A Geek History of Time - Episode 237 - The Damnation of Severus Snape Part II

Episode Date: November 11, 2023

Okay, so there's there there are two possibilities going on here. One, you're you're bringing up a term that I have never earned before. The other possibility is that this is a term I've heard before, but it involves a language that uses pronunciation that's different from Latin it, and so you have no idea how to say it properly. And intensely 80s post apocalyptic schlock film. Oh, and schlong film. You know, it's been over 20 years, but spoilers. Oh, okay. So, so the resident Catholic thinking about that. We're going for low earth orbit. There is no rational here. Leave it on me after and you know I will.

They mean it is two o'clock in the fucking morning. I am. I don't think you can get very much more homosexual panic than that. No, which I don't know if that's better. I mean you guys are Catholics, you tell me. I'm just kind of excited that like you and producer George will have something to talk about that basically just means that I can show up and get fed. This is a geek history of time. Where we connect an artery to the real world. My name is Ed Blalock. I'm a world history teacher and a English teacher here in northern California at the middle

school level. And I can also now mention that I have had the opportunity to make my own lightsaber. My wife and I headed down to visit my family in Southern California. And while we were down there, kind of isn't add on to the trip, we've been planning for it for a while. We visited Disneyland, and I had the opportunity to go to Galaxy Edge for the first time.

I did not expect to get emotional when I saw the Millennium Falcon, but I did not expect to get emotional when I saw the Millennium Falcon, but I did. Like, Han and Shui were not like the focus of my emotionality, you know, in my emotional attachment to that property. So I figured, you know, I know that I'm going to be grinning like a little kid. And I know that my inner eight-year-old is just going to be losing his mind the whole time I'm there. But I didn't think that I'm learning I'm falcon would be a thing, but it was. I teared up a little bit.

And I had the opportunity to build my own lightsaber. It is the most Catholic option possible out of the choices that you can choose from from your scrap metal parts. Yeah, yeah, all the, it's the whole, the total temple guard model, you know, with all the golden, coppery-looking accents on it and God, I love it. So,

and the other experience that I really want to share is I got the opportunity to mouth off to a storm trooper. And that made like the whole thing made my day, obviously, but that was just too much, too much fun. Cause I went, we were walking around on the new work order side of things. And I was wearing a gray t-shirt with the rebellion logo on it, big, big as life in black.

And he spotted me and Trooper came over and, you know, he got to show me some ID and looked at Brighton, and he said, oh, I'm sorry, I must have left that in my other suit of armor. And I know that it's all canned. And I know that like it's all, you know, I mean, I know that it's not, but it felt so goddamn good.

It was just so fulfilling by going on a really, really basic emotional level, just getting to do that was amazing. So yeah, that's my, it's been a little bit since we got back, but like the whole experience was amazing. And I can't wait for the next step. We're planning on the next time we're going to we're planning on going back to this and then to get in three years. So so my little boys five now when he's eight, we're going to go back. Very cool. Which will give us the opportunity to, you know, save up to do it again.

And I'm already looking forward to it. So that's me. How about you? What do you got going on? Well, I'm Damien Harmony. I am a high school US history teacher up here in the northern California area. And I know I've talked to you about this offline, but I don't know if I've talked you about this recently on. So my partner and I have been together quite some time now.

And I've met her kids and they love me. She has met my kids and they love her. And to the point where like, no, put your eyebrows down. We're waiting until they're out of the house before we go. All right. Okay. Fine. All of my, all of my, you know, day in, having a, having a Brady Bunch life. Oh, hell. No, we're not going to do that to our kids. Is ultimately what that is. Yeah. I know. I like on a logical level. Yeah. On a totally rational level, I totally get that. but like, you know, as you're the difference between you and your 40s and your 40s is in your 30s, you would do that and be optimistic about the outcome in your 40s. You're like, why do that? Let's just wait. Yeah. Like, it's not my kids fault that I fell in love with her and it's not her kids fault that she fell in love with me. Yeah, so her kids pose that on either of them. Yeah, and like, you know,

her kids love you, your kids love her. That's awesome. Are they going to love each other? And the thing is they've never met. Yeah, because you know, there's there's all kinds of reasons. Just plain, yeah, just straight up logistics. And then there's just like, I figured the best way to get them to meet was D&D. Well, yeah, because it's a contrived environment. It takes care of any and all personality, because you get it, you know, so I designed a game wherein they would eventually meet. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. I famously rip off other stories, right? So my kids, my kids, the NPC that was guiding them was a fighter with a really good glaive, whose name was Dean, and he really likes pie and hot women. It's not that bright. And he really likes pie and hot women. Um, my spirit animal, my, my totem to the point where my son went to wake him up and he was still kind of sleepy groggy. And he said, he Dean, there's hot babes over there. What babes and he gets up and runs and it's still a joke. All I have to do is look over my son and go, hey, William, babes. And he's just starts laughing his ass off, right? So they, they met Dean. Okay. The, my, my partner's kids, they met a ranger who's exceptionally tall, who does

a lot of reading and has a journal that he, has like all the monsters he's ever hunted that his dad gave. Yeah, his name is Sam. So yeah, everything's going along. Is there is a last name like wind heart? No, I never made never got last name. Okay. All right. Um, everything's going on great. I was like This is how I'm gonna bring it together. These two brothers have been in constant contact with each other because I have sending stones. No problem. Boom. They're going to. What I didn't count on the dice laugh. Yeah. And so my partner's kid lost his first character and Sam died. And I think that kind of plunted the blow. Yeah. But Sam died as well. And that I was not prepared for. So turns out you should probably get them to silver their weapons before they go break into a wearboards house. Yeah. Yeah. So probably Sam Sam's dead. And then I was like, well, shit. What do I do here?

And I was like, well, shit. What do I do here? So then I killed Dean in the other game. Okay. And I don't think they were fighting vampires per se, but it was close to the end. Yeah. And he ends up getting paled on the furniture.

Yeah, something to that effect or no. I think he... What did he... I think there're trolls or something. Okay. And, and he ended up dying, but it was right after they'd rescued his friend, a fallen assamere named Castiel. So who is a sorcerer of the divine soul? is a sorcerer of the divine soul. Have you mentioned any of this to friend of the show, Tessa? No, no. You need to. I think so, because I can hear her howling.

Yes, like already. So I've gotten the kids to, again, I ripped things off famously, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. My kids and Castiel have hunted down a, where they were hunting down a rumor and then they took shelter in this house in the middle of a place. And I decided to go and I had a living dead on them. So, who knows, not these zombies per se because I think that's kind of dumb.

So these are zombies that don't think tactically and move very slowly. And for a while, they were bottlenecking them and it worked great, but there was enough in there. So now they've trapped themselves in the basement. Like I said, it's an idea of living dead, trapped themselves in the basement behind a false book case which by the way that false bookcase works by putting a torch in. And at one point,

Castiel ended up on the other side and you hear him shout, put the torch back. Nice. Both my kids love that. All the castiel is very literal. And yeah, well, yeah. And so when Dean said that, you know, that, you know, that troll is toast, he's like, I don't think they have any baking skills, Dean. So that's another way to get my son laughing his ass off. But they've now trapped themselves at the end of corridor, behind a false wall. And I left it with the ambient sound of something banging on the cord or wall. Like, doesn't know how to get in. Yeah. And that's the cliffhanger. Cause I'm going to meet my partner, her kids on the other side of their wall. It's going to happen. Oh, nice. So I can get them to their their yeah. So now the NPC is cast

yellow. There is no Dean. There's no say I'm in fairness. I mean, I could just bring them back and that would be and you'd still be true to the source material. Yeah. Quite so. Anyway, that's that's what they didn't do that enough. Yeah. That's that's what I like. They didn't do that enough. Yeah. That's that's I I live in envy of of the shit you do in your in your D&D games. When you're running that like, your kid is close to the age that I started. My kids. Yes. So we we have some listening and taking your turn. Things to work on before he'll be he'll be ready.

Simple arithmetic and basic reading. Yeah, because what comes along with those is listening and taking your turn. This is the good to learn to do those things. You have to have listened and waited your turn. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. Well, and he's working his way toward it. Yeah. Yeah. So, um, that is, that is wake-ool. Wake-ool. Yeah. I'm, yeah, that's very, very, that's, yeah,

of, of, and, and that is the most you way of handling that real life situation that I can that I can conceive of. Yeah. Like yeah, everything, everything about that is is very, very you. And yeah, that's that's awesome. Yeah. So when, when we left off at, at the end of our last episode, I had gone through talking about confession and how forgiveness and redemption is like works in the faith tradition and the paradigm that I'm operating from. Sure. That's what you need to do in order to be redeemed. And this is all the whole conversation up to this point has been focused on the example of

Snape, Severus Snape, and the fact that like he never did any of that. So very quickly, for you know, anybody who forget like who hasn't just listened to the last episode, in order to receive forgiveness according to Catholicism, you have to confess your sin, which means recognizing that you did something wrong. You have to express your contrition or your sorrow for having done it. You have to genuinely be sorry you did it. You have to feel bad about what you did. You have to do penance. This is something that non-Catholic sometimes don't kind of understand the role of. Like you will get

often, you will be assigned something that the priest will tell you to do as your penance. So, say 50 Hail Marys. And you're going to pray those prayers. And the thing is, it is not the act of praying those prayers that gets you forgiven, which is, which is the way that gets interpreted frequently by non-catholics. Like, well, you know, you say a few prayers and you're forgiven. No, praying those prayers is something you do as a way of expressing your desire to make things right. Okay. Right. And then when you finish talking to the priest and saying, this is what I did.

And I, you know, I feel horrible about it. And this is what the priest then says, you know, go and send no more. You are, you know, your sins are forgiven. And also important to note, it is not the priest who is forgiving you. The priest is standing in for God, telling you that God has forgiven you. Okay. So you have to take ownership of what you did wrong. You have to recognize that admit that it was wrong.

You have to show a desire to set things right and get back in touch with God and your fellow mortals. The definition of sin in mainline Christianity, not just Catholicism, is any act that separates you from God. And you have to intend not to do it again. I mentioned the examples from bones of like, no, I know I'm going to do it again, which we, we, I mentioned the examples from bones of, of like, no, I know I'm going to do it again. So like, you know, I, you know, I'm not, I'm not going to go into confession because I know it's, we're, we're going to end up doing that again. So recognizing that you're likely not to succeed at avoiding sin is one thing. Knowing I'm, I am a human, I am inherently not perfect.

Right. I know that I'm going to make mistakes, but you have to intend like fully and fully and realistically, you have to go into it intending, I am not, I don't want to do this again. Uh huh. I'm not going to make this mistake another time. I'm going to learn from it. I'm going to do

better, right? Sure. So if you go into the confessional to get absolved of fornication, right, before going out of out on a date with a condom in your pocket, you're not taking the sacrament in good faith and it doesn't count. Okay. And you've probably also just done another sin. Yeah, well, yeah. Okay. So it's also important here to mention that if you confess to having wronged someone, the penance you get assigned is very likely going to require you to face that person and try to make it right. So it's like 12 step, but with you kind of yes, yes. Like if you confess that you lied to your parents about where you were on Saturday night You're gonna have to tell them the truth That's part of the making a man's part. Yes. It's part of the making a man's part unless doing so is gonna put you in danger

Like if you go to your priest and you say, okay, look, you know, I lied to my parents. I told my parents I was at you know this place. I was actually over at this place And like the circumstances me being there are gonna be something that like I know that my dad to my parents, I told my parents I was at, you know, this place, I was actually over at this place. And like the circumstances of me being there are going to be something that like, I know that my dad is going to get out the belt. Like in that case, the priest is going to be like, I don't want you to put yourself in danger to do that. But, you know, except in those circumstances, you know, you're going to have to fess up to what you did. Now, although most Protestant denominations don't acknowledge the role of clergy in reconciliation, um, broadly speaking, the outline of what it takes for God to forgive you is pretty universal across mainline Christianity. Okay. Even a little Calvinist Presbyterians. Yes. Okay. Because I know

that Rowling was Church of Scotland for a while. Yes. Oh, yeah, growing growing up in in Great Britain, unless you're a member of some other religious community at some point, you are COE or COS, like that's kind of unavoidable. Right. And I'm just saying, like that's the culture in which she was enmeshed growing up. So actually, I remember her being that as an adult,

because I was curious, like, you know, when the whole, oh, it's sorcery. Oh, yeah. Stuff came out like I was like, oh, was that gonna bug her at all? And then I looked into her religion and she was church of Scotland's like, yeah, while she was at least at least in the beginning of the books. Yeah, but okay, okay, so so this is so this is the veterans are they

still think you need forgiveness for? They They still, yeah. You in most Protestantism, and I would tend to say, see, because the Church of England is, and this is going to be funny coming from an adult convert to Catholicism. But Church of England and Church of Scotland are kind of weird in terms of like how Protestant they are. Because of course the the root of the whole foundation of the Church of England was Henry the eighth, not getting what he wanted from the Pope. Right. After having supported the Pope after Martin Luther. Yes, after after having been referred to as his most Catholic majesty. Right.

So I mean, there is a layer of like, you know, some Constantine kind of shit there. Oh, I did for you. You got to do for me. You got to hey now. Hey, hey, yeah. Different bridge, you know, but same, same idea. Yeah, not no, me and London. I love that I can make that joke here.

Because anyway, but you know, the thing is, theologically, there's high church and there's low church in Church of England. And high church is effectively its Catholic light. It's, yes, we're Protestant, but that's mostly just because we don't acknowledge that the Pope speaks ex-Cathodra. Right. Like in a lot of ways theologically, they're, they're, we're, we're,

well, not quite a lockstep that'll be in a number statement, but like close enough that, like if I'm not able to find a Catholic church to attend to go to mass, might I- You're supposed to a Catholic church to attend to go to mass. My own... You're getting close to what you need by going to. Well, literally, you know, going through RCA, what I got told was if you can't make it to a Catholic church,

if there's a Methodist church or an Anglican church, Episcopalian church, you can go there and that'll count. Because theologically, we're close enough. Wow. No, you can go there and that'll count because theologically we're close enough like, no, you know what, yeah. That's like, that's like reciprocal rights. Kind of. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, you got a California teaching credential. You can teach in these two states, you know, you register your credential and we'll give you one here and like, you know, it's kind of the same thing. Only, you know, spiritual rather than just legal. But of course, we're talking about Catholicism and Methodism and Anglicanism. So yes, it's actually legalistic too. Right.

But so interestingly, not only is this formula very much recognized across most of Christianity, but it's also in a secular way, very similar to the kind of rules that have become fairly standard across social media for how to properly apologize in a culture in which people say or do sketchy shit, okay? Yeah, you know, I'd like to break in here and just talk as a parent for a second. Yeah. As you know, there's a three-part apology process in my house. Yeah. There are very few rules in this house. I've spoken of this before, but it's not bad for our newer listeners. Hi, both of you. But it, uh, oh, somebody asked me recently, because I haven't seen them in forever. And they said,

oh, my God, how have you been? What have you done since lockdown? And I said, oh, God, man, we tripled our podcast audience, we're up to 12. Not all at the same time, mine, you know, the rotational basis. Yeah. But no, I, in my house, there are two rules, be kind and be honest. And the reason why there's two rules is because they're positive rules. These are things that we strive for. And if we fall short of either of those, everything stops. I get you back on board. We repair what might have been broken by you not being kind or you might not be or by you not being honest. We repair that. And then we move on. There's no punishment involved. It's the point where my daughter even asked me once. She's like, how do you know punish us? I was like, it's the fucking point. You fell off a trail. I think I want us to keep hiking.

Let's get you on the trail. I just need to interject here and say, you are one of the examples I like to use. And on those occasions where I'm ever someplace where somebody makes any kind of remark about, you know, atheist, which doesn't happen very often or somebody, you know, makes any kind of, any kind of remark about, you know, atheist. Okay. Uh, which doesn't happen very often because I try to surround myself by people who aren't

dick bags, but on, on the occasions when it does happen, like, you, you are one of the, one of a couple of people that I have, well, no, like I don't, I don't make the distinction because like every, every atheist, I know, basically, I point out that like, dude, my, my best friends who are atheists are better Christians than you are being right now. Yeah. That's fair. And, and what I, what I kind of wanted to say a second ago was, you know, foreign atheist, you'd make a really good priest. Uh, you know, what colors my parachute type stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Up three or four jobs was there's mortician teacher and minister. Yeah. And it's like, yeah, it does. You know, there you go. But like I said, I respect dogma. Yeah. Okay. It's the way and all people accountable to theirs. But, but anyway, so in order to make things whole in this house, if you fallen off the path so that we can move in, is you need to apologize.

And sometimes it's a recognition that your apology won't come right now because you're two in the moment on the feelings, but you can bank it. And it's like, okay, you'd better handle that shit, you know, at a later date. Recognize it. You just have to construct it. That's fine. But the rule to apologize is very simple. You have to acknowledge what you did. You have to acknowledge that they didn't deserve it. Oh, that's good.

Yeah, and I'm pretty, that's good. Yeah. And I'm pretty sure that's my own baggage and forming things. But you know what? You've taken it and turned it into something positive. So we'll bully for you. Yeah. And then you have to describe the way in which you will seek to not let that happen again.

And you do not get to promise that you'll never do it again. Because you don't make promise. And recognize that, you know, because the next time you'll, you'll apologize quicker and you'll remind them that yeah, you still didn't have that coming. That's on me. And so like there, it does get a little formulae sometimes when the pride gets in the way for a kid. So I'm really sorry, did X, I deserve it. And I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, come back when you are actually ready to call it what it is. You know, we are not, we are not just performative here. And then we all get on the path and keep moving. And sometimes we'll get on the cat path and keep moving before the apology is given.

But the offender needs to acknowledge that an apology is warranted. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Because again, we're human, they're cats. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

We got, we got shit to handle. But yeah. But anyway, yeah. Yeah. So, okay. Yeah. Because again, human, their cats, yeah, we got shit to handle. But yeah, but anyway, yeah. So yeah, no, that's what you're Yeah, back to what you're saying about forgiveness in the the social media realm. Yeah, in the sphere of social media. So number first, you have to say sorry. Okay, this is contrition or remorse, right? You have to name what you did wrong, specifically you have to own up to the wrong actions you committed. This requires recognizing that what you did was hurtful and taking responsibility for having done it. Yes.

You have to show empathy for the hurt you caused. Digging deeply into the wrongness of your actions, you need to show that you understand why what you did was bad. Sounds like I'm calling over backward into doing what you all do with just fewer steps. Hmm. You have to explain if necessary, but don't make excuses. If there is context to the situation that is important, give it, but don't try to get yourself off the hook. Right, okay. You need to describe this as you'll like this. When you need to describe what you're doing to prevent the problem from recurring.

Oh, I do like that. Ties in with penance, showing you're dedicated to not fucking up again. Right. And you have to offer to make things right. What are you going to do to try to repair the damage you caused? Yes. Okay. Now there are all kinds of circumstances in which we've seen this come up in social media a lot recently. Very frequently, like on TikTok, there will be all kinds of stuff

happening between creators where somebody will not apologize or they'll fuck the process up. Right. Very frequently we hear people get inclinatized for, okay, no, fuck you. That was a non-apology. Notably, with Colleen Ballinger, known on YouTube as Miranda Sings, this, this, you and I don't, don't, don't, don't spend a lot of time in these corners of social media. But she's a children's entertainer. And she got caught engaging in some pretty sketchy behavior toward her employees and at her age followers.

Okay. She was sending inappropriate messages, making weird kind of semi sexualized remarks, just kind of being inappropriate, highly inappropriate. And things came out about creating a hostile work environment for people who were working for her and some of her underage followers came out and said, you know, there was this, we were, we were in a hangout online and she was, you know, asking us questions about like when we're going to turn 18 kind of stuff and like inappropriate, like it didn't go all the way into, you know, anything criminal kind of territory, but it was deeply inappropriate and like really wrong. And her response is a really textbook case of a non-apology. And it went viral as a bad joke, because she opened up her apology statement by saying that everybody on her team didn't want her to say anything.

Oh boy. And she pulled out a ukulele and created a really cringe worthy song that painted herself as misunderstood and kind of a victim. Like it was it was part of like okay let me ask you this is is for brand to be weird and quirky in a way. Is there something little? Okay, but this was this was like just beyond the pale. This is, I mean, you know, yeah. And now that we've mentioned social media, in the context of Harry Potter and JK Rowling not understanding why Snape needed to like at the least apologize for his shit. This is where we dive into Joanne Rowling's

desperately shitty behavior and her own refusal to apologize or take ownership of the hurt that she has caused. So first we got to talk about some background on Joanne Umbridge, I mean Rowling. You become the thing you hate the most. Yeah. So she was born in 1965, both her parents met on a train on their way to their Royal Navy assignments in Scotland. But during Rurallings childhood, they got out of the Navy. Her father was a manager for the Rolls Royce company. He started out working on the factory floor and moved up into a kind of minimal middle management position.

Her mother was a science technician who worked for part of her childhood. Her mother worked in the chemistry department of the secondary school that were all intended. Her upbringing was a very middle-class post-war British. She attended state schools. She wore in her own words national health services glasses. And although she wasn't the child of privilege, the family weren't poor. Her father's job was white collar. As I said, he'd started as a factory worker. Either of her parents attended university, but they didn't need to in order to make enough money to own the family home. Reliance family circumstances were cited by biographers

as the reason she didn't get accepted to Oxford because she didn't come from the right kind of family. She was a commoner. Rather than any lack of academic ability, she had, she had the grades that could have gotten her in. She attended the University of Exeter and earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in French in 1987. Okay.

So now a few things I want to kind of highlight about that. She's a tail end boomer or leading edge Xer, depending on which think tank you want to talk to. Generally, 1965 is considered the beginning of Gen X, but some UK think tanks put the date for for the UK at 66 instead. Okay. Either way, she's in she's on that cusp. Well, you tend to go by the values that a person purports. You know, it like, you know, decades aren't neat and tidy. Yeah. You know, World War II started in 39 and went to 45, you know, unless you're in Japan, in which case started in 32, but in China, maybe you think it's like, it's like,

okay. Yeah. So, her upbringing was middle class, very much like the environment depicted in the Dursley household. Okay. I want to point this out. And, you know, because Vernon is clearly in some kind of office level job working for a company that sells drill bits, right?

So his job, much like Rowling's father's job is industrial adjacent, but he's in a white collar part of it, he's in management. And so, you know, there's there's that echo there, right? Although in the novel, Spatonia, Dursley, doesn't work. She's stayed home mom, which Rowling's mother was for some of Rowling's childhood. Okay. Okay. Her mother, and this is my next point, her mother worked outside the home, but by all accounts, the standard gender roles still applied in the house. Her mother did the housework in the cooking and then, et cetera. Um, she received

a university education, she graduated in the late middle 80s as the beneficiary of the Sex Discrimination Act of 1975. Okay. And she's also, she's adulting, starting her adult life shortly after that, you take office. Yes. So to provide some larger historical context, we need to remember that feminism had entered its second wave in the 1960s. And you're more expert on this than I am.

So if at any point you want to jump in with anything, please do. But the movement's focus at this time is now shifting from suffrage and like basic property ownership to a broader form of equality in society. Yeah, in many ways, social feminism was a offshoot from the first wave and your Alice Paul and your your Carrie Chapman cat were very focused on suffrage specifically, but there were other one of Jean Adams and ladies like that. Jeanette Rankin is actually a really good example of social feminism. You step into the public sphere to better protect the private sphere as is your charge as a mother, a sister, a woman is to use your feminism to protect. And so it's still buying into that paradigm

of women have a sphere, specifically to them, because that's kind of the cards that they're dealt. But yeah, that and I don't want to say that that's all that second wave is because that's certainly not all the second wave is, but it absolutely has traces of social feminism. You can draw straight line from Jeanette Rankin all the way through to Hillary Clinton in the 90s. And look at what Clinton's doing in the early 90s, it's healthcare reform. Why? Because that's for children, that's for families, that's for this. You know, stuff like that. It's very that's for this. Yeah, yeah, stuff like that. It's very still very woman's fear informed, I will say. Okay. Okay. Yeah. I like it. So in the UK, specifically, the Married Woman's Property Act reform of 1964 allowed for women to hold property equally with their husbands.

The abortion act. Oh, quick. I'm sorry. It just occurs to me that while I was drawing that line, I meant to draw another one of the ways that women can protect their families is to look to social justice. What is the world in which these children will be born? What is the world in which these families will be raised? And so there is an attempt to start

addressing systemic racism. There is an attempt to start addressing the power structures, the patriarchy that is holding women down to 70% if they're white and down to 49% if they're Hispanic as far as the wage gap goes. Yeah. You can't address feminine or not feminine feminist needs without addressing racial needs. And this isn't white intersectionalism, but it's approaching it. It is. Yeah. And a lot of it comes. I want to say as a reaction to the post war, okay, now thank you,

now go back to the home. But no, there's so much more I can do now. Yeah, wait. Yeah. And so there's, yeah, I mean, reproductive rights are a big deal. They're very, yeah. Yeah. But you can't separate these things from race anymore. You still can from sexuality on some levels. Like you can absolutely whisper about that or stuff like that. But it is, where's first wave is very much suffrage and some property rights.

This is all the property rights, please, no, please. Yeah. And, you know, we need to do this for everyone, not just middle age or middle class white women. Okay. But having said that, there are certainly schisms within. Yeah. And there are plenty of times where white women were still centering themselves.

Yes. So in a big way. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And yeah, thank you for all that. So it's almost like they wanted to end racism, but not inequity. Yeah.

That's a good. That's it. That's I would I would I would jive with that. Yeah. I like that. So the abortion after 1967, abortion legal as like it's right there on the tin, but it also gave all women, not just married ones legal access to contraception. And the United Kingdom at the beginning of the introduction of contraception, it was legal for married women, which anyway. Yeah.

Well, giving the vote also, it came in two phases in England. In some way, you had to be over 30, but not married, to get to vote, I think, in the first wave of such. Yeah. And then the second wave. Which follows with the mindset of like what? Yeah. The divorce reform act established no fault.

Divorced in the United Kingdom in 1969. The same time as California, as we discussed before in our series on GI Joe and Lashkey kids. The Equal Pay Act was passed by Parliament in 1970, preventing preferential pay based on sex. Then in 1975, as I mentioned, Parliament passed the Sex Discrimination Act, making discrimination based on sex or marital status and employment education in other areas of public life illegal. It's wild to me that that and you came into the world at the same time. Like normally I tease you for being old. Yeah. That's way too fucking recent. Yeah. Yeah. That really, that really is measured in Edwardian lifetimes. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. No, I agree. I fully agree. And yes, by the way, for for sharp-eared listeners, I'm sticking to the language of based on sex, not gender, and there's reason. Put a pin in that. So as Joanne was going through her childhood, I feel like dark holiday. Why, I, whatever do you mean? Me. A little bit. Yeah. A little bit. So, so as Jill Ann was going through her childhood, she was surrounded by the idea that as a woman, she was capable of doing anything a man could do.

Mm-hmm. She shouldn't have to deal with harassment or discrimination based on being a woman. And there wasn't anything that made men better than women. Right. And now I'm not saying she never dealt with sexism because I'm not an idiot. Right. And I've read the rest of her bio. And yeah, but I am saying she was raised just as you and I were, because, you know, we're

semi-contemporary to notice it rather than accept it and not put up with it. Okay? Yeah. Yeah. Which is probably the biggest thing that second wave feminism achieved was like, no, no, the social recognition that that's a load of bullshit is to you and me, it's transparently obvious. There's no second guessing, it just seems like, well, I mean, of course, it's bullshit, but at the time,

this was revolutionary. This was getting philish laughly, all twisted up. And by the way, she was successful over here. Yeah, sadly. But there was a whole sector of society that looked at this as absolute anarchism, like destructive chaos. The very natural order of the world was being upended. Meanwhile, those of us who grew up watching free to be who and me are like, no, that's bullshit.

That's all, that's all just a steaming pile of scalological matter. Right. So I mean, just by itself, that's huge. Rowing worked as a bilingual secretary. And at one point, she worked for Anastasia International working on the documentation of human rights abuses in French speaking Africa, which I had not known before researching this. This is Jack O'Hole, yeah. This is between graduating from university in 1987 and 1990. Okay.

In 1990 she had a really rough year. Her mother died. Her mother had MS and had had lingered for a long time with it. Her mother finally passed away. She had a relationship fall apart and she lost her job like all in the span of a few months. Yeah, it's hard. And yeah, so she took a job in Portugal teaching English at night. And left England went to Portugal and met the man who became her first husband Jorge Arantes, a journalist. Okay.

They married in 1992, and they had a daughter in 1993. There are no two ways about it. Rallying was the victim of domestic violence. Arantes abused her. She has described in interviews that he did not allow her a house key. He held the early manuscript of Harry Potter, which she had been working on for a number of years at that point, and had in a type of written form. He helped the hostage as a mechanism of control.

And for his part, Arantes has publicly admitted to slapping her and not regretting it. Does he like, does he have a poster of Sean Connery? Like what's I, I, I don't know. Right. I don't know. And it's, it's, you put me in a weird place because I know, right? Let's just move on. Yeah. So, I mean, yeah. So she, she left Portugal fled and went through the experiences that we are familiar with, that we are familiar with kind of in larger society

as part of the backstory of how Harry Potter got written or around finally got published. She was receiving aid and had her child was scraping by working on the manuscript, you know, in a coffee shop as she has herself said multiple times because that was where the heat was on, you know, and going through some very, very difficult times while working on it. Absolutely. Well, and then Harry Potter got published, the first book, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer Stone got published, and she went from being nobody, anybody to ever heard of to being a sensation. And Harry Potter turned into this huge multi-billion dollar property that over the course of

a over a decade you know turned into a cultural touchstone for an entire generation of people. Right. And and became this thing that was and became this thing that was the mechanism by which great many young people learned about valuing themselves. And the value of kindness and the power of friendship and standing up for what you believe in and doing what's right and all of these wonderful, you know, pro-social values. And the movies turned into a juggernaut of their own,

the property spawned. I don't even know how many million different fan fictions, which is a whole other episode that could be done just about, rolling this relationship with fan fiction writers and how fan fiction writers have dealt with this property, specifically, but I need to now kind of fast forward in time to 2020.

Okay. And in 2020, Rowling made some remarks on Twitter of all places, of course. on Twitter of all places, of course. Where she, wherein, she essentially said that she basically stated that she is an essentialist when it comes to sex and gender, which is why, of course, I used the language I did earlier. When I was talking about legislation during the 60s and 70s in the United Kingdom.

Now just real quick, and if you're about to do it cool, please define essentialist or essentialism. please define essentialist or essentialism. Okay, so essentialist in this case, in the sense that I'm talking about, is there is a deep-seated streak within the Harry Potter universe, really, where you either are something or you are not something, and you don't choose what you get to be. That's kind of what I'm coming down on here. That's the easiest way for me to explain it in this context. And I'll get into kind of what that means in terms of gender identity here in a second, but in the Harry Potter universe

I'm gonna bounce away from the real world to the universe that Rowling constructed Because again as I mentioned in the last episode one of the things that Caught my attention and led me going no, you know what?, I got to finally sit down and write this episode for the podcast. Was at the beginning of book one and at the beginning of the first movie, because it happens in both places. Dumbledore tells Minerva McGonagall, they are the only family he has. Right.

And is referencing the dursleys. Mm-hmm. Now, as somebody who has spent a lot of time in fantasy universes, reading fairy tales, reading fantasy novels, reading stories about making contracts with the Faye and like getting finding a way to get out of a contract made with the devil through a loophole. And all of the magical rule sets that exist in folklore and everywhere else. In all of the stories that we tell as people across cultures, there are rules and there are loopholes in those rules. And the line that Dumbledore has is

they are the only family he has. And we never really get a line for line description of, okay, no, the law of the gay us. I'm putting on him or the the order that he's operating under. You know, we never find out is this like a protection that the Dumbledore crafted is this like an after effect of, of, you know, his mother sacrificing herself or like, what is it? Right. What is it that means, like, clearly we know he has to be staying with or under the protection of family in order to be hidden in order to be safe. And for a very long time, I And for a very long time, I, I defended Dumbledore. And part of this is my own generational outlook. Sure. I defended Dumbledore because obviously very clearly

Dumbledore is supposed to be the wise mentor wizard figure. And like this is his whole role in the story and part of the trope that we're working with is Harry's home life has to suck just in order to magnify how cool it is that no no your wizard you get to do all this other stuff right right it's it's yeah it's I mean it's a classic trope it's it's the same thing although cranked up to 11 for whatever reason that we see in the once-in-future king by T.H. White in

that version of the Arthurian legend, Arthur is living with Sir Ektar and K, and like that's originally out of the source material, but in T.H. White's version, K is not just kind of the smart-assed, kind of sort of jerk-ass that he is in the original legends, he's like actively abusive and actor is not a very good father figure. And, you know, and that's this in sort in the stone, yeah, you know, more animated, obviously. And so that's the that's the trope that we're dealing with. And okay, so Rowling is working with this trope, but okay, Dumbledore kind of wants it being an asshole because of that. And I was kind of like, no, no, Dumbledore is still a good guy. And here's the thing in Rowling's mind. Yeah, she writes him as one, but to all of my millennial friends who are, you know, younger than me,

it's a really like the level of vitriol. Yeah, you don't fucking put a child in an abusive household. Yeah, like the moment the moment you found out that they were depriving him of food and keeping him in a cupboard, right? Like the shit that you was putting up with, you don't leave a kid in those circumstances. You find some other thing to do, right? And the thing is though, Rowling has constructed a universe in which family means you have to be staying with somebody who is closely

enough blood related to you as to be an aunt or an uncle. Now we know, we know that Harry's father came from an old wizarding family. Like he has to have second or third cousins. Yeah. Right. He has like there and and based on the circumstances under which he was orphaned, there, there is no way that his wizarding extended family, however distant they might have been, like Dumbledore being as knowledgeable and connected as he is could easily have found out,

okay, well, you know, his, his nearest, you know, wizarding relatives or, you know, these folks, it's, you know, a second cousin of his dad's. All right, cool. Like send him to them and they'll probably jump on the opportunity to, to be his guardians because he's the boy who lived and we've all been terrified. Like, no, no, we're going to take this kid in. And even and so that's that's even if you want to be a literalist and an essentialist about well, it has to be blood relations, right? Right. Right. Well, okay, you have any number of people who loved lily and James, like siblings, right? You ham the boy to one of them, even if you believe that serious black was responsible for their deaths and whatever Which plenty of people did and that's that's a plot point in in the third book

Like even if you believe that Okay, you don't you don't hand him to black because black, you know betrayed them, but like Remus Lupin Yeah, and and Lily were were besties Yeah. And and Lily were were besties. Yeah. You know, he jumped on the chance to raise this kid. Absolutely. Rubius fucking Hagrid. Now maybe Hagrid. Maybe you don't trust him. Yeah. Maybe maybe you can end an infant. Yeah. Maybe you don't hand an infant to Ruby as Hagrid just because judgment, whatever. But you get what I'm saying. Like there are any number of people and throughout the book, there are so many adults who love Harry so much. It's one of the most, it's one of the most powerful,

most affirming, most positive thing. Yeah. Out of the series is the number of people who love this kid so much. You can't be clever enough to figure out a way to like find a loophole in that rule. Yeah, or you again, there's there, there's an entire muggle world in which you could hide him. Yeah. Like it's not like they don't have foster systems over there. Indeed. You could send him to a group home if you feel like you need some level of abuse. Like there are so many things that you could do that would improve his situation. His circumstances.

Yeah. Where he was. that take minimal effort because you could just loop him into a bureaucracy that you could magic him out of anyway. Yeah, like, oh, no, a kid went missing in corning. All right. Mm hmm. Yeah. Um, you know, yeah, no offense to our corner listeners. But uh, cornwall, you were looking for Cornwall rather than Corning. Oh, was I Cornish Cornwall? Oh, okay. Yes. Yes. But anyway, sorry. Certainly no offense to our Cornish listeners.

Yeah. For both for for that gap. But more to the point, there's there's kids that go missing. There's there's ways to have done this. And I also, I always had trouble with that aspect of it because of how I define family. I've never defined family based on bloodline

because of the families that I've had positive and negative experiences with. So for instance, my sister lives very close to me. And her sons are my kids cousins. Here's the thing, there is no blood relationship between me and my sister, none whatsoever. And therefore, her kids are not my kids cousins. By any kind of consequentity. My sister was taken in by my stepmother after she had divorced my father, not taken in legally as far as I can tell. There's no actual adoption.

But she and I grew up somewhat close by virtue of my going down there and visiting every once in a while. And she and I grew up somewhat close by virtue of my going down there and visiting every once in a while. And she and I, you know, remained close. And she is my sister and I'm her brother. We look nothing alike. She's Yemeni. And my nephews who constantly, Gwineli are not my nephews, but they're my nephews. are not my nephews, but they're my nephews. On my kids' mom's side, they have cousins who are their second cousins, which means that their parents are cousins. But they don't, which means that

my kids then are cousins, first cousins once removed from, you know, those, they don't call them that. They call them and an uncle. Yeah. Because that's what they are. Yeah. Even though constantly. And because it's just easier to say, not only that, but that's the relationship they have. Yeah. Yeah. The relationship that defines the title, not, you know, I, I'm the only time I'm essentialist is when I talk about my dad and my father, my father donated the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the material. Yeah. And was found wanting in most other ways. My dad did his best to do the job. So he gets the title. Um, by the way, I'm adopted by him. Mm hmm. We're not constant, but I am legally adopted by him, which tell me, what does that make my brother that you know? Yeah.

Is that make him my three quarters brother? Because I'm adopted by his dad and he and I share a biological mom. Yeah. Because we're more than half brothers now by version. Yeah. And so, yeah. And therefore is his daughter, my-niece my three-quarter knee like it gets ridiculous. Yeah, yeah, yeah, when he essentially brings down because

family doesn't fit into neat little boxes unless you're doing a patents of nobility to figure out who gets, you know, this 400 acres over here. Yeah. Yeah. And by the time you're trying to make divisions, it wouldn't be 400 acres. It's been like 15. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, I would just sum back to the richest one anyway. Yeah. Just give me the cash. Yeah. But yeah, so I've never, never dug that whole never dug that hole. Yeah, yeah. And, and, you know, in my lived experience, I grew up an only child. But, you know, former guests on the show, Sean and Bishop are both my brothers. Like, I didn't, I didn't meet my brothers until the 7th grade in case of Bishop and college in the case of Sean, but they are my brothers. And that relationship is, that's what that relationship is. Yeah. You know, and, um, yeah.

So essentialism, it is, it is a peculiarity of Rowling's outlook on this, that this is the definition she's working for. And, I mean, I dare say that possibly if anybody were to try to talk to her about it, she in real life when she's actually dealing with real people, her own outlook on it might not be quite so cut and dried, but it says something about her outlook that in the universe that she constructed, this is the way that worked. Now, I will say this because you keep saying in the universe that she constructed it and that is a valid critique. I will say this though, many people are unaware

of the firmware and the operating systems and the assumptions of those operating systems in which they are constructing these universes. So did she set out to write a allegorical story about World War II and the fact that it orphaned a lot of children plus boarding school culture plus, you know, uh, essentialism? I don't know that she did, but that is on all three levels, the most British shit ever. Like, well, it's not her fault that she was born British, but like, not at all. But, but so how much of that is her consciously doing that? I, I got a bachelor's in French. Therefore, she's exposed to literature. Yeah.

But just because you're exposed to literature doesn't mean that you see the pattern on the wallpaper either. Okay. Without, without going so far as to say anything negative about her level of intelligence, which is not my intent, right. I don't think any of that was consciously interrogated by her on any level in the process writing these stories. See, and I fully agree with you. I know this, this is all pattern on the wallpaper kind of kind of level for her. This is the story she told based on she's trying to tell a story

about a boy and there are some things in the story that are that she will say are directly informed by her experiences. You know, I'm convinced that if you pressed her, she would eventually admit that Lillie Potter is a self-insert character. I don't know how hard you'd have to press. You might have to press pretty hard. You might not. I don't know. Um, but I think eventually she would, she would admit to that on some level.

Um, notably unlike Anne Rice and the child vampire character she created in her series. But anyway, I'm getting off the topic. But no, none of this, we're very little of it, anyway, is conscious. Right. And that's kind of part of my point is she doesn't really understand what it is that lies behind this disconnect between what she meant to write and what actually winds up showing up on the page to anybody who's not her. Sure. You know, so is having is ever a snake really herself insert? Incapable of self reflection and improvement. Essentialist.

Yeah. Fucking bully. I mean, we haven't. We haven't got no other point. He's redeemable. Yeah. We, we, the part where she thinks he's redeemable, I think is, I think is very

germane to, to, it was kind of where I was trying to go where I'm still trying to go with this. Um, I, I wasn't quite ready to start hitting her quite so hard over the head with, with the, with the metaphorical night stick, but I can't say you're wrong. Uh, um, I, I think it. I think it, I think it really means something that she would write a character like that and then try to redeem him or try to convince all of the rest of us that he is redeemed without having done anything. But I think, well, I know in a conversation that I had with Bishop while I was working on the notes for this, one of the things he pointed out as a published fantasy author

is she really desperately needed an editor. And one of the things that a good editor might have done for her was look at her and go, okay, wait, you have him name, snake after this guy. Or you have him name his son after this guy. Um, why again? Yeah. You know, like if you're working toward this goal,

I'm not inside your head. like if you're working toward this goal, I'm not inside your head. Like clearly there's some set of assumptions or some thought process you've got. Yeah, it's, hey, where'd he get that rifle? Yeah. He kind of, yeah. It's like, when he pulls out the rifle, what do you mean the rifle?? You say, like, okay, okay. Yeah. But even then, we should talk. But yeah. Yeah. Checkup did

not, did not include this gun. Where, where was this? So, yeah. And, and the the this leads us to kind of, you know, getting back to where exactly it is that she has, you know, done some things that certainly the rest of us think she needs to apologize for, that she doesn't seem to understand like how they were wrong. Right. So in 2020, how they were wrong. Right. So in 2020, and I'm trying to find the tweets right now, I want to say it was June of 2020, about 19, anything. So let's see. Now I'm scrolling through all the responses from everybody else around her saying, I know she's full of shit. So, all right. So here we go. So on June 6th of 2020, Rowling retweeted an article about creating a more equal post-COVID world for people who menstruate. And she took issue with the phrase, people who menstruate. And she took issue with the phrase, people who menstruate. Her exact quote, people who menstruate, I'm sure there used to be a word for those people.

Someone helped me out. Wombin, Wimpund, Womid, Opinion. And then there's the article. And a whole lot of people told her, you're kind of being a dick, not kind of, you're being a dick. And her response rather than looking at that and going, at the very least, I'm sorry, my tone sucked. I should not have been at the disparaging. That was, that was awful. I apologize for that. Like at the very least, like even without, even like just that would have been something and then shut the fuck up right. But no, her response is if sex isn't real, there's no same sex attraction. If sex isn't real, the lived reality of women globally is erased. I know and love trans people, but like fuck you, the moment you say, but anyway, erasing the concept of sex removes the ability of many to meaningfully discuss their lives. It isn't hate to speak the truth. That was on June 6th, 2020. She then and then and she kept going. The idea that women like me who've been empathetic

to trans people for decades. How exactly when when have we seen this feeling kinship because they're vulnerable in the same way as women, IE to male violence hate trans people because they think sex is real and has lived consequences is a nonsense. I respect every trans person's right to live any way that feels authentic and comfortable to them. I'd march with you if you were discriminated against on the basis of being trans. At the same time, my life has been shaped by being female. I do not believe it's hateful to say so. And then she quoted an anti-trans article from a lesbian author. And so yeah, then on June 10th, she published a really long post on her website, sent out a tweet that read Turf Wars, basically claiming the title of Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist,

basically claiming the title of trans exclusionary radical feminist, which led to a bunch of backlash. And ever since then, it's just been, you know, back and forth and back and forth. And consistently, her tone has been one of dismissal sarcasm. Basically, yeah, dismissal and sarcasm. Like any other phrase I'm gonna say is just gonna be branching off of those two points. And the thing is, now I'm gonna go back to where I said, put a pin in those phrases from the 1970s, Because there is a very significant aspect of sex essentialism, meaning you are born one of these two things and you don't get to change that. Right. Doesn't matter what your identity is, doesn't matter.

Like, you know, if you're trans, like, I love you, but you're not really a woman or you're not really a man. Like, how do you say that and not see how utterly destructive that is to the value of the person that you're talking to? Like legitimately, that makes me want to look at her and go, you haven't ever actually interacted with anyone who is trans like ever have you or or you haven't ever known anyone or who is or she's that person who has black friends. You know, okay, there's that like there's a rope over here in America. Yeah, well, I assume such exists over in England as well, but just the I have a friend from this marginalized group and they're fine with

me using language that's detrimental to them. Therefore, it's not detrimental because they understand it. They get where I'm coming from. And it's like, you know, that's, you know, that's the jumping off point to the mental gymnastics. And I think I think there's maybe something on, there's something going on there. I also think that there's, um, you know, the more I, I listen to and, and hear those, those tweets bounce around in my head, the more I think, yeah, that is complete essentialism because the way she comes off is, well, I'm using the classical definition of the word is she's being proscriptive, I believe. Yes.

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. it against because they are trans, then certainly I will stand up against that, but if they're being discriminated against for other reasons. And it's like, you're really endorsing status quo is what you're doing. You're not an ally or an accomplice. Yeah, because you're being a hand-ranging liberal who is figuring out reasons why they don't have to get in there.

Yes. And do the fighting. Yeah. Because and there's and there's a couple of different directions. I kind of want to bounce off of that. Sure. Going like starting with the one you just, you just threw out there. Her entire upbringing was, um, she, she is a feminist to the extent that she grew up in a time where all of these ideas out of second wave feminism were normalized. Right?

Yep. So it's never been revolutionary for her to have a job. It's never been revolutionary for her to expect to get paid the same as a man in her position. It's never been a revolutionary for her to believe that she should be able to get away from an abusive relationship. It's never been revolutionary for none of these things are are anything transgressive. Right. For her. These are not rights that she has had to fight for. These are things that she has assumed. She is the union person who, I guess I'll pay my dues, who doesn't realize the benefits that you take for granted are the ones that we have fought for her 20 years. Then literally people died for. Yeah. Within the context of the labor movement as

a whole. Yeah. I would say, I would also say this. So going back to my description of second-wave feminism, I said that there does need to be a connection between this kind of feminism and social justice for people of other colors and things like that. It can't just be white-centric. That being said, like that, it can't just be white centric. That being said, it is the elimination of racism as policy, not necessarily as practice or as trappings. It is, and that's what I was trying to get to was that because because second wave feminists absolutely were like, no, it is not okay to discriminate against people because they're black. All right, now that we've solved that. And it's like, you know, but of

course, of course, there should be rules at a workplace that monitor the kind of hairstyle you should have. Wait, and it's like, wait, wait, wait, you don't see how that's, no, that's not because they're black. That's just a hairstyle choice. That's just That's just a hairstyle choice. That's just, that's just a professional norm. Right. And they're in, and they're in as where the, the ceiling is four second wave feminism.

Yeah. And that's where, and that's where third, that's, that's where third and fourth wave had to come in with like, and don't know where we're being, we, we need some genuine, uh, with like, don't know, we're being, we're, we need some genuine, the word just slipped out because I'm on my second period. I'm sorry. intersectional is that we need, we need to have genuine intersectionalism. Like, yeah, it's the idea that you simply removing the legal aspects of supremacy and racism and patriarchy. That does not mean that you are done. Removing a bad is not the same. Creating a world in which there's tolerance is not the end of

the story. That is the shoulder that you jump from to create acceptance and then you jump from acceptance to create normalization. And you know what I mean? Like, and full inclusion. So it's not, you have a seat at the table now, it's you get to decide the menu now. Like, and the menu has shit that you like on it. Not just you get to choose what you're picking from the menu. So like, yeah, second way is feminism absolutely is like we deserve it to see the table. Cool. And you shouldn't be discriminated against because of your race. Also cool. Or your sex. All right. Cool.

Or your sexual preference, although we're going to be a little iffy about that. All right. Cool. But that's where they stopped. And, you know, we've said this before, like, at some point, we're going to time out as well. We're going to. Oh, yeah.

We're, and I'm hoping I'll recognize it and go, Oh, I just need to get out of the way. Yeah. Yeah. You know, instead of like, it's gone too far now. Because everybody thinks it's gone too far for their generation kind of thing. I'm shit. I don't have contact with certain family members anymore because you know, because of my stance of like, no, you could still go farther, you know. But, uh, yeah, I think she's very much of that ilk of very much rid of racism. It's like, no, you've got rid of legalized racial discrimination. Like mandated, legally mandated racial discrimination. You know, well done that. And and that is a huge step.

That's that's that's a big deal. But you don't get to stop there. And you don't get to tell other people that they should be happy with what you do achieve or what or what the people before you in the case of Rowling. It's not even what you achieved. It's what the people before you achieved in fairness. She did work in a human rights thing Yes, I'm gonna give her credit for caring about that kind of shit. Yes. Yes. She does get credit for that But that you know and and and what I keep coming back to is I look at the way loop in his writ mm-hmm, right? Mm-hmm and even in the text, like it's

so clear, like it's like clear coded out, out to 11, like, and I can't help but think that that was at least on some level, something she was aware of. And how you can manage, and I mean, I know this is possible just because people suck, but like, I don't get how you could write that. And then turn around and be so contemptuous of another group that is marginalized over a related kind of issue. She's not she's not contemptuous of that group in her mind. She's contemptuous of people trying to go further than is necessary. She's contemptuous of people daring to challenge her use of words. She's an author, dammit. Yeah, okay. There's no. I think I think that the because I think of the family members that I know who, you know, God, you make everything about race and blah, blah, blah. I'm like, well, who'd you vote for? You know,

and, you know, and, and then I'm like, how could you do that when, when you have black and brown grandkids? Yeah. And, and, and while you go go there you go making it about race, I love my grandkids. I'm sure you do like, but they're in licensing. They don't have contempt for those groups of people even. And they certainly don't have contempt for those that are their loved ones. Yeah. But there is a layer of their others without even realizing it. They're others. And I don't wanna have to care about it anymore. And I think it's that part.

And again, I'm all four people saying, that's too much for me, then get out of the way. Like, yeah, that's, you gotta take that next step off the path. Like, you can't just be like, I have a huge problem with it. Like, unless the problem is genuinely a moral one, but her sound linguistic, they sound like linguistic essentialism,

proscriptive language use. One, it's prescriptive, it's prescriptive language use. That's a big, that's a big part of it. But I think there's something, there's something behind the prescriptive language use. There's something behind the prescriptive language use. I think that her lived experiences of needing, of having been in a circumstance

where she needed a safe, female space. Combined with her inability, apparent inability or unwillingness, I don't know which. I'm trying to be charitable by saying inability to understand the lived experience of trans people. That combined with her lived experience needing to escape from male violence, has created a situation in her head where, well, okay, no, look, women need to be protected in this way. And women need to be able to have this, this, you know, there needs to be for her on an emotional, I'm guessing. And this is all me, you know, making assumptions here. But it reads to me like women need to have this ability to be to be separate from and protected from men. And if you have male genitalia, you are a man. And so you don't get to be here in this feminine space. You know, I mean, and I know that that is somewhat reductionist of me.

No, but it makes sense. You know, there's also, I don't know, I just, I just keep coming back to sometimes someone will use 70% of their battery life on one battle in their life. Yeah. I wonder if she didn't do that. It's possible. You know, with all the troubles she went through and all the success that she found, she finally got to a point where she could just relax.

And for her relaxing was not having to fight for anyone anymore because she always had to fight for herself. In her mind. Yeah. Yeah. I get that. So there's just a, you know, the fights over because I'm done fighting. Yeah. And I come back to that. But I think you're absolutely right. I think, you know, it doesn't have to be one or the other. And I hate to just say, oh, it's it's both. But like, I do think that you're what you say, there's a lot of merit to that. Like she needed a safe space in her life away from men. And therefore anybody who has the stink of man on them in some level trying to come

into female spaces or feminine spaces, um, that is a threat to her on some level. Mm hmm. And, and I could certainly see that as well. her on some level. And I could certainly see that as well. Yeah. And, and the, the, uh, baseline essentialism, I mean, it shouldn't have surprised any of us when she came out with the stance because when we look at the universe that she created, you are born a wizard or not. You don't get to learn to, I mean, you get to learn to focus your abilities to use magic, but you don't get to learn how to have the ability to use magic.

Either you're born one or not. Now, interestingly, in her own universe, there is the case of squibs who are wizards, but don't really have enough magic to, to like, fully use their abilities. You know, or, or, you know, there are muggles, essentially muggles, who are born to wizard in families, right? But the, but the, the way society treats it, everybody's still basically pretty binary. You either are a, are a wizard and you get to participate fully in wizard society, or you're a squib. And like Mrs., I want to say Mrs. Norris, but I think I'm wrong in that name. But yeah, but the person who owns the cat. Yeah. Well, well, Mrs. Norton is the cat. I'm thinking that's Argus Filch, who is a non-magical

member of a wizarding family. But I'm thinking of the neighbor of the dursleys who's given the job of keeping an eye on Harry when he's in the Muggle world, who we find out in book for five that no, no, she's a squib. She knows about the Wizarding world, but she doesn't have magical powers. And so like, okay, she gets this job of watching over the boy who lived, but she doesn't need to participate in Wizarding society. You know, so there's still this binary, right? Yeah, yeah. And, and this one just jumped out at me actually this evening because my son wanted to watch the first movie again. I've seen that movie so many times now. But, and there's moments that keep coming up and I'm like, oh my God, how did I not fucking notice this before? That

Harry Finds out that his father was also a champion's seeker and the the phrase that Hermione Granger uses is of course You're a great quidditch player. It's in your blood. Even the mule or even the mud blood says it. Dude, not cool. Don't be don't be bringing those slurs on here. But yeah, no, yeah. But I mean, she and in University of course, she knows it because she's like red, everything already because she's, you overachiever but like you know it's we're blood oh wow another another case of you're either born one or you're not what the

fuck Joanne come on now right um and and I don't know what, I don't know if that's like a result that that mindset is a result of the inherent kind of background classism of of UK society. I think I mean, that almost feels like to answer, but that's that's the most. No, not when you look at the fact that there is a boarding school that is central to all of it. Okay, good point. Yeah. You know, so, um, and there, there are just all of these cases in which you either are something or you aren't. And in the case of Snape, Rowling decided that Snape was a good person.

Because he is one. because he is one. Because because he is one. And now you mentioned Calvidence Presbyterianism in our last episode. You have to find it funny because that's now we're getting into the idea of predestination, which is like, okay, well, you know, if you're one of the elect, it doesn't matter how you behave,

you're going to heaven when you die. Right. And, and like maybe, maybe that's a thing. Um, I mean, I don't know. I think it's sort of a pattern on the wallpaper shit. Yeah, it could be. And, and I don't know how, how, um, latent know how latent that would have been in what she went to church or I mean, yeah, you know, but did identify as a church gore? Yes.

Yes. So there it like, we do know that much. And you know, within, within that particular stripe of Protestantism, the idea of predestination is a thing. And so like, okay, well, no, Snape is a good person, even though he does all of this awful shit and never apologizes for it, somewhere within her head as the author of that works. And so because of

the weight of her voice in the narrative, as a reader, there is kind of a convenient out for people to to make the same assumption, right? Sure. And you have to be really engaging with the text very critically or at least somewhat critically in order to look at it and go, wait, what? No, that doesn't work. And that's, and I never did that with Snape just because Snape as a character hit my buttons as hard as he did like instantly. But I did do it with Dumbledore and it has taken a lot of conversation with a lot of people who are by and large younger than me, which is an important thing too.

Let me look at and go, yeah, no, no, double door kind of, double door fucked that up. Double door is not, double door is not a good guy. And I've come around to understanding that or understanding that interpretation of the text. understanding that or understanding that interpretation of the text. So, you know, and, and in, in that way, I still assert that, uh, both Dumbledore and Snape, kind of like I screwed over by the author who was writing them, because she didn't interrogate her own outlook on things enough to give us evidence to support Dumbledore being a good guy or snake being a good guy. Right. Yeah, I agree with that. Because in her head, there was this, there was this essentialism,

this kind of Calvinist, well, you know, they were electing so they're good people, which is... If there for no need to forgive. Yes, and therefore no need to forgive. And therefore no need to confess. Yes, and therefore no need to forgive. And therefore, no need to confess. Yes. Which then also gets to her own attitude in regard to the significant amount of hurt that she's caused to a lot of people. There are a lot of LGBTQ people in the world who grew up as huge fans of this series. Because of the things this series

said about being true to yourself and about the power of love and about friendships and about, I mean, look at the relationship between Harry and the entire Weasley family, but especially Ron. Yeah. Like Harry and Ron are me and my brothers from another mother, like 110%. I am a Ron Weasley Stan almost to the extent that I am a Ron's mom Stan. that I am a Ron's mom Stan. And, and, you know, as I've said before, my nectonical is, is teacher goals, even though I want to give her side eye about, you know, not standing up to Dumbledore about a lot of shit. You know, but like, there are so many things in this series that are so great. And she just shat all over it for so many people.

And at the end of the day, like you can have your opinions and you can have whatever, whatever outlook you want to have on issues of other people's identities and whatever, but at the very least, the very least you can do in order to be a good person, in order to be as good as the characters you fucking wrote, is you can acknowledge that what you've said is hurt people. Yeah. That you have, that you have like hurt people badly and you can apologize for hurting them and then you can shut the fuck up and stop doing it. Well, and she's done what I wish I could have done one percent of which is making up money that she could just disappear. Yeah. And not have to do any

of that. Like, yeah. Just go. You make that much money. I'll shut up and go away. Oh, yeah. Oh, easy. So, yeah, I mean, I have, I have enough of a, of a overdeveloped sense of duty and responsibility that maybe I wouldn't be able to completely disappear. But like, you know, I'd at least think real hard about going away. And I don't think Bradley has even done that. And then, and then, and then it actually gets even worse because then she's gone on and she's published other works outside of the Harry

Potter universe in which she has demonized trans people as serial killers. Oh yeah, yeah. I mean like she's tripled down, like you said, she's tripled down. She's picking aside and and she's going, it's one of those things of, she's going after an entire group because some people from that group made her feel bad. Yeah. Like, you know, it would be like if, oh God, I don't know, if somebody from Oregon ripped me off

and I just every villain in every story I ever do is Oregonian. Is an Oregonian? Yeah. And in a part of it, really, I just don't get is how as one of the wealthiest authors in the world, how do you not recognize that you are punching down? Like she has, she has, she has everybody is her equals. She thinks that the job is done. We've ended racism. There is no down. There is no punching down in a world where we've achieved full equality. Wow. Okay, I guess I can see that, yeah.

She's not right, but that's, no, she's not. That's actually remarkably, in a way that's kind of a very charitable way of looking at it. I was just under the impression that the whole reason she was doing it is just because, you know, my feelings got hurt. So I'm a victim. No, I know what?

This is the problem that I always have with liberals. Like this is the way. Yeah, right. Yeah. Um, yeah, I, you know, and there are so many so many liberals white liberals, particularly who like I have come around to recognizing that at the end of the day I am one As much as my upbringing makes me like desperately recoil on an instinctive level. I'm like no, no, I am one And then and then I hear you make a statement like level. I'm like, no, no, I am one. And then I hear you make a statement like that. And I'm like, so why can't the rest of my fellow liberals figure the fuck out?

Like, I came, maybe it's because I came from where I came from. Like I had, I had to, I had to walk into it like she was. Yeah. I had to walk, I had to walk this far that I'm looking at it like, no, I still got a ways to go, man. Right. Because walking is a part of your journey. Whereas they were, you know, came up in it. You know, the other part is, uh, why can't the rest of them? Because they've gone far enough in their mind. Fuck.

Yeah. God damn it. You know, you know, and in, and in in kind of in that vein, the funny thing is at the end of the day, the things that have made me a liberal are the values that I was taught by my really conservative dad. Like, you know, an overton window shift. Yeah, well, you're the one always talking about an overton window shift. Yeah, well, there is that. Yes. You know, but I have, I have, as much as the overton window has radically shifted right, like so far as to be ridiculous, except it's actually a thing. Accept it's actually a thing.

I have, I will recognize that I have moved left. Like I have gotten as far as being a distributist. Yeah. Okay, you know. You and Hillary Clinton, you're a little to the left of her. Cause you're more Eisenhower than Clinton. Yeah, okay, I can't complain. Yeah, true. What the fuck? I've also shifted left. I mean, I, again, I started liberal and thought I was done. And then I, you know, had my pants pulled down in front of everyone and I'm like, oh, right.

For a minute, well, I go figure some shit out. Yeah. I mean, for a minute, well, I go figure some shit out. Yeah. You know, and rolling like, or fucks sake, she made a point of standing up in front of an audience full of people like for no reason. You know that meme, nobody. Right. Nobody at all. Right.

And then below that JK Rowling,, yeah, double doors gay. Yeah Like honest to God going back through the novels. He's not queer coded No, he's not and you know, pardon me, it's like yeah, anybody can be gay. That's awesome But also this doesn't advance the story in any way shape or form. This does nothing. This is this is that chasing. Yeah, it might make him lesser as a gay representative character now, um, because of the shit that he does because he's because he's not a good guy. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

So there's, there's that. Yeah, I, I, you know, I also think that, um, what she's doing now is chasing down the people who will validate her experience for her. And when you have that much money, part of me is like, when you have that much money, just fucking go to a spy every day then. Yeah. Yeah. But she's British. So maybe not. You know, yeah.

Yeah. She has to be recognized as being, you know, one of the good members of the nobility, I suppose. Right. So I mean, yeah, that's, that's essentially, essentially, that's, that's, you know, we've, we've, we've come around to the point that I was trying to make is that she is a, she is a centrist liberal, which essentially, which means, I keep saying essentially, which is funny. She is effectively a defender status quo and conservative, which shouldn't really surprise anybody who reads the books. And I wish that she could have a Pauline moment and fall off her talking land on her ass.

And recognize that maybe she needs to at the very least apologize to the hundreds of thousands of people, possibly millions of people who she has, in fact, hurt, who loved this book, these the series of books, this whole property, and who it has been tarnished for forever because of her, because of her shit, you know, you know, just apologize for the money that she's given to anti trans organizations. Yeah, you know, start there, like start there. That's a good place to start. Um, so yeah, um, Snape, within Catholicism, we don't ever say that anyone is in hell. Okay. We don't know that. We can't know that. And the only people that we can point to and say

that person is in heaven are the people that the church has recognized as being saints. That's actually what makes someone a canonized saint, right? Okay. I, however, I'm going to go out and limit, I'm going to say that snake is in the bad place because he was a shithead and a bully and his death did not redeem him. And Rowling doesn't get that because of everything I just described. And all of that is tied to the same behavior that has led to her being where she is in public opinion on Twitter. And everywhere else. So there you go. That's the end of it. And it's her essentialism and her lack of understanding of how redemption actually works that led to all of this.

I like. So based on that, what is your reaction or your takeaway from all of this? Oh, I think she could have written May's window. Okay. Yeah. You have my attention. What do you mean? The saddest. Okay. Sticking to the dogma. Okay. And not really seeing the humanity or the sentience essentially of their mission. You know, I think she could have written him effectively, given her attitudes. All right. So, and also, you know, oh no, shocking, a billionaire listening, stopped being told no a long time ago. And now they have some really shitty takes.

Yeah, yeah, we ever would have guessed. Yeah. But yeah, yeah, that's, I mean, all that I've said has been in this episode. So yeah. All right. Cool. What's your reading? We're recommending. I am going to recommend once again that everybody go out and find a copy, purchase a copy, give my friend money, two gun witch by Bishop O'Connell. give my friend money. Two gun witch by Bishop O'Connell. For all of the reasons that I mentioned in the last episode, it is a really good adventure yarn that touches on some very important topics. And I want to see my friend do well from what he's written. So there you go. How about you? from what he's written. So there you go. How about you? I'm going to recommend two books again, but they're both going to be books that are within a series.

So you might have to read the whole series to get it. The first one being Jedi search. I believe. Yeah, I believe that's by Kevin J Anderson. It's the one time he dipped into Star Wars for a little while. They're not particularly good books, but there's really wonderful scene in in the first few pages where Wedge is helping clean up Coruscant and the things that he and Luke say to each other. I think that that gets at some of the stuff that we were talking about. The other one I will recommend is Star Wars book again called Sacrifice by... Oh, it's by Karen Travis. Okay. And it's in the middle of the Jedi Legacy series, which is one of my favorite series. I think I might actually start rereading that.

I think I might actually start rereading that. But there's a wonderful discussion that Ben and Luke have. And again, in the EU, that is no longer canon, Ben is Luke and Mara's child. But there's a wonderful discussion that the two of them have about choosing to act. And I really, really dig that. And I think it's away from the essentialism. So nice. Yeah. You and I don't want to be found where can they find this podcast?

Well, our website is wova wova wova.gehistoryoftime.com and we're going to be able to still for the moment on Twitter at New History Time. And you have already found us, if you're listening to us, you've found us either on Stitcher or Spotify or the Apple Podcast app, wherever it is that you found us,

please subscribe. Please subscribe some more. Give us the five star review that you know we deserve and anything else you want to look for go back through our archive and take a look we cover all kinds of stuff in in Damien's case anyway exhausting detail. There's where we did some Harry Potter stuff back before we started turning on everyone. Yes, yes, before she became twisted and evil. Yeah, we did.

So yeah, well, cool. Well, thank you for this. This has been a lot of fun. I was always wondering if we're going to get back to Harry Potter. Yeah, I was of how if we're going to get Mac to Harry Potter. Yeah. How's it how awful she is? But I like, well, and this is kind of because of how awful she is. Yeah. So, well, well threaded, sir.

Good needle. All right. Thank you. Well, for Geek History of Time, I'm Damien Hermany. And I'm Ed Blaylock. And until next time, keep rolling 20s. Keep rolling twice.