I haven't read harry potter for 20 years, got totally burned out before finishing the series and as you can imagine 14 year old me wasn't exactly very aware of trans issues but here's a few even my thick headed teenage brain found weird:

Bankers are basically jewish caricatures - short goblins with long noses that only care about money
Weird slavery message where Hermione is proven wrong for wanting to free the elves as a lot of them are happy with servitude
Every foreign character is a weird stereotype. I think there was even a Korean character with a chinese name like Chong? There was clearly no concern for portraying anything correctly, just a weak attempt to increase diversity with no effort I guess

There were also a few weird things adjacent to harry potter like how every major character is basically described as alabaster white and she later attempted to hide her bias by saying "I never explicitly said that X was white". Lady, you literally wrote that Hermione was a pale redhead in dozens if not hundreds of pages. I don't care if she's played by a 4 inch tall blue alien, just own up to it and stop gaslighting people.

Also, not a big deal but it always felt weird to me that even the nominally poor family lived a life of luxury. I could tell the person writing never truly knew hardship from the way she wrote the Weasleys. I can't say I have much experience myself but it felt strange how they kept saying a clearly upper middle class family was destitute and made fun of.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago

A lot of it is also lazy writing, often crossing over into negligence. The Japanese magic school being literally called "Magic School" is an example of that, where she just ran it through google translate or something.

Now that I think of it, I shouldn't be surprised that someone so intellectually lazy is such a big transphobe.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago

Who the fuck still has a Waldenbooks? I'm moving.

[+] MindSkipperBro12 -35 points 10 months ago (3 children)

Before anyone complains: Book Burnings aren’t inherently evil. It’s like a tool, it can be used for a righteous or a nefarious cause.

[–] ummthatguy 25 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Please list and cite for the class, any times in human history, where book burning is seen as warranted/acceptable.

[–] EdibleFriend 18 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Bullshit. Even booked full of disgusting hate speech have their purpose as they let us know exactly what those kind of pieces of shit think and say.

[–] captainlezbian -3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

But at the same time the value of preserving historical propaganda is different from destroying some of current bigoted propaganda as it’s being put out for mass dissemination. There’s a difference between an academic in the 90s studying der sturmer and an average German getting their hands on the same text in the 30s.

I don’t think Harry Potter counts for that, but Irreversible Damage sure does. If you start going into the library of congress and trying to destroy their copy I’ll have a problem, but attacking the copies at a target is fair game.

[–] EtherWhack 1 points 10 months ago

I think that would be more defined as a protest. Book burnings tend to imply that all media about a subject is being destroyed. It's a case of semantics, I guess.

[–] MindSkipperBro12 -5 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Then place it in a museum and burn the ones at Barns and Noble.

[–] EdibleFriend 4 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

That's the argument for statues not books. Why in the ever living fuck would you put a copy of some racist book in a museum?

[–] MindSkipperBro12 -4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

For people to see the sins of our past. I guarantee you that there’s a Mien Kampf in a WW2 museum somewhere.

[–] EdibleFriend 4 points 10 months ago

That's a little different because that's a book that Hitler wrote so it has huge historical context. I'm saying we shouldn't burn all offensive books. You're saying all the offensive books should go in a museum.

[–] I_Has_A_Hat 13 points 10 months ago

Everyone who burns a book thinks their cause is righteous. Those who fear words are cowards.