My Academic Friends who Follow JKR

[pennswoods]

Rowlings name rolled across my Twitter feed and I went looking. I was thinking of typing up something about her latest, but it did not feel like a good use of words or my brain. I do not follow her and have her blocked, but out of curiosity, I looked to see how many people I follow who follow her. 

It really is a shocking number of fellow academics, some of whom are close personal friends, actually follow her. None of them identify themselves as Harry Potter fans or people particularly interested in fan practices or even literature. A few live in the UK - one that I know of, is gay. Another is someone I have spoken at length with about why I don't follow her and how I see her influence and continued anti-trans position as harmful. 

I wonder why they still follow her.

It's possible some of these people have forgotten they follow her and don't really pay attention to her. Some may even have her blocked. Others may not use Twitter much if at all anymore. But I felt myself wondering if any follow her not out of curiosity but out of actual support. Every now and again, I see a distant colleague share a TERF/GC tweet and one or two have even come out overtly. I also think that older women in the UK are more likely to side with what they see as Rowling's defense of women's rights and then handwave the other stuff she tweets as irrelevent or misunderstood.

I think it would break my heart to learn that some of these people, even now, even still, think Rowling is being reasonable and has a point.

ETA: There is one who is liking and supporting JKR's tweets and tweets in support of her. This is a middle-aged British woman that is not a close personal friend but someone I work closely with through my leadership of the European organization I am a president of. 

Comments

[tjs_whatnot]

I would go and see if I still (or ever did) follow her, but I uninstalled the app, lost my password and don't even remember what my user name was. I imagine most of the other followers I know are likewise interested in her opinion on ANYTHING. which is, not at all.

I will say that I also know a lot of people who will follow people who they vehemently oppose to be able to be made aware of their bullshit and counter it, but, I don't have that sort of time...or bandwidth.

[pennswoods]

Yes, this is like hatewatching a little. Keeping your eye on the enemy or just keeping abreast of major players. I expect this is true for some of them and like you, I don't have energy for this - at least not on this scale.

I noticed that Malala (not a close personal friend, of course) follows JKR and also Elon Musk. I doubt she's a huge fan of Musk's but it makes sense as a public figure to keep an eye on other public figures of influence. What is interesting is seeing distinct differences in which of my academic friends follow Rowling vs. those who follow Musk. There is some overlap, but not much.

Yet Rowling and Musk have a lot in common - both are billionaires who tweet really damaging stuff and have an outsized influence on humanity and public policy. But before they took up shitposting as their part-time job, Rowling did actually contribute something interesting and influential to culture. Musk has yet to do anything on that scale.

[mundungus42]

It is disheartening and dispiriting to discover that a friend and colleague holds heinous views, but I think your explanations for your closer friends continuing to follow her make a lot more sense, especially if they don't interact with her Twitter output. And there are plenty of academics, activists, and journalists who disagree with JKR but still follow her on social media because no matter how odious her opinions are, she's (for now) still a significant public figure, and knowing what foulness she's spewing is part of their jobs.

Where I personally draw the line folks who like JKR's tweets and/or uncritically retweet them, especially since JKR's Twitter interactions were the first sign of her radicalization. Quote-tweeting is a gray area because there are a lot of naive-but-sincere folks who don't realize that quote-tweeting instead of sharing a screencap gives the person they're quote-tweeting more Twitter clout.

Anyway, it's hard. *hugs* Sympathies.

[pennswoods]

I have found one who is liking tweets in support of JKR right now and also liking tweets about liking JKR. She is a middle-aged British woman that I work with through the leadership of a European organization. She is not a close personal friend, and trans rights do not typically come up in our work.

It is possibly a little silly to care. But I am disheartened.

[mundungus42]

Ugh, I'm sorry. *hugs* It sucks learning that someone in a position of influence espouses an exclusionary and hateful ideology.

I think that transphobia is particularly widespread in the UK because they're far ahead of the US on legal protections for trans folks, so they're in full backlash. And because there are fewer barriers to transitioning now, trans folks are more visible, including the very small number of trans folks who have committed crimes, and whose names are used to bludgeon anyone attempting to say that most trans folks just want to pee/poo in peace and live their lives.

I had a HUGE dust-up with a long-term fandom friend from the UK who's bought into gender essentialism hook, line, and sinker, which has been really hard to square with the fact that she was someone who taught me to identify other forms of oppression because she understood dogwhistles that I didn't. I really do believe that there are still some GC folks who truly believe it's a protecting-women issue, not realizing that they're being used as a respectable front by fascists/actual Nazis, religious extremists, and homophobes. But for a goodly portion of them, allying with such people is at least part of the appeal.

It is all so very, very sad and infuriating.

[clevermanka]

I don't think it's silly to care at all. It's good to know where the snakes are in the grasses, you know? That way you can warn others who might get bitten, too.