Tag: drawing a line | A Banana Peeled

In yesterday’s post, I was talking about where to draw the line when it came to problematic creators. It always amuses/frustrates me when people try to lecture me about not giving my money to someone I personally abhor. Even if they were objectively true that I should not use my purchasing power in that way–

Which, by the way. Let’s unpack and dissect that a bit. Capitalism is based on buying what you want/need. And the basic tenet is ‘let the market decide’. In tangent, we are told that people ‘vote with their wallets’. To me, this means that me deciding NOT to give money to JKR, for example, is exactly how capitalism/politics are supposed to work. And yet, I’m told that somehow I’m doing her wrong by not buying her shit?

I want to emphasize again that no one is owed my money. I’m not talking about bills, of course, but about creators who are trying to entice me to part with my dollars. While I support the arts in general, I am not obligated to support any one artist. It’s fascinating to me that the political right, who are big proponents of capitalism (so they say) are the ones who throw a hissy fit when they perceive ‘cancel culture’ is happening.

Look. You can’t really have it both ways. You can’t say let the market decide unless it goes against my point of view. I mean, you can say that, but it’s not being internally logical. Which, I know. It may not surprise you to know that I don’t think much of the right and their ability to maintain an internal logic.

More to the point, though, is that they are really good at staying on message. It’s one thing I envy about the Republicans. Less so since that guy took over the party, but still. They will line up dutifully behind their party and repeat the talking points ad nauseam.

I wish the Democrats were as on message, but for better and worse, we are the big tent party. I have been a Dem since I was eighteen. Before that, really, but maybe not vocally.

So. There is an open world Potter game. As you can imagine, this has caused a lot of strong emotions because for many people, JKR is the absolute worst. I will hasten to add that I’m in that category. To others, people who are against JKR are the worst. They can go jump in a lake. I only read the books because I had a massive crush on Alan Rickman, but there were serious problems with them even outside JKR’s transphobia.

First of all, the casual racism. The way she named the love interest ‘Cho Chang’. That’s just like she dropped a fork on a tiled floor and named the character after the sound the fork made. In addition, why is she Asian? There is nothing Asian about her except her made-up name. There was the casual transphobia–how she described Rita Skeeter–and the fatphobia. The ‘oh Dumbledore was gay all along’ bullshit, just to name a few.

The worse thing, though, is her simplistic morality system. If someone is deemed good, then anything they do is good. If someone is bad, then everything they do is bad. Harry Potter bullies other kids, but that’s fine because he’s good. No, the absolute worst thing is that they are poorly-written books. Plus, like most famous writers, she needed a good editor starting around book four.

She went off the rails in her transphobic views and many of us in the LBGTQ+ family wrote her off for good. It’s especially repugnant because she likes to wrap it up as her just looking out for (cis) women. She claims that she has many friends who are trans. Hahahahhahahah. That’s always the lie people go to when they want to trash a group–but I have friends who are in that group! It might even be true. There are always people in a group who are too eager to be the cool one in that group. My brother, sadly, is like that when it comes to being Asian.

One person is a game developer and said that the protests hurt the devs, not JKR. Although Ian pointed out to me that devs got paid ahead of time and most don’t get a percentage of the game sales (the minions, I mean). I said, “Well, yes. People are going to not get the money. That’s the point.” And, yes, it’s easy for me to say that you can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs. It was her arguing with a trans woman for a while, and the dev was saying that it was too personal for the trans woman. Which, well, duh. Of course it’s personal. I don’t understand why this needs to be said. I also don’t understand why you (generic you) would think it was a negative to not want to give money to people who were actively harming you.

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