News from Rob Mimpriss

16th August 2024: J K Rowling

J. K. Rowling at the White House in 2010 | Source

When I had a Twitter account, and when Scotland’s constitutional future was a matter of urgent debate, I visited J. K. Rowling’s page a few times. , since she was making her opinions known, and these opinions were being amplified by some of the lower-quality news websites, especially those based in England, with headlines about ‘OWNing’ or ‘DESTROYing’ the ‘NATS.’ She came across as less welcoming of readers than she was of ‘fans,’ grandly awarding anyone who agreed with her ‘Ten points to Gryffindor!’ while treating her critics with a patronising and off-hand rudeness. One of her ways of ‘owning’ or ‘destroying’ people was to boast about all the money she had made.

In her dealings with Scottish nationalists over the years she was able to present herself both as an innocent victim of cyber-bullies, and as a representative of the decent majority which had eventually rejected Scottish independence. Those news sites were also able to imply that cyberbullying was the inevitable outcome of a movement as reactionary and bigoted as Scottish nationalism, even when nationalists as prominent as Nicola Sturgeon were defending her right to speak her mind. In the essay on trans-sexuality which she published on her own website, she presented herself again as a victim of other people’s aggression and prejudice: complaining that she was being asked on online whether Gryffindor or Slytherin would be more welcoming of her gender-critical views, and by people whose question proved that they were too childish and stupid to debate with her as equals. She referred to transgender friends whom she supported, and whose lifestyle choices she affirmed, but one assumes that such friendships have fallen by the wayside, even as she has become more bitterly entrenched in her rightness and has come to be more mocked and ignored.

She also complained, more broadly, that she was being judged on the basis of hearsay, and not being given the space to defend herself. If this is indeed the case, she may have more in common with her opponents, on both issues, than she herself suspects.