This Week in Gossip (April 13)

The wizard bigot won’t stop talking, reality TV show grossness, political drama, and Matt Bomer being hot. It’s a newsletter of contrasts.

J.K. Rowling is At It Again. This Time, She’s Bullying Asexual People

(Image via Giphy - it’s Dan Olson.)

Look, nobody is surprised to discover that J.K. Rowling, full-time transphobe and sometime wizard writer, hates asexual people. Scratch the surface of any TERF and you’ll find a ton of hate for anyone who doesn’t fit the rigid pink-blue gender binary (this includes bi and pan people, predictably.) But hoo boy, it continues to make my stomach churn whenever I see this callous and bitter woman use all of her clout to punch down at those who are already marginalized.

Sharing a post related to basic asexual rights (via Reddit), Rowling spewed the usual crap about how not being sexually active is not a form of oppression. You know what she said. You could have predicted this exact conversation about five years ago, like a really depressing Nostradamus.

And right there is John Boyne, part-time Rowling goon and author of The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, a book so exploitative of the Holocaust that the f*cking Auschwitz Museum called him out for it! That would make most people walk into the sea. Not Boyne. He’s so thoroughly doubled down on his proud ignorance and cozying up to transphobes that the entire concept of shame has exited his body and fled for safer pastures. He seems genuinely baffled that the LGBTQ+ community is, you know, a community, rather than an exclusive party where he and a rich cishet bully get to act as bouncers.

The issue with getting into the mud with bigots is that you find yourself wanting to make reasonable responses to mouth-frothing hate that has no desire to be challenged or listen to sense. They don’t want to actually find out why asexual representation and protection matters. They don’t care to hear about the shockingly high statistics for conversion therapy, sexual harassment and assault, and threats of “corrective” rape that ace people face. To talk about that is futile because they just wanted to make the easy joke, not simply for the sake of it but because it strengthens their narrow-minded view of humans as being divided between “normal” and “broken.”

Rowling doesn’t understand community. She has no time for something where she doesn’t get to be the almighty ruler and moral arbiter for the slobbering and unquestioning masses. Bullies like to position themselves as allies but only in that they can be dictatorial about who and what counts as “oppressed.” Ace and aro people know this nonsense all too well: plenty within the LGBTQ+ community claim they don’t have a place under the vast umbrella of our beautiful alphabet. Rowling and Boyne are echoing this crap and facing no real pushback because aro/ace issues aren’t taken seriously.

And, again, if you’re still giving Rowling your money, I have nothing but contempt for you. You’re an adult. You know where your money is going. You know it’s funding hate. Why does the f*cking Hufflepuff scarf and poorly reviewed video game matter to you more than the safety of others? Read another book and grow a spine.

China Might Ban Hollywood Movies Thanks to Trump’s Tariffs

(Image via Morbotron.)

Hours after Donald Trump imposed record 125% tariffs on Chinese products entering the US, China has announced it will further curb the number of US films allowed to screen in the country. “The wrong action of the US government to abuse tariffs on China will inevitably further reduce the domestic audience’s favourability towards American films,” the China Film Administration said in a statement on Thursday (via The Guardian.) “We will follow the market rules, respect the audience’s choice, and moderately reduce the number of American films imported.”