Good morning, friends and fans!
Welcome to a “Peek Into My Week”! Here’s a look at some of my latest news: February 13, 2023! Here are some things that happened this past week.
News About Writing & Publishing: This Is The Current State Of Things
Let’s take a look at the current status quo on various ongoing issues affecting my writing or publishing:
- New Audiobooks: “We All Fall Down“, narrated by Darla Middlebrook, is the third book in the Panic! Horror In Space series, due to appear on ACX soon. This will be my 19th audiobook!
- New Videos: Nigel Peever (of Peever Publishing) created this new promo video for the audiobook of “High Steaks”, book 6 in the Quantum Series:
- Writing: I’m still working on the article I mentioned last week. It’s very important to get the details exactly right, and in order to complete the article, I’ve discovered that I’d first have to write and publish another academic paper in order to reduce the overall length of the article! Instead of including all the material in the paper, I’d simply be able to refer to the paper within the article instead, which will save me quite a few pages! With the article itself now at 95% done, I’m already in the process of writing the paper. Yes, it’s a bit convoluted, but such is my life.
Other Stuff:
I started back at work again last week, and it’s been back to business as usual.
A Social Responsibility
I don’t like to push social or political issues in the course of promoting my writing, but occasionally I encounter a line in the sand, and this is one such occasion. Unfortunately, this will be a bit of a rant – but I feel it’s a necessary one.
I need to clear the air – and to put you in the picture as to where I stand. It’s up to you to decide whether you will stand with me – or not.
As an author, I would never dream of abusing my influence to direct harm against vulnerable groups of people – even were I ever to be so lucky as to hold any noteworthy influence in future. Crudely put, that’s bigotry and stochastic terrorism. Unfortunately, while some authors use what social influence they have to do good for others, a few use that influence for evil. One such author is J.K. Rowling.
Like many people, I enjoyed the Harry Potter movies, and collected the DVDs. I even enjoyed the first Fantastic Beasts movie. It was then that I learned their author, J.K. Rowling, had aligned herself with trans-exclusionary radical feminism (TERF), and had begun to use her brand and fame and resources to support the messages and messengers of hate and disinformation about transwomen from the UK. Today she is a leading voice in the TERF movement, which is literally a gang of Karens shrieking about how they believe the mere existence of and tolerance for transwomen is misogynistic towards what they refer to as “real” women. Showing respect and acceptance to transwomen, in their view, is “misogyny” that allegedly harms the cause of feminism.
What really does harm feminism is transphobia.
This, against the backdrop of the highest number of transphobic bills being submitted – and passed – and transgender people being murdered in the USA and around the world, in decades.
The TERF view of “feminism” is, and has been shown to be, so extreme as to undermine feminism itself, since it polices womanhood and female identity in such as way as to oppress women rather than to work for their liberation and equality. One example of how, is demonstrated by a new bill in the US which would force all people in a particular state, with a Y chromosome, to be classified as male – even the cisgender women who have that chromosome. This disconnection from a human rights ethos, and science – and its abuse in fascist causes – is a tell-tale characteristic of such hate-driven ignorance.
Rowling also is an anti-Semite, which only makes the ferocity of her support even worse. Unlike anti-Semites, though, TERFs have only been around for about 30 years or so – while actual NAZIs have been around a lot longer, and in the UK as well.
The irony of all this is, were Rowling to have shown her true colors before rising to fame and fortune, she probably wouldn’t have found her path to success half as easy. Now that she’s already rich and famous, the only thing that can be done is to boycott her and her “products”.
TERFs are a phenomenon that rose to prominence in the 1990s and 2000s, and which completely rejects transwomen, their status as women, and undermines their humanity and their rights to respect, dignity and acceptance in society. Their arguments also employ pseudo-science and often outright science-denialism in their misrepresentation of gender and various stereotypes. They and their supporters engage in blatant bullying tactics, especially on social media.
I enjoyed the Harry Potter movies, and I appreciate the decency and humanity displayed by many of the actors who spoke out in shock against the hatred expressed by Rowling against transwomen – but I’ll never watch them or any new ones again. In fact, I destroyed the DVDs rather than pass them on to anyone else, even for free.
Last week, I noted with dismay that JK Rowling – an author who has used her platform to support the TERF war on transwomen, has released a new Hogwarts game. I have already blocked dozens of people on social media for sharing items promoting this game. Be warned, I will hold people accountable for their choice to buy (hence support) a game that enriches a transphobe and supports her campaign to destroy transgender people.
If I, or any transgender person means anything to you as a cisgender person, a significant other, a friend or an ally, you will take a stand with them, and not flip off transgender persecution with excuses like “it’s just a game” or “don’t take it so seriously” or “who do you think you are?”.
I know who I am – I’m a transwoman watching a war being waged against people like me around the world, and I’m expecting a little responsibility, a little empathy and compassion, and some moral support from fellow human beings.
It’s the lack of understanding of what it is to be trans – and the tsunami of hate directed at transgender people – that inspired me to write the Quantum Series in the first place, and to relate the fears and struggles of transwomen in a distant future. Events and experiences like this cause me to think that the struggle for acceptance and understanding will probably never end, even by the 23rd century. As a matter of interest, the way things are going now, I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the events in the two newest books actually materialized somewhere around the globe within the next decade. Sadly, it wouldn’t be the first time I would be able to say, with irony, “I fucking told you so”.
If we can’t even expect people we know to help us by not supporting a transphobe by giving her their money, how can we possibly expect them to support us when TERFs submit bills to legislate us out of existence?
To put it more simply – if people are too selfish to even stop buying a silly game, how could we possibly expect them to help us when the fascists come to cart us off to concentration camps?
I’ve long been disappointed in Humanity as a species, and there’s little that still surprises me about the depths of human evil and depravity – even when those dozens of people without an iota of empathy for the suffering of others came on to reply to my post with insistences that they would “buy two more copies” in that case, or to make demonstrations of how callous and selfish they could be by saying they would buy (and play) whatever they choose to, no matter who else had to deal with the consequences of their selfishness.
It’s a simple choice – either you support transwomen, or you support Rowling and TERFdom and the annihilation of transwomen. Either you’re standing with me against monsters, or with them. This is one of those areas where there is absolutely no gray whatsoever. None. Make up your mind which side you’re on.
If you’re on their side, you can just move on. You don’t need to know me, or talk to me, or follow me, or read my books, because you’d be too closed-minded to understand or appreciate them anyway, period. I don’t write for people like that at all, so it’s really no loss to me.
For some unfathomable reason, a lot of these psychopaths – and I mean that literally, in the sense that they feel no compassion or empathy at all for others – reacted to my post with laugh emoticons. Apparently the idea that people ought to be held accountable for supporting stochastic terrorism – and make no mistake, that’s what Rowling and her TERF cohorts conduct – is hilarious. It’s a joke to them. How dare transwomen make them feel (or look) like bad people, or guilty, or immoral? How dare we criticize their idol? It’s only a game, after all. Only, it isn’t.
Of these, two had the audacity to claim that they had trans friends who had bought and were playing the game with them, and that I was over-reacting, who do I think I am, and what makes me think my opinion is “right” and theirs was “wrong? That’s easy – it’s called “the facts” – a little thing that this sort of people generally disregard and distort to suit themselves.
As so many people demonstrate today, having the privilege of free speech doesn’t mean that what you’re saying fits with the facts – or reality. This very point is an example of why there are so many idiots out there today arguing to the bitter end that the Earth is flat and that science is some sort of “deep state” government conspiracy!
Firstly, my dear, if you claim to be a friend or “ally” to transwomen while defending transphobia, you’re no fucking ally! Secondly, if your trans friends actually exist and gave money to a transphobe, they’re either ignorant, stupid or suicidal. Considering the level of spelling and grammar in most of the posts I collected, I can already tell which of these apply.
Buying a transphobes’ products and giving them money means supporting a transphobe and transphobia because this enables them to continue doing what they’re doing – there’s the fact at the heart of the matter.
By supporting Rowling and her “products”, people are supporting not only transphobia, but also anti-Semitism. Seeing how rabid Nazism has had a resurgence in the last two decades, I can’t say I’m that surprised to see so much support for Rowling – or where it’s coming from.
This simple concept seemed too complicated for these people to understand, or they were likely just too shallow and selfish to care that they’re making themselves complicit in an attack on the human rights and dignity of people generally being legislated out of existence or murdered around the world just for being different in some ways to them – because of the sort of absolute trash people like Rowling say about transgender people. Which is kinda the fucking point.
To hell with Rowling and her entire brand – and anyone who supports her, either tacitly or actively.
That’s all for this week!
As always, I’ll keep you posted about any further developments. And remember:
In spite of some of my books having been on Amazon since 2005, not one of them has yet reached 10 reviews on any platform, let alone 50! I would really appreciate your help on this! Come on, leave a review – it’s free!
I wish you all a pleasant week until next time!