compulsion to pass judgment. 

Ok. I as a reader, have an investment, whether emotional or psychologically or whatever, in these stories I buy and get into. With "The Dark Tower" series?
I'm not really a big Stephen King fan, but I really loved that series UP TO THAT POINT. But then I actually just threw the book I bought down in mid-book (can't remember
which one it was) because it fell off track so much from the original story, that I got fed up with it. I never finished that series after that. I felt cheated.
With the Harry Potter series? This is a little different. I was married at the time and my wife t the time was a huge fan. So ya know...lol...we do things to share things
with our loved ones, even though it really wasn't my thing. And the books and movies we went to weren't bad. It was a good time. But the point is I had an investment
in the series. Emotional or psychological or whatever. But when Rowling did that? Well...now I gotta reevalate the whole damn thing from a completely falsified perspective
and so now I feel cheated again. Because I don't think in a million years Rowling sexualized those characters in her mind at all when she was writing the shit. I think
she made these claims for completely fake and commercial reasons just to get her name back in headlines for purely superficial reasons. And I find this kind of cheap.
Kind of like "artistic prostitution". And now I feel like the dumb bastard who overpaid for a crackwhore.


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## Dluuni

Wait, how would Dumbledore being gay sexualize things any more than Snape being straight sexualized the books? Snape being straight was a fairly significant aspect of his character. Ones orientation touches on a lot of things. It wouldn't affect the original series much, but the prequel book had opportunity to have him do something indicative.

Also, including LGBTQIA, PoC, non-xian, disabled, etc. characters isn't a "nod to social justice and inclusion", it's called "making your cast realistic".


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## Squalid Glass

luckyscars said:


> Yeah. I think we can all agree that doing anything for the sake of it is generally pretty bad.
> 
> The only part of dale's post that's really annoying, and which he still has not justified in any way I can see, is what gives him the supreme omniscience to tell the difference between something added 'for no reason and all' and something added to clarify what was there all along but he just wasn't personally aware of it.
> 
> When JK Rowling announced that Dumbledore was gay, yes, I imagine there were people who were annoyed or at least surprised by it...but, and this is important, there were also a lot of people who said something like 'OMG I knew it! That's amazing!' and a series of fanatics who then re-theorized aspects of the novels with this new 'information' in mind. All you have to do is read the Twitter comments to see it.
> 
> My question is this: *Which of these two reactions is correct?*
> 
> It seems obvious that the answer is neither/both. You can read into characters as much or as little as you want. That's part of why reading is the greatest invention of all time. It comes down to how *you* want to read the book. Some people read Lord Of The Rings as being an allegory of the First World War. No real evidence for that, they just see that truth. Others say it's about other wars or no wars at all.
> 
> Thing is, I bet if Tolkien rose from the dead tomorrow and said "Actually, guys, it was about Women's Suffrage" there would be people like the OP calling him a SJW or whatever. It's nonsense, basically. You can't define a book or a book character's identity with that kind of certainty. You _have _to be open to rethink.
> 
> If the way *you *want to read the book isn't made possible due to the dishonesty or incompetence of the author, then that's a good reason to put down the book and find another book.



To be clear, I actually think the Dumbledore retcon is fine and makes sense. Some of her other retcons do seem a little out there, though.

to your main point, you’re literally describing the process of literary theory. Interpretation is always subjective, but different approaches can yield more reasonable interpretations.


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## Squalid Glass

dale said:


> Well...I'll explain it to you from my perspective. lol. Although in a way, you're right. It might not be my place to feel I should have any
> compulsion to pass judgment.
> 
> Ok. I as a reader, have an investment, whether emotional or psychologically or whatever, in these stories I buy and get into. With "The Dark Tower" series?
> I'm not really a big Stephen King fan, but I really loved that series UP TO THAT POINT. But then I actually just threw the book I bought down in mid-book (can't remember
> which one it was) because it fell off track so much from the original story, that I got fed up with it. I never finished that series after that. I felt cheated.
> With the Harry Potter series? This is a little different. I was married at the time and my wife t the time was a huge fan. So ya know...lol...we do things to share things
> with our loved ones, even though it really wasn't my thing. And the books and movies we went to weren't bad. It was a good time. But the point is I had an investment
> in the series. Emotional or psychological or whatever. But when Rowling did that? Well...now I gotta reevalate the whole damn thing from a completely falsified perspective
> and so now I feel cheated again. Because I don't think in a million years Rowling sexualized those characters in her mind at all when she was writing the shit. I think
> she made these claims for completely fake and commercial reasons just to get her name back in headlines for purely superficial reasons. And I find this kind of cheap.
> Kind of like "artistic prostitution". And now I feel like the dumb bastard who overpaid for a crackwhore.



Honestly, after reading this I can only think of two possibilities here. 

1. You’re mad that Rowling made you rethink something that isn’t really important to the story.
2. You’re mad that the retcon involved what you think to be “trending pc nonsense.”

Either way, I don’t think your argument has much merit in this particular case.


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## dale

Squalid Glass said:


> Honestly, after reading this I can only think of two possibilities here.
> 
> 1. You’re mad that Rowling made you rethink something that isn’t really important to the story.
> 2. You’re mad that the retcon involved what you think to be “trending pc nonsense.”
> 
> Either way, I don’t think your argument has much merit in this particular case.



lol. ok. maybe if I write  best-selling book or books and then i totally misrepresent my characters for reasons of socio-political grandstanding
in order to whore my way back into the limelight after future projects fail? Come talk to me then. And if I do that? Come shoot me with a sawed-off
shotgun and put me out of my misery. Please. But until I do that? Shove it up your ass.


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## Annoying kid

You're complaining about vastly under represented classes of people in media getting even a casual out of universe mention (which is the minimum a writer can possibly do), from a privileged position of being the default representation. Thats like a wealthy Western fat cat saying how annoying it is that starving Africans get to eat anything.

You don't get to say that diversity for the sake of diversity isn't important from the position of being the default representation. 

Whatever you're tempted to say in your reply? It just don't matter. If you're not diversity starved, you're not in a position to appreciate diversity's value.


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## dale

Annoying kid said:


> You're complaining about vastly under represented classes of people in media getting even a casual out of universe mention (which is the minimum a writer can possibly do), from a privileged position of being the default representation. Thats like a wealthy Western fat cat saying how annoying it is that starving Africans get to eat anything.
> 
> You don't get to say that diversity for the sake of diversity isn't important from the position of being the default representation.
> 
> Whatever you're tempted to say in your reply? It just don't matter. If you're not diversity starved, you're not in a position to appreciate diversity's value.



What in God's name are you even talking about? lol. Actually, in the media, minorities are so OVERrepresented that it's a fucking joke.


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## Annoying kid

dale said:


> What in God's name are you even talking about? lol. Actually, in the media, minorities are so OVERrepresented that it's a fucking joke.



LGBT are not over represented. About 4.5% of people admit to being LGBT when surveyed, with an upward growth trend https://inequalitybyinteriordesign....018-update-shifts-in-the-u-s-lgbt-population/. 0.7 % are LGBT in the movies. 0.6% admit to being transgender when surveyed.  0% are transgender in mainstream movies. And I can only think of 2 characters in independent film. GLAAD’s 2018 film survey found that only 12.8 percent of 109 films included an LGBTQ character, down from 18.4 percent last year.


Women in Film:
_According to a new study about women and film out of San Diego State University, women accounted for *24 percent* of protagonists in the 100 top-grossing domestic films of 2017
Film Study Finds Number of Female Protagonists Down 5 Percent_
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/22/movies/women-hollywood-study.html

The percentage of major female characters remained unchanged, at 37 percent
(women are half the population, fyi


Video games.

109 games debuted at E3 this year, and just eight of them (or *7 percent) star female characters,
compared with 29 titles (26 percent) featuring male protagonists. Fifty-two percent of newly announced games utilize a system that lets players select specific characters or genders.
*https://blog.aivanet.com/2017/06/18/the-evolution-of-women-in-video-games-continues-at-e3-2017/*

Comics:
Only 26.7 percent of all DC and Marvel characters are female, and only 12 percent of mainstream superhero comics have female protagonists.

*https://pudding.cool/2017/07/comics/

Books 
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2...d-in-victorian-novels-than-modern-finds-study

[FONT=&quot]An analysis of more than 100,000 novels spanning more than 200 years shows how gendered even seemingly innocuous words can be – as well as revealing an unexpected decline in the proportion of female novelists from the mid-19th to the mid-20th century. 

-----------------

There's no evidence that "minorities are so overrepresented its a joke". If anything on several metrics, minority representation is in decline. In some its rising, is others its stable. 

The only place I can think where lgbt is statistically over represented is tv. And thats only a recent increase and the total is only by a couple of percentage points above the surveyed irl number. [/FONT]6.4 percent of characters identifying as LGBTQ in 2017, up from 4 percent in 2016 [FONT=&quot]

What am I talking about? The fact that your default, over representation means you have no seat at the table when it comes to assessing the need for diversity. Your irritation is not a factor. Like at all. 

[/FONT]


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## dale

Oh. Ok. Praise Jesus. I am now so thankful for these "blog" studies. Now I can actually go to mass as a white nominally christian heterosexual
male and say 14 hail marys and grovel on the fucking ground tomorrow for easter and just maybe? just maybe? i can be redeemed for all my
sins for being a white nominally christian piece of shit sexist male. fuck it. i may even toss a quarter into the candlebox just for shits and giggles.
ha ha.


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## Annoying kid

You complain about "blog studies" while you've posted no evidence for your claims whatsoever.


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## Dluuni

dale said:


> Actually, in the media, minorities are so OVERrepresented that it's a fucking joke.


What. 

Okay, I can't speak to the case of racial minorities. That varies depending on where you are, though most shows are set in cities that have very high levels of racial diversity, and the shows don't really reflect that in their central casting.

However, GLAAD actually counts every LGBTQIA character on TV and film every year.
Gay men almost approach the population norm, but they're unrealistically white. 
Lesbians come up short, and again weirdly white. 
Transgender women come up very short, and the depictions are still extremely negative and stereotypical as opposed to just being there. 
Transgender MEN are almost completely invisible in media. There's like, six. And they're very white. 
There are only two canon asexual characters in media, the representation is shaky on both. 
I don't remember seeing any mention of intersex characters, but they're as common as redheads in real life.

Other religions seem quite rare, again I don't have the numbers. 

I'm not clear why it's a bad thing to have a realistic variety of characters. What's the justification for having such an unrealistic lack of variety?


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## dale

Dluuni said:


> What.
> 
> Okay, I can't speak to the case of racial minorities. That varies depending on where you are, though most shows are set in cities that have very high levels of racial diversity, and the shows don't really reflect that in their central casting.
> 
> However, GLAAD actually counts every LGBTQIA character on TV and film every year.
> Gay men almost approach the population norm, but they're unrealistically white.
> Lesbians come up short, and again weirdly white.
> Transgender women come up very short, and the depictions are still extremely negative and stereotypical as opposed to just being there.
> Transgender MEN are almost completely invisible in media. There's like, six. And they're very white.
> There are only two canon asexual characters in media, the representation is shaky on both.
> I don't remember seeing any mention of intersex characters, but they're as common as redheads in real life.
> 
> Other religions seem quite rare, again I don't have the numbers.
> 
> I'm not clear why it's a bad thing to have a realistic variety of characters. What's the justification for having such an unrealistic lack of variety?



oh my god. are we really gonna have this discussion? because i've actually been suspended for having these discussions on this forum before.
so i'm kind of feeling like i need to pull back a little bit. i'm trying to get over my writers block coming here. because i like this place. but i feel like
any god damn minute i'm gonna get that notification telling me i'm not allowed back on for awhile.


----------



## luckyscars

dale said:


> oh my god. are we really gonna have this discussion? because i've actually been suspended for having these discussions on this forum before.
> so i'm kind of feeling like i need to pull back a little bit. i'm trying to get over my writers block coming here. because i like this place. but i feel like
> any god damn minute i'm gonna get that notification telling me i'm not allowed back on for awhile.



You won't get suspended for anything you say so long as it's within the rules, which basically comes down to putting forward your view, whatever it may be, in a manner that is respectful. I typically enjoy these kinds of discussions. I don't enjoy them when people cross the line into personal attacks. If you can't tell the difference, you should probably disengage. If you can, there's no issue.

As far as the topic of minorities being over/under-represented...There's no evidence - none - that minorities are over-represented. What there is, is evidence that they are represented now where they never were before. You can't name a single movie featuring a lesbian woman from before 1960 because it was unheard of. Being gay wasn't even legal. And now suddenly they're 'over-represented'? Give me a friggin' break.

I admit it can _feel _like over-representation at times to white, straight, male folks like you and I, because we are used to a world where *we* are the starring role in virtually every major movie, book, etc and the fact that we are now only the starring role 80% of them (or whatever the stat is) equates to a seismic increase for those for whom representation was previously 0%  and who are now occupying the lead roles in maybe 10% or 20% of what comes out. That does not, however, equate to a seismic decrease for us. Going from zero to twenty percent is a much, much bigger deal than going down from one hundred percent to eighty. Do you see? It's a matter of relative perspective. It's a matter of feelings, not facts.

The goal is not to have every main character be some black, gay, transgender person anyway. Nobody sane is advocating that. Minorities are supposed to be represented in the minority of roles...because they are minorities. Equality is the goal, not gay exceptionalism or whatever. Dluuni mentioned the goal being simply to reflect the population, and she is correct. By saying 'well if 8% of the population are gay men and we know this, then roughly 8% of the roles in movies and the characters in books should be gay men because that's how we accurately reflect society'. It's not that controversial IMO.


----------



## Dluuni

Well, just remember before talking negatively about minorities that you are surrounded by those minorities, and we don't let sketchy statements go unchallenged anymore.


----------



## Kevin

How annoying is it when they throw a diversified character in there for p.c., or trendiness? Thinking about it on an abstract, philosophical level it's slightly annoying and it does come across as fake. 
...
Driving down Sunset Blvd. I count how many of one minority group in particular are on the billboards each week, and that minority is a minimum 60- 75% of represented images ( the images get changed weekly) over-represented if you are comparing to actual demographics (and that is evidence presented here if you are arguing that if there is not presented evidence it doesn't exist which is a stupid argument because things do exist regardless..) and... about that over representation in relationship to reality? I don't care. 

Books, movies, media are what in my myopic view( because of where I live) I term "Hollywood" and in Hollywood you keep your mouth shut, or if you're a star, you often loudly go off the rails about whatever current trendiness thing is oh so g-D'ed important at the time (while the majority keep their mouth shut so they can get hired on the next project). Talk about repression of minorities.

It is  annoying. It's not the worst  thing in the world, but it does feel like people cramming their religion down your throat and so you mentally, politely ignore their myopathy (and yes, for some out there  'identity' is everything rather than just getting on with it) unless they overstepp some boundary like insisting Tom Sawyer be banned, or...? Then you say ( unless you work in some PC nightmare like most of where I live where you'll get fired or blacklisted ) okay enough already- geesus, gettalife and gtf outta my face! Usually, you just think it, and don't say anything. 

There's all sorts of activists, which is great, but when they cross over into advocacy tactics that unduly influence or corrupt the law it gets annoying.

And this mindset brainwashing they are teaching ( yes, it is actively taught, insisted upon even) that says any self-identifying group that complains and says a thing is or is caused by this, and that_ cannot be questioned_, (as is being insisted upon in corporate, non-Hollywood settings), that is more-than-annoying. But what are you going to do? They'll fire your ass...

So, Jk Rowling retro-actively making Dumbledor gay? I give it a 3 on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being worst as far as annoying. "But you don't know what she was thinking." Yah? Well, she wrote it down, and there was nothing there until 20-years later:_ 'Oh, and by the way: he was gay.'._
Really?  Yawn. Sfw...  
Next.


----------



## Kyle R

J.K. Rowling is hardly on my radar, so the whole controversy over her strange character reveals doesn't really interest me either way. Though, it has made for some fun jokes and memes at her expense. :topsy_turvy:


----------



## dale

Kyle R said:


> J.K. Rowling is hardly on my radar, so the whole controversy over her strange character reveals doesn't really interest me either way. Though, it has made for some fun jokes and memes at her expense. :topsy_turvy:



oh wow. how's my favorite chinaman doing? lol. everything still going good? Sunny still doing ok?


----------



## Kyle R

Lol. Things are good!

Though J.Ro just informed me that we're both gay and just don't know it yet!


----------



## dale

Kyle R said:


> Lol. Things are good!
> 
> Though J.Ro just informed me that we're both gay and just don't know it yet!



ya know? you and sunny and john m and all you all taught me a lot about being a better writer and person. 
and i appreciate that. hope you doing well.


----------



## Dluuni

So what are your thoughts on when they change a diverse character retroactively into a less diverse one? For example, like they did with Riverdale or Stonewall.

Riverdale: Jughead has always been an example of ace/aro representation. The newer comic series made it more blatant, but it was always a strong character aspect. They made it into a show and changed his character into a straight.

Stonewall: Accounts indicate that the first brick was thrown by a black transgender woman, a less represented and intersectional person. The movie changed her into a white gay man, the most accepted and mainstream demographic possible.

There are other films and similar that change diverse canon characters and main characters into white men. Do you have thoughts on those?


----------



## Kyle R

dale said:


> ya know? you and sunny and john m and all you all taught me a lot about being a better writer and person.
> and i appreciate that. hope you doing well.



Very cool to hear! And I haven't heard from JonM in a long time. Wonder what he's up to?

Sunny says hi.


----------



## Riptide

Dluuni said:


> So what are your thoughts on when they change a diverse character retroactively into a less diverse one? For example, like they did with Riverdale or Stonewall.
> 
> Riverdale: Jughead has always been an example of ace/aro representation. The newer comic series made it more blatant, but it was always a strong character aspect. They made it into a show and changed his character into a straight.
> 
> Stonewall: Accounts indicate that the first brick was thrown by a black transgender woman, a less represented and intersectional person. The movie changed her into a white gay man, the most accepted and mainstream demographic possible.
> 
> There are other films and similar that change diverse canon characters and main characters into white men. Do you have thoughts on those?



Of course it's not good, but it's a business so producers try to direct it towards the majority. As much as they love depicting the truth, they also care about money and being popular and all that fun stuff, so... we get the usual. It's the same with Brokeback Mountain. I've never read it, or watched it actually, but I listened in on a riveting discussion about it once in my English class that it wouldn't have worked so well if they had casted people who actually looked like how the novel portrayed them to look like.


Anyway, for the question at hand. I personally don't care, having never read them. I do think she might be just saying things just to say them, to make a point that you couldn't tell because they don't look or act any different from anybody else. I personally like the writing to speak for itself in regards to sexuality. If it was important for the novel she would've put it in, but since it's been 20+ years, the fact some characters are gay or not seems irrelevant. I do like her attempt at inclusion, though.


----------



## Winston

There's a fine line between "artistic license' and "revisionism".  
Is the statue of some 19th Century guy on horseback _really_ offensive?  Or, is that just an attribute that you project on it?
Art is art.  But foisting politics into it just sullies it and makes it less accessible to all.


----------



## Dluuni

Winston said:


> Is the statue of some 19th Century guy on horseback _really_ offensive?  Or, is that just an attribute that you project on it?
> Art is art.  But foisting politics into it just sullies it and makes it less accessible to all.


General Lee statues aren't art though—they are cheaply mass produced tickytacky sold cheaply to cities to erect during Jim Crow and the segregation debate. One in a museum is art. Many copies facing historically Black neighborhoods not so much. They were sullied when they were bought specifically to make things less accessible.

And LGBTQIA+, Black, Native, etc. communities have seen their monuments torn down with nothing but a patronizing sneer. There's a Golden Rule aspect to it.

As far as being a business... Captain Marvel broke the billion dollar mark, and it's a female story with elements that confuse non-minority men centering a woman, a PoC, and a PoC woman. Monetarily, people should be all for inclusion and diversity at this point, because minorities are common and have money.

There's some growing pains; witness the recent RITA controversy, the Boyne fiasco, or for that matter the Wolves incident. But things are slowly improving as minorities refuse to be left out of the discussion.


----------



## Riptide

Dluuni said:


> As far as being a business... Captain Marvel broke the billion dollar mark, and it's a female story with elements that confuse non-minority men centering a woman, a PoC, and a PoC woman. Monetarily, people should be all for inclusion and diversity at this point, because minorities are common and have money.
> 
> There's some growing pains; witness the recent RITA controversy, the Boyne fiasco, or for that matter the Wolves incident. But things are slowly improving as minorities refuse to be left out of the discussion.



Captain Marvel isn't a fair judgement of the climate. It's a part of a huge franchise and literally almost everyone was going to go see it, no matter who was in it. Same as the new Star Wars movies. That's not to say they aren't assisting in changing the tides, because of course they are, but they're special cases.


----------



## Dluuni

Frozen was stand alone, and female centered. People were going to watch Captain Marvel because franchise, but that doesn't explain breaking the billion dollar mark. The merchandise angle on TFA was completely baffled by Rey being popular, they assumed people wanted to see Kylo.


----------



## Riptide

Dluuni said:


> Frozen was stand alone, and female centered. People were going to watch Captain Marvel because franchise, but that doesn't explain breaking the billion dollar mark. The merchandise angle on TFA was completely baffled by Rey being popular, they assumed people wanted to see Kylo.



 I'm not going against you. Totally, tides are changing, but Infinity Wars grossed 2 billion world wide and I'm sure half would've wanted to see the next slotted movie. Also, Frozen isn't totally standalone. They have the backing of Disney and all their beloved Disney Princesses. It's just these aren't numbers in a vacuum. They have history in them and reasons for why they might've grossed so much. 

Anyway, they don't answer the OP question. Or maybe it does. Maybe JK Rowlings revealed all this about her characters so people could reread the books and find the clues or hints she dotted along the narrative. Who knows? Maybe it's all about profit and popularity?


----------



## dale

Dluuni said:


> General Lee statues aren't art though—they are cheaply mass produced tickytacky sold cheaply to cities to erect during Jim Crow and the segregation debate. One in a museum is art. Many copies facing historically Black neighborhoods not so much. They were sullied when they were bought specifically to make things less accessible.
> 
> And LGBTQIA+, Black, Native, etc. communities have seen their monuments torn down with nothing but a patronizing sneer. There's a Golden Rule aspect to it.
> 
> As far as being a business... Captain Marvel broke the billion dollar mark, and it's a female story with elements that confuse non-minority men centering a woman, a PoC, and a PoC woman. Monetarily, people should be all for inclusion and diversity at this point, because minorities are common and have money.
> 
> There's some growing pains; witness the recent RITA controversy, the Boyne fiasco, or for that matter the Wolves incident. But things are slowly improving as minorities refuse to be left out of the discussion.



the only reason these films are selling is because people are completely STARVED for entertainment. starved for the next distraction.
hollywood is nothing but reboot and remake after reboot after remake. and the sheep just keep getting in line to feed at the trough. why?
because they have nothing fucking better to do. and then we get total catastrophes becoming box office smashes because the sheep
got fed on tv that this "new" version of the old thing was "diverse" blah blah blah. lol. it's fucking retarded. but.....i really did enjoy that
"black panther" movie. lol. i was expecting it to be some PC garbage? but while watching it, i was like.....damn. this is a great flick...... lol


----------



## Squalid Glass

Speaking as someone who doesn't consider himself a sheep and who doesn't feel starved for a distraction, I quite like all these new movies. I just don't see a reason to go through life being so angry about this stuff. These stories are becoming more inclusive. There's nothing wrong with that. It's about time media opened up a bit, honestly. You can be pissed about it and whine about it all you want, but what fun is that?

And for what it's worth, artists have been retconning their work for centuries, and popular art has been political since art became a thing.


----------



## Terry D

dale said:


> It does me. Like JK Rowling just transforming characters with a "gay reveal", even though completely out of character.



Hey! Good to see you back, dale. As far as retooling characters retroactively, I think it's total horseshit. All that matters about our fictional worlds is what happens between the covers. If JKR thought Dumbeldore's sexuality was important, she should have written him as such. If it's not important enough to be written into the books, then he's not gay. We're talking about a fictional character here, everything about that character that matters to readers is in the pages of the books. There's nothing else to him, just words on a page. I don't care if JKR thought of him as gay, straight, Confucian, Tory, or any other damned thing, she didn't write him that way. People who try to parse out the 'true' nature of fictional characters, are pathetic. And authors who do it in retrospect are simply pandering, or grandstanding.


----------



## dale

Terry D said:


> Hey! Good to see you back, dale. As far as retooling characters retroactively, I think it's total horseshit. All that matters about our fictional worlds is what happens between the covers. If JKR thought Dumbeldore's sexuality was important, she should have written him as such. If it's not important enough to be written into the books, then he's not gay. We're talking about a fictional character here, everything about that character that matters to readers is in the pages of the books. There's nothing else to him, just words on a page. I don't care if JKR thought of him as gay, straight, Confucian, Tory, or any other damned thing, she didn't write him that way. People who try to parse out the 'true' nature of fictional characters, are pathetic. And authors who do it in retrospect are simply pandering, or grandstanding.



good to see you too, man. i finally got a new computer that has wifi built in. lol. i hated going to forums and stuff on the blasted phone. lol
but it's good to be back. better than that facebook crap.


----------



## ironpony

luckyscars said:


> Yeah. I think we can all agree that doing anything for the sake of it is generally pretty bad.
> 
> The only part of dale's post that's really annoying, and which he still has not justified in any way I can see, is what gives him the supreme omniscience to tell the difference between something added 'for no reason and all' and something added to clarify what was there all along but he just wasn't personally aware of it.
> 
> When JK Rowling announced that Dumbledore was gay, yes, I imagine there were people who were annoyed or at least surprised by it...but, and this is important, there were also a lot of people who said something like 'OMG I knew it! That's amazing!' and a series of fanatics who then re-theorized aspects of the novels with this new 'information' in mind. All you have to do is read the Twitter comments to see it.
> 
> My question is this: *Which of these two reactions is correct?*
> 
> It seems obvious that the answer is neither/both. You can read into characters as much or as little as you want. That's part of why reading is the greatest invention of all time. It comes down to how *you* want to read the book. Some people read Lord Of The Rings as being an allegory of the First World War. No real evidence for that, they just see that truth. Others say it's about other wars or no wars at all.
> 
> Thing is, I bet if Tolkien rose from the dead tomorrow and said "Actually, guys, it was about Women's Suffrage" there would be people like the OP calling him a SJW or whatever. It's nonsense, basically. You can't define a book or a book character's identity with that kind of certainty. You _have _to be open to rethink.
> 
> If the way *you *want to read the book isn't made possible due to the dishonesty or incompetence of the author, then that's a good reason to put down the book and find another book.



I think someone should ask JK Rowling in an interview whether or not she decided the character was gay long after, and retroactively, or if she had it in mind all along, when first creating the character.  That way, the fans will know.


----------



## Squalid Glass

She’s claimed plenty of times that she had it in mind while writing. Doesn’t change the fact that people don’t believe her.


----------



## Plasticweld

dale said:


> the only reason these films are selling is because people are completely STARVED for entertainment. starved for the next distraction.
> hollywood is nothing but reboot and remake after reboot after remake. and the sheep just keep getting in line to feed at the trough. why?
> because they have nothing fucking better to do. and then we get total catastrophes becoming box office smashes because the sheep
> got fed on tv that this "new" version of the old thing was "diverse" blah blah blah. lol. it's fucking retarded. but.....i really did enjoy that
> "black panther" movie. lol. i was expecting it to be some PC garbage? but while watching it, i was like.....damn. this is a great flick...... lol




The last good movie I saw was the Green Mile.  No special effects, just a good storyline, something I think is missing from the latest crop of new flicks out there.  Remaking a comic book storyline holds no allure to someone who had no interest in them when they were new. I view most of the comic book storylines as a lazy attempt in storytelling, instead of anything creative.


----------



## Winston

> ...and popular art has been political since art became a thing.



Should it be, though?  Does our acceptance of it being political say something about the art?  Or about ourselves?


----------



## Squalid Glass

Art is an excellent vehicle to express political ideology. It’s one of the purposes of art. I see no issue with that.


----------



## Winston

All art and literature after Lascaux is soiled with human avarice.


----------



## Squalid Glass

That seems like a harsh take not backed by actual historical artists.


----------



## dale

of course the artist expresses his or her self into the work. whether it be political, cultural, blah blah blah. the broken heart bleeds
most freely in ink and paint. but i've never actually SET OUT to do that. it just happens. ALL my characters are ME. don't matter if male or female.
it just transcends that way. so you just write and you do it YOUR way. and readers either relate or they don't. but to me? the most important 
thing is to be honest. to be real. because some people will say...well fiction is a lie. you're making shit up. it's a fantasy......but that's really
not true. as an artist, you're basically bleeding your heart onto the page. or canvass. or whatever. i'll write a tale of "fiction"? and it will be more
honest the the shit i talk to a chick at a bar. because my heart is in it.


----------



## Squalid Glass

For some people, believe it or not, politics and social issues are a part of themselves - a part of their heart. Why can't an artist purposefully include such things? 

And to your second point, who are you to say Rowling isn't being honest? Because you don't like her politics? Because her honesty is coming late to the party? As I've said before, artists have done this kind of retconning for a long time. It's not a big deal now.


----------



## dale

Squalid Glass said:


> For some people, believe it or not, politics and social issues are a part of themselves - a part of their heart. Why can't an artist purposefully include such things?
> 
> And to your second point, who are you to say Rowling isn't being honest? Because you don't like her politics? Because her honesty is coming late to the party? As I've said before, artists have done this kind of retconning for a long time. It's not a big deal now.



well...i'd consider the timing of it. and to be honest? i'm cynical about the woman who comes out years later
and starts crying #metoo over something that supposedly happened years ago. i mean....if you gonna talk some
shit no one heard before and then pretend it's true years later when the time is pinpoint convenient for you?
i'm gonna be skeptical.


----------



## Squalid Glass

Again, who are you to tell other people how to do things? Whether it is discussing their art or discussing their trauma, why does everyone have to operate on your timeline? Isn’t it possible that people deal with things in a different way than you would? Or, more likely, isn’t it likely that you have no idea how you would deal with something you’ve never had to deal with? Strikes me as really arrogant to cast such harsh judgement on people with vastly different experiences from you.


----------



## Kevin

She ( jk) had an original piece of work, whatever the criticisms of it, and that has nothing to do with politics, not in the sense of her recent statement- and then she has to go and try to politicize it in a way it never originally was. That's the beef, and the fact that her 'political' subject that she's trying to add is totally trendy. Any author could take any popular book they wrote sometime in the past and do that and they would recieve the same jeers.


----------



## dale

Squalid Glass said:


> Again, who are you to tell other people how to do things? Whether it is discussing their art or discussing their trauma, why does everyone have to operate on your timeline? Isn’t it possible that people deal with things in a different way than you would? Or, more likely, isn’t it likely that you have no idea how you would deal with something you’ve never had to deal with? Strikes me as really arrogant to cast such harsh judgement on people with vastly different experiences from you.



well..i think that might have a little bit to do with that i'm an arrogant, narcissistic bastard. or at least that's what most girls keep telling me, for some reason.


----------



## Dluuni

I don't actually care whether or not it was cynical. She may well have intended that meaning from the beginning. It doesn't matter. 

When people were reading the books, some of them really needed that representation. They did not find it in the text of the book.

When I was young, I went through the entirety of my childhood looking for representation figure out how to inhabit my skin. I found almost none*. Lately, I am finding tiny trickles, but most of it is bad. So, I'm having to write it myself.

Now, I'm not gay in any sense of the word. But if I were a gay boy, and I stumbled across some throwaway line about how Dumbledore had a husband once, I would feel like I could have a place in that setting, and I would have a character to look up to. 

That didn't happen. The opportunity was wasted. Saying "Oh, I intended him that way, but I didn't write it in" is like finding someone bleeding and wounded, and showing them a picture on your phone of the first aid kit you wanted to buy but didn't. It doesn't help anybody.

Also, mentioning that a character is gay isn't political any more than owls are political. LGBTQIA people are normal people. 

*Weirdly, some of the most positive representation I have seen to this day was written in a children's portal fantasy book series 115 years ago—in the second book in the Oz series with mention afterwards in the series. Probably not own voices stuff and obviously very dated and out of context, alas, but the etiquette is still pretty good today. It's 2019. I shouldn't have to include a 115 year old children's book in my literature recommendations.


----------



## Ralph Rotten

I have 2 words for this argument: Inclusion rider.


----------



## Kevin

I'm pissed she didn't put a 'vote for Bernie' sticker on his forehead like I politely asked her in my letters. It's really important.


----------



## ppsage

dale said:


> _(sic)_ i'll write a tale of "fiction"? and it will be more
> honest than the shit i talk to a chick at a bar. because my heart is in it.


_BACK in it,_ I thought you said you came back here to try getting. How's that project? All this diatribe doin' the trick?


----------



## Squalid Glass

Ugh, these debates always devolve into this kind of disingenuousness.


----------



## ironpony

Squalid Glass said:


> She’s claimed plenty of times that she had it in mind while writing. Doesn’t change the fact that people don’t believe her.



Well if she had in mind the whole time, then why did she keep it a secret till now?  Did she think the character being gay would be a big twist for everyone, if saved to reveal it for later on?


----------



## ppsage

ironpony said:


> Well if she had in mind the whole time, then why did she keep it a secret till now?  Did she think the character being gay would be a big twist for everyone, if saved to reveal it for later on?


Maybe she's so insecure that it took until now to feel rich enough to risk hurting sales?


----------



## Squalid Glass

Or maybe people are missing the fact that she first mentioned Dumbledore’s sexuality in 2007. The recent controversy is just from her making more comments about the nature of his relationship with Grindelward. This isn’t some 2019 sjw with-the-times retcon. And it’s not, as some here have claimed, some ploy to make up for the lack of success of her new movies. It’s something that’s been around for awhile.


----------



## dale

Squalid Glass said:


> Or maybe people are missing the fact that she first mentioned Dumbledore’s sexuality in 2007. The recent controversy is just from her making more comments about the nature of his relationship with Grindelward. This isn’t some 2019 sjw with-the-times retcon. And it’s not, as some here have claimed, some ploy to make up for the lack of success of her new movies. It’s something that’s been around for awhile.


would you fuck her, though? i mean....JK Rowling. Would you fuck her if you got the chance?


----------



## Dluuni

That's a very.. odd change of topic, what brought that on? Is everything okay?


----------



## dale

no. i think if we're gonna wanna be sexualizing fucking dumbledore? then maybe we should just sexualize the author herself. 
i mean...she's a bit older that i date nowadays. but still fairly attractive for a chick in her 50s. i'm gonna go with a "yes" here.
i'd bang her.


----------



## Dluuni

Nobody is sexualizing Dumbledore? Not any more than they sexualized the main cast by showing them in relationships in the denouement.


----------



## epimetheus

Squalid Glass said:


> Ugh, these debates always devolve into this kind of disingenuousness.



It's a shame, any valid points raised in the OP just get drowned in its own vitriol, making it difficult to see other people's perspectives.


----------



## luckyscars

Terry D said:


> All that matters about our fictional worlds is what happens between the covers.



Interesting statement. Some thoughts on this, partly because it's interesting, partly to drag this thread back from the swamps of the unpleasant.

 If it was the case, that everything that matters about a character like Dumbledore happened within the books as they were initially written, why would anybody ever want a spin off? Never mind the huge volumes of fanfiction, etc. Rowling created 'Fantastic Beasts' precisely to account for the incredibly hunger in her audience to know more about Dumbledore and other characters. This also contradicts your assertion that Dumbledore's sexuality was not written. One may debate the motives behind its creation and its overall quality (I thought it was shite) but Dumbledore's sexuality is certainly canon and present beyond off-cuff comments by Jo Rowling. As Squalid Glass pointed out, the premise of this thread is mostly bullshit.

In any event, this kind of retroactive revisionism/expansionism is common enough. Tolkien and George RR Martin and Lovecraft fans do it constantly. Stephen King rebooted the character of Danny Torrance from The Shining to write 'Doctor Sleep', apparently driven by his audience's demand: If I remember correctly, he held a poll and a huge majority wanted to hear more about the kid from The Shining. Presumably this would not have happened if the King fans had, en masse, been happy with 'what happens between the covers'? It is logical to assume a good number of them considered this character's 'unwritten story' extensively beyond the pages; otherwise, presumably, they would have had no reason to request it.

I don't much care for extended explorations or off-canon debates on literary characters myself, it's just not my thing, but it is human nature to humanize the fictional, which by definition frequently involves imagining characters and worlds beyond the book. This is actually how most religions get off the ground. 

You can call it pathetic, if you want, in many cases I would not necessarily disagree at all. It is fairly pathetic to obsess over imaginary people, IMO, particularly when there are millions of real people who are ignored. But it's certainly not _unusual_. More importantly, I'd say its antithetical to the interests of any writer (or should be) to sneer at how readers choose to dispose of books. It makes as little sense for a writer to criticize the way a reader chooses to read as it does for a reader to criticize the way a writer chooses to write. It is certainly in no writer's interest, IMO, to disparage readers for falling so deeply in love with fictional characters that they decide to imagine them beyond the pages.


----------



## Phil Istine

MOD NOTE:

Thread has gone way off the topic of 
[h=2]"Does an author purposely trending PC nonsense irritate anyone else?"
[/h]and who might want to fuck who is totally irrelevant.


----------



## Terry D

luckyscars said:


> Interesting statement. Some thoughts on this, partly because it's interesting, partly to drag this thread back from the swamps of the unpleasant.
> 
> If it was the case, that everything that matters about a character like Dumbledore happened within the books as they were initially written, why would anybody ever want a spin off? Never mind the huge volumes of fanfiction, etc. Rowling created 'Fantastic Beasts' precisely to account for the incredibly hunger in her audience to know more about Dumbledore and other characters. This also contradicts your assertion that Dumbledore's sexuality was not written. One may debate the motives behind its creation and its overall quality (I thought it was shite) but Dumbledore's sexuality is certainly canon and present beyond off-cuff comments by Jo Rowling. As Squalid Glass pointed out, the premise of this thread is mostly bullshit.
> 
> In any event, this kind of retroactive revisionism/expansionism is common enough. Tolkien and George RR Martin and Lovecraft fans do it constantly. Stephen King rebooted the character of Danny Torrance from The Shining to write 'Doctor Sleep', apparently driven by his audience's demand: If I remember correctly, he held a poll and a huge majority wanted to hear more about the kid from The Shining. Presumably this would not have happened if the King fans had, en masse, been happy with 'what happens between the covers'? It is logical to assume a good number of them considered this character's 'unwritten story' extensively beyond the pages; otherwise, presumably, they would have had no reason to request it.
> 
> I don't much care for extended explorations or off-canon debates on literary characters myself, it's just not my thing, but it is human nature to humanize the fictional, which by definition frequently involves imagining characters and worlds beyond the book. This is actually how most religions get off the ground.
> 
> You can call it pathetic, if you want, in many cases I would not necessarily disagree at all. It is fairly pathetic to obsess over imaginary people, IMO, particularly when there are millions of real people who are ignored. But it's certainly not _unusual_. More importantly, I'd say its antithetical to the interests of any writer (or should be) to sneer at how readers choose to dispose of books. It makes as little sense for a writer to criticize the way a reader chooses to read as it does for a reader to criticize the way a writer chooses to write. It is certainly in no writer's interest, IMO, to disparage readers for falling so deeply in love with fictional characters that they decide to imagine them beyond the pages.



Until Dumbledore's proclivities were written, they didn't exist. Until Dr. Sleep was written, Danny Torrence's alcoholism, and his job at a retirement center didn't exist. I understand that readers care about, and in many cases want to know more about, a character's own story, but until, or if, that story is written it does not exist. We can speculate all night over beers about whether or not Tom Goad abused his wife (so many of them Okies did, don'cha know) or whether Glinda, The Good Witch of the South in Oz was, in fact, trans, but that's all it would be, speculation. Unless the writer tells us, or shows us, those traits they don't exist. It doesn't matter what was in the writer's mind. So, no, in the original novels Dumbledore was not gay.


----------



## Aquilo

I think it all comes down to the basics of foreshadowing. If there are hints there for the reader to pick up on that Dumbledore was gay, or Harry bisexual, then all's well and good. But if there's no foreshadowing and the characters "turn" gay or bisexual halfway through, then that brings up the whole shite-pile debate of people being able to turn gay on spec, whether Rowling intended it to or not. It has upset a fair few in the LGBTQ+ community because of that. Most do ask: why the hell now? Yeah, maybe it's Rowling's way of kicking back against the likes of Trump (she's been seen to Tweet madly about Trump's Tran's ban etc), but without that foreshadowing there for her characters, it could send the wrong message altogether.


----------



## Kevin

Squalid Glass said:


> Ugh, these debates always devolve into this kind of disingenuousness.


it started with a reaction to the author's disingenuousness.


----------



## luckyscars

Terry D said:


> Until Dumbledore's proclivities were written, they didn't exist. Until Dr. Sleep was written, Danny Torrence's alcoholism, and his job at a retirement center didn't exist. I understand that readers care about, and in many cases want to know more about, a character's own story, but until, or if, that story is written it does not exist. We can speculate all night over beers about whether or not Tom Goad abused his wife (so many of them Okies did, don'cha know) or whether Glinda, The Good Witch of the South in Oz was, in fact, trans, but that's all it would be, speculation. Unless the writer tells us, or shows us, those traits they don't exist. It doesn't matter what was in the writer's mind. So, no, in the original novels Dumbledore was not gay.





Aquilo said:


> I think it all comes down to the basics of foreshadowing. If there are hints there for the reader to pick up on that Dumbledore was gay, or Harry bisexual, then all's well and good. But if there's no foreshadowing and the characters "turn" gay or bisexual halfway through, then that brings up the whole shite-pile debate of people being able to turn gay on spec, whether Rowling intended it to or not. It has upset a fair few in the LGBTQ+ community because of that. Most do ask: why the hell now? Yeah, maybe it's Rowling's way of kicking back against the likes of Trump (she's been seen to Tweet madly about Trump's Tran's ban etc), but without that foreshadowing there for her characters, it could send the wrong message altogether.



These arguments assume that being gay isn’t a viable default state for a character whose sexuality is otherwise undefined, that in order for a character to be gay they have to exhibit (or “foreshadow”) gayness. 

Why do we assume that a character needed to be “written gay” to be gay all along? Dumbledore was never defined as straight so defining him as gay whether it is retrospective or not should not be problematic. It is irrelevant at absolute worst. But it’s not a change to the character because the character WAS NEVER STRAIGHT.

NB this ignores the fact that Rowling never mentioned Dumbledore being gay until after she had written it (in Fantastic Beasts) and the issue came up as a response to that, not as pandering to liberal woke politics. Thus these constant pontifications about “it doesn’t exist until it is written” is baseless - it was written. It’s a straw man the OP didn’t bother to fact check when he started the thread.


----------



## Cephus

dale said:


> Just to follow fashion, I guess. I kind of find it stupid and damn near offensive when it's done just to simply appease
> some trend that's going on, if the story itself doesn't call for it. Like if shit was popular last week, but honey is popular
> this week? But then you think....hold on. maybe I should dip this shit in a jar of honey.



I think Rowling has a severe SJW problem. She just makes these things up retroactively whenever some far-left lunatic criticizes her story. Dumbledore is gay. Why? Because the LGBT-whatever community complained. It never appeared in the  books and it never appeared in the movies.  She pulled a Jewish wizard out of her backside because someone pointed out that none were in her story. Again, it doesn't exist anywhere in her work. 

Now I have no problem with these things being true. If she wants to write a trilogy of books about gay Dumbledore, that's fine with me.  If she wants to write a series about Anthony Goldstein, Jewish wizard, more power to her. That's entirely cool. But to just make this crap up out of whole cloth to satiate a political faction is absurd.  It's basically made whatever respect I had for her vanish.


----------



## Cephus

Phil Istine said:


> I did get the feeling that she did that to be trendy, but I suppose it's her story so her call.
> I won't be losing any sleep over it though (says the guy who's posting at 5.25 am).



But everything she's done has been to be trendy. When she shows up once a year saying she wishes she hadn't done something, just because that's the way the wind is blowing in the fandom, she's revealing that she lacks a backbone.  Oh, Hermione should have ended up with Harry because that's what fans want! Oh, Fred shouldn't have died because that's what the fans are whining about this week! It's the sign of a generally spinless individual.  She wrote a story and people either like it or they don't.


----------



## Cephus

Squalid Glass said:


> She’s claimed plenty of times that she had it in mind while writing. Doesn’t change the fact that people don’t believe her.



Nor should they, she hasn't produced any evidence for it.  I could see if she could produce original manuscripts that were submitted to Scholastic with gay Dumbledore in them and Scholastic put the kabosh on that idea. That would be totally acceptable, but that's also not what's happened. She made him gay in response to political pressure and now that people are vocally calling her out on it, she's lying again to protect her reputation. I don't care what she claims, I care what she can prove.  So far, at least as far as I'm aware since I don't pay any attention to Harry Potter, she hasn't done a thing.


----------



## luckyscars

Cephus said:


> Nor should they, she hasn't produced any evidence for it.  I could see if she could produce original manuscripts that were submitted to Scholastic with gay Dumbledore in them and Scholastic put the kabosh on that idea. That would be totally acceptable, but that's also not what's happened. She made him gay in response to political pressure and now that people are vocally calling her out on it, she's lying again to protect her reputation. I don't care what she claims, I care what she can prove.  So far, at least as far as I'm aware since I don't pay any attention to Harry Potter, she hasn't done a thing.



“I don’t pay attention to Harry Potter but I have a strong opinion on its character and author”.

WTF kind of “evidence” should she have provided? Seriously, what are you even talking about? 

Can you “prove” you’re straight, Cephus? Because if you can’t, I don’t recognize that you are. Not only that, I’m going to accuse you of lying about your straightness and/or using it to make yourself look good. See how stupid that sounds?


----------



## Squalid Glass

Kevin said:


> it started with a reaction to the author's disingenuousness.



Yes, and her actions lead to a very good debate topic. But that debate is spoiled when the debaters decide to rebuttal honest points with disingenuous sarcasm.


----------



## Squalid Glass

Cephus said:


> Nor should they, she hasn't produced any evidence for it.  I could see if she could produce original manuscripts that were submitted to Scholastic with gay Dumbledore in them and Scholastic put the kabosh on that idea. That would be totally acceptable, but that's also not what's happened. She made him gay in response to political pressure and now that people are vocally calling her out on it, she's lying again to protect her reputation. I don't care what she claims, I care what she can prove.  So far, at least as far as I'm aware since I don't pay any attention to Harry Potter, she hasn't done a thing.



I don’t necessarily agree that she needs evidence. I mean, it’s her story. She can do whatever she wants with it either while writing or after publication. My original point in this discussion was that the utilization of social justice simply for social justice’s sake doesn’t really service social justice or a story very well, but sometimes intent is a very difficult thing to judge. In this case, her retcons have actually upset the lgbtq+ community more than the free speech warrior side, which is kind of ironic. 

But again I reiterate, she did reveal Dumbledore’s sexuality in 2007, the year the last book was published. So is it a retcon? Yes, though lucky’s point about defaulting a character’s orientation to straight is well taken. Is it in response to some sort of political moment? Originally, no.

Furthermore, the real issue isn’t really the retcon. It’s what she’s coming out and changing. I mean, nobody would bat an eye if she came out and said that McGonagall was divorced or something. The outrage on the left is in response to a lack of representation, and the outrage on the right is because by simply saying she wrote a gay character, she automatically becomes an sjw pushing an ideology. To me, there are issues with both sides of those responses, but one of them seems a bit more strawmanny than the other.


----------



## velo

dale said:


> well...i'd consider the timing of it. and to be honest? i'm cynical about the woman who comes out years later
> and starts crying #metoo over something that supposedly happened years ago. i mean....if you gonna talk some
> shit no one heard before and then pretend it's true years later when the time is pinpoint convenient for you?



This quote is the epitome of male privilege and the reason why #metoo is important.  Women are used to not being believed, being shamed for things that happen to them, being blamed for being assaulted because of the clothes they wear.  This is about the most uninformed thing I've read since I've stopped reading the news.  PLEASE educate yourself.  This attitude is ENTIRELY the problem.  

Is it possible that a woman may come out for political reasons?  Of course.  But you don't get to decide that.  Because there are already so many barriers to women being able to speak their truth, be believed, and have something done about it we men don't get to have a bloody opinion about the veracity of any woman's story until that bias is completely eliminated and the level playing field is here.  That day is sadly a long way off.  

As for PC-ness...yeah, it's annoying and my fellow liberals (to be fair, I make Bernie look like a Fox News fan) have, as usual, gone so freaking overboard that they've made the whole thing nauseating.  You can't have a rational conversation with people these days because they aren't willing to acknowledge some basic facts such as men and women do have physiological differences.  There is nothing wrong or sexist about that yet some folks flip out when I say such heresy.  When reality takes a backseat to 'being nice' we're all screwed.  

BUT, there is a lot of PC-ness that is necessary and appropriate.  We do need to be respectful of another person's name or orientation or ethnicity or whatever.  It's basic politeness and human respect.  I don't know you, your background, or your life experience.  If you tell me you've always identified as a man even though you were born with girl parts it would be the height of arrogance and disrespect for me to have any view on that other than accepting your truth as you experience it.  You don't see white boys like me running around dropping the n-bomb anymore, and thank goodness for that.  Racial epithets in general have mostly been banished from public discourse.  

The real issue with the topic is that there is an assumption that because a character is [gay/trans/black/whatever] that it _must_ be because the author is "trying to be PC."  Sure, that happens, but there are many equally valid reasons a character might be written a certain way.  Also, making a character part of a certain demographic merely to increase exposure to that demographic and attempt to humanise those people is as valid as any other reason.  No idea what was in JKR's head about Dumbledore being gay but DILLIGAF?  I don't care.  He was a great character and a lovely human being.  

It is this assumption that reveals the bias inherent in society.  A piece that is not about cis-gendered males with women playing secondary roles is often treated as not mainstream or 'special.'  That's utter bollocks.  People are people, we all walk through the human condition in our own individual way.  It's time we changed the way we think and write. 

So no, to answer the original question, it doesn't bother me.  What bothers me is that we are still having this discussion.  Why the fuck does it matter what demographic a character belongs to?  If you do care, I suggest you take a hard and long look at yourself and ask yourself why.


----------



## Kevin

i am not the inventor of sarcasm to point out the ridiculous- goes back to at least the Greeks, and I think it gets the point across fine, except for those unable to get it.


...okay, never mind.


----------



## dale

velo said:


> This quote is the epitome of male privilege



my god. it's about time i got some of this "male privilege" everyone keeps harping about. i can't even get a chick to do the dishes for me.


----------



## Terry D

luckyscars said:


> These arguments assume that being gay isn’t a viable default state for a character whose sexuality is otherwise undefined, that in order for a character to be gay they have to exhibit (or “foreshadow”) gayness.
> 
> Why do we assume that a character needed to be “written gay” to be gay all along? Dumbledore was never defined as straight so defining him as gay whether it is retrospective or not should not be problematic. It is irrelevant at absolute worst. But it’s not a change to the character because the character WAS NEVER STRAIGHT.
> 
> NB this ignores the fact that Rowling never mentioned Dumbledore being gay until after she had written it (in Fantastic Beasts) and the issue came up as a response to that, not as pandering to liberal woke politics. Thus these constant pontifications about “it doesn’t exist until it is written” is baseless - it was written. It’s a straw man the OP didn’t bother to fact check when he started the thread.



I never said he was straight. I said he was never gay until she defined him as such. _Because he is a bit of fiction_. Our fictional characters have no traits whatsoever until we, the authors, define them. It's really that simple. When I pick up a book and start reading, I'm going to use the information the author gives me to understand the characters. Any voids in that information will be filled in by my imagination -- if I feel the need -- based on my life experiences. As a reader, I generally don't view characters in regard to their sexuality unless that is germane to the story and specified by the author. It's like Schrodinger's Cat, not dead, nor alive until it is observed. If you want to "default" to an unspecified character as gay, that's fine for you. Others may default to African American, or tall, or deaf. My point is it is nothing/everything until it is specified.


----------



## Dluuni

As far as Dumbledore being undefined.. If a character can be cast as a cisgender, heterosexual, Christian white man, they will be cast as a cishet WASP man, and people will react to any deviation from that with great hostility for "changing" the character. If you want diversity, you have to put it on the page and you have to spell it out explicitly.


----------



## Bardling

Dluuni said:


> As far as Dumbledore being undefined.. If a character can be cast as a cisgender, heterosexual, Christian white man, they will be cast as a cishet WASP man, and people will react to any deviation from that with great hostility for "changing" the character. If you want diversity, you have to put it on the page and you have to spell it out explicitly.



And you don't have to look any farther for an example than Ursula LeGuin's Earthsea books, where many characters were of various (nonwhite) hues, being whitewashed when they were made into a miniseries on the Syfy channel.  For that matter, I remember reading some of those books and never really twigging to the fact that they were not white (It was long ago and I was a child).

The assumption is that characters in a work are "normal" with "normal" being the dominant cultural group.


----------



## Terry D

Dluuni said:


> As far as Dumbledore being undefined.. If a character can be cast as a cisgender, heterosexual, Christian white man, they will be cast as a cishet WASP man, and people will react to any deviation from that with great hostility for "changing" the character. If you want diversity, you have to put it on the page and you have to spell it out explicitly.



Not necessarily. Ever read the book, _The Bone Collector_, by Jeffery Deaver? Ever see the movie with Denzel Washington? The race of Denzel's character, Lincoln Rhyme is never mentioned in the book, yet I don't remember any great uproar when Denzel was cast. The same holds true for Idris Elba in the movie version of King's, _The Dark Tower. _King never specified Roland Deschain's race, yet the casting of Elba was widely praised. I haven't read much hand-wringing about Captain Marvel being re-imagined as a woman either.


----------



## Aquilo

luckyscars said:


> These arguments assume that being gay isn’t a viable default state for a character whose sexuality is otherwise undefined, that in order for a character to be gay they have to exhibit (or “foreshadow”) gayness



No. I'd say sexuality is either relevant or it isn't. Dumbledore's wasn't relevant, now it is. That's like saying being gay/straight/bi etc isn't relevant or doesn't exist as a state of being until the author dictates otherwise. That's not what sexuality and character-building are about: it's not a token gesture to be used. Rowling is writing to a younger audience where it hasn't needed the sexuality detail. That's how she's written it so far: not to matter. If it was needed and it did matter, then like any relationship-building, it deserves respect, not an 'oh by the way I'm this' approach. That's potentially insulting to any sexuality, not just gay or bi.

And it's nothing to do with a viable LGBTQ+ default. It's to do with how readers process language in general. Mention the word 'fan' and you get a picture of one of Rowling's readers, no doubt. But 'fan' is also a cooling device. One word, two options. It's why dictionaries have 2-6+ different meanings for one word, always starting with the most widely used first. Mention "sexuality" most will first go with what they know, and it will most likely be a straight. That doesn't discount LGBTQ+, it just shows how readers process detail in an order they know. Until you say it's a straight/bi/gay sexuality, there's always going to be ambiguity. It's down to the author to stop that ambiguity. You can't call out readers for failing to fill in blanks they can't process without, the necessary information.

If anything, I thought Dumbledore was asexual because he'd no on-page relationship, and I was perfectly happy with that! Why should I now believe he's gay when his non-attachment has pinpointed asexuality more?


----------



## dale

Aquilo said:


> No. I'd say sexuality is either relevant or it isn't. Dumbledore's wasn't relevant, now it is. That's like saying being gay/straight/bi etc isn't relevant or doesn't exist as a state of being until the author dictates otherwise. That's not what sexuality and character-building are about: it's not a token gesture to be used. Rowling is writing to a younger audience where it hasn't needed the sexuality detail. That's how she's written it so far: not to matter. If it was needed and it did matter, then like any relationship-building, it deserves respect, not an 'oh by the way I'm this' approach. That's potentially insulting to any sexuality, not just gay or bi.
> 
> And it's nothing to do with a viable LGBTQ+ default. It's to do with how readers process language in general. Mention the word 'fan' and you get a picture of one of Rowling's readers, no doubt. But 'fan' is also a cooling device. One word, two options. It's why dictionaries have 2-6+ different meanings for one word, always starting with the most widely used first. Mention "sexuality" most will first go with what they know, and it will most likely be a straight. That doesn't discount LGBTQ+, it just shows how readers process detail in an order they know. Until you say it's a straight/bi/gay sexuality, there's always going to be ambiguity. It's down to the author to stop that ambiguity. You can't call out readers for failing to fill in blanks they can't process without the necessary information.



Christ. I feel like I just took a college course after reading his. lol. Very well put.


----------



## Squalid Glass

Kevin said:


> i am not the inventor of sarcasm to point out the ridiculous- goes back to at least the Greeks, and I think it gets the point across fine, except for those unable to get it.
> 
> 
> ...okay, never mind.



Sarcasm is an effective rhetorical strategy when used in conjunction with substantive points. When it’s used in place of an actual argument, though, it’s just a red herring.


----------



## Squalid Glass

Terry D said:


> I never said he was straight. I said he was never gay until she defined him as such. _Because he is a bit of fiction_. Our fictional characters have no traits whatsoever until we, the authors, define them. It's really that simple. When I pick up a book and start reading, I'm going to use the information the author gives me to understand the characters. Any voids in that information will be filled in by my imagination -- if I feel the need -- based on my life experiences. As a reader, I generally don't view characters in regard to their sexuality unless that is germane to the story and specified by the author. It's like Schrodinger's Cat, not dead, nor alive until it is observed. If you want to "default" to an unspecified character as gay, that's fine for you. Others may default to African American, or tall, or deaf. My point is it is nothing/everything until it is specified.



So if that’s the case, then what is the problem with retroactively providing this information? Simply because it doesn’t exist within the canon of the book?


----------



## Squalid Glass

Aquilo said:


> No. I'd say sexuality is either relevant or it isn't. Dumbledore's wasn't relevant, now it is. That's like saying being gay/straight/bi etc isn't relevant or doesn't exist as a state of being until the author dictates otherwise. That's not what sexuality and character-building are about: it's not a token gesture to be used. Rowling is writing to a younger audience where it hasn't needed the sexuality detail. That's how she's written it so far: not to matter. If it was needed and it did matter, then like any relationship-building, it deserves respect, not an 'oh by the way I'm this' approach. That's potentially insulting to any sexuality, not just gay or bi.
> 
> And it's nothing to do with a viable LGBTQ+ default. It's to do with how readers process language in general. Mention the word 'fan' and you get a picture of one of Rowling's readers, no doubt. But 'fan' is also a cooling device. One word, two options. It's why dictionaries have 2-6+ different meanings for one word, always starting with the most widely used first. Mention "sexuality" most will first go with what they know, and it will most likely be a straight. That doesn't discount LGBTQ+, it just shows how readers process detail in an order they know. Until you say it's a straight/bi/gay sexuality, there's always going to be ambiguity. It's down to the author to stop that ambiguity. You can't call out readers for failing to fill in blanks they can't process without, the necessary information.
> 
> If anything, I thought Dumbledore was asexual because he'd no on-page relationship, and I was perfectly happy with that! Why should I now believe he's gay when his non-attachment has pinpointed asexuality more?



Lucky’s argument about assumptions is correct, in my mind, but I also see the value in your thinking here, Aquilo. Which is part of the reason why I think the lgbtq+ community has been upset with her retconning. And I also thought of him as asexual just because his character trope seemed to be above such human desires. 

That being said, Rowling, to my knowledge, has never called out readers for failing to fill in the blanks. Neither has anyone in this discussion. It’s more a question of what we are upset about. I think there is a legitimate argument to be had about the ethics of retconning an artistic work. I also think there is one to be had about token attempts to appease. But I take issue with those who automatically jump to the argument that these kinds of things are sjw progressive coups of society simply on the basis that they involve diversity. That’s where the opposing side loses me.


----------



## Winston

dale said:


> my god. it's about time i got some of this "male privilege" everyone keeps harping about. i can't even get a chick to do the dishes for me.



The only privilege I get is after operating heavy equipment all day, I get to do dishes and vacuum.  Is breathing dust mites a privilege?  

Seriously, every rational adult knows that some people "get it worse" than others.  It's been that way since we crawled out of the muck, and one amphibian sneered at the spots on another.
Like it or not, folks, there's a bunch of us "counterrevolutionaries" that are kinda fed-up with being told what to think, and how to feel.  It helps no one when we harp on this stuff like it's a debate on whether Mother Theresa should get sainthood.  But to make your objects of devotion more likable, you must make others into villains.   

I don't care if any character is a part of a "protected class" or whatever nonsensical label is currently in vogue.  If the writing works, it works.  Period.
If it's contrived propaganda designed to manipulate public opinion through targeted emotional responses, that's trash.  Exclamation point.

Dumbledore is just some goofy character that Rowlings was able to make ton of cash off of.  He swings a twig and speaks in Latin.  I don't care who he lays with.
As long as it's not one of his students.  Or, is that now a "protected class" as well?  Adiuva nos Deus.


----------



## Kevin

Squalid Glass said:


> So if that’s the case, then what is the problem with retroactively providing this information? Simply because it doesn’t exist within the canon of the book?


The problem is stated in the title of this thread.


----------



## Squalid Glass

The title implies intent that the op has no way of knowing. It casts Rowling’s actions as simply a product of “pc nonsense,” which is both a loaded term and a judgement based on nothing but the op’s unsubstantiated feelings.

And my quoted response was to Terry’s comment that once the author has defined something, it then comes into existence.


----------



## Dluuni

Because it's sloppy. "Oh, I forgot to mention this detail!"
It's like saying, once you are disembarking from the plane on your way to a ski trip, "Oh, I meant to grab my good ski gloves!"
Well, then you don't have your gloves, do you? The difference between "I don't have ski gloves" and "I have great ski gloves back on my kitchen table in Phoenix, AZ" is zero. Your hands are going to get just as cold.


----------



## Squalid Glass

Dluuni said:


> Because it's sloppy. "Oh, I forgot to mention this detail!"
> It's like saying, once you are disembarking from the plane on your way to a ski trip, "Oh, I meant to grab my good ski gloves!"
> Well, then you don't have your gloves, do you? The difference between "I don't have ski gloves" and "I have great ski gloves back on my kitchen table in Phoenix, AZ" is zero. Your hands are going to get just as cold.



I don’t necessarily disagree. But saying something is sloppy is very different than saying something has been done because of “pc nonsense.”


----------



## ppsage

dale said:


> my god. it's about time i got some of this "male privilege" everyone keeps harping about. i can't even get a chick to do the dishes for me.


Try doing all the cooking that's how I do it.


----------



## Dluuni

It doesn't matter if a character is revealed to be LGBT+ in some apocrypha somewhere. We are not going to be allowed to claim that character, and that character did us no good whatsoever. You do not understand how much blowback LGBTQIA+, PoC, etc. people have gotten and continue to get on this point.

I can make an incredibly strong case for why a couple of characters are ace, but unless the canon actually has the character say "I am asexual, I'm not attracted to anybody that way", including all those words, I am just going to get a solid wall of patronizing lectures about how I am just trying to read things into the character and that they are obviously straight and insert some bit of goofy justification for all their ace traits here.

Put it in the text, explicitly. Don't "hint". Don't have "vague indications". Say flat out "This man had a husband." "She is bisexual." "He is on the autism spectrum." "She is Jewish." Otherwise, we're going to have to get in an endless series of exhausting fights and arguments over that character any time we want to refer to them. I have to spend so much of every day arguing already! You aren't doing me any favors by giving people another reason to argue with me.


----------



## Terry D

Squalid Glass said:


> So if that’s the case, then what is the problem with retroactively providing this information? Simply because it doesn’t exist within the canon of the book?



Because it's fiction. The world and the characters of a novel are simply thoughts put into words on a page. They aren't real. The way a character is presented in the book in which he resides is the reality of that book. Sure, an author can go back and rewrite the book -- although I've never seen anyone do that -- then, for the purposes of the rewrite, the character can be given any sexuality, or other trait, that the writer wishes. The author is free to add details for a character in subsequent books but that has no effect on the earlier version of the character. Too many people responding to this thread are acting like these characters are real people, with real backstories. They are not. They are fictions created solely by the words used on the page to describe them. A character isn't tall unless the writer writes her that way, nor is a character gay unless the writer describes him that way. Characters have no life beyond what we see on the page. If the story needs to have the character possess a particular trait the author damned well better put that on the page somewhere.


----------



## Squalid Glass

Terry D said:


> Because it's fiction. The world and the characters of a novel are simply thoughts put into words on a page. They aren't real. The way a character is presented in the book in which he resides is the reality of that book. Sure, an author can go back and rewrite the book -- although I've never seen anyone do that -- then, for the purposes of the rewrite, the character can be given any sexuality, or other trait, that the writer wishes. The author is free to add details for a character in subsequent books but that has no effect on the earlier version of the character. Too many people responding to this thread are acting like these characters are real people, with real backstories. They are not. They are fictions created solely by the words used on the page to describe them. A character isn't tall unless the writer writes her that way, nor is a character gay unless the writer describes him that way. Characters have no life beyond what we see on the page. If the story needs to have the character possess a particular trait the author damned well better put that on the page somewhere.



Ah! See, this should really be the heart of the debate. 

Now, I respectfully disagree with your assessment there, Terry, because that's not how these multi media franchises work anymore. The stories continue on in other pieces of media that often modify the original source material. A lot of what Rowling has been criticized for has been retcons she's posted on Pottermore, which is like her extended universe canonical website. She'll often post writing there that is intended to continue the ethos of the Harry Potter world. Some of the stuff with Dumbledore has been because Fantastic Beasts is the current iteration of the Harry Potter IP, and Dumbledore's relationship with Grindelwald is central to that narrative. 

This is really no different than the expanded universe books that for so long modified the Star Wars universe. Marvel also does this with their one shots or when they supplement their movies with tie in comics. These franchises don't just exist on the pages of the source material anymore: they are intended to be expanded upon because their fans have a demand for more and more content. 

And while I'm inclined to agree with Dluuni that issues of representation can feel like cop outs if they are not present in the source material (and certainly that they do no good to the community they are trying to be inclusive to), I can't fault Rowling to the degree others have for doing something that has been consistently done for a long time. I also find fault with the side calling this an sjw retcon because they don't seem to be having the same sort of triggered-level reactions to Rowling's other retcons, so to me, it suggests an issue with the nature of the retcon, not the retcon itself.


----------



## Dluuni

Yeah. We have enough trouble with people who ARE explicit having their identities erased.

There was a doctor who lived his entire life as a man, used a male name, referred to himself as a man even in his own private journal, ignored reasonably viable opportunities to out himself without harm, retained his masculine identity in old age after it no longer mattered, and demanded in writing that he be buried in the suit he died in, under the name and pronouns he used in his day to day life. 

There was a _recently _published biography about him gushing about how "She was a real feminist hero, showing how a woman could succeed at the time!" :hopelessness: 
And there's lots of arguments about how "You can't know how _she_ identified, there wasn't the labels we use today! #-o

We get the same pushback on characters in fiction. If it isn't stated _outright_, in the most un-ambiguous of terms, including the label, in the actual work itself, it's just something else we get to have arguments started with us about. If we can't even be spared argument on very blatant cases, why do people think it's okay to give sloppy, watered down, vague "representation"? It's harmful and it's frustrating and it's sloppy. I might have other things I want to do than get in an argument about someone else's characters just because that specific bit of sloppiness happens to regard something that a certain portion of society has an irrational hate for.


----------



## JJBuchholz

I stopped following Stephen King on Twitter because of things like this. It got to the point where more than three quarters of his tweets were about politics/political grandstanding/political endorsements/political flame wars and hardly anything about his books, what he was working on, or writing in general.

When I follow an author, well-known or independent, I want to read posts/tweets about writing. Is that too much to ask for?

-JJB


----------



## velo

Yes, everyone is born with different inherent disadvantages.  But to use that as an argument to sustain social and systemic inequalities that are entirely within a culture's span of control is, frankly, despicable in its dismissiveness of another's challenges in a society that does not treat them equally.  

The only people that call protected classes 'nonsensical' are people in that class at the top that doesn't need protection.  It's very easy from that standpoint to point fingers and roll your eyes at those merely trying to be treated equally.  It's also short-sighted and wilfully ignorant.  It's an insult to anyone who has ever struggled with inequity.  

No, this is not off topic.  This is the heart of why the OP asked the question in the first place.  PC is not about hurting the white man or taking his cookies, it's about showing some bloody respect to the people it seems so many in this thread find unworthy of that respect.  






Winston said:


> The only privilege I get is after operating heavy equipment all day, I get to do dishes and vacuum.  Is breathing dust mites a privilege?
> 
> Seriously, every rational adult knows that some people "get it worse" than others.  It's been that way since we crawled out of the muck, and one amphibian sneered at the spots on another.
> Like it or not, folks, there's a bunch of us "counterrevolutionaries" that are kinda fed-up with being told what to think, and how to feel.  It helps no one when we harp on this stuff like it's a debate on whether Mother Theresa should get sainthood.  But to make your objects of devotion more likable, you must make others into villains.
> 
> I don't care if any character is a part of a "protected class" or whatever nonsensical label is currently in vogue.  If the writing works, it works.  Period.
> If it's contrived propaganda designed to manipulate public opinion through targeted emotional responses, that's trash.  Exclamation point.
> 
> Dumbledore is just some goofy character that Rowlings was able to make ton of cash off of.  He swings a twig and speaks in Latin.  I don't care who he lays with.
> As long as it's not one of his students.  Or, is that now a "protected class" as well?  Adiuva nos Deus.


----------



## Squalid Glass

JJBuchholz said:


> When I follow an author, well-known or independent, I want to read posts/tweets about writing. Is that too much to ask for?



Yes.

Authors are allowed to use their personal social media accounts to offer their own personal political opinions. To say otherwise is equivalent to the "shut up and dribble" argument, which is ... ignorant.


----------



## Dluuni

I'd say that it's a completely different question - a marketing question. King has apparently chosen to have a brand that is heavy on activism. That's his prerogative to do.


----------



## luckyscars

Terry D said:


> Because it's fiction. The world and the characters of a novel are simply thoughts put into words on a page. They aren't real. The way a character is presented in the book in which he resides is the reality of that book. Sure, an author can go back and rewrite the book -- although I've never seen anyone do that -- then, for the purposes of the rewrite, the character can be given any sexuality, or other trait, that the writer wishes. The author is free to add details for a character in subsequent books but that has no effect on the earlier version of the character. Too many people responding to this thread are acting like these characters are real people, with real backstories. They are not. They are fictions created solely by the words used on the page to describe them. A character isn't tall unless the writer writes her that way, nor is a character gay unless the writer describes him that way. Characters have no life beyond what we see on the page. If the story needs to have the character possess a particular trait the author damned well better put that on the page somewhere.


[FONT=&Verdana]
[/FONT]
Just to be clear, I personally don’t like/can’t stand people who do what you describe as far as taking elements of fiction way out of context and behaving as though these things are real. The people who start to identify with Jedi as an actual philosophy to live by as opposed to a fictional conceit, or those oddballs who try to play quidditch in real life or tell everybody they’re a Hufflepuff because they’re “loyal, patient, fair”...when it’s grown adults doing that, my default response is usually to inwardly bellow “grow the fuck up”.

[FONT=&Verdana][FONT=&Verdana]But here's the thing...I would never tell them their perception and use of the material is incorrect or invalid. If anything, they are far better readers than I because they possess an ability to internalize, imagine and -- in the context of fan fiction and people trying to reinvent quidditch without broomsticks -- make creative hay from reading a children’s book that I found only passable and still struggle to get excited about. I respect those people as insufferable as they are. I certainly admire their spirit.

I think it’s important to bear in mind there is no “existence” or “truth” or concept of 'real' in fiction. That’s why it’s fiction. If you disagree with that, perhaps you could define what you mean. 'The way a character is presented in a book' is, beyond a basic level, entirely subjective. I doubt you and I would envision any two characters identically and I certainly don't envision Harry Potter like the fanatics do. So what does it even mean to talk about 'the reality of a book'?

Isn't the truth really that a[/FONT] book is not so much what the writer intends or even what they say, but what the reader perceives. To hold that the writers stated intent and what is explicitly stated in the text (in other words, to adopt a fundamentalist or originalist standard) is the litmus test for meaning is a justifiable position if you want to consider books that way (and I tend to) however it is plainly not how everybody operates.   More importantly, if applied consistently, originalism limits our ability to personalize the reading experience: The entire field  becomes dry if one considers only “what is written” as canon and the author’s explicit intent, according to the definitions of what is written, to be the sole authority. Bottom line: Meaning in fiction can exist by consensus, and it can never be settled. A writer can tell us what a character is not, but they can never tell us completely what a character is. In that gray area, there is room for gay Dumbledores and whatever else.[/FONT]

Example: For my BA literary criticism class I wrote a paper on feminism in Harry Potter. Not because I thought feminism in the book was important or even existed as a theme, but simply because I knew I could write such a paper and ace it. That I could, if I wanted to, find that social commentary in the text and shoehorn it into a critique about a random political philosophy I had chosen if I just tried hard enough. And it worked. I found shit loads of material in the book to support this argument. I also, interestingly, found shit loads of material that could have been used to support a counter-argument. Which of course I ignored because it didn’t fit my predetermined point of view. A good book can be this complex. A committed reader can be this blind. I found 'my meaning' in that book easily. It's different than yours, I bet, but nobody could ever _prove_ mine was horse shit.

[FONT=&Verdana][FONT=&Verdana]So what is JK Rowling's actual message about feminism in Harry Potter? Hell if I knew, hell if I cared. What Rowling intended did not matter because I chose not to deem it as important for my purposes - if I had, I would probably have struggled with my paper. There are plenty of books for which we have no idea what the writer meant and for which the story is blurry and we get along discussing the meaning of those just fine. The book meant to me, as the “feminist literary critic”, whatever I wanted it to mean and I could cherry pick subtext to support what I 'believed'.

 Same deal with the gay thing: There are people who swear now they knew all along that Dumbledore was gay and the author herself says she did. Whether I or you believe them or their motives is entirely irrelevant to whether other people read the book that way and claim to perceive the character.  It’s not for us to tell them it’s wrong or pathetic: A book’s meaning, once it is bought and paid for, belongs to the reader, not the writer. This isn’t science: divergence of opinion over characters and themes and even utterly baseless beliefs in what is or is not in the context of a made-up story about made-up people is completely permissible. It’s plain absurd, or neurotic, to argue that certain readings or re-readings however they come are inadmissible.[/FONT][/FONT]


----------



## Winston

velo said:


> Yes, everyone is born with different inherent disadvantages.  But to use that as an argument to sustain social and systemic inequalities that are entirely within a culture's span of control is, frankly, despicable in its dismissiveness of another's challenges in a society that does not treat them equally.
> 
> The only people that call protected classes 'nonsensical' are people in that class at the top that doesn't need protection.  It's very easy from that standpoint to point fingers and roll your eyes at those merely trying to be treated equally.  It's also short-sighted and willfully ignorant.  It's an insult to anyone who has ever struggled with inequity.
> 
> No, this is not off topic.  This is the heart of why the OP asked the question in the first place.  PC is not about hurting the white man or taking his cookies, it's about showing some bloody respect to the people it seems so many in this thread find unworthy of that respect.



Me, and nobody that I know are responsible for any of these "systemic" abuses that are the boogeymen of identity politics apologists.  We work hard, we follow the rules, and we DO NOT OPRESS ANYONE.  Forcing one's socio-political views down the throats of average people does not "win hearts and minds".  Quite the contrary, these ham-fisted attempts at anointing sainthood upon certain people based on some contrived socialist paradigm is a recipe for division.  My God, this is straight out of _Animal Farm_.  Four legs good, two legs bad.  

You think I'm some rich (privileged) white guy?  Really?  
My mom's side of the family cut sugar cane in Puerto Rico.  C&H exploited their asses with lofty claims and free passage to Hawaii.  Their reward was a crappy shack in the hills above Honolulu.  My mom got to see all of her friends carted off after Pearl Harbor.  My grandmother told us grandkids to claim we were Hawaiian, because people think Puerto Ricans are dirty.  
My dad's side of the family were Jehovah's Witnesses that escaped Nazi Germany.  My grandfather busted his arse in a meat-packing plant, only to be fired six months prior to his pension.  I have his lousy gold (plated) watch on my desk.  My dad came home every day covered in automotive grease, and scrimped and saved until he could buy his own shop.  

No damn heroic tales from social justice authors for us.  Just blame and derision, from them and their apologists. Some people's struggles are just more important, noble and honorable.   
My family just wasn't edgy enough.  My apologies for being so boring, and not embracing our victim class.  
Some of us cling to that silly notion that what you do matters more than what your status or class is.


----------



## Squalid Glass

But like ... the point of social justice is to stop those unfair things that happened to your family from happening. Nobody should be treated like dirt because of where they come from or what they look like. That's like ... the point.

It's actually the exact opposite of Animal Farm. But the movement has been portrayed as some sort of revenge fantasy where minorities are gods and white people become serfs. That's the strawman idea of social justice. It's not the truth of what it actually wishes to achieve.

My grandma came from Colombia and didn't know a word of English. Her rise to the middle class was made much harder because she was a Hispanic woman. It shouldn't have been. I would think we would want to eliminate those kinds of unnecessary hardships.


----------



## luckyscars

Winston said:


> Me, and nobody that I know are responsible for any of these "systemic" abuses that are the boogeymen of identity politics apologists.  We work hard, we follow the rules, and we DO NOT OPRESS ANYONE.  Forcing one's socio-political views down the throats of average people does not "win hearts and minds".  Quite the contrary, these ham-fisted attempts at anointing sainthood upon certain people based on some contrived socialist paradigm is a recipe for division.  My God, this is straight out of _Animal Farm_.  Four legs good, two legs bad.
> 
> You think I'm some rich (privileged) white guy?  Really?
> My mom's side of the family cut sugar cane in Puerto Rico.  C&H exploited their asses with lofty claims and free passage to Hawaii.  Their reward was a crappy shack in the hills above Honolulu.  My mom got to see all of her friends carted off after Pearl Harbor.  My grandmother told us grandkids to claim we were Hawaiian, because people think Puerto Ricans are dirty.
> My dad's side of the family were Jehovah's Witnesses that escaped Nazi Germany.  My grandfather busted his arse in a meat-packing plant, only to be fired six months prior to his pension.  I have his lousy gold (plated) watch on my desk.  My dad came home every day covered in automotive grease, and scrimped and saved until he could buy his own shop.
> 
> No damn heroic tales from social justice authors for us.  Just blame and derision, from them and their apologists. Some people's struggles are just more important, noble and honorable.
> My family just wasn't edgy enough.  My apologies for being so boring, and not embracing our victim class.
> Some of us cling to that silly notion that what you do matters more than what your status or class is.



Speaking as a white, straight guy who often gets frustrated with 'social justice warrior' politics...

The point of talking about social hierarchies is not to say that your life can't be hard if you're white or straight or male or able-bodied or whatever. Numerically, most people in poverty in America are white and straight and at least half of them are probably male. That's not in dispute.

The point of talking about social hierarchies is to recognize that your life was not made even harder by being, say, a black trans woman or a gay Muslim man or other even more discriminated-against class than the one into which you were born. Whether you care to admit it or not, you have just acknowledged a _degree of _privilege right here "My grandmother *told us grandkids to claim we were Hawaiian*, because people think Puerto Ricans are dirty." 

The fact you were able to claim you were Hawaiian is, believe it or not, a privilege: It indicates you were able to achieve an advantage. An advantage that a black person (a black Puerto Rican?) would not be able to no matter what  - because nobody is believing a black guy is Hawaiian no matter what he says. A black guy is black.

Now I don't know for sure if what you describe would have been _harder _if you were black, or gay, or black AND gay,  or black AND gay AND Muslim.Jewish, or black AND gay And Muslim AND a hermaphrodite, or the Elephant Man...but I am pretty damn sure it would not have been easier if you were any of those things, right? On the other hand, if you were white you would never have had to worry about anybody thinking you 'dirty'. And that is what we mean by privilege.

Again, I am not trying to dismiss the difficulty of your upbringing. It sounds one hell of a lot tougher than mine and probably most people's and for that you deserve respect. What I am saying is the essence of 'social justice' is to try to eliminate this - the fact you even need to mention your heritage as a means to explain yourself - as an issue. That's got nothing to do with playing victim or anointing sainthood and everything to do with recognizing a reality. Which is the first step to changing it.


----------



## luckyscars

One thing that has not yet been suggested on this thread is the possible reason JKR may have had for keeping Dumbledore's homosexuality unspecified. Assuming she did always consider him gay.

Do we not think it quite possible, likely even, that in the relatively unenlightened nineties/early 2000's, an author probably would have had a much harder time if a major character in her debut novel, a novel aimed at children and 100% dependent on the endorsement of schools (including many religious schools) and parents, had been written as an openly gay man?

This is part of the problem. Everybody always wants to jump on the "THEY SHOULD HAVE WRITTEN IT!" bandwagon but you can't just write whatever the fuck you want and hope to get published, especially if you are writing for children.


----------



## Dluuni

Winston said:


> Me, and nobody that I know are responsible for any of these "systemic" abuses that are the boogeymen of identity politics apologists.  We work hard, we follow the rules, and we DO NOT OPRESS ANYONE.


You are in fact a cog in the machine of those abuses. You did not build the machine, but you are a part of the machine and you take advantage of the fruits of those abuses.

That is not a moral statement, it is a factual statement like "Water is wet". Nobody thinks you should be BLAMED for the situation, just that you should FIX it.

That said, trying to turn the blame back on the victims and whine that they are the ones at fault for making you feel bad for telling you how the world works IS something I am happy to judge people for doing, because my patience for that ran out years ago, after dealing with things like being let go from a job because somebody in the chain thought I was icky.

It is your job to try to break the machine and strive toward equality, because the people the machine is chewing up do not have the power that you do to make things better. You had no control in being put into your position, but you have control over whether you continue to allow the oppression to happen.



Winston said:


> Quite the contrary, these ham-fisted attempts at anointing sainthood upon certain people based on some contrived socialist paradigm is a recipe for division.


Anybody who can be driven to evil by a gentle request to be good was already close enough to walk there. Anybody who says "If you don't tone down your complaints about being abused, you are going to lose me as an ally" was never an ally in the first place; they never cared about oppression and injustice, they just want people to stop telling them about it so they don't have to feel bad about being part of it.

I'm not okay with that. I write in part because I want everyone to know just what is messed up and unjust so that thereafter, people have to make the stark choice of whether to continue to be part of the oppression *knowingly*, or to take action to make the horrible things actually stop.


----------



## dale

velo said:


> Yes, everyone is born with different inherent disadvantages.  But to use that as an argument to sustain social and systemic inequalities that are entirely within a culture's span of control is, frankly, despicable in its dismissiveness of another's challenges in a society that does not treat them equally.
> 
> The only people that call protected classes 'nonsensical' are people in that class at the top that doesn't need protection.  It's very easy from that standpoint to point fingers and roll your eyes at those merely trying to be treated equally.  It's also short-sighted and wilfully ignorant.  It's an insult to anyone who has ever struggled with inequity.
> 
> No, this is not off topic.  This is the heart of why the OP asked the question in the first place.  PC is not about hurting the white man or taking his cookies, it's about showing some bloody respect to the people it seems so many in this thread find unworthy of that respect.



horseshit. and just to be clear? my ex-wife is a black woman and my daughter is mixed. but not even my ex was stupid enough to fall for this clap-trap. 
and all i can do is pray to god my daughter doesn't grow up having this weak-minded victim mentality hanging over her head like some dark cloud robbing
her of her potential.


----------



## luckyscars

dale said:


> horseshit. and just to be clear? my ex-wife is a black woman and my daughter is mixed. but not even my ex was stupid enough to fall for this clap-trap.
> and all i can do is pray to god my daughter doesn't grow up having this weak-minded victim mentality hanging over her head like some dark cloud robbing
> her of her potential.



How about you try to explain why it is horse shit in a way that goes beyond 'it's a victim mentality and I hate it'? 

I would genuinely be very interested to hear your reasoning.


----------



## Winston

> ...What I am saying is the essence of 'social justice' is to try to eliminate this...



I don't see anyone legitimately trying to eliminate anything.  What I see is people trying to justify discrimination with discrimination, and taking a deep dive into the pity pool.
I knew this would denigrate into "Your not dark enough", or gay enough, or whatever metric is used to measure social "goodness".  
How can one ever accept the claims of genuine "inclusiveness" when every effort is made to cleave and separate people into opposing, combative groups? 
Christ, I just told a tale of my family's religious persecution and ethnic abuse.  I should be aggrieved.  But I'm not.  Instead, you're frustrated by me.   

My mother's soul was crushed when, as an 11 year old girl, all of her Japanese friends were rounded-up (by Democrat FDR) and sent away.  She felt abandoned, betrayed.
Now, the idea is to make things right by putting your thumbs on the scale?  Like that would fix broken people like my mother? Or anyone who was wronged in the past? 

Here's a better idea:  It's the 21st Century.  Let's just stop talking (and writing) about people as members of some group.  It's easy to demonize, and do wrong to a "group".
But we can see, and think of people as individuals.  Not as a _gay_ man, or a _black_ woman.  But as unique people with unique traits and experiences. Deserving of our respect as individuals, not as a member of a group.   
Or, we can continue to put people in boxes.  Write as your heart tells you.  Seriously, if that makes sense to you, go ahead.  And God save us from the consequences.


----------



## luckyscars

Winston said:


> I don't see anyone legitimately trying to eliminate anything.  What I see is people trying to justify discrimination with discrimination, and taking a deep dive into the pity pool.



Where has anything remotely like that been said in this thread?



> I knew this would denigrate into "Your not dark enough", or gay enough, or whatever metric is used to measure social "goodness".
> How can one ever accept the claims of genuine "inclusiveness" when every effort is made to cleave and separate people into opposing, combative groups?
> Christ, I just told a tale of my family's religious persecution and ethnic abuse.  I should be aggrieved.  But I'm not.  Instead, you're frustrated by me.
> 
> My mother's soul was crushed when, as an 11 year old girl, all of her Japanese friends were rounded-up (by Democrat FDR) and sent away.  She felt abandoned, betrayed.
> Now, the idea is to make things right by putting your thumbs on the scale?  Like that would fix broken people like my mother? Or anyone who was wronged in the past?



Mein gott, you complain about the victim class and yet seem intent on wanting to portray yourself as a victim...

I don't advocate any 'putting thumbs on scales' to make things right. As far as I know nobody here has suggested that. I think you are suffering from a certain degree of confirmation bias here. You have this preconceived notion of what 'social justice warriors' want to do and are intent on lashing out on that presumption 

The idea that people want to punish you or others to accrue financial or moral reparations for 'protected classes' or any of that nonsense is the kind of right wing false narrative typically found on Tucker Carlson talking points. You can either be open to a conversation or act like a drama queen but you can't have both.



> Here's a better idea:  It's the 21st Century.  Let's just stop talking (and writing) about people as members of some group.  It's easy to demonize, and do wrong to a "group".
> But we can see, and think of people as individuals.  Not as a _gay_ man, or a _black_ woman.  But as unique people with unique traits and experiences. Deserving of our respect as individuals, not as a member of a group.
> Or, we can continue to put people in boxes.  Write as your heart tells you.  Seriously, if that makes sense to you, go ahead.  And God save us from the consequences.



Every non-sociopath _wants _to do that. The problem is a balance has to be struck between 'thinking of people as individuals' and recognizing that society, as a whole, does the exact opposite of that. 

You are right that it is unproductive to belabor identity politics. On the other hand, one must not conflate avoiding identity politics in the name of 'not wanting to put people in boxes' with ignoring or enabling racism, sexism, etc where it undoubtedly still exists. 

It sounds like you do acknowledge discrimination does exist. The question is, where do you draw the line between something being acceptable and unacceptable? Is it sexist that women are still vastly under-represented in political and corporate life and that a committee of mostly men dictates women's reproductive rights? Is it racist that gerrymandering largely takes into account race, that black people are 20% of the population but 70% of the prison population, or that the US Republican party are, right now, using 9/11 as a basis to attack a Muslim congresswoman who had nothing to do with it? Is it indicative of homophobia that a gay wizard in a children's book is controversial? 

If these _aren't_ problems, then at what point do they become problems, in your opinion? Would it have to escalate into something violent, say? Is that the standard?

 If they _are_ problems, how does ignoring them in the name of 'not wanting to do identity politics' stop it happening? Because turning a blind eye sure as shit didn't work in the Nazi Germany your family left, right?

I think this is meandering once again off-topic so I may not be responding further on this particular line, but it's something to think about.


----------



## dale

luckyscars said:


> How about you try to explain why it is horse shit in a way that goes beyond 'it's a victim mentality and I hate it'?
> 
> I would genuinely be very interested to hear your reasoning.



oh. i think it's pretty crystal clear apparent to anyone who has eyes to see. the fact is? you create your own hell. like i work construction. build
decks for major homebuilders. so i'm around a lot of tradesmen for different trades. and all kinds of people on these crews when these houses 
go up. whites. blacks. hispanics. gays. but none of us no matter our race or gender or sexual orientation have fallen for this "victim mentality" crap.
and like we're all just people. we shoot the shit and laugh at jokes. make a living. have families and kids we love. we go home and do our thing.
we're all equal. just people. we ain't blaming some boogyman for our problems in life. but then you have these other people who DO blame a boogyman
for all their problems. and those people? they live in squalid apartment projects with high crime. get food stamps. don't matter their race, gender or
sexual orientation, either. they've decided they wanna be victims. so? they become fucking victims. and that's just the way it is in america.


----------



## Squalid Glass

Winston, you can’t get to the point where society treats people purely as individuals until you break the systematic chains that hold down certain groups. Equality of opportunity is not yet a thing. If we want it to be a thing, we have to acknowledge the systems that make it impossible and destroy them. One of those things is a culture that takes issue every time a diverse person is given representation simply for the fact that they’re getting represented.


----------



## Squalid Glass

dale said:


> oh. i think it's pretty crystal clear apparent to anyone who has eyes to see. the fact is? you create your own hell. like i work construction. build
> decks for major homebuilders. so i'm around a lot of tradesmen for different trades. and all kinds of people on these crews when these houses
> go up. whites. blacks. hispanics. gays. but none of us no matter our race or gender or sexual orientation have fallen for this "victim mentality" crap.
> and like we're all just people. we shoot the shit and laugh at jokes. make a living. have families and kids we love. we go home and do our thing.
> we're all equal. just people. we ain't blaming some boogyman for our problems in life. but then you have these other people who DO blame a boogyman
> for all their problems. and those people? they live in squalid apartment projects with high crime. get food stamps. don't matter their race, gender or
> sexual orientation, either. they've decided they wanna be victims. so? they become fucking victims. and that's just the way it is in america.



This is literally a straw man and a gross generalization based on absolutely no evidence. It’s also illogical. People voluntarily choose to live on food stamps in the projects because they want to be victims? Why would anybody do this? And what people are blaming all of their problems on a boogeyman? You don’t think it’s possible that people stuck in poverty are trying to break free of it, but things like red lining housing discrimination, low quality socioeconomic schools, and community violence make it monumentally  more difficult for them? Like, where does this mentality come from that says anyone less fortunate than me is screwed because they want to be screwed? What evidence is there of that?


----------



## dale

Squalid Glass said:


> This is literally a straw man and a gross generalization based on absolutely no evidence. It’s also illogical. People voluntarily choose to live on food stamps in the projects because they want to be victims? Why would anybody do this? And what people are blaming all of their problems on a boogeyman? You don’t think it’s possible that people stuck in poverty are trying to break free of it, but things like red lining housing discrimination, low quality socioeconomic schools, and community violence make it monumentally  more difficult for them? Like, where does this mentality come from that says anyone less fortunate than me is screwed because they want to be screwed? What evidence is there of that?



like i said...you create your own hell. you can choose to live in it as long as you wish.


----------



## luckyscars

dale said:


> oh. i think it's pretty crystal clear apparent to anyone who has eyes to see. the fact is? you create your own hell. like i work construction. build
> decks for major homebuilders. so i'm around a lot of tradesmen for different trades. and all kinds of people on these crews when these houses
> go up. whites. blacks. hispanics. gays. but none of us no matter our race or gender or sexual orientation have fallen for this "victim mentality" crap.
> and like we're all just people. we shoot the shit and laugh at jokes. make a living. have families and kids we love. we go home and do our thing.
> we're all equal. just people. we ain't blaming some boogyman for our problems in life. but then you have these other people who DO blame a boogyman
> for all their problems. and those people? they live in squalid apartment projects with high crime. get food stamps. don't matter their race, gender or
> sexual orientation, either. they've decided they wanna be victims. so? they become fucking victims. and that's just the way it is in america.



I think a big reason why there is such a disconnect is that generally speaking it is very difficult to hate other people when it's up close and personal and very easy when its not.

I can't count the number of people I have known who have thought nothing of saying racist crap and yet when they are forced to be in a situation when they are around people of color or whoever they otherwise blame for the 'downfall of society' they get along great with them. 

An acquaintance of mine who is a southern baptist and total homophobe got a job with us. Two months later and he's saying my boss, an extremely effeminate gay dude, is 'awesome' and 'the best boss he's ever had' and they're always laughing and joking. Yet on his own time he'll still talk about how he thinks homosexuality is an abomination. This kind of cognitive dissonance and double-think is rampant.

So no, in short, the fact you don't see it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. The same people who laugh and joke with other races are often the ones who will talk about how 'blacks' are drug dealers, Muslims are terrorists, Mexicans are dirty or whatever else. Studies show they will typically also carry those values into the voting booth. My Southern Baptist acquaintance may laugh and joke with my gay boss but he still won't read a book about a gay man or vote for a gay Presidential Candidate and if he had a son who came out gay I think it's an even 50/50 he would disown him. He sure says he would.


----------



## dale

luckyscars said:


> I think a big reason why there is such a disconnect is that generally speaking it is very difficult to hate other people when it's up close and personal and very easy when its not.
> 
> I can't count the number of people I have known who have thought nothing of saying racist crap and yet when they are forced to be in a situation when they are around people of color or whoever they otherwise blame for the 'downfall of society' they get along great with them.
> 
> An acquaintance of mine who is a southern baptist and total homophobe got a job with us. Two months later and he's saying my boss, an extremely effeminate gay dude, is 'awesome' and 'the best boss he's ever had' and they're always laughing and joking. Yet on his own time he'll still talk about how he thinks homosexuality is an abomination. This kind of cognitive dissonance and double-think is rampant.
> 
> So no, in short, the fact you don't see it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. The same people who laugh and joke with other races are often the ones who will talk about how 'blacks' are drug dealers, Muslims are terrorists, Mexicans are dirty or whatever else. Studies show they will typically also carry those values into the voting booth. My Southern Baptist acquaintance may laugh and joke with my gay boss but he still won't read a book about a gay man or vote for a gay Presidential Candidate and if he had a son who came out gay I think it's an even 50/50 he would disown him. He sure says he would.



lol. i know how liberals love pointing that finger of accusation at a white person who says..."but i have black friends"....as somehow a ridiculous
sign in itself a more right wing thinking person is "racist". i've always found this quite hilarious. but? i don't think i personally can even be pigeonholed
into this retarded category. I MARRIED THE GIRL. and i don't think any actual racist is gonna go that god damn far to prove he's not a fucking racist.


----------



## Squalid Glass

dale said:


> like i said...you create your own hell. you can choose to live in it as long as you wish.



That’s a mantra, not an argument.

And to be fair, it’s not like I don’t know this argument. I was raised in a fundamentalist Christian cult whose mantra was “change your thinking” for every problem. But the reality, my friend, is that a change in thinking is not always sufficient to overcome every problem. Sometimes you need help. Sometimes there are things outside your control that weigh you down. Personal responsibility can take you a long way, but it isn’t everything.

Ugh, but lucky is right. This train has gone well off the tracks from the original discussion, so I will not derail it further.


----------



## dale

Squalid Glass said:


> That’s a mantra, not an argument.



well..then i'll explain it from personal experience. in the 1990s, i was a dopehead and a drug dealer. it ended up in pure hell.
even went to prison a few years over it. but these were the choices i made. i did that to myself. would you like i play the victim
role for these misfortunes? blame it society or the jews or something? blame it on corporate greed? blame it on donald trump?
would this make you feel better? because it sure as fuck wouldn't me. if there were times in my life that i became a trainwreck? 
it was ME driving the train. no one else. me.


----------



## Dluuni

dale said:


> I MARRIED THE GIRL. and i don't think any actual racist is gonna go that god damn far to prove he's not a fucking racist.


I think if you actually asked her to point out some of the stuff she deals with, and LISTENED without arguing, that you would find it eye-opening.

By the way, in interviews, one of the most consistent statements that they get from literal cross-burning KKK members in hoods when they are talked to while they are having rallies and planning to burn crosses on yards and things is "I'm not a racist." Racist isn't a self-identification, it's an attribute everybody has that takes constant vigilance to minimize.


----------



## dale

Dluuni said:


> I think if you actually asked her to point out some of the stuff she deals with, and LISTENED without arguing, that you would find it eye-opening.
> 
> By the way, in interviews, one of the most consistent statements that they get from literal cross-burning KKK members in hoods when they are talked to while they are having rallies and planning to burn crosses on yards and things is "I'm not a racist." Racist isn't a self-identification, it's an attribute everybody has that takes constant vigilance to minimize.



pfft. lol. very funny. that girl is 22 years younger than me. now she has a big house in the burbs and a platinum card. 
and i'm a fucking white gypsy barely able to keep my head out of the river from drowning. what the fuck she gonna tell me?
because how hard her life as been sure as hell ain't gonna be it.


----------



## Dluuni

dale said:


> how hard her life as been sure as hell ain't gonna be it.


It's not about how hard your life is or how much success you have achieved. It's the extra annoyances and hurdles one person has to deal with that another person doesn't because of how society sees them not as an individual but as a member of a group.


----------



## epimetheus

Winston said:


> You think I'm some rich (privileged) white guy?  Really? ...



Being from a poor white background i have sympathy for this perspective, i've never felt that i've had an advantage. I could point to
Michelle Obama, or just the Pakistani parents of a classmate who are pharmacists who are much better off than my family. I'm at a disadvantage compared to these under-represented people.  But that's not what privilege is about: no one but a few vocal extremists are saying all white males have it better than all other people - money is a much bigger factor in determining privilege. But ethnicity and even gender are still factors.

This talk by a mathematician explains it better than i can; the relevant bit starts from 27:00 and goes on for about 10 minutes, although the whole talk is interesting anyway. She uses prime numbers and their products to model the theory of privilege. 




Dluuni said:


> Because it's sloppy. "Oh, I forgot to mention this detail!"



I've only read the original books, and not avidly, so please correct any mistakes. 

I thought there were some clues to their relationship in the original books? For instance, from the Deathly Hallows...



> However, there can be no doubt that Dumbledore delayed, for some five years of turmoil, fatalities and disappearances, his attack upon Gellert Grindelwald. Was it lingering affection for the man...



At least we know that Dumbledore has sufficient affection for Grindelwald to delay going after him. Maybe Rolwing could have made it more explicit here, but it wasn't strictly necessary for that part of the story.


Also, i'm been advised (on this forum) not to add details to the world if they are not relevant, only adding them if they become so. I currently have a character in my WIP that i imagine as being black. It's entirely irrelevant to the story and even his personality so i haven't mentioned it. I don't plan for the colour of his skin to be relevant, but surely i reserve the right to change my mind if a good idea suggests itself? Or should i bring attention to the colour of his skin just in case? Afterall, it does jar when you have got used to imagining a character one way just to be told to imagine them in a different way much later - especially if it's relevant to the plot so can't just stick to my initial picture.


----------



## Terry D

Squalid Glass said:


> Ah! See, this should really be the heart of the debate.
> 
> Now, I respectfully disagree with your assessment there, Terry, because that's not how these multi media franchises work anymore. The stories continue on in other pieces of media that often modify the original source material. A lot of what Rowling has been criticized for has been retcons she's posted on Pottermore, which is like her extended universe canonical website. She'll often post writing there that is intended to continue the ethos of the Harry Potter world. Some of the stuff with Dumbledore has been because Fantastic Beasts is the current iteration of the Harry Potter IP, and Dumbledore's relationship with Grindelwald is central to that narrative.
> 
> This is really no different than the expanded universe books that for so long modified the Star Wars universe. Marvel also does this with their one shots or when they supplement their movies with tie in comics. These franchises don't just exist on the pages of the source material anymore: they are intended to be expanded upon because their fans have a demand for more and more content.
> 
> And while I'm inclined to agree with Dluuni that issues of representation can feel like cop outs if they are not present in the source material (and certainly that they do no good to the community they are trying to be inclusive to), I can't fault Rowling to the degree others have for doing something that has been consistently done for a long time. I also find fault with the side calling this an sjw retcon because they don't seem to be having the same sort of triggered-level reactions to Rowling's other retcons, so to me, it suggests an issue with the nature of the retcon, not the retcon itself.



Don't get me wrong, I'm not faulting Rowling in any way. It's her canon, she can do as she wishes. But I doubt if she had this entire universe planned out to the extent to which it has grown when she was pedaling Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone to publishers. All I'm saying is that she did not depict Dumbledore as gay in that book, so, since he's not a real person just words on a page, in that book he's not gay. She may have envisioned him as gay, but that doesn't matter in the world of that book. If the book had sold poorly and the subsequent books never published, then anyone who picked up a copy and read it would simply see the old wizard as only that, a wise and caring old magician. In that book, and any others which precede JKR's 'outing' of him, he is only what he is written as. 

I have a minor character in one of my novels who I came to envision as lesbian after I finished the book. If I include her in future books I may describe her as such _if it serves a purpose in the story_, but, until I do, the character cannot be seen as gay. What if I change my mind and decide the story is best served by this character having a heterosexual relationship with an antagonist? Does that 'change' the original depiction of that character? Of course not. Characters in a developing series are like cells in a developing embryo, some differentiate early in the gestation period, others much later on. But at any stage, for that moment in time (or, in the book we are currently reading) each cell is what it is at that moment.

This has been made more complex than I ever intended my point to be, which is: Each book is a discrete entity and any characters portrayed in that book are only what they are written as in that book. Our characters, even the best ones we create, are simply two dimensional representations of imagined people. They are nothing more than what the words we use to describe them tell the reader they are.


----------



## Kevin

dale said:


> like i said...you create your own hell. you can choose to live in it as long as you wish.


do any crime long enough and you're gonna get caught. 

I don't know but perhaps some of you in your 'priveledge' don't get it.

Simple things like not doing homework, not showing up for school; not showing up for work, not paying your bills, auto registration, your parking ticket, your moving violation, auto insurance; then you get pulled over; then they find drugs, and - surprise! you have a warrant (because you didn't pay your ticket).

All this not paying, not working, and things snowballing happened with people (in my privilege) that I grew up with. Right or wrong skin color didn't help them. They were screw ups by choice. 

All of this stuff is common, with predictable outcomes. Don't show up, maybe get stoned instead, get fired, lose your car, don't pay your bills....and _start doing crimes._ That's how you do it. It's called Self-sabotage. 

One playmate, 13, doing crimes, complained that all the prosecutors and judges were white. He'd learned that one in 'Juvie'. That's right: the System, the racist system did it to him.

Someone asked: "How is it, you suppose, that you are even meeting these judges and prosecutors in the first place?" 

"I'm a victim."


----------



## Cephus

luckyscars said:


> “I don’t pay attention to Harry Potter but I have a strong opinion on its character and author”.
> 
> WTF kind of “evidence” should she have provided? Seriously, what are you even talking about?
> 
> Can you “prove” you’re straight, Cephus? Because if you can’t, I don’t recognize that you are. Not only that, I’m going to accuse you of lying about your straightness and/or using it to make yourself look good. See how stupid that sounds?



I've already mentioned it in this post. She didn't give any reason that I'm aware of that if Dumbledore was gay all along, why she didn't write it into the books. Why was it only done in retrospect? She hasn't explained that, so far as I know. She hasn't said that Scholastic forced her to stop. She hasn't shown it existed in any manuscript. She hasn't even tried. It doesn't matter what she has in her head, I only care if she can prove that she had this in mind all along.  And she doesn't even try.

And yes, my wife and children prove I'm straight.  Thanks for asking.


----------



## Cephus

Squalid Glass said:


> I don’t necessarily agree that she needs evidence. I mean, it’s her story. She can do whatever she wants with it either while writing or after publication. My original point in this discussion was that the utilization of social justice simply for social justice’s sake doesn’t really service social justice or a story very well, but sometimes intent is a very difficult thing to judge. In this case, her retcons have actually upset the lgbtq+ community more than the free speech warrior side, which is kind of ironic.
> 
> But again I reiterate, she did reveal Dumbledore’s sexuality in 2007, the year the last book was published. So is it a retcon? Yes, though lucky’s point about defaulting a character’s orientation to straight is well taken. Is it in response to some sort of political moment? Originally, no.
> 
> Furthermore, the real issue isn’t really the retcon. It’s what she’s coming out and changing. I mean, nobody would bat an eye if she came out and said that McGonagall was divorced or something. The outrage on the left is in response to a lack of representation, and the outrage on the right is because by simply saying she wrote a gay character, she automatically becomes an sjw pushing an ideology. To me, there are issues with both sides of those responses, but one of them seems a bit more strawmanny than the other.



Yes, it's her story, but now she's coming back and saying that the story that she wrote isn't actually the story she's now pushing. That story is on every book store shelf in the nation. Go read it.  None of these details exist in any copy of the book. Now, if she wants to revise the series and put gay Dumbledore or divorced McGonigall or whoever the Jewish wizard in the book, fine. If she wants to write additional works where those things are true, that's fine too.  Her universe, she can do with it whatever she wants. Of course, when she tried to do that with Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, that didn't sell so well, did it?

It really feels like she found the whiny side of the Internet in 2007 and because she has a thin skin and doesn't like criticism, that's when she started retroactively changing things so people wouldn't be upset. That's the whole point here. I don't care what she does with her story, it's her story. I care that she's wishy-washy.


----------



## luckyscars

Cephus said:


> I've already mentioned it in this post. She didn't give any reason that I'm aware of that if Dumbledore was gay all along, why she didn't write it into the books. Why was it only done in retrospect? She hasn't explained that, so far as I know. She hasn't said that Scholastic forced her to stop. She hasn't shown it existed in any manuscript. She hasn't even tried. It doesn't matter what she has in her head, I only care if she can prove that she had this in mind all along.  And she doesn't even try.
> 
> And yes, my wife and children prove I'm straight.  Thanks for asking.



Squalid Glass already pointed out that JK Rowling said Dumbledore was gay over a decade ago, so that point is asked and answered. 

As to why it wasn't done in the very beginning, I already pointed out that writing an openly gay character in a book aimed at children and 100% reliant on the support of schools and parents in the nineties was probably not in any writer's capacity, least of all a brand new writer with no publishing credits and therefore no clout. Look you have to be realistic with this stuff. The world is homophobic and it was even more homophobic in 1997 or whatever. You couldn't go writing openly gay characters left, right and center and expect it to be an easy sell. Especially in a YA market. Scholastic didn't need to say anything. We all know how this works - they aren't going to tell you, they're just going to say no. It would be equivalent to me trying to sell a YA book featuring extreme BDSM or auto-erotic asphyxia or swinging. That's literally how homosexuality was viewed up until fairly recently - as a perversion.

I sense I am wasting my breath on this, but again it is impossible to prove a character is gay short of showing them actually doing gay sexual acts (and even then, not all men who have sex with men are gay) so the whole notion of 'writing a character as gay' is not possible, unless it comes down to the writer saying "Dumbledore was a gay wizard" or "Dumbledore called his boyfriend to tell him he loved him" or something similarly direct and irrefutable, which may not be possible to write. Because context. 

In any case, having this expectation of proof when it comes to a sexual orientation smacks of a double-standard. We don't expect that kind of 'proof' to believe a character is straight, hence I asked you how you might prove your sexual orientation. And you can't, by the way, because plenty of gay men have or had a wife and kids. But your orientation is a personal matter and I don't need you to prove it, of course. Which rather begs the question why you would need Rowling to prove her wizard is gay in order to believe it...


----------



## Kevin

The last book came out in 2007. There was no gay Dumbledore written in it. So... no question has been settled. 
Obfuscation, that is clouding things by going off on tangents/ side subjects, mischaracterizing things, twisting them to fit are both, erhm... tactics. They don't get at the truth; they talk around it. Still, despite all of that, as per the op... people are annoyed.


----------



## Terry D

velo said:


> Yes, everyone is born with different inherent disadvantages.  But to use that as an argument to sustain social and systemic inequalities that are entirely within a culture's span of control is, frankly, despicable in its dismissiveness of another's challenges in a society that does not treat them equally.
> 
> The only people that call protected classes 'nonsensical' are people in that class at the top that doesn't need protection.  It's very easy from that standpoint to point fingers and roll your eyes at those merely trying to be treated equally.  It's also short-sighted and wilfully ignorant.  It's an insult to anyone who has ever struggled with inequity.



This is just not correct. Show me what 'equality' looks like. It's a mythical concept not supported by nature, society, government, or even religion. I challenge you to find one person who has never suffered from inequality. The human psyche will not allow any of us to really view everyone equally. The sooner we all understand that the sooner we can start working on ways to make those perceptions less of a problem because unequal doesn't have to mean inferior. We will never be color-blind, orientation-blind, or culture-blind, nor will we ever all share the same values. But, maybe, we can find enough common ground to share some of them, enough perhaps that we can try to give as many people as possible equal opportunities. We are a long way from that, due in large part because too many people consider their mythical equality more important than that of anyone else.

If I piss in someone else's Corn Flakes, tell me about it. Call me on it. But if you piss in mine simply in the name of 'equality' then you are no different than I. Hey! Look at that! One level of equality.


----------



## velo

dale said:


> horseshit. and just to be clear? my ex-wife is a black woman and my daughter is mixed. but not even my ex was stupid enough to fall for this clap-trap.
> and all i can do is pray to god my daughter doesn't grow up having this weak-minded victim mentality hanging over her head like some dark cloud robbing
> her of her potential.



Your lack of belief and apparent ignorance of the subject changes nothing.  The ethnicity of your ex-wife is immaterial as are your shallow responses.  The sciences of sociology, politics, economics, etc have all shown that there is inherent bias in this society.  

There is a lack of rationality in so many response in this thread that only serves to prove the point.  The close-minded hysteria of the "oppressed" white man is nothing but fear (conscious or not) of being toppled from the high rung on the social ladder.  You may not have as much money as a specific black family but anecdotes prove nothing.  You ever been pulled over for driving a car in a white neighbourhood because you have brown skin?  You ever have to prove yourself more than the white guy when applying for the same job?  

The honest truth is that both through circumstance of birth and what appears to be willful ignorance mixed with a shit tonne of cognitive bias you actually don't have a bloody clue what you're talking about.  The mere fact that this thread exists shows how endemic the problem is.  



			
				winston said:
			
		

> We work hard, we follow the rules, and we DO NOT OPRESS ANYONE.



I'll grant that you probably have never consciously or deliberately done anything that you view as 'oppression' yet you have absolutely oppressed people not only with your dismissive views of their experience that you have no real ability to analyse and also you likely don't even know what the word 'oppression' means in this context.  Why do black parents have to educate their kids about how to interact with police and white parents don't?  I've heard successful Hollywood stars of colour talking about how despite reaching the heights of economic and career success in the US they are still afraid of their kids driving a nice car through a nice part of town.  You oppress these people every day because you don't give a shit about their views or life experience which you've made plainly clear.   Your participation in the system, as does mine, continues the machinery of oppression every day you get up and so heroically go to work.  

You had a tough childhood and came from a poor family?  So did a lot of us.  The entire point of this is that white people, men especially, had a _far_ easier time getting out those circumstances then a black or hispanic would in the very same situation.  The utter sophistry of everything you've said in this thread is mind-boggling and gives me little hope that I'll ever see a day when people will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.


----------



## luckyscars

Terry D said:


> I challenge you to find one person who has never suffered from inequality.







View attachment 23647


----------



## Winston

> Mein gott, you complain about the victim class and yet seem intent on wanting to portray yourself as a victim...



No one, not me, or anyone in my family is a victim.  Victimhood is a choice.  Getting screwed over happens.  Getting screwed over because of your race, class, gender, orientation, beliefs or for any other reason... happens.  
I don't condone anyone getting screwed-over.  When it happens to me, or my family, we get up and move on.  I don't need some heroic figure to inspire me.  Teaching young people through pap literature that their wizard is more heroic based on his lifestyle choice is ineffective and counterproductive.
People are heroic through deeds.  They are victims through inaction.  Navel gazing at your "orientation" is inaction.  

However, there are a number of white quasi-intellectuals with a savior complex that think they must "help" certain groups.  As if teaching someone dependency and groupthink will serve them well.  Rowling jumped on that rickety band wagon.  Thank God she saved some poor confused kid.  Have a cookie.  

It irritates rich, white old women like Rowling that someone from my circumstances succeeded without the help of the likes of her kind.  I am an American, not Puerto Rican (hyphen) anything.  My gay nephew is libertarian / conservative, happy as hell and well off.  Despite the fact his dad was a complete a-hole.  I love the kid.  Funny, we didn't need any snotty liberals beating us over the head to figure it out.  
Too bad condescending writers only want to focus on the f-ed up stuff.  The world isn't that bad.  In a couple of generations, my family went from owning nothing to...well I'm good.  Real good.  I'll be retiring in a few years on 5 to 10 acres, everything paid off and a nice little nest egg.  All it took was a lot of hard work and discipline.  The writers that helped me were Huxley, Orwell, Rand and Buckley.  Was Ayn Rand gay?  Don't know, don't care.  Orwell was a commie.  So what?  

And please.  Tell me that my success was due to "white privilege".  Dishonor the hard work and sacrifice of my parents and grandparents.  Go ahead.  Do it.


----------



## Terry D

luckyscars said:


> View attachment 23647



You forget about the 'Witch Hunt'


----------



## luckyscars

Winston said:


> No one, not me, or anyone in my family is a victim.  Victimhood is a choice.  Getting screwed over happens.  Getting screwed over because of your race, class, gender, orientation, beliefs or for any other reason... happens. I don't condone anyone getting screwed-over. When it happens to me, or my family, we get up and move on.



Totally. Like this bunch of whining layabouts. Just needed to get up and move on, all of 'em. "Victimhood is a choice", don'tcha know.

View attachment 23648




> I don't need some heroic figure to inspire me.  Teaching young people through pap literature that their wizard is more heroic based on his lifestyle choice is ineffective and counterproductive.
> People are heroic through deeds.  They are victims through inaction.  Navel gazing at your "orientation" is inaction.



Not your business to decide what others need, and if you have a problem with fictional wizards influencing people through their lifestyle choice, I assume you must really have a problem with Jesus Christ.



> It irritates rich, white old women like Rowling that someone from my circumstances succeeded without the help of the likes of her kind.  I am an American, not Puerto Rican (hyphen) anything.  My gay nephew is libertarian / conservative, happy as hell and well off.  Despite the fact his dad was a complete a-hole.  I love the kid.  Funny, we didn't need any snotty liberals beating us over the head to figure it out.
> Too bad condescending writers only want to focus on the f-ed up stuff.  The world isn't that bad.  In a couple of generations, my family went from owning nothing to...well I'm good.  Real good.  I'll be retiring in a few years on 5 to 10 acres, everything paid off and a nice little nest egg.  All it took was a lot of hard work and discipline.  The writers that helped me were Huxley, Orwell, Rand and Buckley.  Was Ayn Rand gay?  Don't know, don't care.  Orwell was a commie.  So what?



Rowling was a dirt poor single mother when she wrote Harry Potter, but don't let a little thing like 'facts' cloud your disdain. Not even sure what the rest of your point is about and rather bored of it. Something about snotty liberals blah blah. Yawn.



> And please.  Tell me that my success was due to "white privilege".  Dishonor the hard work and sacrifice of my parents and grandparents.  Go ahead.  Do it.



I don't know what your 'success' was about. I don't care. I only know it wouldn't have been easier if you had darker skin or been gay. But I sense you aren't really receptive to that and would rather 'navel gaze' on your own victimhood while disparaging others for mentioning theirs. Pure delusion.


----------



## Winston

luckyscars said:


> Totally. Like this bunch of whining layabouts. Just needed to get up and move on, all of 'em. "Victimhood is a choice", don'tcha know.
> 
> View attachment 23648



Funny, you wanted to make this personal, and ad hominin.
But, as long as we're doing Latin, look up _Reductio ad Hitlerum_
That means you lose.


----------



## luckyscars

Winston said:


> Funny, you wanted to make this personal, and ad hominin.
> But, as long as we're doing Latin, look up _Reductio ad Hitlerum_
> That means you lose.



Actually, you're the one who makes it personal. You literally haven't shut up about *your struggles*. Nobody asked you to talk about your bloody family. You can't use yourself as evidence and then cry 'personal attack' when anybody challenges you, sorry.

As far as Hitler: Your point, as far as you had one, was to say that 'gay people need to stop feeling victimized'. The picture I posted was of a group of gay men dying in a concentration camp for want of empathy and justice. 

The Reductio ad Hitlerum concerns inappropriate or absurdist use of Nazism for things which are not related to Nazi Germany. It's entirely relevant and appropriate to speak of Nazi Germany in any debate regarding the persecution of homosexuals - any historian would agree. You don't like it, that probably says more about you.


----------



## velo

Winston said:


> And please.  Tell me that my success was due to "white privilege".  Dishonor the hard work and sacrifice of my parents and grandparents.  Go ahead.  Do it.



No one said that.  But you're no bloody hero for working hard.  Your hard work PLUS the advantages race and gender buy you in this country allowed you to succeed.  You are conflating two different ideas.  Brown people have to work HARDER to achieve LESS because of the system you seem Hell-bent on perpetuating.


----------



## Cephus

JJBuchholz said:


> I stopped following Stephen King on Twitter because of things like this. It got to the point where more than three quarters of his tweets were about politics/political grandstanding/political endorsements/political flame wars and hardly anything about his books, what he was working on, or writing in general.
> 
> When I follow an author, well-known or independent, I want to read posts/tweets about writing. Is that too much to ask for?



I agree. I don't care about anyone's political views. I care about their writing. I want to know what they're working on. If you insist on stuffing your books or social media full of political talk, then I'll just stop reading your books and reading your social media. You've lost me. I don't care.


----------



## Cephus

luckyscars said:


> One thing that has not yet been suggested on this thread is the possible reason JKR may have had for keeping Dumbledore's homosexuality unspecified. Assuming she did always consider him gay.
> 
> Do we not think it quite possible, likely even, that in the relatively unenlightened nineties/early 2000's, an author probably would have had a much harder time if a major character in her debut novel, a novel aimed at children and 100% dependent on the endorsement of schools (including many religious schools) and parents, had been written as an openly gay man?
> 
> This is part of the problem. Everybody always wants to jump on the "THEY SHOULD HAVE WRITTEN IT!" bandwagon but you can't just write whatever the fuck you want and hope to get published, especially if you are writing for children.



And that's fine, I've already pointed out that possibility. But where does it go from "I always intended this" to pure virtue signalling?  Especially for someone like Rowling who has done this kind of thing continually? Where is the letter from her agent saying she has to take that part out?  Where is the e-mail from the publisher saying that they won't publish the book with gay Dumbledore in it? Where is any corroboration that she intended to do anything?


----------



## Aquilo

luckyscars said:


> Squalid Glass already pointed out that JK Rowling said Dumbledore was gay over a decade ago, so that point is asked and answered.
> 
> As to why it wasn't done in the very beginning, I already pointed out that writing an openly gay character in a book aimed at children and 100% reliant on the support of schools and parents in the nineties was probably not in any writer's capacity, least of all a brand new writer with no publishing credits and therefore no clout. Look you have to be realistic with this stuff. The world is homophobic and it was even more homophobic in 1997 or whatever. You couldn't go writing openly gay characters left, right and center and expect it to be an easy sell. Especially in a YA market. Scholastic didn't need to say anything. We all know how this works - they aren't going to tell you, they're just going to say no. It would be equivalent to me trying to sell a YA book featuring extreme BDSM or auto-erotic asphyxia or swinging. That's literally how homosexuality was viewed up until fairly recently - as a perversion.
> 
> I sense I am wasting my breath on this, but again it is impossible to prove a character is gay short of showing them actually doing gay sexual acts (and even then, not all men who have sex with men are gay) so the whole notion of 'writing a character as gay' is not possible, unless it comes down to the writer saying "Dumbledore was a gay wizard" or "Dumbledore called his boyfriend to tell him he loved him" or something similarly direct and irrefutable, which may not be possible to write. Because context.
> 
> In any case, having this expectation of proof when it comes to a sexual orientation smacks of a double-standard. We don't expect that kind of 'proof' to believe a character is straight, hence I asked you how you might prove your sexual orientation. And you can't, by the way, because plenty of gay men have or had a wife and kids. But your orientation is a personal matter and I don't need you to prove it, of course. Which rather begs the question why you would need Rowling to prove her wizard is gay in order to believe it...



I understand this side of the argument. More than. Nearly half of the banned novels in America are lgbt+. There's always been a 'hush-hush' aspect to publishing over the years when it comes to portraying anything outside of the straight spectrum. Yes Rowling would have been restricted to publishing trope, yes she would have perhaps made a choice at one stage, and yes, she would have stated outside of her work that Dumbledore was gay, Harry bisexual. Not to mention she's not going to blacken her publishing company's name by saying they advised her to not use LGBT characters if that's the case. Publishers have a lot of control over authors, especially new authors. 

But does that make the argument any better? She chose_ not _to add a gay/bi relationship because of pressure, because of getting published over realistic portrayal, therefore helping to push the whole 'keep it in the closet' debate when it comes to LGBT characters in fiction?

It's easy for me to judge nearly 20 years down the line. I've been writing Gay psych thrillers for 8 years now, and working as an editor for MM publications for nearly ten. It's long before my start time. But, yes, I've been asked to make my characters straight, and it came to down saying yes or no. But my target audience is different, where sexuality plays a major part. The whole point with Rowlings? It hasn't been shown on page until now. If it hasn't been shown on page and it matters to her -- which she's saying it does -- then it should have been on page long before now. No gay, bi, straight person will go through X amount of books without showing who they're attracted to if it mattered that much to the author and overall story. It really is no good saying outside of the story: but he is gay. If he's gay, bi, straight, and it's relevant to plot -- show it.

She didn't have her book banned because of LGBT portrayal where numerous authors in her era of writing before her did. So yeah, I can understand why her character being portrayed now as a gay on page is annoying a few people. She's not helped quell the debate of 'hush-hush, don't talk about LGBT relationships' in the long run, if that is the case.


----------



## Squalid Glass

Winston said:


> Funny, you wanted to make this personal, and ad hominin.
> But, as long as we're doing Latin, look up _Reductio ad Hitlerum_
> That means you lose.



I’m currently teaching one of my classes rhetorical fallacies. They’re favorite one is the fallacy fallacy. I’ve never actually seen it used in practice until this post.


----------



## Cephus

luckyscars said:


> Squalid Glass already pointed out that JK Rowling said Dumbledore was gay over a decade ago, so that point is asked and answered.
> 
> As to why it wasn't done in the very beginning, I already pointed out that writing an openly gay character in a book aimed at children and 100% reliant on the support of schools and parents in the nineties was probably not in any writer's capacity, least of all a brand new writer with no publishing credits and therefore no clout. Look you have to be realistic with this stuff. The world is homophobic and it was even more homophobic in 1997 or whatever. You couldn't go writing openly gay characters left, right and center and expect it to be an easy sell. Especially in a YA market. Scholastic didn't need to say anything. We all know how this works - they aren't going to tell you, they're just going to say no. It would be equivalent to me trying to sell a YA book featuring extreme BDSM or auto-erotic asphyxia or swinging. That's literally how homosexuality was viewed up until fairly recently - as a perversion.
> 
> I sense I am wasting my breath on this, but again it is impossible to prove a character is gay short of showing them actually doing gay sexual acts (and even then, not all men who have sex with men are gay) so the whole notion of 'writing a character as gay' is not possible, unless it comes down to the writer saying "Dumbledore was a gay wizard" or "Dumbledore called his boyfriend to tell him he loved him" or something similarly direct and irrefutable, which may not be possible to write. Because context.
> 
> In any case, having this expectation of proof when it comes to a sexual orientation smacks of a double-standard. We don't expect that kind of 'proof' to believe a character is straight, hence I asked you how you might prove your sexual orientation. And you can't, by the way, because plenty of gay men have or had a wife and kids. But your orientation is a personal matter and I don't need you to prove it, of course. Which rather begs the question why you would need Rowling to prove her wizard is gay in order to believe it...



He was gay as of 2007. That doesn't mean he was gay as of 1997 when the first book came out.  Like I said, I don't care. I only care that she seems to be trying to score social justice points. It didn't appear in any book or any movie. It came completely out of the blue, only after people started complaining that there weren't any gay characters in the books. It's the same way she pulled a Jewish wizard out of her ass after people complained there weren't any. This seems to be a pattern with her.

The real problem here isn't that Dumbledore is gay, it's that it doesn't matter. I don't care if McGonigall is straight or gay. I don't care if any of them are. It has zero bearing on the story. She didn't come out and identify which characters were straight and which ones were gay because it made a difference. It doesn't. Someone's sexuality is entirely irrelevant to the Harry Potter universe. She did it only because she was virtue signalling to a particular political faction.

The fact is, it shouldn't make a difference. When I watched Star Wars in the theater in 1977, I didn't care if Luke Skywalker was gay or straight. It didn't matter. It had no bearing whatsoever on the movie.  I didn't know and I didn't  care. It was irrelevant, just as irrelevant as Dumbledore's sexuality in a children's book. But today, we've got this really idiotic identity politics horseshit where every conceivable "identity" has to be represented so people don't whine. It shouldn't matter. The fact that it does shows just how far we've fallen as a society.


----------



## Squalid Glass

Cephus said:


> He was gay as of 2007. That doesn't mean he was gay as of 1997 when the first book came out.  Like I said, I don't care. I only care that she seems to be trying to score social justice points. It didn't appear in any book or any movie. It came completely out of the blue, only after people started complaining that there weren't any gay characters in the books. It's the same way she pulled a Jewish wizard out of her ass after people complained there weren't any. This seems to be a pattern with her.
> 
> The real problem here isn't that Dumbledore is gay, it's that it doesn't matter. I don't care if McGonigall is straight or gay. I don't care if any of them are. It has zero bearing on the story. She didn't come out and identify which characters were straight and which ones were gay because it made a difference. It doesn't. Someone's sexuality is entirely irrelevant to the Harry Potter universe. She did it only because she was virtue signalling to a particular political faction.
> 
> The fact is, it shouldn't make a difference. When I watched Star Wars in the theater in 1977, I didn't care if Luke Skywalker was gay or straight. It didn't matter. It had no bearing whatsoever on the movie.  I didn't know and I didn't  care. It was irrelevant, just as irrelevant as Dumbledore's sexuality in a children's book. But today, we've got this really idiotic identity politics horseshit where every conceivable "identity" has to be represented so people don't whine. It shouldn't matter. The fact that it does shows just how far we've fallen as a society.



And that ... is privilege.


----------



## Squalid Glass

Terry D said:


> Don't get me wrong, I'm not faulting Rowling in any way. It's her canon, she can do as she wishes. But I doubt if she had this entire universe planned out to the extent to which it has grown when she was pedaling Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone to publishers. All I'm saying is that she did not depict Dumbledore as gay in that book, so, since he's not a real person just words on a page, in that book he's not gay. She may have envisioned him as gay, but that doesn't matter in the world of that book. If the book had sold poorly and the subsequent books never published, then anyone who picked up a copy and read it would simply see the old wizard as only that, a wise and caring old magician. In that book, and any others which precede JKR's 'outing' of him, he is only what he is written as.
> 
> I have a minor character in one of my novels who I came to envision as lesbian after I finished the book. If I include her in future books I may describe her as such _if it serves a purpose in the story_, but, until I do, the character cannot be seen as gay. What if I change my mind and decide the story is best served by this character having a heterosexual relationship with an antagonist? Does that 'change' the original depiction of that character? Of course not. Characters in a developing series are like cells in a developing embryo, some differentiate early in the gestation period, others much later on. But at any stage, for that moment in time (or, in the book we are currently reading) each cell is what it is at that moment.
> 
> This has been made more complex than I ever intended my point to be, which is: Each book is a discrete entity and any characters portrayed in that book are only what they are written as in that book. Our characters, even the best ones we create, are simply two dimensional representations of imagined people. They are nothing more than what the words we use to describe them tell the reader they are.



Interesting take. And this is where our disagreement lies. I analyze texts contextually, not formally. You do the opposite. I’m cool with agreeing to disagree there. Thanks for responding.


----------



## Winston

> I don't know what your 'success' was about. I don't care. I only know it wouldn't have been easier if you had darker skin or been gay...


Again, circular logic.  I told you I'm of Puerto Rican descent.  And again, it's a melanin thing.  What a high-brow analysis. 
Must be why Denzel gets all the good gigs, and Bernie Mac has to play in casinos.  Nothing to do with talent or abilities.

But, since you were so damn dismissive of my 'success', here you go: I own property, with hundreds of thousands in the bank.  And, of course, no debt.
That places my household in the top quintile in the United States (the richest country in the world).  I paid my degree off in three years, no GI Bill needed.  
But the real success is not financial.  My family is my achievement.  I'm sure yours is, ok as well.  But it's better when my loved ones are taken care of. 

I'm not a big self-promoter, but you pushed my hand.  Does it hurt when you hear that others have more than you?  Frankly, it doesn't bother me.  
I want others to do well, too.  This blather about identity politics isn't the path to anyone's success. 

As a kid, I read history and science books.  Now, we're debating the benefits of a fictional gay wizard?  
Even an angry, jaded liberal can see an irony there.


----------



## velo

Winston said:


> I'm not a big self-promoter


----------



## Cephus

Squalid Glass said:


> And that ... is privilege.



No, privilege is bullshit.


----------



## velo

Winston said:


> Again, circular logic.


----------



## velo

Cephus said:


> No, privilege is bullshit.



Sayeth he with privilege.


----------



## dale

velo said:


> Your lack of belief and apparent ignorance of the subject changes nothing.  The ethnicity of your ex-wife is immaterial as are your shallow responses.  The sciences of sociology, politics, economics, etc have all shown that there is inherent bias in this society.
> 
> There is a lack of rationality in so many response in this thread that only serves to prove the point.  The close-minded hysteria of the "oppressed" white man is nothing but fear (conscious or not) of being toppled from the high rung on the social ladder.  You may not have as much money as a specific black family but anecdotes prove nothing.  You ever been pulled over for driving a car in a white neighbourhood because you have brown skin?  You ever have to prove yourself more than the white guy when applying for the same job?
> 
> The honest truth is that both through circumstance of birth and what appears to be willful ignorance mixed with a shit tonne of cognitive bias you actually don't have a bloody clue what you're talking about.  The mere fact that this thread exists shows how endemic the problem is.
> 
> 
> 
> I'll grant that you probably have never consciously or deliberately done anything that you view as 'oppression' yet you have absolutely oppressed people not only with your dismissive views of their experience that you have no real ability to analyse and also you likely don't even know what the word 'oppression' means in this context.  Why do black parents have to educate their kids about how to interact with police and white parents don't?  I've heard successful Hollywood stars of colour talking about how despite reaching the heights of economic and career success in the US they are still afraid of their kids driving a nice car through a nice part of town.  You oppress these people every day because you don't give a shit about their views or life experience which you've made plainly clear.   Your participation in the system, as does mine, continues the machinery of oppression every day you get up and so heroically go to work.
> 
> You had a tough childhood and came from a poor family?  So did a lot of us.  The entire point of this is that white people, men especially, had a _far_ easier time getting out those circumstances then a black or hispanic would in the very same situation.  The utter sophistry of everything you've said in this thread is mind-boggling and gives me little hope that I'll ever see a day when people will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.



and your consistent female whining and blithering on like a spoiled child who didn't get her daily slice of entitlement pie will not impress me. 
maybe if you believed more in yourself, you wouldn't need men like me to patronize you.


----------



## velo

dale said:


> and your consistent female whining and blithering on like spoiled child who didn't get her daily slice of entitlement pie will not impress me.
> maybe if you believed more in yourself, you wouldn't need men like me to patronize you.



My point is made.  Male privilege evidenced in your misogynistic attempts to insult me.  Thanks for confirming your bias and lack of ability to converse constructively.


----------



## dale

velo said:


> My point is made.  Male privilege evidenced in your misogynistic attempts to insult me.  Thanks for confirming your bias and lack of ability to converse constructively.



you're welcome, hon. may i offer you a pacifier?


----------



## luckyscars

Winston said:


> Again, circular logic.  I told you I'm of Puerto Rican descent.  And again, it's a melanin thing.  What a high-brow analysis.
> Must be why Denzel gets all the good gigs, and Bernie Mac has to play in casinos.  Nothing to do with talent or abilities.



*Googles a dozen different academic studies showing the correlation between darker skin and poverty*
*Puts them away. Winston is of Puerto Rican descent and therefore knows better*

I think we have reached peak Dunning-Krueger in this thread.



> But, since you were so damn dismissive of my 'success', here you go: I own property, with hundreds of thousands in the bank.  And, of course, no debt.
> That places my household in the top quintile in the United States (the richest country in the world).  I paid my degree off in three years, no GI Bill needed.
> But the real success is not financial.  My family is my achievement.  I'm sure yours is, ok as well.  But it's better when my loved ones are taken care of.
> 
> I'm not a big self-promoter, but you pushed my hand.  Does it hurt when you hear that others have more than you?  Frankly, it doesn't bother me.



Please quote me one instance where I dismissed your success. In return I will happily furnish you with 6-8 different examples of all that self-promotion you claim you don't do.



> I want others to do well, too.  This blather about identity politics isn't the path to anyone's success.



It's more of a 'making sure that your kids aren't going to go to jail because they're black where a white kid would get out of it'  type mission than anything to do with success.



> As a kid, I read history and science books.  Now, we're debating the benefits of a fictional gay wizard?
> Even an angry, jaded liberal can see an irony there.



Being neither angry, jaded, nor liberal I'm afraid the irony is lost on me. Please explain how this is ironic? Do you know what irony is?


----------



## luckyscars

Aquilo said:


> I understand this side of the argument. More than. Nearly half of the banned novels in America are lgbt+. There's always been a 'hush-hush' aspect to publishing over the years when it comes to portraying anything outside of the straight spectrum. Yes Rowling would have been restricted to publishing trope, yes she would have perhaps made a choice at one stage, and yes, she would have stated outside of her work that Dumbledore was gay, Harry bisexual. Not to mention she's not going to blacken her publishing company's name by saying they advised her to not use LGBT characters if that's the case. Publishers have a lot of control over authors, especially new authors.
> 
> But does that make the argument any better? She chose_ not _to add a gay/bi relationship because of pressure, because of getting published over realistic portrayal, therefore helping to push the whole 'keep it in the closet' debate when it comes to LGBT characters in fiction?
> 
> It's easy for me to judge nearly 20 years down the line. I've been writing Gay psych thrillers for 8 years now, and working as an editor for MM publications for nearly ten. It's long before my start time. But, yes, I've been asked to make my characters straight, and it came to down saying yes or no. But my target audience is different, where sexuality plays a major part. The whole point with Rowlings? It hasn't been shown on page until now. If it hasn't been shown on page and it matters to her -- which she's saying it does -- then it should have been on page long before now. No gay, bi, straight person will go through X amount of books without showing who they're attracted to if it mattered that much to the author and overall story. It really is no good saying outside of the story: but he is gay. If he's gay, bi, straight, and it's relevant to plot -- show it.
> 
> She didn't have her book banned because of LGBT portrayal where numerous authors in her era of writing before her did. So yeah, I can understand why her character being portrayed now as a gay on page is annoying a few people. She's not helped quell the debate of 'hush-hush, don't talk about LGBT relationships' in the long run, if that is the case.



I suspect Rowling would probably agree with your analysis here. 

It's difficult, because Harry Potter is obviously not about Dumbledore, much less about gay rights, so I'm not sure it was ever her *responsibility* as such to 'help quell the debate' so much as it was her responsibility to (1) Write a good book for the world's children and (2) Make that book a success to help her own children. I personally regard her success in simply not engaging in the perpetuation of homophobic stereotypes at a time where so many other children's authors did, to be sufficiently virtuous. Your mileage may vary. 

As I am not gay, I don't pretend to be the authority on this. I don't hold it against people for keeping themselves/their characters 'closeted' and don't see them as hurting the cause by simply not being brave enough to make a moralistic point, especially one that probably would have backfired on them anyway.

I always think there's an element of impossibility in trying to write nobly. I struggle with it myself. Ultimately, if we start to expect every writer to address every aspect of social injustice fully and comprehensively we can get into the weeds. Not to mention distracting from the main story. Did Harry Potter do enough (or anything) to address racism? Sexism? Any -ism? Arguably not. Arguably one could say Martin Luther King Jr didn't really do much to help gay people either, while Susan B. Anthony morally failed by fighting for women's right to vote but ignoring, seemingly, the fact black women remained disenfranchised. Are we going to be annoyed by these people's technical lack of moral consistency too? Does the perfect become the enemy of the good?

Ultimately we can get into the weeds of 'should have done betters' when it comes to just about anything, including writing, but I'm not sure it is realistic or helpful? At this point, with so many apparently incapable of even realizing the problem of inequality exists (as wonderfully demonstrated by several folks on this thread), I myself am satisfied with a writer who simply acknowledges that it does exist and avoids making these problems worse within the context of their own work and lives. I don't expect my writers to be trailblazers for equality. If they manage to even address the topic in one small constructive way through representation (even flawed representation), I am pretty much happy with them.


----------



## Chesters Daughter

*It would seem some have short memories. It was politely requested yesterday that everyone remain on topic, and yet this thread is miserably off track yet again. Kindly consider this a final plea to get back on topic. The next post that veers into the personal or otherwise strays from the topic at hand will see this thread locked. Thank you for your anticipated cooperation.*


----------



## Terry D

velo said:


> Sayeth he with privilege.



Please, define privilege for me? You must have a great grasp on it since you can bestow the title onto someone you've never met. Tell me how my privilege has benefited me (I'm a 65 year-old, white, male, catholic with an upper-middle-class job verging on retirement). What has my supposed privilege gotten me? You seem to assume I have it, so you must be able to tell me how I've gained from it?

This is the problem I see with these sweeping generalizations. They really mean nothing and only serve to insulate people from having to deal with real, specific issues. Social justice is an issue. I know that and I want to see it change (although 'social justice' wasn't a 'thing' back then, I've been involved with these sorts of issues for 50+ years), but until we stop compartmentalizing people into their respective 'teams' -- race, gender identity, sexual orientation, OWBs (Old White Bastards), or whatever the next classification will be -- we aren't going to really get anywhere. You think Trump wants to build a wall? Well welcome to the community, which, by the way, is just a word meaning a group surrounded by an invisible wall.


----------



## luckyscars

Terry D said:


> Please, define privilege for me? You must have a great grasp on it since you can bestow the title onto someone you've never met. Tell me how my privilege has benefited me (I'm a 65 year-old, white, male, catholic with an upper-middle-class job verging on retirement). What has my supposed privilege gotten me? You seem to assume I have it, so you must be able to tell me how I've gained from it?
> 
> This is the problem I see with these sweeping generalizations. They really mean nothing and only serve to insulate people from having to deal with real, specific issues. Social justice is an issue. I know that and I want to see it change (although 'social justice' wasn't a 'thing' back then, I've been involved with these sorts of issues for 50+ years), but until we stop compartmentalizing people into their respective 'teams' -- race, gender identity, sexual orientation, OWBs (Old White Bastards), or whatever the next classification will be -- we aren't going to really get anywhere. You think Trump wants to build a wall? Well welcome to the community, which, by the way, is just a word meaning a group surrounded by an invisible wall.



As has been said multiple times, the idea of privilege isn’t to say that it gives you something, at least nothing tangible, but that it insulates you from something that you might have suffered as a disadvantage otherwise.

I can’t prove a negative, but based on how you describe yourself here’s an idea: If you’re 65 and white you probably went to a better school than would have been open to you if you were 65 and black because of segregation. If you smoked dope as a teenager you probably didn’t get arrested for it, and if you did you probably would not have ended up nearly as badly punished as if you were black and got caught doing the same thing. That’s just facts. Now it may not apply in every case and yes it is based on generalizations, but that doesn’t invalidate it’s existence, unless we want to say that a generalization is never based on reality and it’s all luck of the draw. 

Now, does that mean that reverse discrimination is the answer? No, and this is where I do part ways with certain people. I still value a book with a white male protagonist on equal footing with a black female or gay one. But to say “I’ve never benefited from privilege and if you say I have then prove it” seems like a totally foolish position. Even if you haven’t benefited from being white or straight or male then plenty have, and there’s stone cold evidence for that.


----------



## Cephus

velo said:


> Sayeth he with privilege.



You can claim that all you like, that doesn't make it so.


----------



## Cephus

Terry D said:


> Please, define privilege for me? You must have a great grasp on it since you can bestow the title onto someone you've never met. Tell me how my privilege has benefited me (I'm a 65 year-old, white, male, catholic with an upper-middle-class job verging on retirement). What has my supposed privilege gotten me? You seem to assume I have it, so you must be able to tell me how I've gained from it?



Good luck on that. It's just a presumption made by a particular political ideology and not something they can actually demonstrate. They don't even try. It's really pathetic when you think about it.


----------



## luckyscars

Cephus said:


> Good luck on that. It's just a presumption made by a particular political ideology and not something they can actually demonstrate. They don't even try. It's really pathetic when you think about it.



I just did. If you wanna play, give me your age, race, gender, religion in which you were raised, nationality, where you grew up and what your parents did for a living and what you do now and I’ll give you some pretty specific ideas of where you may have benefited from some privilege in your life. 

I can’t promise 100% accuracy, because “individuality”, but I’d be willing to bet on 70%+ success based on nothing more than common sense and a basic high school education. You could actually do this yourself, but it would require self-awareness that I am unsure you have. 

Of course, this would also rely on you being honest enough to admit things, which is probably not a realistic expectation.


----------



## Dluuni

I write #OwnVoices stuff. I've given up on traditional publishing because of a few points.

Biased judging - the RITA mess indicates that I can't expect to get prestige through the normal channels. The Romance Writers of America, an organization created by a black woman, has annual awards for best works in various categories. The judging is theoretically fair, but it was based on feedback from readers, most of whom were heterosexual, cisgender white women. As such, when the numbers were crunched, it was discovered that finalists were almost entirely cisgender, heterosexual, white women.
The resulting scandal has caused them to look at redesigning how they judge entries, but this sort of thing happens whenever people start saying they don't see color.

Restricted shelving - wandering past the shelves where books were sold in the store the other day, I noted that there was a small section, separated from everything else, marked "Ethnic". In this section were a jumble of books from other genres that just happened to center PoC experiences. I did not see an LGBT section. I presume this is because LGBT experiences are considered to be too scandalous for normal consumption. 
My books are Sweet romance. There is no sex on the page. Characters don't even walk behind a closed door. Nobody gets naked. This is apparently more "adult" and scandalous than 50 Shades or erotic romance.

Limited access - regularly, when own voices writers submit their books, they are told that the publisher already has a book in the works about their area of expertise. 
These books are usually written by white, cisgender, heterosexual people who have already gotten writing acclaim through things like winning awards similar to the RITA or getting lots book sales by being shelved in the same place other books are.

These are all things I have to deal with just to get my books read. Those are things that I do not have privilege around. These aren't things that I can just wave my hand and overcome by putting in a couple of extra hours.


----------



## luckyscars

My most recent favorite example of privilege is that in a local art museum there is en entire huge exhibition on “French Impressionism” and then one very small exhibit called “African Art.” Oh and guess which one has lines out the door for...


----------



## Cephus

luckyscars said:


> I just did. If you wanna play, give me your age, race, gender, religion in which you were raised, nationality, where you grew up and what your parents did for a living and what you do now and I’ll give you some pretty specific ideas of where you may have benefited from some privilege in your life.



"May have".  Not have, may have.  Because you're pretending that everyone with a particular characteristic has received benefits without any evidence.


----------



## Terry D

luckyscars said:


> As has been said multiple times, the idea of privilege isn’t to say that it gives you something, at least nothing tangible, but that it insulates you from something that you might have suffered as a disadvantage otherwise.
> 
> I can’t prove a negative, but based on how you describe yourself here’s an idea: If you’re 65 and white you probably went to a better school than would have been open to you if you were 65 and black because of segregation. If you smoked dope as a teenager you probably didn’t get arrested for it, and if you did you probably would not have ended up nearly as badly punished as if you were black and got caught doing the same thing. That’s just facts. Now it may not apply in every case and yes it is based on generalizations, but that doesn’t invalidate it’s existence, unless we want to say that a generalization is never based on reality and it’s all luck of the draw.



Here's the problem with generalizations, since they are only accurate in the aggregate each individual can, justifiably say, "See, that doesn't apply to me because I didn't go to a segregated school," or "When I was in high school all the best parts in the school plays went to the gay kid," or "When I was unemployed and on food stamps I was denied a job because they were looking for a candidate to fill an Affirmative Action requirement." Also, there's no generalized solutions to generalized problems. The only way to solve problems is to drill down to root causes and implement specific solutions. That's not what our society likes to do though is it?  We prefer to hash-tag problems and demand legislated solutions which only fix (maybe) symptoms. I agree that awareness is a major step in the problem solving process (defining the problem), but placing blame is counter productive. Whether that's oppressed groups blaming the OWBs, or marginalized white folk blaming one or more of the oppressed groups, it's not going to work. We have to stop thinking about these issues as us vs. them and start thinking about why.



> Now, does that mean that reverse discrimination is the answer? No, and this is where I do part ways with certain people. I still value a book with a white male protagonist on equal footing with a black female or gay one. But to say “I’ve never benefited from privilege and if you say I have then prove it” seems like a totally foolish position. Even if you haven’t benefited from being white or straight or male then plenty have, and there’s stone cold evidence for that.



I hope you are not suggesting I said, “I’ve never benefited from privilege and if you say I have then prove it," because I did not. I simply asked how velo might think I benefited. I was just challenging assumptions. Since her only possible answer would be couched in generalities I would, of course, be able to use many specifics from my life to poke holes in those generalities. I would only do that to show how dangerous those generalities are. Talk 'white privilege' to an Appalachian coal miner and he'll laugh at you -- if you are lucky -- and go vote for Trump again. Try telling the children and grand children of depression era Midwesterners that today's problems are because they've had it so great for generations and see what happens. Many of the OWBs that everyone likes to revile today had the privilege of watching their friends and family die in WWII and Korea. Others slogged through the mud and blood of southeast Asia alongside the African Americans they called brothers. Groups aren't the problem. Individuals are. Deal with the individuals and the problems will start getting solved.


----------



## Squalid Glass

I 100% agree that the approach should not be the call out culture twitter approach so many of my fellow lefties have been fond of over the years. The message should focus on the systematic inequalities that need fixing, and the political messenger should frame changes in a way that shows how everyone benefits. 

That being said, the straw manning and ignorance that is out there (and, obviously, that has been present in this thread) demands rebuttal. If it is allowed to fester without challenge, it will continue hindering progress.


----------



## Annoying kid

Since when is being a member of the LGBT, a political stance? The only places that don't have open LGBT is where its too dangerous to declare said.

What JK did with Dumbledore wasn't political and not a retcon, as it wasn't written in the first place. 

Now her saying Hermoine could be interpreted as a black woman based on the HP text, is political, as it simply isn't true. 

But its in line with her lazy inclusivity. Instead of writing a black or gay character, after the fact she'll say I interpret, or you can interpret this character as X minority. It's patronizing and cynical queer/race baiting that puts all the interpretive work  on the minority reader.

If THAT is seen as somehow radical, "feminist" or "SJW" then holy crap.


----------



## Cephus

Squalid Glass said:


> That being said, the straw manning and ignorance that is out there (and, obviously, that has been present in this thread) demands rebuttal. If it is allowed to fester without challenge, it will continue hindering progress.



But of course, you don't recognize it when it's your side doing the strawmanning and being ignorant. That's kind of the problem of being emotionally attached to a political ideology to the point that you can't step back and think about what's actually going on.


----------



## dale

Cephus said:


> Good luck on that. It's just a presumption made by a particular political ideology and not something they can actually demonstrate. They don't even try. It's really pathetic when you think about it.



yeah. identity politics is just basic bolshevism. it's meant to divide people so they can be more easily manipulated and controlled
through hogwash groupthink. there's no logically factual basis behind any of it.


----------



## Squalid Glass

dale said:


> yeah. identity politics is just basic bolshevism. it's meant to divide people so they can be more easily manipulated and controlled
> through hogwash groupthink. there's no logically factual basis behind any of it.



Cephus, if that's not a strawman, I don't know what is.


----------



## Kevin

"Systematic inequalities" - assumed as fact


----------



## Squalid Glass

Kevin said:


> "Systematic inequalities" - assumed as fact



If you would like to provide evidence that shows that redlining, for example, was not a thing that has had an extreme effect on housing discrimination, by all means do it and prove us wrong. Or does that not qualify as a systematic attempt to perpetuate inequality?

Or, to speak more to the source of this topic, can you provide evidence that shows that the illegality of gay marriage up until just a couple years ago did not constitute a systematic inequality?


----------



## Winston

*For those just joining, here's what you missed:*

-Hi.  I don't like it when writers inject their socio-political views into their works.  It's disingenuous and condescending.

_Shut up.  You're a bigot._

-No, I'm not.  And I have a right to have an opinion, don't I?

_You do not.  You have white privilege.  That means you don't understand anything._

-What about me?  I married a black gal.  Am I a bigot?

_No, you are a not a bigot.  But you have white privilege.  So your opinion is not worth shit. _ 

-And me?  I'm mixed-race, but I disagree with social engineering. Can I be taken seriously?

_No.  You're skin color is still too white.  
And don't tell anyone that you don't need Affirmative Action.  If your life is good, that's that half-white part being privileged 'n stuff. _ 

-On page 9,672 of Rowling's 38th Harry Potter book, Dumbldumb is clearly reading a Men's Health magazine and humming a show tune.  I think he's gay.

_Finally!  Someone with some sense..._


----------



## unveiledartist

Interesting. Hm. That's pretty much it.


----------



## luckyscars

Terry D said:


> Here's the problem with generalizations, since they are only accurate in the aggregate each individual can, justifiably say, "See, that doesn't apply to me because I didn't go to a segregated school," or "When I was in high school all the best parts in the school plays went to the gay kid," or "When I was unemployed and on food stamps I was denied a job because they were looking for a candidate to fill an Affirmative Action requirement." Also, there's no generalized solutions to generalized problems. The only way to solve problems is to drill down to root causes and implement specific solutions. That's not what our society likes to do though is it?  We prefer to hash-tag problems and demand legislated solutions which only fix (maybe) symptoms. I agree that awareness is a major step in the problem solving process (defining the problem), but placing blame is counter productive. Whether that's oppressed groups blaming the OWBs, or marginalized white folk blaming one or more of the oppressed groups, it's not going to work. We have to stop thinking about these issues as us vs. them and start thinking about why.
> 
> I hope you are not suggesting I said, “I’ve never benefited from privilege and if you say I have then prove it," because I did not. I simply asked how velo might think I benefited. I was just challenging assumptions. Since her only possible answer would be couched in generalities I would, of course, be able to use many specifics from my life to poke holes in those generalities. I would only do that to show how dangerous those generalities are. Talk 'white privilege' to an Appalachian coal miner and he'll laugh at you -- if you are lucky -- and go vote for Trump again. Try telling the children and grand children of depression era Midwesterners that today's problems are because they've had it so great for generations and see what happens. Many of the OWBs that everyone likes to revile today had the privilege of watching their friends and family die in WWII and Korea. Others slogged through the mud and blood of southeast Asia alongside the African Americans they called brothers. Groups aren't the problem. Individuals are. Deal with the individuals and the problems will start getting solved.



It actually makes my blood boil when I see cries of 'white male privilege!' used to shut down or otherwise sideline debates. I get in a lot of fights about this... I see a huge difference between increasing representation of minorities and shitting on anybody who isn't a minority, Sadly I don't believe a lot of these 'liberals' can tell that difference anymore. 

The idea that my kid might someday found himself dismissed, blamed or shamed because of his gender or skin color pisses me off. It pisses me off even though I absolutely recognize his demographic (white and male) has historically done exactly that to women and other genders. But the idea of  inherited culpability, responsibility or 'original sin' existing among white hetero men, which I believe Dluuni was touching on earlier, is disgusting. That sort of 'social justice' deserves pissed on at every turn. To that extent we likely agree.

But what I don't agree with is this : _"Here's the problem with generalizations, since they are only accurate in the aggregate each individual can, justifiably say, "See, that doesn't apply to me because I didn't go to a segregated school," or "When I was in high school all the best parts in the school plays went to the gay kid," or "When I was unemployed and on food stamps I was denied a job because they were looking for a candidate to fill an Affirmative Action requirement." 

_I don't think its true, that people can justifiably say that privilege does not apply to their lives. You and I and probably most others on this thread have almost certainly benefited from white male privilege at _some point _along the way. To pretend otherwise is to either show astounding ignorance or straight dishonesty. The privilege in question may have been something as small and silly as getting served before a guy in a turban or a woman in a niqab at a fast food restaurant where the cashier happened to be racist. Or being given a larger slice of cake at a party 'because guys eat more'. On the other hand, it may have been as major as getting admitted into a certain college or getting out of a jail sentence or given a loan or not being murdered by cops when we popped air rifles or played with BB guns as kids. We don't know the exact impact this has had. Only that it must have had some.

How white privilege manifests is somewhat irrelevant here because we are not evaluating symptoms but existence. In any case, most of the time, privilege has more to do with how others react and perceive, not with your actions and choices. Besides which, even if you were aware of an instance where you achieved an advantage, you have no incentive or requirement to perceive it that way, let alone admit to it on an internet forum. And therein lies the problem.

But we _do _know is that privilege exists, because science and data have repeatedly proved it, and it simply makes no sense for any of us to claim we are anomalous to conclusive data anymore than it makes sense to claim we are able to walk across a field of grass and not crush a single insect. The chances of any white American adult not benefiting in some way solely from their whiteness is essentially zero. It just is.

When idiots try to say 'privilege is bullshit', or try to mitigate or avoid their obligation in addressing (or at least not exacerbating) issues of social inequality by bringing up how tough their life has been and how they are exceptions to the social order, as though having a tough life as a white (or half-white) person means that the same set of circumstances lived as a black or gay or trans or Jewish person wouldn't be, if not the same, than infinitely worse, and certainly not better (per the data)...that is very fucking irritating. Privilege is a relative and overlapping concept - I just wish people would see it as such. A taller, handsomer white man has more privilege in many situations than a shorter, uglier white man. A rich black woman can be more privileged than a poor white man.

But the point of bringing up race, gender and sexual orientation as the flashpoints for this stuff...is simple. To say that white or straight privilege does not exist because a few examples exist that contradict it; that just because America has had a black President means hey-presto blacks are equal now, for example (I've heard many people say this shit) is to betray the vast majority of people from these groups who do suffer disadvantages due to their station. So to recognize it is not about splitting people into groups but realizing and accepting that these groups already exist and do affect, if not all of the 'protected classes', then the vast majority. And no, they're not going away. As futile as it might be to persevere with breaking down the hierarchy, it is still in the human interest to try, lest things get worse. 

Oh, and the persistence of division has got nothing to do with identity politics. That's pure bullshit. It speaks to a lack of responsibility really. Sure some people take it too far and say stupid things, but the real reason 'putting people in boxes' continues has nothing to do with SJW's on social media and everything to do with real-world racism, sexism, homophobia, etc. Identity politicians don't run the prison industrial complex. Identity politicians don't market brands of cigarettes toward African Americans. Identity politicians aren't the ones scrapping protections for LGBTQ kids in schools. Identity politicians didn't decide to give a gay guy the death penalty because 'he'd enjoy prison too much'. Identity politicians don't firebomb black churches. Identity Politicians don't perpetuate the KKK or let young white men off of jail time for the same rape offence that young black men routinely get 20+ years for. Blaming identity politics for the perpetuation of that crap rather than the actual societal ills and the bastards that hurt people..is about as dishonest as it gets. 

I admit addressing problems according to group identity can be problematic. But...it doesn't have to be. Actually, recognizing privilege and the differences between groups can be positive. By seeing that, for instance, boys do much better at math than girls across the board and recognizing that this is almost entirely due to the way girls at the age of thirteen or so lose a huge amount of their self-esteem and confidence...and acknowledging how that loss of self-esteem is a direct result of the way society as a whole provides teenage boys certain encouragements and entitlements that they do not provide nearly as readily to teenage girls, a whole system of failure becomes immediately solvable. As a parent, I can then use that information to give my daughter a head start by telling her she is great at math and making sure she damn well believes in herself. 

The history of literature shows it's this kind of small progression that changes lives. By telling a sexually confused teenage boy that the most powerful wizard in the book series he just finished reading is gay, because the lady who wrote the books has said so, we can potentially help him deal with something that might be much harder for him otherwise. These things have value beyond the sum of their parts, at least sometimes.


----------



## Terry D

Squalid Glass said:


> If you would like to provide evidence that shows that redlining, for example, was not a thing that has had an extreme effect on housing discrimination, by all means do it and prove us wrong. Or does that not qualify as a systematic attempt to perpetuate inequality?
> 
> Or, to speak more to the source of this topic, can you provide evidence that shows that the illegality of gay marriage up until just a couple years ago did not constitute a systematic inequality?



This is my whole point. You've given two examples of specific issues, significant issues. Creating specific targets for action actually allows us to attack those issues rather than the amorphous concepts of equality or privilege. 



luckyscars said:


> But what I don't agree with is this : _"Here's the problem with generalizations, since they are only accurate in the aggregate each individual can, justifiably say, "See, that doesn't apply to me because I didn't go to a segregated school," or "When I was in high school all the best parts in the school plays went to the gay kid," or "When I was unemployed and on food stamps I was denied a job because they were looking for a candidate to fill an Affirmative Action requirement."
> 
> _I don't think its true, that people can justifiably say that privilege does not apply to their lives.



I agree completely. My only problem is with the many (most?)lazy people who only speak in terms of generalities, because that allows those seeking to protect, or deny, their privilege to rationalize -- justifiably, in there own minds -- their position. For me it all comes down to people being willing to try and do something about specific issues instead of hand-wringing, or screaming about the general state of affairs.


----------



## Squalid Glass

Terry, but don’t you think the concepts of equality and privilege and those concrete issues are inherently linked? Like, what is the problem with saying that those are issues of systematic inequality, and those who are not affected by them are privileged in that regard. The next step in the conversation does not need to be some sort of inquisition of those not affected; instead, it should be, “okay, how do we fix this inequality?” And obviously the solution is through policy change, but policy change doesn’t get support unless people are willing to admit that there has been an injustice, some have not been hurt by it, but those who have not been hurt need to step up and admit that it didn’t hurt them and only hurt others. Such acknowledgment will then help spur change along.


----------



## Cephus

Squalid Glass said:


> Cephus, if that's not a strawman, I don't know what is.



Then you don't know what a strawman is. The left pushes victimhood narratives to make people dependent on them. "Oh, everyone is out to get you so you'd better vote for us!" It's why they push collectivism. People aren't individuals with individual responsibilities, they are part of a racial or ethnic or gender-based collective.  "X bad thing has happened to your group, therefore you're a victim, even if nothing bad has ever happened to you!"  It's why this whole absurd left-wing diversity nonsense is going on.  Everyone has to be sorted by their groups. We have to make sure every group has representation! It doesn't matter if you're writing a good book or making a good movie so long as you tick off all of the diversity checkboxes. You'd better hire a black director! It doesn't matter if it's a good director, so long as it gets you some diversity points!  And even better yet if it's a black, female, lesbian, disabled director in a wheelchair!  That's a bonus!

Diversity for the sake of diversity is idiotic.  And guess what? It's racist too. But the left doesn't care about only looking at someone's skin color or gender or sexual orientation. That's what collectivism is all about.  It's gathering people based on irrelevant physical characteristics for the purpose of winning votes and appealing to emotions. It's not telling people that they have to succeed on their own because individual responsibility is anathema to the left. They want to hear how everyone is downtrodden and deserves free stuff that only the Democrats can provide.  That is, unless you're a straight white man, which is seen as perfectly acceptable to discriminate against by the left.

This is what happens when you're buried so deeply within an asinine ideology that you can't step back and see it from the outside.  It's not a strawman, it's reality.


----------



## Cephus

Kevin said:


> "Systematic inequalities" - assumed as fact



Because it's blind faith. It's why so many of these claims, when you take a look at them rationally, they entirely fall apart.  The "gender wage gap" has been debunked so many times it's laughable, but it still gets trotted out by the left because to them, it's a tenet of their liberal religion.  I mean, I'm trying not to be political here, but apparently the mods don't care because they're the ones driving most of the political content in this thread. I'm trying to limit what I talk about directly to writing or other creative processes, but hey, if the people in charge don't care, and clearly they don't, then I guess it goes where it goes, at least until they realize they're losing and suddenly, the rules apply to thee, but not to me.


----------



## Dluuni

When we bring up the problems individually, we get a litany of "But I'm not a racist! You're the racist!" anyway. And privilege is how we can recognize problems quickly without massive research only to see that, oh surprise, the exact same thing happened again.

Transitioning is a crash course in privilege. I knew my pills were working when I went into a meeting prepared with two weeks of careful research in stuff I have been dealing with for much of my life only to be continually shut down and ignored and dismissed by men at the table, who didn't have the qualifications. A little bit later, I was able to interact with children without their parents getting visibly uncomfortable. A few days later, I had to buy a windshield wiper blade and had the guy at the car parts place argue that I didn't know what size blade I really needed when I got it off their own website, and he would only sell the wrong size. Eventually I bought it because I needed it to drive home and I was sick of arguing. I went from having people bizarrely listening to whatever garbage I babbled to fighting with me on my competence in my area of expertise.

So this idea that I am just imagining this stuff is pretty annoying, because I got a clear before and after. It's like getting a skin color change. 

We had a great class yesterday about Facebook ads to sell books. I'm worried that I won't be able to use it though, because the fact that I exist is offensive to a lot of people who might be caught by the ad. FB allows hate speech and racist death threats after review, and I get incredibly innocuous stuff pulled down with review.

If I showed up in a kids book, with no mention of being in a relationship, I would possibly get the book pulled from library shelves for being too "sexualized". I dress conservatively and rarely wear more than a touch of lipstick so I don't look sick. There's some privilege for you. So I want culture to get inoculated by seeing people like me enough in boring ways that people lose that weird hangup. That means writing them into the book boldly and unequivocally. Like they did in Captain Underpants, where they idly mentioned a man and his husband in passing. Because some men have husbands, and that's normal, and normal people should be in the cast of books instead of books enforcing an unrealistic view of the world.


----------



## Aquilo

Dluuni said:


> I did not see an LGBT section. I presume this is because LGBT experiences are considered to be too scandalous for normal consumption.
> My books are Sweet romance. There is no sex on the page. Characters don't even walk behind a closed door. Nobody gets naked. This is apparently more "adult" and scandalous than 50 Shades or erotic romance.



Yeah, I've noticed as soon as MM is mentioned, it gets an erotic romance tag no matter the heat level, or it gets hidden behind Amazon algorithms as soon as you tag it LGBT. 



Dluuni said:


> Limited access - regularly, when own voices writers submit their books, they are told that the publisher already has a book in the works about their area of expertise.
> These books are usually written by white, cisgender, heterosexual people who have already gotten writing acclaim through things like winning awards similar to the RITA or getting lots book sales by being shelved in the same place other books are.



I'll disagree with this. The only way work is accepted with the publishers I know is if they're a damn good content. It doesn't matter what the author's gender or sexuality is. Having an own voice doesn't make (generic) you the better writer, neither does being het: Talent still counts for a lot of it, or it does where I'm concerned. When I get an edit via a publishing company, I'm given nothing but the script. And I've worked the slush pile with only that detail. I really don't care what an author's sexuality or gender is.

On the author side, I worked hard over 8 years to get where I have, and I started from scratch. A lot of the authors I know have worked just as hard too. We see new authors come on the scene, and we help out, but most times new authors are looking for an easy ride that doesn't exist. We've been through rejections, we've been through years of waiting to get that 1st acceptance, we've been through years of being told we're not good enough because we're het, female, and shouldn't be writing what we do because we're not own voices. Or worse, we're demoted to just being allies. I have a transgender son who's come home after being locked in a classroom with other lads who want to prove his gender, I've taken jobs where men have been doing exactly the same job as me and still gotten paid more: I can imagine exactly what own voices face. That will never make me an ally: it makes me a mom to my transgender kid, end of debate. But most don't look beyond the page and the author photo: all they see is a het writer. one who only got there because they were privileged in a privileged system.

In the end, we write it because we're authors, and any good author will learn and understand what they don't know. That's the basics of being an author.


----------



## Squalid Glass

Cephus said:


> Then you don't know what a strawman is. The left pushes victimhood narratives to make people dependent on them. "Oh, everyone is out to get you so you'd better vote for us!" It's why they push collectivism. People aren't individuals with individual responsibilities, they are part of a racial or ethnic or gender-based collective.  "X bad thing has happened to your group, therefore you're a victim, even if nothing bad has ever happened to you!"  It's why this whole absurd left-wing diversity nonsense is going on.  Everyone has to be sorted by their groups. We have to make sure every group has representation! It doesn't matter if you're writing a good book or making a good movie so long as you tick off all of the diversity checkboxes. You'd better hire a black director! It doesn't matter if it's a good director, so long as it gets you some diversity points!  And even better yet if it's a black, female, lesbian, disabled director in a wheelchair!  That's a bonus!
> 
> Diversity for the sake of diversity is idiotic.  And guess what? It's racist too. But the left doesn't care about only looking at someone's skin color or gender or sexual orientation. That's what collectivism is all about.  It's gathering people based on irrelevant physical characteristics for the purpose of winning votes and appealing to emotions. It's not telling people that they have to succeed on their own because individual responsibility is anathema to the left. They want to hear how everyone is downtrodden and deserves free stuff that only the Democrats can provide.  That is, unless you're a straight white man, which is seen as perfectly acceptable to discriminate against by the left.
> 
> This is what happens when you're buried so deeply within an asinine ideology that you can't step back and see it from the outside.  It's not a strawman, it's reality.



So let me get this straight. I pointed out a strawman in the post above my previous one, and you responded by not even addressing the strawman I pointed out, but instead by going into another strawman about the ideological agenda of the left. Your whole post here is an attempt to frame the left’s position in a way that is hyperbolic, absurd, and misrepresented. You could have responded to my examples of redlining and the illegality of gay marriage, but instead you resorted to calling the left “collectivism ... religion ... asinine ... racist ...” and “idiotic.” Again I ask, if this is not a strawman, then what is? I suppose, too, that this is also a red herring because instead of addressing the posts I’ve made, you have chosen to fall back to this conception you have of what the opposite side’s beliefs are. Yet, there is no factual thing here to back up your conception of my beliefs.

This is not how an academic argument is supposed to go. This is how a cable news argument goes.


----------



## Squalid Glass

Cephus said:


> Because it's blind faith. It's why so many of these claims, when you take a look at them rationally, they entirely fall apart.  The "gender wage gap" has been debunked so many times it's laughable, but it still gets trotted out by the left because to them, it's a tenet of their liberal religion.  I mean, I'm trying not to be political here, but apparently the mods don't care because they're the ones driving most of the political content in this thread. I'm trying to limit what I talk about directly to writing or other creative processes, but hey, if the people in charge don't care, and clearly they don't, then I guess it goes where it goes, at least until they realize they're losing and suddenly, the rules apply to thee, but not to me.



Just stop with that. This is a political thread by its very nature. The op’s question deals with the intersection of artistic choice and political ideology. The conversation has evolved into one about the roots of some of these issues. It is acceptable to discuss your political beliefs on this topic.


----------



## Aquilo

Cephus said:


> The "gender wage gap" has been debunked so many times it's laughable.



It has? By who? Because I've worked where men have done the exact same job as me, where they've been a lot younger, with no commitments like kids, and they've still been paid more than me, where I've had more qualifications. Maybe a memo needs to be sent to the owners of companies like the one I worked at, because they obviously didn't get it. Just because someone tells you something doesn't make it real.


----------



## Dluuni

Right, and I don't do M/M, or at least I haven't. My first piece and my just-drafted piece are both M/F. I had to strip a "Lesbian Romance" tag that Amazon decided to add to my first piece I'm not sure why.

"Good content" isn't a neutral thing handed down from the heavens. Puffin Books decided to publish and defend the Boyne garbage that I will not name presumably because they deemed it "Well Written". The entire book, including the title, is on the level of being all how a family suffers because they adopt a jive talking, watermelon and fried chicken obsessed black child who eventually saves the day by bleaching their skin. It's only "Well Written" to people on the outside who have biases. The wordcraft is probably great, but...

We get rejections claiming that they don't want to publish because they "already have a book like that" which turns out to be something like.... that. It pushes us out of mainstream, and then the AI hides us.


----------



## Cephus

Aquilo said:


> I'll disagree with this. The only way work is accepted with the publishers I know is if they're a damn good content. It doesn't matter what the author's gender or sexuality is. Having an own voice doesn't make (generic) you the better writer, neither does being het: Talent still counts for a lot of it, or it does where I'm concerned. When I get an edit via a publishing company, I'm given nothing but the script. And I've worked the slush pile with only that detail. I really don't care what an author's sexuality or gender is.



That's all true. And honestly, in the modern world, how many people with agents or publishers have any idea what race, gender or what sexual orientation their contacts in the publishing world are? What do they know about you, unless that's how you introduce yourself? There are people who, the first things out of their mouths are "hi, I'm a black, gay rhinoceros in drag" though, so you never know.  Books ought to be about skill, not about the looks of the author. That shouldn't make a difference. There was a Twitter hashtag a while back about "reading diverse authors".  It wanted people to read books written about black characters, only if they're written by black authors. Of course, they'd never say you should only read a book written about white characters if they are written by a white author because they're hypocrites. I don't care what the skin color or the gender or the sexual orientation of any author is. I care if they can write a compelling book. What they look like doesn't matter and shouldn't matter to anyone. It's really sad that it does to some people.


----------



## Cephus

Aquilo said:


> It has? By who? Because I've worked where men have done the exact same job as me, where they've been a lot younger, with no commitments like kids, and they've still been paid more than me, where I've had more qualifications. Maybe a memo needs to be sent to the owners of companies like the one I worked at, because they obviously didn't get it. Just because someone tells you something doesn't make it real.



You need to do some research then. This is not the place to talk about it.


----------



## epimetheus

Squalid Glass said:


> The op’s question deals with the intersection of artistic choice and political ideology. The conversation has evolved into one about the roots of some of these issues.



I agree that's what it is, but i question whether it needed to.

I just watched this video essay, which does a reasonable job of explaining why Harry Potter and the Star Wars prequels are so shit. And it has nothing to do with politics, SJW, or otherwise, but a dissonance between how the authors think their stories should be consumed and how readers relate to that content.

[video=youtube;GMaZcCEm2Gs]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMaZcCEm2Gs&amp;t=66s[/video]

The Harry Potter and Star Wars (i'd include Alien in this too) sequels are shit because they take away from the original stories. It just so happened that it manifests as SJW at present. Ten years from now it will still be the same, as long as punters keep offering up their money, but some other 'hot' topic that reaches the appropriate demographics.


----------



## Dluuni

We've done the research. The wage gap is real. The mechanics of it are well known.

I get research about straight sexuality shoved in my face daily, even by children's movies that all rub my nose in the sexuality of the characters and parade it around. It's easy for me to parrot that stuff out. My writing group is constantly baffled and amazed by the things I barely gloss over because it's ordinary slice of life stuff that half the people I know do or deal with. The information isn't evenly distributed.


----------



## Squalid Glass

epimetheus said:


> I agree that's what it is, but i question whether it needed to.
> 
> I just watched this video essay, which does a reasonable job of explaining why Harry Potter and the Star Wars prequels are so shit. And it has nothing to do with politics, SJW, or otherwise, but a dissonance between how the authors think their stories should be consumed and how readers relate to that content.
> 
> [video=youtube;GMaZcCEm2Gs]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMaZcCEm2Gs&amp;t=66s[/video]
> 
> The Harry Potter and Star Wars (i'd include Alien in this too) sequels are shit because they take away from the original stories. It just so happened that it manifests as SJW at present. Ten years from now it will still be the same, as long as punters keep offering up their money, but some other 'hot' topic that reaches the appropriate demographics.



I agree that the discussion about authorial intent and the dissonance between reader and author is a good conversation. We were discussing that a few pages ago. But the op was specifically about “pc nonsense.” The framing of the question inherently leads to discussions about the politics.

I will watch that video when I get some time later today.


----------



## dale

Dluuni said:


> We've done the research. The wage gap is real. The mechanics of it are well known.
> 
> I get research about straight sexuality shoved in my face daily, even by children's movies that all rub my nose in the sexuality of the characters and parade it around. It's easy for me to parrot that stuff out. My writing group is constantly baffled and amazed by the things I barely gloss over because it's ordinary slice of life stuff that half the people I know do or deal with. The information isn't evenly distributed.



the so-called "wage gap" myth is absolute nonsense because it neglects the fact there are plenty of jobs out there where women actually
make more than men. the myth depends upon taking one industry or particular business where men in-particular may be more qualified
or they make more headway as far as production than women. then liberals will pick this particular industry or business and start getting
their panties in a twist and jumping up and down screaming off on another tantrum.


----------



## Terry D

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/03/22/gender-pay-gap-facts/

This from the Pew Research Center -- an historically centrist organization renown for their unbiased assessments. I could fill this page with reliable sources that prove the gender wage gap is real.


----------



## dale

Terry D said:


> https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/03/22/gender-pay-gap-facts/
> 
> This from the Pew Research Center -- an historically centrist organization renown for their unbiased assessments. I could fill this page with reliable sources that prove the gender wage gap is real.



and when you click the embedded link in the article explaining how PEW measured their analysis for their study,
the last paragraph makes my point.....

"[COLOR=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.87)]Some of it is due to differences in the types of jobs (occupations) women and men do and some of it is due to the effects of parenthood on women and men. Research also suggests that [/COLOR]women may not negotiate for higher wages as aggressively[COLOR=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.87)] as men [/COLOR]or they may be more likely to trade off higher wages for other amenities[COLOR=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.87)], such as flexible work hours. Other pieces of the puzzle—attributes employers value but that are not captured in available data or the presence of discrimination—are more difficult to quantify."[/COLOR]


----------



## Kevin

nevrrmind...


----------



## Terry D

dale said:


> and when you click the embedded link in the article explaining how PEW measured their analysis for their study,
> the last paragraph makes my point.....
> 
> "[COLOR=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.87)]Some of it is due to differences in the types of jobs (occupations) women and men do and some of it is due to the effects of parenthood on women and men. Research also suggests that [/COLOR]women may not negotiate for higher wages as aggressively[COLOR=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.87)] as men [/COLOR]or they may be more likely to trade off higher wages for other amenities[COLOR=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.87)], such as flexible work hours. Other pieces of the puzzle—attributes employers value but that are not captured in available data or the presence of discrimination—are more difficult to quantify."[/COLOR]



So, there is a proven discrepancy that you want to blame on issues that the researchers say "Some of it is due to...?" Sorry, dale, but you are cherry-picking the content for isolated bits and trying apply that to the entire issue. The primary point of the article, and of the many others available with a simple search, is clearly that the gap is real.


----------



## Dluuni

Wage gap isn't per job. There are a couple of pink collar jobs, but their value is depressed compared to other fields. It's an all around comparison for people in the same situation, eg. trained unmarried childless engineers trying to get work.
Alex and Chris apply to ZZ Engineering. Both negotiate salary. Both get assigned to a project. Both offer a critical suggestion on a project. Both offer to work extra hours. 
Alex gets the higher salary, Chris gets told that the offer is non-negotiable.
Chris offers an insight and is ignored. Five minutes later, Quinn repeats the idea word for word and is congratulated and given credit. Alex gets congratulated for their idea. Chris mentions that Quinn's suggestion was their idea and gets told they aren't being a team player. 
Alex gets asked to work extra hours. Chris gets sent home with some comment about how they don't want to strain Chris out.
One of them gets promoted. Which one do you think it could be? 
Research shows that we can predict with almost perfect accuracy what configuration each of the characters there has between their legs just from the narrative above.

And I don't know how to advertise without my ads for no-heat sweet romance stories being flagged left and right for "offensive content".


----------



## dale

Terry D said:


> So, there is a proven discrepancy that you want to blame on issues that the researchers say "Some of it is due to...?" Sorry, dale, but you are cherry-picking the content for isolated bits and trying apply that to the entire issue. The primary point of the article, and of the many others available with a simple search, is clearly that the gap is real.



no. i'm simply pointing out that even the study admits that this supposed "wage gap" isn't simply a matter of treating women
like 2nd class citizens, but merely a matter that the man getting paid more is actually more efficient and productive at the job itself.


----------



## dale

and actually? women and minorities have an extreme legal advantage in the workplace due to affirmative action laws and policies.
so f anyone should be bitching? it's the white male.


----------



## Cephus

dale said:


> no. i'm simply pointing out that even the study admits that this supposed "wage gap" isn't simply a matter of treating women
> like 2nd class citizens, but merely a matter that the man getting paid more is actually more efficient and productive at the job itself.



Exactly. But the left needs there to be oppression so that's what they pretend is going on. It isn't. Men tend to take harder and more dangerous jobs that have higher pay. They don't tend to take time off like women do to raise children. They tend to be better at negotiating higher salaries and they work harder and longer than women tend to. Women tend to go into lower-paying fields than men do. It's choice, not oppression. It's why every time feminists try to get women to go into STEM fields, they fail. It isn't that women are being kept out, it's that,  by and large, women just don't want to go into those fields.  Like it or not, there is a difference between men and women and they have different preferences and different goals. This isn't socially-determined, it's biologically determined. There's nothing wrong with that.

Of course, when you have an agenda to push, the left plays dirty pool. They use statistics that take the sum-total of all jobs that women have and the sum-total of all jobs that men do and pretend that because women, on average, make less because they tend to take jobs that pay less, that somehow, people in the same career with the same level of experience and education and negotiating skills, women are being kept down by the evil white male.  And that's just not true, according to the data.  But honesty and reality don't mean much when you've got blind faith in a political ideology, I guess.


----------



## Kevin

I guess I'm not understanding. I'm reading the pew report regarding the factors that cause women to earn less. There's a bunch of them that are not because they are discriminated against. As far as discrimination they are not quantifying it. Is that me cherry picking? I'm looking, I'm reading  but its talking about family leave, part time hours, expectations, and negotiation? and then there's figures like women part timers earning 119% of men (-parttimers ) which is more than men, isn't it? Age was a factor in that. So apparently there are multiple factors as to why women earn less than men- and the ones quantified are that they either choose or are in different situations statisically. By a broad figure they earn less but I'm struggling to see how this matters when the specifics show they are doing things differently ( career-wise).


----------



## Cephus

Kevin said:


> I guess I'm not understanding. I'm reading the pew report regarding the factors that cause women to earn less. There's a bunch of them that are not because they are discriminated against. As far as discrimination they are not quantifying it. Is that me cherry picking? I'm looking, I'm reading  but its talking about family leave, part time hours, expectations, and negotiation? and then there's figures like women part timers earning 119% of men (-parttimers ) which is more than men, isn't it? Age was a factor in that. So apparently there are multiple factors as to why women earn less than men- and the ones quantified are that they either choose or are in different situations statisically. By a broad figure they earn less but I'm struggling to see how this matters when they are specifically doing things differently.



There are a lot of factors that have nothing at all to do with discrimination why women may earn less than men, but thanks to the SJW whine-fest, companies are purposely paying some women more than men, thus proving that they are actually discriminating against men.  Imagine that.


----------



## Kevin

Cephus- I want to see what the discrimination is not just say it is or isn't.


----------



## Cephus

Kevin said:


> Cephus- I want to see what the discrimination is not just say it is or isn't.



And I'd like to see anyone produce evidence of systemic discrimination. They just can't do it. They just take emotional claims and cooked data and pretend that proves their point. It never stands up to rational scrutiny. That's the problem.


----------



## Squalid Glass

Cephus said:


> And I'd like to see anyone produce evidence of systemic discrimination. They just can't do it. They just take emotional claims and cooked data and pretend that proves their point. It never stands up to rational scrutiny. That's the problem.



Two pages ago I literally asked for evidence to show that red lining and/or the illegality of gay marriage are not systematic forms of discrimination and inequality. I was ignored.


----------



## dale

Kevin said:


> Cephus- I want to see what the discrimination is not just say it is or isn't.



yeah. maybe i should apply for a job as a waitress at "Hooters" and see how far i get. maybe i can sue
for sexual discrimination when they refuse to hire me. but....in a more realistic example...my ex was a server
in a 5-star fine dining restaurant. i've watched her bring home $800 in one shift before. the male servers NEVER
made money like the female ones did. just the way it is.


----------



## Cephus

Squalid Glass said:


> Two pages ago I literally asked for evidence to show that red lining and/or the illegality of gay marriage are not systematic forms of discrimination and inequality. I was ignored.



Funny, gay marriage is legal last I looked. How did that happen?  And Proposition 8 passed in California, one of the most liberal states around.  Huh.


----------



## Squalid Glass

So since gay marriage was legalized five years ago, that means that systematic oppression is a myth? What about those who were oppressed by it being illegal up until five years ago? Does that count for nothing.


----------



## Cephus

Squalid Glass said:


> So since gay marriage was legalized five years ago, that means that systematic oppression is a myth? What about those who were oppressed by it being illegal up until five years ago? Does that count for nothing.



It is today. Why do you insist on living in the past? Are you unable to find modern-day "oppressions" and you have to look for them years, or even decades back? Tear down any Civil War monuments lately?


----------



## dale

Squalid Glass said:


> So since gay marriage was legalized five years ago, that means that systematic oppression is a myth? What about those who were oppressed by it being illegal up until five years ago? Does that count for nothing.



the fact is...marriage has never been a "right". for ANYONE. a marriage license is like a driver's license. it's not a "right",
but a privilege defined by a required and set of rules and applicable standards. gays pretending like their RIGHTS were
being violated was always total nonsense to begin with. no RIGHTS were being violated. they fought to change the
basic criteria which defined the privilege of obtaining a license. but no "rights" were ever violated.


----------



## Squalid Glass

Cephus said:


> It is today. Why do you insist on living in the past? Are you unable to find modern-day "oppressions" and you have to look for them years, or even decades back? Tear down any Civil War monuments lately?



Haha, wow. 

I’m sorry, I figured something that happened five years ago was considered a modern issue. Regardless, it still proves the point that systematic inequality is a thing, which completely disproves the claims in this thread that systematic inequality is a myth. So, you know, there’s that.

I guess I shouldn’t even bring up issues like home ownership discrepancies that are the result of decades of housing discrimination, which contributes mighty to the wealth gap. I’m guessing the defense against that is what? That people of color just need to work harder? Or that housing discrimination is illegal so problem solved, the inequality that continues to exist as a result of years of unfair practices is just something that people need to overcome on their own?

And i I suppose I shouldn’t bring the up the plethora of legal issues trans people face because that’s not really a thing. 

Or the continued issue mandatory sentence discrepancy between black and white convicts.

Or even the issue of healthcare access and the fact that health is a business in this country.

What about this one? Affirmative action. In your mind, doesn’t affirmative action constitute a systematic attempt to enforce an unequal policy? So ... doesn’t that mean that there is such a thing as systematic inequality?


----------



## Squalid Glass

dale said:


> the fact is...marriage has never been a "right". for ANYONE. a marriage license is like a driver's license. it's not a "right",
> but a privilege defined by a required and set of rules and applicable standards. gays pretending like their RIGHTS were
> being violated was always total nonsense to begin with. no RIGHTS were being violated. they fought to change the
> basic criteria which defined the privilege of obtaining a license. but no "rights" were ever violated.



If the privilege to get married was exclusive to straight people, then doesn’t that mean it is exclusionary to gay people, and therefore unequal?


----------



## dale

Squalid Glass said:


> If the privilege to get married was exclusive to straight people, then doesn’t that mean it is exclusionary to gay people, and therefore unequal?



if the privilege of obtaining a driver's license is exclusive to people with eyesight? then doesn't that mean it's exclusionary to the blind? and therefore unequal?


----------



## luckyscars

dale said:


> if the privilege of obtaining a driver's license is exclusive to people with eyesight? then doesn't that mean it's exclusionary to the blind? and therefore unequal?



Driving has always been a privilege. Marriage has always been a right. Don’t believe me? Take it up with the conservative controlled Supreme Court of the United States. It’s a due process issue and therefore constitutional.  But I’m sure you know better, right?


----------



## dale

luckyscars said:


> Driving has always been a privilege. Marriage has always been a right. Don’t believe me? Take it up with the conservative controlled Supreme Court of the United States. It’s a due process issue and therefore constitutional.  But I’m sure you know better, right?



well....all anyone has to do is look into the history of exactly why a marriage license became required by government in the 1st place.
because this was 20th century legislation. you never had to get a marriage license to be married until the 1900s. and the only reason
the government passed this legislation, is because identity politics democrats became concerned with white men getting married to
black and filipino women. it was always a matter of pure identity politics.....just like YOU believe in. that's the irony. the government
marriage license itself was established by the bigotry of identity politics. you know.....the very ideology you celebrate.


----------



## Squalid Glass

dale said:


> if the privilege of obtaining a driver's license is exclusive to people with eyesight? then doesn't that mean it's exclusionary to the blind? and therefore unequal?



Lucky is correct. And beyond that, your providing a false equivocation. The ability to drive requires eyesight. The ability to get married does not require a straight couple. I fail to see the logic here.


----------



## Squalid Glass

dale said:


> well....all anyone has to do is look into the history of exactly why a marriage license became required by government in the 1st place.
> because this was 20th century legislation. you never had to get a marriage license to be married until the 1900s. and the only reason
> the government passed this legislation, is because identity politics democrats became concerned with white men getting married to
> black and filipino women. it was always a matter of pure identity politics.....just like YOU believe in. that's the irony. the government
> marriage license itself was established by the bigotry of identity politics. you know.....the very ideology you celebrate.



Wow. Argument won. I think this is where I officially take the exit. We’re not even in the same universe anymore.


----------



## dale

Squalid Glass said:


> Wow. Argument won. I think this is where I officially take the exit. We’re not even in the same universe anymore.



well...i already knew that. my view of reality isn't all rainbows and flying unicorns such as the typical leftist.


----------



## Winston

dale said:


> well....all anyone has to do is look into the history of exactly why a marriage license became required by government in the 1st place.
> because this was 20th century legislation. you never had to get a marriage license to be married until the 1900s. and the only reason
> the government passed this legislation, is because identity politics democrats became concerned with white men getting married to
> black and filipino women. it was always a matter of pure identity politics.....just like YOU believe in. that's the irony. the government
> marriage license itself was established by the bigotry of identity politics. you know.....the very ideology you celebrate.



Do you not expect revisionist history from adherents of Mao and Stalin? Anything they deem counterrevolutionary goes straight down the memory hole.
Marriage has always been a bond between a man and a woman, a religious ceremony.  In a short 100 years, they made it secular and godless.  That's progress.
It was always on the table to just scrap the entire thing and get government out of it.  Civil unions only, for everyone.  Not good enough for the left-zealots.  
It's never enough that we accept their right to do as they please.  Insecure people need external validation as well.   

Yeah.  Remember when socialists were so bold and unafraid in their social engineering?  The good old days... 
That inconvenient truth about Margaret Sanger and eugenics?  The founder of Planned Parenthood wanted an industry to abort all those undesirable Non-white babies?  
Her plan worked-out pretty well.  Totally supported by her modern adherents today.  You don't just accept it.  You now must celebrate it.      
Now they try the iron fist in a velvet glove injecting their values into literature and even kid's books.  Today's libs are not as obvious in their hate and distrust of the common person, more circumspect.  They actually pantomime like they care about people.
But they are preparing a new generation in the culture of nihilism and death.  Destroy the family, and government is your god.


----------



## dale

Winston said:


> Do you not expect revisionist history from adherents of Mao and Stalin? Anything they deem counterrevolutionary goes straight down the memory hole.
> Marriage has always been a bond between a man and a woman, a religious ceremony.  In a short 100 years, they made it secular and godless.  That's progress.
> It was always on the table to just scrap the entire thing and get government out of it.  Civil unions only, for everyone.  Not good enough for the left-zealots.
> It's never enough that we accept their right to do as they please.  Insecure people need external validation as well.
> 
> Yeah.  Remember when socialists were so bold and unafraid in their social engineering?  The good old days...
> That inconvenient truth about Margaret Sanger and eugenics?  The founder of Planned Parenthood wanted an industry to abort all those undesirable Non-white babies?
> Her plan worked-out pretty well.  Totally supported by her modern adherents today.  You don't just accept it.  You now must celebrate it.
> Now they try the iron fist in a velvet glove injecting their values into literature and even kid's books.  Today's libs are not as obvious in their hate and distrust of the common person, more circumspect.  They actually pantomime like they care about people.
> But they are preparing a new generation in the culture of nihilism and death.  Destroy the family, and government is your god.



i was actually going to mention sanger and planned parenthood as another example of what i'm talking about.
because really the agenda hasn't changed. no matter how hard they try to pretend. i mean....it's no coincidence
that every abortion clinic in every large city is located in a poor black neighborhood. it's no coincidence that their
are more black babies aborted in new york city than born. it's no coincidence that section 8 apartment projects in the 
inner cities keep blacks segregated in high crime communities where they shoot eachother in record numbers. and
the whole gay marriage thing was NEVER about equality. it was always about destroying western cultural norms. 
the liberal agenda is sincerely the worst thing to ever happen to women, families, and minority communities. it has completely
enslaved them to state dependency and created a destructive chaos which they'll never get out of without walking away.


----------



## luckyscars

dale said:


> well....all anyone has to do is look into the history of exactly why a marriage license became required by government in the 1st place.
> because this was 20th century legislation. you never had to get a marriage license to be married until the 1900s. and the only reason
> the government passed this legislation, is because identity politics democrats became concerned with white men getting married to
> black and filipino women. it was always a matter of pure identity politics.....just like YOU believe in. that's the irony. the government
> marriage license itself was established by the bigotry of identity politics. you know.....the very ideology you celebrate.



The reason marriage licenses became necessary was because women began to own property and personal income and gradually move away from being property of their husbands to equal parties. Yeah, yeah, typical liberal snowflakes not wanting to be chattel. Bloody women, eh?

But this change meant divorce became far more common and property rights increasingly contested in court. Which necessitated marriage moving from a religious institution to a civil one as the Establishment Cause of the First Amendment meant that churches were simply not allowed to have any stature in law.

So it's nothing to do with identity politics, everything to do with proving marriages were genuine, entered into on a consensual basis so they could stand up in court. What you absurdly decry as leftist pandering by Democrats (not that there was anything remotely leftist about the Democratic Party in those days, but hell it's only facts) is actually imposed by every right-wing conservative's supposed favorite thing: The US Constitution. Irony indeed!

Sure, there were other, minor reasons for regulation of marriage. To end problems associated with Mormon polygamy in Utah and stuff like that, for instance. But nothing to do with identity politics. There was no such thing as identity politics back then. Black and Filipinos? Mao and Stalin? My goodness! It’s almost like you, Winston and whoever else crawled out from under their rock to partake in this fatuous circle jerk of a thread had no intent of actually discussing anything but really just wanted an excuse to get a rise like a gaggle of teenage incels. Sad.

But whatever, it’s just not what I joined this forum for. If I wanted to have unending flame wars I’d hang out on 4chan. This forum is meant for grownups who want to talk about writing. Bye Felicia.


----------



## Dluuni

Cephus said:


> Men tend to take harder and more dangerous jobs that have higher pay. They don't tend to take time off like women do to raise children. They tend to be better at negotiating higher salaries and they work harder and longer than women tend to..


Women apply for and are turned down for harder and more dangerous jobs. Women get pushed out of the workforce when they have children, and men should be forced to take paternity leave. Women who try to negotiate salary tend to get told "take it or leave it, and maybe we should retract the offer" when they negotiate. They get turned down for extra hours. All of which helps push them into lower paying fields they didn't want to go into. 



Cephus said:


> This isn't socially-determined, it's biologically determined.


So why aren't women still dominant in computer science and mathematics, both derided as biologically better suited for women for decades? In Russia, doctors and surgeons are mainly women, and get paid badly. Biology does not determine these things. Gendered tasks change over time and place, it's not biology. 



Cephus said:


> .. people in the same career with the same level of experience and education and negotiating skills, women are being kept down by the evil white male.


The data shows that in exactly that situation, wage gap exists.

How prestigious are romance authors? How many can you name? Why or why not? 
How about urban fantasy?
Oh, but everyone knows the big names in some of the more manly genres that make up a much smaller portion of the market...


----------



## bdcharles

dale said:


> lol. It offends me because it's fake as fuck and everyone can plainly see it.



Yeah ok but do the sexual preferences of a make-believe wizard actually even matter that much though? 

[ ] Just sayin’
[x] Asking for a friend


----------



## bdcharles

I think the bigger question here anyway is: at which point does something become canon? Is the author daydreaming about characters’ backstories a legitimate source? To be canon, or not; that’s what I’m seeking an answer on...


----------



## Phil Istine

bdcharles said:


> Yeah ok but do the sexual preferences of a make-believe wizard actually even matter that much though?



Indeed, resenting the rest of the world from my reserved seat in the gutter wasn't the best way to live.  What a pretend wizard chooses to do with his pretend wand is entirely his own business.


----------



## Kevin

bdcharles said:


> Yeah ok but do the sexual preferences of a make-believe wizard actually even matter that much though?
> 
> [ ] Just sayin’
> [x] Asking for a friend


 that is exactly the point of the op- not about what his sexual preferences are, but why she'd come out with it/them after the fact?   because it's trendy? What other purpose...? that comes across as phony and pandering. 
And how big-a-deal is that? Not very, but still annoying. You could be generally pro-anything you want, or anti-anything you want, and still be annoyed by it.


----------



## JJBuchholz

Squalid Glass said:


> Authors are allowed to use their personal social media accounts to offer their own personal political opinions. To say otherwise is equivalent to the "shut up and dribble" argument, which is ... ignorant.



I go and follow an *author *to get some insight on his writing and thought process on writing, and maybe even some hidden inspiration, but see mostly political grandstanding and opinionated nonsense, but that somehow makes *ME *ignorant? That is a very backwards way of thinking. I have no problem with people expressing their opinions on social media, but when you are a public figure in the top echelon of your particular line of work, does it not make sense to also speak about what you do, especially when that is why so many people have chosen to follow you in the first place?

I'll give an example: Actress Alyssa Milano (no, I don't follow her, but I came across this one day) has at least TWO Twitter accounts. One is her official account (where she talks about her movies, tv shows, bookings, etc.), and her personal account (where she does her SJW grandstanding). This is how it should be done! Even though she is a heavily opinionated person that does a LOT of political grandstanding, she is smart enough to have separate accounts so that people can choose why they want to follow her. The two aspects of who she is are kept separate so everyone that follows her can enjoy what they follow.

Stephen King should take note of this.

-JJB


----------



## bdcharles

Kevin said:


> that is exactly the point of the op- not about what his sexual preferences are, but why she'd come out with it/them after the fact?   because it's trendy? What other purpose...? that comes across as phony and pandering.
> And how big-a-deal is that? Not very, but still annoying. You could be generally pro-anything you want, or anti-anything you want, and still be annoyed by it.



well JKR made this announcement following criticism about how there were not many gay characters in HP-land, so it suggests not wanting to alienate a readership, making it in essence a commercial-slash-reputation decision imo, rather than over-adherence to trends. You might equally argue it enriches the lore. I could be wrong but it all just seems a peculiar assumption to leap to. Still, nowt queerer than folk so to speak, or whatever the expression is.


----------



## bdcharles

JJBuchholz said:


> I go and follow an *author *to get some insight on his writing and thought process on writing, and maybe even some hidden inspiration,



Haha if I was a rich and successful author, I'd be disinclined to share anything that might serve as my own secret weapon  I quite like the little personal glimpses into the writers' actual selves that SM offers, though I do unfollow some when it gets too soapboxey.


----------



## Kevin

Are readers really so shallow that they needed to have an anything added? Really? How many readers? What percentage? Are you sure that wasn't just the loud, annoying ones that feel it's their calling to loudly... never mind. I mean, if you don't get this I don't know how to explain it. Is their whole filter, everything, based on...? How bout just read the gd books and enjoy them like they did way back when, before they began insisting on inserting (whoops, sorry- no inserting) cramming their PC... you know, stuff... into ever f-ing thing?

and jk... It wasn't there before and now you're adding it? Come on jk. 
Oh, it was always there? Ok, whatever. You are 1000% correct.  Thank you for helping save and awaken us all. We're deeply indebted. You are a wonderful, wonderful person contributing to a wonderful wonderful future world, universe. No, no, I'm serious- I love you love you love you... in a completely non-intrusive, non-offensive, no touchie-touchie, just an air hug, way, and I mean  nothing by it, just adoration in a non-anything way.  Air-smooch. 
Isn't she great, everyone? Love, love love love... Thank you, jk, for being you, jk.


----------



## Terry D

My opinion is, an author can do any damned thing they want with their stories and their characters and their social media accounts. It's that pesky freedom of speech thing cropping up again, damn those pesky old founding fathers. If I don't like Rowling changing things around, or adding details retroactively I don't have to buy her books. Getting pissed off about it is pretty unproductive and, frankly, kinda dumb. Don't like Steve King's politics on Twitter? Don't read them, or better yet read them and refute him with replies. It probably won't do any good, but it can be cathartic -- I know, I follow Trump and tell him how ignorant he is all the time (and no, I don't have any fantasies about him actually reading my replies, only a wistful hope of someday finding myself blocked from his account).


----------



## bdcharles

Kevin said:


> Are readers really so shallow that they needed to have an anything added?



Well, no, but some readers might *want* it in there. Their perogative (sp?) and of course, should it dovetail with a cause the author cares about, it'll carry extra weight; nothing complicated about supporting your allies. So with that in mind I say let it slide, & let the pretzels of fury form elsewhere. One non-canonically gay wizard does not an overarching movement or theme make; it's just sandboxing in the worldbuild.


----------



## luckyscars

JJBuchholz said:


> I go and follow an *author *to get some insight on his writing and thought process on writing, and maybe even some hidden inspiration, but see mostly political grandstanding and opinionated nonsense, but that somehow makes *ME *ignorant? That is a very backwards way of thinking. I have no problem with people expressing their opinions on social media, but when you are a public figure in the top echelon of your particular line of work, does it not make sense to also speak about what you do, especially when that is why so many people have chosen to follow you in the first place?
> 
> I'll give an example: Actress Alyssa Milano (no, I don't follow her, but I came across this one day) has at least TWO Twitter accounts. One is her official account (where she talks about her movies, tv shows, bookings, etc.), and her personal account (where she does her SJW grandstanding). This is how it should be done! Even though she is a heavily opinionated person that does a LOT of political grandstanding, she is smart enough to have separate accounts so that people can choose why they want to follow her. The two aspects of who she is are kept separate so everyone that follows her can enjoy what they follow.
> 
> Stephen King should take note of this.
> 
> -JJB



A lot of politically-opinionated writers would probably argue that their views are indivisible from their creative life. 

Alyssa Milano may be great but as an actress her job is literally to put aside who she is and become somebody else. Politics are entirely a side-gig for her. That’s not the same as a writer who has to incorporate their world view, including their political views, into their work, even if it’s really subtle.

For example, Stephen King is not a writer who writes about politics...but his politics are consistent and present in his work insofar as his work is humanist, often quite moral, often focused on themes like the banality of evil. If one enjoys King’s work for the way it explores evil (and most of his fans do, he is a horror writer) then his commentary on, say, Trump is 100% relevant to “insight on his writing”. On the other hand, his opinions on how to bake cookies are probably less relevant...

...and yet it sounds like you would probably accept the cookies commentary but not the Trump commentary, which does not make sense...unless you just don’t *like* King’s views. Which is absolutely fair enough (I don’t necessarily care for them either) except that you should not then be pretending your issue is with King being politically opinionated but rather what his politics happen to be.


----------



## Winston

JJBuchholz said:


> ?
> ...I'll give an example: Actress Alyssa Milano (no, I don't follow her, but I came across this one day) has at least TWO Twitter accounts. One is her official account (where she talks about her movies, tv shows, bookings, etc.), and her personal account (where she does her SJW grandstanding). This is how it should be done! Even though she is a heavily opinionated person that does a LOT of political grandstanding, she is smart enough to have separate accounts so that people can choose why they want to follow her. The two aspects of who she is are kept separate so everyone that follows her can enjoy what they follow...
> -JJB



Robert A. Heinlein is often ignorantly dismissed as a militarist with fascist leanings. I would challenge everyone here to treat yourself to an early hidden gem of his called "For Us, The Living:  A Comedy of Customs".  

The man was always a social liberal / libertarian, but all everyone remembers is Rico and the Mobile Infantry.  In "for Us" (written 1939), he explores a future society with many progressive themes, including universal income.  But the concept that really stuck with me was his societal norm of separating the "Public" from the "Personal".  In the world he created, no one pried into your personal life.  That was socially disgusting and repugnant.  Conversely, in public, you did not discuss your personal life.  That was tacky and improper.

I know, Heinlein is a fascist, dismiss him.  But that concept always made sense to me (much more than universal income and uber secularism). I find it sad that not only has that concept of privacy died, but it's been replaced with mandatory exhibitionism. 

So Rowling is "sharing" her personal views in a public space?  What could go wrong?  (see above 25 pages)


----------



## Aquilo

Terry D said:


> My opinion is, an author can do any damned thing they want with their stories and their characters and their social media accounts.



Maybe with their social media accounts (although I've known some authors be warned off about getting political on FB etc), but author responsibility needs to come in with writing. If you're representing any community, you have to do it right, otherwise, you're laughed off the market. Although some get away with it. _50 Shades_ was apparently about BDSM, but everything done in that went against BDSM guidelines, making readers think it's okay to push a Dom beyond what's stated in his contract, and that just because the guy was good-looking and had money it was okay to stalk a woman. At best it should have been good for the next episode of _Criminal Minds_. 

What you (generic you) write can upset people. Hell, authors play on reader emotion in order to get a reader to buy a novel and spread the word. You can't want the one and not expect the other if you get it wrong. Respect goes both ways, or it should. And readers aren't mindreaders. Most don't go onto the author's social site and see a character is supposed to be gay. If it's relevant to the story, it should be in the story, where it matters.

If an author has to explain anything outside of the work, then they've not done their job of getting it across in the story itself.


----------



## Cephus

Squalid Glass said:


> Haha, wow.
> 
> I’m sorry, I figured something that happened five years ago was considered a modern issue. Regardless, it still proves the point that systematic inequality is a thing, which completely disproves the claims in this thread that systematic inequality is a myth. So, you know, there’s that.
> 
> I guess I shouldn’t even bring up issues like home ownership discrepancies that are the result of decades of housing discrimination, which contributes mighty to the wealth gap. I’m guessing the defense against that is what? That people of color just need to work harder? Or that housing discrimination is illegal so problem solved, the inequality that continues to exist as a result of years of unfair practices is just something that people need to overcome on their own?
> 
> And i I suppose I shouldn’t bring the up the plethora of legal issues trans people face because that’s not really a thing.
> 
> Or the continued issue mandatory sentence discrepancy between black and white convicts.
> 
> Or even the issue of healthcare access and the fact that health is a business in this country.
> 
> What about this one? Affirmative action. In your mind, doesn’t affirmative action constitute a systematic attempt to enforce an unequal policy? So ... doesn’t that mean that there is such a thing as systematic inequality?



It's a systemic inequality against white people, specifically white men. I guess you're proud of that. This really isn't going well for you, is it? The only examples you can find are racist toward the side you hate.


----------



## SueC

I think there is a lot of that going on, and not just in prose or even film. I see it as an attempt to make characters or story lines more complete (for lack of a better word). I know some of us often struggle with defining our character's motivations, and giving them qualities that may seem irrelevant to a story, can sometimes explain their actions. I don't think it's a bad thing - and I don't usually find it off-putting. I think we are long past the days where you simply put a character in a scene and give him a voice and something to do. Now we try harder (I think) to define them, offer up motivations, give our readers a reason why they make the choices they do. Often these characteristics are part of the "back story," but sometimes we are compelled to include them in the actual story, for the sake of clarification.

I'm not much of a prude here, but I think we could have this conversation with using some of this language. You're writers - come up with something different to get your point across - yeah?


----------



## Terry D

Cephus said:


> It's a systemic inequality against white people, specifically white men. I guess you're proud of that. This really isn't going well for you, is it? The only examples you can find are racist toward the side you hate.



I'm curious, can you name any one area of society where a white person is not afforded an opportunity to succeed? Please show me some documentation to support this systemic anti-white bias. I don't mean opinions about whites, I'm talking about something a white person isn't allowed to do, or an opportunity they aren't afforded.

On Edit: I'm not talking anecdotal evidence, I'm talking systemic issues.


----------



## Cephus

luckyscars said:


> The reason marriage licenses became necessary was because women began to own property and personal income and gradually move away from being property of their husbands to equal parties. Yeah, yeah, typical liberal snowflakes not wanting to be chattel. Bloody women, eh?
> 
> But this change meant divorce became far more common and property rights increasingly contested in court. Which necessitated marriage moving from a religious institution to a civil one as the Establishment Cause of the First Amendment meant that churches were simply not allowed to have any stature in law.



That much is true. Marriage hasn't been a religious institution in a very long time. You can walk down all of the aisles in all of the churches you want, you're not actually married until you get that piece of paper from the state. I'm entirely fine with any two legal, consenting adults choosing the officially bind their financial and legal futures together for social gain. That's great. I voted for gay marriage after all.

Where this becomes a problem are the people who want to play this revisionist history nonsense. Let's not forget that it was the Democrats that pushed for slavery in the first place. The KKK was founded by the left as a response to Republican Reconstruction-era policies in the south. It only moved over to the right following Nixon's Southern Strategy in the 70s. That's when religion took over the Republican Party. I'm not blaming or excusing anyone, there's plenty of blame to go around. These are just the facts, whether anyone likes them or not.

But, in today's far-left regressive political ideology, identity politics means everything. It doesn't matter who you are on the inside, it matters what you are on the outside. It is a way to divide people for political gain. It doesn't matter what happened last week or last year or a century ago, this is what's happening today. That's what a lot of people object to and rightfully so. Martin Luther King Jr. would be appalled at what has happened to the political left in this country. What happens today is exactly the polar opposite of what he wanted to see. People aren't judged by their character, except in an endless array of mindless virtue signalling. They are judged solely by the color of their skin.

The regressive left are like locusts. They swarm from place to place trying to impose their asinine ideology on everyone, not because they really care about the property or idea, but because they want to force people to be just like them. They leave a swath of destruction in their wake. They want a universal hive mind and won't take no for an answer. You can't dislike certain movies these days or you get labeled a Nazi or a misogynist. Anything they don't like, they burn down. It isn't the political right that is rioting in the streets. That's the left. The right doesn't have an ANTIFA. The left does and it's labeled as a terrorist group. The idea of "punching Nazis", for whatever definition of Nazi you happen to like at the moment, is a left wing idea. They are fine with violence and destruction, rather than discussion and compromise. And I'll be the first to agree that's the case to a certain degree on both sides, especially in the extremes, that's why we're so ideologically deadlocked today, but you don't solve problems by saying "it's your fault". You solve problems by cleaning up your own house and most people I encounter on the left have no interest in that.  All they want to do is scream "orange man bad" and pretend Trump is a Russian agent, even though they've been proven wrong. It's just children screaming at each other because they don't know how to think, they only know how to feel.

And guess what? Most of the incels are on the left.  Just thought you might want to know that.


----------



## Cephus

Terry D said:


> I'm curious, can you name any one area of society where a white person is not afforded an opportunity to succeed? Please show me some documentation to support this systemic anti-white bias. I don't mean opinions about whites, I'm talking about something a white person isn't allowed to do, or an opportunity they aren't afforded.
> 
> On Edit: I'm not talking anecdotal evidence, I'm talking systemic issues.



Most colleges. There are race and gender-based scholarships and entry quotas. Non-whites and women get preferential treatment. Look at companies like the BBC that hire based on gender and skin color, not on skill and qualifications. They advertise that they're hiring people, so long as they're not white. I could give you tons of specifics, although I continue to be convinced that this has nothing to do with writing anymore and should probably be moved to off-topic so that it doesn't take over the forum.


----------



## Terry D

Cephus said:


> Most colleges. There are race and gender-based scholarships and entry quotas. Non-whites and women get preferential treatment. Look at companies like the BBC that hire based on gender and skin color, not on skill and qualifications. They advertise that they're hiring people, so long as they're not white. I could give you tons of specifics, although I continue to be convinced that this has nothing to do with writing anymore and should probably be moved to off-topic so that it doesn't take over the forum.



No one's complaining about the direction of this thread, so that doesn't worry me. Specific scholarships can, and do target specific sorts of students, that's true, but, for every one of those you can find as many, if not more, private scholarships handed out by fraternal organizations, businesses, alumni groups, etc. and if you don't think many of those perfectly legal, privately funded, scholarships are target at white males, you are deluding yourself. 

Please, show me an advertisement from the BBC that specifies they are hiring 'non-white' only. They can't be doing that in this country or it would be a violation of Federal law -- which protects white males from discrimination as well as everyone else. I don't know the laws in the UK. I know you can find "tons of specifics" but I don't think any of them would demonstrate a systemic bias against white males. I get it, I get frustrated too when I hear about Black Lives Matter blaming white men, about #METOO blaming white men, or about LBGQ folks blaming white men for all their problems. Hell, I've never done anything to them -- except unwittingly benefited from a system that's become tilted in my favor. So, when I feel that frustration, I try to put myself in their shoes; if a little jaw-boneing and finger-pointing and name calling pisses me off, how must the people who live with real discrimination every day feel?


----------



## Cephus

Terry D said:


> No one's complaining about the direction of this thread, so that doesn't worry me. Specific scholarships can, and do target specific sorts of students, that's true, but, for every one of those you can find as many, if not more, private scholarships handed out by fraternal organizations, businesses, alumni groups, etc. and if you don't think many of those perfectly legal, privately funded, scholarships are target at white males, you are deluding yourself.



Then by all means point them out.  Show me any that are advertised to "white males".  Go ahead.  Might there be some that are sneaky about it? I don't know. And neither do you. But there absolutely are some that openly advertise for women or minorities. 



> Please, show me an advertisement from the BBC that specifies they are hiring 'non-white' only. They can't be doing that in this country or it would be a violation of Federal law -- which protects white males from discrimination as well as everyone else. I don't know the laws in the UK. I know you can find "tons of specifics" but I don't think any of them would demonstrate a systemic bias against white males. I get it, I get frustrated too when I hear about Black Lives Matter blaming white men, about #METOO blaming white men, or about LBGQ folks blaming white men for all their problems. Hell, I've never done anything to them -- except unwittingly benefited from a system that's become tilted in my favor. So, when I feel that frustration, I try to put myself in their shoes; if a little jaw-boneing and finger-pointing and name calling pisses me off, how must the people who live with real discrimination every day feel?



https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/885434/bbc-trainee-job-advert-open-to-non-white-applicants-only


----------



## Terry D

Cephus said:


> Then by all means point them out.  Show me any that are advertised to "white males".  Go ahead.  Might there be some that are sneaky about it? I don't know. And neither do you. But there absolutely are some that openly advertise for women or minorities.



Systemic bigotry doesn't advertise itself. It doesn't have to. 



https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/885434/bbc-trainee-job-advert-open-to-non-white-applicants-only[/QUOTE]

You've proven my point precisely. An advertisement for *one* temporary, paid internship position -- which the organization caught hell for -- is just about the complete opposite of a systemic issue.


----------



## luckyscars

Cephus said:


> Then by all means point them out.  Show me any that are advertised to "white males".  Go ahead.  Might there be some that are sneaky about it? I don't know. And neither do you. But there absolutely are some that openly advertise for women or minorities.
> 
> 
> 
> https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/885434/bbc-trainee-job-advert-open-to-non-white-applicants-only



The Daily Express is not a credible source, Cephus. It’s a British tabloid owned by a celebrity magazine huckster whose whole schtick is right wing populism. No serious British person reads it. As far as source material, you might as well quote Sesame Street.


----------



## Kevin

Again, I would urge any truly committed person of great conscience while lacking pigment and p-... uhm, member to give up their position of priveledge to another more deserving, in the name of diversity, equality of outcome, and the uhm... something-non-offensive hood of humanity.


----------



## Cephus

Terry D said:


> Systemic bigotry doesn't advertise itself. It doesn't have to.



And it's handy that when you have a particular emotionally-derived political ideology, you can just claim that it's there, conveniently without having to provide any evidence to prove it.



> You've proven my point precisely. An advertisement for *one* temporary, paid internship position -- which the organization caught hell for -- is just about the complete opposite of a systemic issue.



But that doesn't stop it from happening. That's one of many examples I could provide. It's why James Damore  got fired from Google for daring to speak out against racist hiring practices, and why there's now a female employee at Microsoft doing the same thing. These things happen all over the place and when these things come up, the left just makes excuses.

Why is that?


----------



## dale

Kevin said:


> Again, I would urge any truly committed person of great conscience while lacking pigment and p-... uhm, member to give up their position of priveledge to another more deserving, in the name of diversity, equality of outcome, and the uhm... something-non-offensive hood of humanity.


obviously the bigotry against whites is systematic. it's systematic because it has become institutional. it's taught in schools.
by the media. in praised and critically acclaimed books and films. in politics. it's everywhere you look.


----------



## Aquilo

dale said:


> obviously the bigotry against whites is systematic. it's systematic because it has become institutional. it's taught in schools.
> by the media. in praised and critically acclaimed books and films. in politics. it's everywhere you look.



I agree to a certain extent. I hated how classic literature in schools only spoonfed that romance happened between a man and woman. We're taught to be a tolerant by a system that didn't show it. I can't stand to read the classics now, give me work that moves outside of the so-called norm anyday.


----------



## luckyscars

Cephus said:


> And it's handy that when you have a particular emotionally-derived political ideology, you can just claim that it's there, conveniently without having to provide any evidence to prove it.



Prove what? We have literal millennia of human history and countless deaths that prove the existence of systemic bigotry in the human psyche. If you're seriously demanding evidence for systemic racism, may I suggest retaking a few kindergarten courses on the subject. 

Unless _you _can provide evidence that systemic racism has been ended, the default position is to claim that it survives, even if you are fortunate enough not to have to live with it yourself. 




Cephus said:


> But that doesn't stop it from happening. That's one of many examples I could provide. It's why James Damore got fired from Google for daring to speak out against racist hiring practices, and why there's now a female employee at Microsoft doing the same thing. These things happen all over the place and when these things come up, the left just makes excuses.
> 
> 
> Why is that?




But they don't happen 'all over the place'. They happen piecemeal in various places affecting various different groups at different times. *That's why it's in the friggin' news. *That's why you know who James Damore is - because if/when it happens it constitutes such anathema to social mores (and in many cases the law) it becomes A Big Deal. If it happened regularly in lots of places it would stale in the news cycles they wouldn't cover it. You know, kind of like how they stopped covering police shootings.

The only reason you think it happens 'all over the place' is because you have allowed Steve Bannon and whatever other college of alt-right loonies persuade you it's some epic problem. The vast majority of those who go to school at Harvard are white. The vast majority of those who work for Google and Facebook and Microsoft (especially in upper management) are white. Look it up and show me where all the blacks and gays have the hot programming jobs. You know where there isn't a majority of white people? Prison.


----------



## Winston

> ...You know where there isn't a majority of white people? Prison.



Well...
https://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_race.jsp
I used to work in corrections.  You're wrong.
Just sayin'.


----------



## dale

Winston said:


> Well...
> https://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_race.jsp
> I used to work in corrections.  You're wrong.
> Just sayin'.



now you know pointing out facts and statistics to these people will only get you accused of being adolf hitler...right?


----------



## luckyscars

Winston said:


> Well...
> https://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_race.jsp
> I used to work in corrections.  You're wrong.
> Just sayin'.



The BOP data is federal prison only. Most crime is state crime with inmates in state prisons and jails, but you knew that of course...

“Blacks have long outnumbered whites in U.S. prisons. But a significant decline in the number of black prisoners in recent years has steadily narrowed that gap to the point where it is half as wide as it was in 2009, when America’s prison population peaked, according to new data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics.”

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-ta...etween-number-of-blacks-and-whites-in-prison/

“Jus’ Sayin”


----------



## dale

luckyscars said:


> The BOP data is federal prison only. Most crime is state crime with inmates in state prisons and jails, but you knew that of course...
> 
> “Blacks have long outnumbered whites in U.S. prisons. But a significant decline in the number of black prisoners in recent years has steadily narrowed that gap to the point where it is half as wide as it was in 2009, when America’s prison population peaked, according to new data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics.”
> 
> https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-ta...etween-number-of-blacks-and-whites-in-prison/
> 
> “Jus’ Sayin”


but of course....you wouldn't want to see the percentage ratios of blacks committing the majority of violent crime in this country
even though being a much smaller percentage of the population. i mean....that...much like the link already provided, which completely blow 
your poor widdle false narrative all to hell again....basically like ALL statistics do.


----------



## luckyscars

dale said:


> but of course....you wouldn't want to see the percentage ratios of blacks committing the majority of violent crime in this country
> even though being a much smaller percentage of the population. i mean....that...much like the link already provided, which completely blow
> your poor widdle false narrative all to hell again....basically like ALL statistics do.



So you do agree that the majority of people in prison definitely aren’t white, then?


----------



## Winston

> The BOP data is federal prison only. Most crime is state crime with inmates in state prisons and jails, but you knew that of course...



The Bureau of Prisons is regulated by numerous government codes, overseen by other agencies and given regular colonoscopies by opportunist politicians.  

The Pew Research Center is a highly partisan left-leaning group that panders to it's progressive base.  They have zero accountability.

When the two don't agree, which is the more trustworthy source?

BTW, if you want 50 different breakdowns for the states, do your own research. I did 30 years ago when I got my degree in Administration of Justice.  I can save you the time:  There's very little difference between all the states and Feds (except states like Montana and Idaho have greater white incarceration rates).  Outliers like the District of Columbia get close to 50%.  But nowhere are non-whites a majority in prison.

Stop drinking the Rachel Madow Kool Aid.  Learn to think for yourself.  Or, at least do some real research before committing to an ignorant statement.  

I found another easy-to-read one for ya.  It's from The Bureau of Justice Statistics.  Not some partisan hacks like you pulled up.  
https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/ji17_sum.pdf

And we can do this all night long, back and forth. Me with real stats, you with made-up biased crap.  But, my male-privilege is calling and I have to go cook dinner.  Happy reading!


----------



## luckyscars

Winston said:


> The Bureau of Prisons is regulated by numerous government codes, overseen by other agencies and given regular colonoscopies by opportunist politicians.
> 
> The Pew Research Center is a highly partisan left-leaning group that panders to it's progressive base. They have zero accountability.
> 
> When the two don't agree, which is the more trustworthy source?
> 
> BTW, if you want 50 different breakdowns for the states, do your own research. I did 30 years ago when I got my degree in Administration of Justice. I can save you the time: There's very little difference between all the states and Feds (except states like Montana and Idaho have greater white incarceration rates). Outliers like the District of Columbia get close to 50%. But nowhere are non-whites a majority in prison.
> 
> Stop drinking the Rachel Madow Kool Aid. Learn to think for yourself. Or, at least do some real research before committing to an ignorant statement.
> 
> I found another easy-to-read one for ya. It's from The Bureau of Justice Statistics. Not some partisan hacks like you pulled up.
> https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/ji17_sum.pdf
> 
> And we can do this all night long, back and forth Me with real stats, you with made-up biased crap. But, my male-privilege is calling and I have to go cook dinner. Happy reading!



“Real stats”. Lol. I’m out.

It’s also important to note “white” in US government data includes Hispanic, which blows up the federal prison data because illegal immigration is a federal crime and most illegal immigrants arrested in the US are (Hispanic) whites. If one was to only count whites as being non-Hispanic the number of white inmates is extremely small.

https://www.sentencingproject.org/criminal-justice-facts/

“[FONT=TGN_Regular]Sentencing policies, implicit racial bias, and socioeconomic inequity contribute to racial disparities at every level of the criminal justice system. Today, people of color make up 37% of the U.S. population but 67% of the prison population. Overall, African Americans are more likely than white Americans to be arrested; once arrested, they are more likely to be convicted; and once convicted, they are more likely to face stiff sentences. Black men are six times as likely to be incarcerated as white men and Hispanic men are more than twice as likely to be incarcerated as non-Hispanic white men”[/FONT]


Night Winston. I’d say happy reading back, but I get the sense you don’t do much.


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## dale

luckyscars said:


> So you do agree that the majority of people in prison definitely aren’t white, then?



depends on where the prison is. Indiana has about 13 prisons. most of them are majority white. the ones that aren't are generally
close to the chicagoland area, where many violent gang members from the chicagoland area itself fill them. and chicago is a perfect example
of crime rate statistics. you have 500 murders in the city of chicago? almost all of them are blacks killing other blacks. and all this is thanks to
chicago's asinine liberal policies.


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## dale

the only white people you can blame for black crime statistics and black incarceration rates are white liberals.


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## luckyscars

Regarding allegations of Pew being “left leaning” , for the mouth-breathers...

https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/pew-research
*
”Overall, we rate Pew Research Least Biased and Very High for factual reporting due to excellent sourcing.”

*Fucking pathetic.


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## dale

luckyscars said:


> Regarding allegations of Pew being “left leaning” , for the mouth-breathers...
> 
> https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/pew-research
> *
> ”Overall, we rate Pew Research Least Biased and Very High for factual reporting due to excellent sourcing.”
> 
> Fucking pathetic.*


lol. i never said a damn thing about PEW. i'm just sorry you can't handle the fact that you hate black people, which is clearly
demonstrated by your ideology in relation to eugenics and social welfare programs.


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## Dluuni

You realize that right wing ideology runs on and are overwhelming fueled by identity politics, right? And why does nobody want to answer any of my comments on books? Sigh.


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## CyberWar

Leftist PC drivel is unfortunately the official Party line in much of the Western world today. Like it or not, it's what sells these days. Personally I find it extremely irritating, especially where it clearly has no merit to the storyline and merely serves to signal virtue to the special snowflake SJW crowd of professionaly-offended victims, but it is what it is. A professional author who makes a living writing bestsellers to a primarily-Western audience just has to take that into account and give at least some lip service to the values of the liberal left, lest he or she risk losing a sizable portion of their fanbase (and revenue) solely by failing to please the entitled snowflake part of it.

Now, personally I would never write against my beliefs for any reason whatsoever, but what do I know - I'm just an ignorant potato-farming hick from the ass end of Eastern Europe (since "ass end of Europe" alone isn't bad enough) who thinks "diversity" is a kind of livestock disease and generally is only one step below a goose-stepping Nazi in terms of social attitudes.


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## Kevin

Dluuni said:


> You realize that right wing ideology runs on and are overwhelming fueled by identity politics, right? And why does nobody want to answer any of my comments on books? Sigh.


right wing ideology- so called right wing or like the.12 or so actual Nazis somewhere in Huntington Beach or... Montana? I kid, but relatively they may as well be 12 of them. I mean they are so far off norm that nobody's is for them. And the fact that they breath and eat food, or are for their country ( nationalists?) does not make others who eat, breathe, and are for their country Nazis -no..
The largest western anti-Nazi killing machine ( designed specifically to kill nazis) ever assembled was composed of those who were for their country. 

So ... being a poet ( go ahead and laugh), I tend to see things with feel. So how does it feel? Uhm...
everything is being taken to the extreme. 2 percent of the 2 percent are pushing social agenda on the 100%. Sorry, but I can't go along. 

As a for-instance some boy, born as a physical boy is now on the girls track team. Naturally (and that is based on reality) he's kicking ass all over the girls. Some of those girls don't appreciate it. They were hoping for letters and maybe scholarships or getting in to college by sports, but this person is making that not happen. They have no chance because he wins every race. 

How is that ok or a good thing? Anyway, it's happening 'institutionallly' you could say ( because the school district backs it- policy) . So am I a troglodyte/Nazi for even questioning this? I see it as related to trans-whatever, though easily separatable, but right now, totally unfair.

And sorry about not commenting on the books, this thread is so long I can't find them mentioned and I probably wouldn't be interested since I only see and maybe then comment on something that interests me. I'm prejudiced.


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## dale

CyberWar said:


> Leftist PC drivel is unfortunately the official Party line in much of the Western world today. Like it or not, it's what sells these days. Personally I find it extremely irritating, especially where it clearly has no merit to the storyline and merely serves to signal virtue to the special snowflake SJW crowd of professionaly-offended victims, but it is what it is. A professional author who makes a living writing bestsellers to a primarily-Western audience just has to take that into account and give at least some lip service to the values of the liberal left, lest he or she risk losing a sizable portion of their fanbase (and revenue) solely by failing to please the entitled snowflake part of it.
> 
> Now, personally I would never write against my beliefs for any reason whatsoever, but what do I know - I'm just an ignorant potato-farming hick from the ass end of Eastern Europe (since "ass end of Europe" alone isn't bad enough) who thinks "diversity" is a kind of livestock disease and generally is only one step below a goose-stepping Nazi in terms of social attitudes.



it's not losing any significant part of a fanbase that's any real issue. to be honest, these actors and authors and artists probably lose more fans
by pulling this crap than if they hadn't. but the INDUSTRY is the problem. the industry is biased towards left wing stupidity. you'll have a harder 
time with the top agents and publishers if you don't suck up to the left wing insanity.


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## Aquilo

Kevin said:


> As a for-instance some boy, born as a physical boy is now on the girls track team. Naturally (and that is based on reality) he's kicking ass all over the girls. Some of those girls don't appreciate it. They were hoping for letters and maybe scholarships or getting into college by sports, but this person is making that not happen. They have no chance because he wins every race.
> 
> How is that ok or a good thing? Anyway, it's happening 'institutionally' you could say ( because the school district backs it- policy) . So am I a troglodyte/Nazi for even questioning this? I see it as related to trans-whatever, though easily separatable, but right now, totally unfair.



You have more sports stars taking steroids to beat the system as they get older. The latter outweighs the former by miles, yet you bring up the trans side when they are young. In fact just because a kid is trans, it won't change how most kids think, and that's how they'd rather get out of sports because they can't stand it. The instances with trans kids as sports stars is rare. Out of 1,500 of kids in my son's highschool, there's one, and he hates sports. You're pushing your own "but 2 percent of the 2 percent do X here" agenda. I thought you weren't into that?


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## luckyscars

dale said:


> depends on where the prison is. Indiana has about 13 prisons. most of them are majority white. the ones that aren't are generally
> close to the chicagoland area, where many violent gang members from the chicagoland area itself fill them. and chicago is a perfect example
> of crime rate statistics. you have 500 murders in the city of chicago? almost all of them are blacks killing other blacks. and all this is thanks to
> chicago's asinine liberal policies.



Y'know, if you and Winston insist on beating this tired drum, it might be helpful if you actually decided to look up stuff rather than make it up. 

Here is the data for Indiana via The Setencing Project (numbers from the US Bureau of Justice Statistics, before you start whining about liberal fake news) https://www.sentencingproject.org/the-facts/#map

[FONT=TGN_Regular]Imprisonment by Race/Ethnicity (2014)

[/FONT]
[FONT=TGN_Regular]White imprisonment rate (per 100,000)
339
[/FONT]
[FONT=TGN_Regular]Black imprisonment rate (per 100,000)
1,616
[/FONT]
[FONT=TGN_Regular]Hispanic imprisonment rate (per 100,000)
302
[/FONT]


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## dale

luckyscars said:


> Y'know, if you and Winston insist on beating this tired drum, it might be helpful if you actually decided to look up stuff rather than make it up.
> 
> Here is the data for Indiana via The Setencing Project (numbers from the US Bureau of Justice Statistics, before you start whining about liberal fake news) https://www.sentencingproject.org/the-facts/#map
> 
> [FONT=TGN_Regular]Imprisonment by Race/Ethnicity (2014)
> 
> [/FONT]
> [FONT=TGN_Regular]White imprisonment rate (per 100,000)
> 339
> [/FONT]
> [FONT=TGN_Regular]Black imprisonment rate (per 100,000)
> 1,616
> [/FONT]
> [FONT=TGN_Regular]Hispanic imprisonment rate (per 100,000)
> 302
> [/FONT]



well...the thing is? I'VE ACTUALLY BEEN THERE. and on my little 6 year tour, i was transferred to 4 different ones. and every one i went to
had more whites than blacks. so excuse meif i might believe my own fucking eyes before i do your links.


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## Kevin

Aquilo said:


> You have more sports stars taking steroids to beat the system as they get older. The latter outweighs the former by miles, yet you bring up the trans side when they are young. In fact just because a kid is trans, it won't change how most kids think, and that's how they'd rather get out of sports because they can't stand it. The instances with trans kids as sports stars is rare. Out of 1,500 of kids in my son's highschool, there's one, and he hates sports. You're pushing your own "but 2 percent of the 2 percent do X here" agenda. I thought you weren't into that?


I'm not following... Because pro sports atheletes often take steroids school boys should be allowed to compete against girls as girls?


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## luckyscars

dale said:


> well...the thing is? I'VE ACTUALLY BEEN THERE. and on my little 6 year tour, i was transferred to 4 different ones. and every one i went to
> had more whites than blacks. so excuse meif i might believe my own fucking eyes before i do your links.



Ah Okay. Yeah I'll believe you and all the careful counting of white people you allegedly did when you were allegedly in jail instead of published demographic data from the US Government because clearly you're the reliable source on this stuff. Now excuse me, I'm off to see Alex Jones to learn all about how the New World Order are turning the frogs gay. Have a lovely day, dale.


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## dale

luckyscars said:


> Ah Okay. Yeah I'll believe you and all the careful counting of white people you allegedly did when you were allegedly in jail instead of published demographic data from the US Government because clearly you're the reliable source on this stuff. Now excuse me, I'm off to see Alex Jones to learn all about how the New World Order are turning the frogs gay. Have a lovely day, dale.



lol. and anyway? i wouldn't give a shit if there was more blacks in state prisons than whites. this isn't proof of systematic racism.
this is just simply proof that blacks commit a disproportionate amount of violent crime by percentage ratio. because there's a very
logical explanation why there were more whites than blacks in the places i was. i wasn't a violent offender. now if i would've went
to a place like westville? it WOULD have been 90% black. but that's a maximum security joint up by lake michigan. they generally
won't send you there unless you're a violent criminal or have an institutional disciplinary problem. so hate to break the news to ya?
but even if there are more blacks than whites in a certain facility? that's has nothing to do with systematic racism. so sorry. lol


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## Phil Istine

*MOD NOTE:  As you may have noticed by now, this thread is locked.

I don't think it's necessary to explain the reasons.

If you participated in a reasonable manner, my apologies.

If you didn't, you were part of the problem.*


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