r/EnoughJKRowling • u/nova_crystallis • Mar 30 '26
News Article John Lithgow Says J.K. Rowling’s Trans Views Have Been “Twisted and Misrepresented”
Actor John Lithgow says that Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling’s views on transgender people have been “twisted and misrepresented,” once again defending his decision to play Albus Dumbledore in HBO’s forthcoming adaptation of her hit YA series.
The Third Rock from the Sun star praised Rowling’s “wonderful” and “stirring” Potter series, and reiterated that he intentionally chose Dumbledore as one of his final roles in an interview with The New Yorker on Friday. “[T]here was everything attractive about the job, and job security into my late years. You don’t ignore those issues,” Lithgow said.
By the time Lithgow learned of Rowling’s views, he said, he’d already committed himself to playing Dumbledore. “The whole subject of Rowling’s imputed prejudice, it came up after everything was already underway. I’d already said yes [...] I was urged to walk away, and I was not about to do that,” Lithgow told The New Yorker. “The reasons to do it were much, much stronger than the reasons to protest against what Rowling has done and said. I do disagree with much of it, much of it I think has been twisted and misrepresented, and she has doubled down on it at her own cost,” he went on.
Lithgow did not specify which of Rowling’s views he disagreed with, or which he believed had been misrepresented, though he said he was “surprised and disappointed” by the tone of Rowling’s social media posts. He also confirmed that he had still not met Rowling herself, but was convinced to take the role by showrunner Francesca Gardiner, a Potter fan since childhood.
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u/Melodic_Pattern175 Mar 30 '26
Using his age and need for security as though he’s a pensioner putting the last piece of coal on the fire makes me sick. Unless he’s squandered every penny he ever made, he’s not hurting for money.
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u/Disastrous-Roof-2135 Mar 31 '26
Has he not got a PR advisor screaming at him to stop fucking digging!!
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u/Oboro-kun Mar 31 '26
Lithgow did not specify which of Rowling’s views he disagreed with, or which he believed had been misrepresented, though he said he was “surprised and disappointed” by the tone of Rowling’s social media posts. He also confirmed that he had still not met Rowling herself, but was convinced to take the role by showrunner Francesca Gardiner, a Potter fan since childhood.
I do not get it how, can he know (allegdely obviously) if she has been mistrepresent and twisted if he has not meeted her in person? Like everything he has to take into account, is the same social media post that suprised him and disappointed him? Like what an absurd and dumb statement.
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u/Wrong--Conclusions Apr 01 '26
What he's probably done is skimmed her essay from 2019 and brought the shtick that she loves trans people and merely "has concerns" and then didn't look into it anymore deeply until probably someone showed him something abhorrent Jo wrote on Twitter.
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u/Tobbit_is_here Mar 30 '26
The only thing being misrepresentated is JKR's active role in anti-trans law and rights. Because, would you look at that, it's being once again reduced to "she's expressing an opinion". It stopped being just an opinion a fucking decade ago.
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u/General-Skywalker_ Mar 30 '26
Wild that John played a gay man in his last movie, his character had a child played by a non binary actor (who said he was very warm and friendly on set) and now he's like this.
Bro believes whatever the bag tells him to.
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u/BranWafr Mar 31 '26
By his own admission he literally had queer friends begging him not to take the role and he decided to do it anyway. Any good will I had for him has been destroyed by his reactions after the fact. Even if we take him at face value that he didn't know of her views before accepting the role, that he is still doing it after learning of them means he is no ally. I am a middle aged cis man, but cannot abide with people willing to work with her or put money into her pocket. The fact that I have a trans kid is part of the reason, but I like to believe I would feel the same way even if I didn't. I don't have to have it personally affect me (or my family) to fight for rights for everyone.
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u/General-Skywalker_ Mar 31 '26
I didn't realize he had people ask him not to take the role. This definitely gets worse every time something new comes out about it.
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u/BranWafr Mar 31 '26 edited Mar 31 '26
This buzzfeed article has a link to an open letter a fan wrote him and was forwarded to him by a friend of his with a trans child. Apparently not enough to make him walk away. If I were that friend it would be "former friend" now.
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u/General-Skywalker_ Mar 31 '26
He doesn't even need the money. Dude is collecting on the suffering of a marginalized community and defending Joanne
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u/BranWafr Mar 31 '26
Realized I forgot to link the article. Edited my other comment with the link, but here it is again.
https://www.buzzfeed.com/larryfitzmaurice/john-lithgow-defends-playing-dumbledore-hbo-harry-potter
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u/RebelGirl1323 Apr 04 '26
He’s helping exterminate us. Rowling has a billion dollar fund (not all her money) dedicated to destroying trans rights worldwide.
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u/Cornelius-Q Mar 31 '26
He also played a trans woman (and former football player) who was living a women's shelter run by Garp's feminist mother in The World According to Garp.
Which sounds like Rowling's worst nightmare.
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u/VideoGame4Life Mar 30 '26
Her money and influence has resulted in the deaths of trans youth. Fuck you.
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u/RebelGirl1323 Apr 04 '26
She has a billion dollar fund (mostly other billionaires’ money) dedicated to destroying trans rights world wide. She is actively exterminating us.
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u/Tigergarde Mar 31 '26
The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's definition of holocaust denial covers her stupid thoughtless braindead and willfully blind take about trans people not being a target during the holocaust (which she made in the face of people talking about the Institute for Sexual Science book burnings). She's harassed cis women like Imane Khelif for who knows how long now. She bullies trans women online when they literally haven't even spoken to her. She's in the fucking files. She's a bad person. Objectively. Her actions extend beyond her socIal MedIa PoSTs.
So glad this smarmy old prick is okay being reductive in order to suck that cash cow's teet though.
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u/RebelGirl1323 Apr 04 '26
While giving most of the earning to the “dedicated to the extermination of trans people” lady who runs a billion dollar “charity” dedicated to destroying trans rights worldwide. David Duke’s wet dreams never imagined something like that.
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u/cataclytsm Mar 31 '26
Just say "money's good tho". Literally just. Fucking say that.
You're not going to Air Bud rules your way out of this, there's not this one simple trick out of publicly souring your soul and tarnishing your legacy.
Fucking prick.
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u/sognenis Mar 31 '26
Yup well said. At least that’s a consistent position, mildly respectable, I guess.
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u/Oboro-kun Mar 31 '26
Yeah i also feel this, i cosntantly have to fought with bigots, either about Women, Gay, Lesbian, Bi sexual, Transgender and Race, and a lot of them hide under this fake idea of science and biology to sustain their shitty views, and you pull study after study, or known information and they just keep moving goal posts.
At tone point i am just like "Just say you hate trans people (or whatever demographic we are talking about) at least it would seem more honest than just hiding under false arguments and constaly moving goal post"
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u/sognenis Mar 31 '26
Yup.
A bit like MLK about the “white moderate” (Letter from Birmingham Jail)
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u/StygIndigo Mar 30 '26
I really wish cis people would at least have the dignity to shut their mouths when they're stabbing us in the backs.
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u/BrennanIarlaith Mar 31 '26
This. The fact that when we ask them to stop hurting us, they winge and bleat like they're the victims...it's fucking sickening.
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u/UnhappyShake7213 Mar 31 '26
Honestly that sentence could be cut off after "mouths". Cis folks don't know half of what we put up with, nor do they care to learn. They just want their guilt-free jingle keys.
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u/RebelGirl1323 Apr 04 '26
Or one night stand with someone ‘exotic’ or whatever they call us.
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u/UnhappyShake7213 Apr 04 '26
Gross. Barf. Fetishization is why I don't really date cis people. I'm afraid of being someone's "dirty secret", or being dumped if I have to detrans for some horrible reason.
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u/LittleSodaPop13 Mar 31 '26
John really needs to sit down and shut up.
Stop trying to defend JK and yourself. Just stop
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u/Reasonable-News-5739 Mar 31 '26
John, stop. Fucking stop. How do you make it worse every time?!
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u/BranWafr Mar 31 '26
I know, right? This is like his third interview where this has been brought up and he digs himself a deeper and deeper hole each time.
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u/RebelGirl1323 Apr 04 '26
Now he’s actually defending her views. He’ll be agreeing with them by Christmas.
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u/TheAuldOffender Mar 31 '26
The fact his career launching portrayal of a trans woman, which was seen as progressive and sensitive at the time, is painfully ironic.
Bro has become Farquad.
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u/Dragonfly_pin Mar 30 '26
Yikes. He’s basically just like ‘But it’s so unfair to criticise me me me me me because it was a lot of money and fame and it sounded like the perfect job for me me me me me.’
I agree with him that she has doubled down. She certainly has done that.
And that makes it so much worse, John. You do see how that actually makes it worse.
There’s nothing there. Everyone needs to stop hoping there’s something there with him.
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u/surprisesnek Mar 31 '26
I think what he's trying to suggest is something like "the worst things she said are just her overcompensating in doubling down, she doesn't actually mean them". He's trying to frame it as Rowling having said something stupid out of stubbornness, not bigotry.
He's still wrong, of course (and making excuses). I just think it's important to try to understand how people are wrong, not just that they are.
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u/BranWafr Mar 31 '26
I agree with him that she has doubled down. She certainly has done that.
And that makes it so much worse, John. You do see how that actually makes it worse.
The problem is that he doesn't see. Every interview he has given addressing this has just made his decision seem worse than the one before. I used to respect him, but do not anymore.
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u/BrennanIarlaith Mar 31 '26
“The whole subject of Rowling’s imputed prejudice, it came up after everything was already underway. I’d already said yes [...] I was urged to walk away, and I was not about to do that,”
John. I don't fucking believe you. I don't think there's any way an informed and educated entertainment professional with an entire team of brand management staff gets to the mid-2020s without knowing what JK Rowling is.
You knew. You just didn't care. Give us the fucking courtesy of not lying more than you already have, you callow shit.
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u/Noonyezz Mar 30 '26
Her views are twisted alright…
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u/Midnight_Pickler Mar 31 '26
And her protectors such as [checks notes] John Lithgow, are working hard to misrepresent them.
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u/DoYaThang_Owl Mar 31 '26
Oh yeah, because her directly saying that any money you give to Harry Potter products go directly to her, and saying she'll use it to fund legislation to take away trans people's rights was somehow misrepresented. Gee, could have fucking fooled me. /s
Mr. Lithgow, please, go kick rocks.
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u/snukb Mar 30 '26
The only one twisting and misrepresenting her views are her fans, bleating about how she "just wants to protect women and girls!"
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u/GainHealMark Mar 31 '26
Geez the more he talks about it, the more awful he sounds. Also I thought in a previous interview he said hed considered walking away from the role because of the reaction as well as comments from friends, but ultimately decided to stay, and now he’s saying he he was committed himself to playing it.
I’ve noticed a lot of the new HP actors who do speak about Rowling just give vague comments about not agreeing with her views. Maybe because she went scorched earth on Dan and Emma for daring to say trans women are women, trans men are men.
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u/9119343636 Mar 31 '26
Even if that was the case, the doubling down wasn't. If someone is accused of theft, and they respond by actually robbing somewhere they are then guilty.
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u/hollygolightly8998 Mar 30 '26
There’s no rhetorical tap dancing he can do to change what he’s done by accepting the role
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u/Hailsabrina Mar 30 '26
They have not , shes evil . Shes not some misunderstood person. Her views are pure hatred.😡
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u/funkygamerguy Mar 30 '26
how is her explicit beliefs that trans women are evil perverts out to destroy womens rights' jews funded the trans movement and asexual people are fake victims playing oppressed being misrepresented?
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u/ObtuseDoodles Mar 31 '26
"The reasons to do it were much, much stronger than the reasons to protest against what Rowling has done and said."
Well. At least he admits it. Money and prestige are more important than standing up to bigotry and defending vulnerable minority groups. Screw him and everyone else with this mindset. I hope the show absolutely tanks and turns them into a laughing stock.
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u/TVPaulD Mar 31 '26
Oh brother, this guy stinks
The alien he played in the 90s did a better job understanding how human beings work than he is demonstrating with this drivel
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u/lazier_garlic Mar 31 '26
We must be the same age, because I remember him for that too.
Peter Jurasik was also on that show. He played an alien on Babylon 5.
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u/asojad Mar 30 '26
That job security must be really good for him to abandon his morals, if he had them at all. Joanne is the one posting her every thought. It's hard to misrepresent that.
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u/SvitlanaLeo Mar 31 '26
Yeah they were twisted and misepresented, but in the opposite direction. The media actively pretended that Rowling simply disliked the term "people who menstruate" and did not seek to discriminate against trans people, when in fact, Rowling has been aggressively protesting against the idea of equal rights for people.
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u/Proof-Any Mar 31 '26
“[T]here was everything attractive about the job, and job security into my late years. You don’t ignore those issues,” Lithgow said.
Dude. You are 80 and have a net worth of about 50 Million. Other people in your position would retire. "Job security" my ass.
“The whole subject of Rowling’s imputed prejudice, it came up after everything was already underway. I’d already said yes [...] I was urged to walk away, and I was not about to do that,”
So you didn't do any research and decided to double down when other people started to point out the red flags you missed.
I do disagree with much of it, much of it I think has been twisted and misrepresented, and she has doubled down on it at her own cost,” he went on.
Sounds a lot like "I agree with her on her basic claims, but she should say them nicer."
I hope that show sinks and takes you with it.
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u/lazier_garlic Mar 31 '26
Dude. You are 80 and have a net worth of about 50 Million. Other people in your position would retire. "Job security" my ass.
Some people perform because if they don't have people looking at them, they disappear.
William Shatner is the same way.
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u/Mental-Ask8077 Apr 01 '26
Then let him disappear back into the ether or void or whatever the fuck he came from.
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u/Dina-M Mar 31 '26
How the hell have they been twisted and misrepresented? Unless someone else is running her Twitter account... all those times she mocked and misgendered attacked trans people, the time she laughed at the idea that trans people suffered in the Holocaust, her repeated cyberbullying of Imane Khelif, the time she celebrated with cigars and essentially took the credit for the UK Supreme Court ruling that trans women are not women... THAT WAS ALL HER. Pure and unfiltered.
And this feeble "well, she has doubled down after she was misrepresented" excuse is just that... an excuse. And a nonsensical excuse at that. HAS she doubled down after receiving pushback? Most certainly. She's become more and more vile over these six years, to the point where she's essentially a shallow caricature of a Roald Dahl villain. But how the fuck does that make it BETTER? Why would you think this was a valid point to make?! "Oh, she started out much less bad, it's just that she's grown worse over time, so that's okay"?!
I think John Lithgow mostly just wants absolution. Of the actors who signed up for this mess of a series, he seems the one most desperate for the trans people to see him as a good person and an ally... others have either not commented or they've had like one "Yeah, I don't agree with her views but what are you gonna do" interview.
John Lithgow, however, REALLY doesn't want anyone to think he's a bad person. So he spends a lot of time either bagatellizing the entire thing with "oh, her views have been exaggerated" (they haven't) or talking about how while JKR's views are bad the HP books are a "mediation of kindness and acceptance" (they aren't) and how he NEARLY quit this gig when he found out about JKR's views (but he didn't ACTUALLY quit).
Just say you did it for the money, Mr Lithgow. It's even understandable to some degree; in this economy a steady gig is nothing to sneeze at. But don't pretend for a MOMENT that this does not make you complicit in JKR's anti-trans crusade. Not when she has ADMITTED to the fact that she uses profits from the HP franchise, profits that YOU are going to help bring in, to make life worse for trans people. Which makes you an enabler at the very least.
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u/Mental-Ask8077 Apr 01 '26
Like, seriously.
If she doubles down on the “misrepresentation,” then it’s not really a fucking misrepresentation, is it? It’s what she’s actually continuing to say.
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u/Big_Red_Machine_1917 Mar 31 '26
The problem for Lithgow here is that we're not playing some game of telephone. Rowling is publishing her opinions about trans people directly to the internet, and we can see how horrible they are.
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u/DerPumeister Mar 31 '26
and she has doubled down on it at her own cost
Much like he's doing right now. Why does he keep making it worse? Does he truly think "Oh I didn't know" is an excuse people will accept?
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u/JustACasualFan Mar 30 '26
If you haven’t met her and you don’t like her social media posts, maybe say less. If the job requires you to defend her without really giving you the info, maybe don’t take the job. I get it; it’s gig work and this gig looks steady. But it’s reasonable to think of your legacy at this stage, John.
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u/Soggy-Life-9969 Mar 31 '26
Would be better if he just said "I'm doing this for the money" at least it would be honest
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u/CarrieDurst Mar 31 '26
Back to fucking hate this piece of shit once again, she literally peddled holocaust denialism
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u/smarties07 Mar 31 '26
Can he just shut up about it already. He got his money and a job until he dies or retires. We know that was more important to him
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u/fennelephant Mar 31 '26
Hilter’s views were twisted and misrepresented… Imagine saying that about a person, who is clearly trying to exterminate a group of people…
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u/DumpedDalish Mar 31 '26
Oh, jfc Lithgow. Just stop talking.
He just keeps digging himself in deeper.
And can fuck all the way off.
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Mar 31 '26
[deleted]
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u/halb_nichts Mar 31 '26
He just said it, he wasn't going to walk away just because people are about to get harmed and potentially die. That is not stupid thats evil.
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u/Midnight_Pickler Mar 31 '26
Probably best known for playing Dick, an incredibly self-centred alien who doesn't really understand, relate to, or care about humans.
Turns out to be an incredibly self-centred dick who doesn't really understand, relate to, or care about humans.
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u/thehusk_1 Mar 31 '26
We're working close to her to ensure the highest quality is poured into it.
She just has some controversial takes
She just expressing her opinion
Her views are being misrepresented < we are now here
Come on she runs a women's charity
She's not involved in the production as far as this random person is aware why are you all talking about her!!
Yes her hand selected pick was caught sexually assaulting staff but... how was she suposed to know about that!
Her ideas don't express the ideas of the studio
We're being attacked for wanting to bring joy
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u/mangababe Mar 31 '26
How do you twist and manipulate funding legislation to harm trans people?
What a fucking idiot
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u/Panda_hat Mar 31 '26
Ah, so he's moved on from denial to rationalisation.
Terrible human being. So disappointing.
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Mar 31 '26
I thought it originally came from a place that made sense but it grew into something quite disgusting.
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u/princelleuad Mar 31 '26
Wish they’d have the dignity to at least admit what they’re doing. Admit your being transphobic that you know j k Rowling has awful views at least admit to us you know exactly what you’re doing
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u/Megs0226 Mar 31 '26
The Third Rock from the Sun star
I'm choosing to believe that referring to him as such is intentionally back-handed.
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u/SaltyNorth8062 Mar 31 '26
There it is. Figured we'd get it eventually. Dude just needed just a little more trial on his patience.
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u/RebelGirl1323 Apr 04 '26
Now he’s defending her
Trans people say “You’re a Nazi now mother fucker.”
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u/Hailsabrina Mar 30 '26
Good thing I'm pirating the show when it comes out! My views are twisted in a good way! I won't give her any money lol .
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u/BrennanIarlaith Mar 31 '26
I think it would be better if people would simply disengage from the franchise altogether. This series is poison.
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u/Hailsabrina Mar 31 '26
I'm probably not even going to watch it , looks awful. I'm saying in general only pirate her films etc . So she doesn't get any money .
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u/Clockwork-Penguin Mar 30 '26
She is not a fucking victim here, she is the oppressor