J.K. Rowling blasted Emma Watson after the Hermione actress claimed she still treasures Rowling in a recent interview. Rowling noted that Watson is “ignorant of how ignorant she is.”
Last week, Watson appeared on the Jay Shetty Podcast and was asked about Rowling’s comments directed at her specifically that she will not forgive her and that Watson and her co-stars have ruined the films for her.
Watson answered, “I really don’t believe that by having had that experience and holding the love and support and views that I have, mean that I can’t and don’t treasure Jo and the person that I had personal experiences with. I will never believe that one negates the other and that my experience of that person, I don’t get to keep and cherish. To come back to our earlier thing, I just don’t think these things are either or. I think it’s my deepest wish that I hope people who don’t agree with my opinion will love me, and I hope I can keep loving people who I don’t necessarily share the same opinion with.”
“And I think that’s a very, very important way for me that I need to be able to move through life. I just really, I guess to circle back around, I really do believe in having conversations and that those are really important and that, I don’t know, I guess, where I’ve landed is that it’s not so much what we say or what we believe, but very often how we say it that’s really important,” she continued. “And that’s really frustrating and not what you want to hear when you’re really angry and upset with someone. But, I don’t know, I just see this world right now where we seem to be giving permission for this kind of like throwing out of people or that people are disposable. And I just think that’s-. I will always think that’s wrong. I just believe that no one is disposable and everyone, as far as possible, whatever the conversations is, should and can be treated with, at the very least, dignity and respect.”
Rowling initially reacted to Watson’s comments responding to a report that she was being attacked by transgender activists saying, “It’s quite extraordinary how many people think a crocodile will be so grateful you’ve fed it red meat for years that it’ll let you stroll away unharmed when you decide you want a break.”
In a much lengthier post, she reacted to a clip featuring Fiona McAnena criticizing Watson’s measured comments and predicting that she can’t ride the fence after promoting transitioning children and other transgender activism including publicly rebuking Rowling.
Rowling posted, “I’m not owed eternal agreement from any actor who once played a character I created. The idea is as ludicrous as me checking with the boss I had when I was twenty-one for what opinions I should hold these days.”
Next, she falsely claimed, “Emma Watson and her co-stars have every right to embrace gender identity ideology. Such beliefs are legally protected, and I wouldn’t want to see any of them threatened with loss of work, or violence, or death, because of them.”
To be clear, there is no right to gender identity ideology, because espousing that view is an act of injustice. Catholic.com explains, “Right, as a substantive (my right, his right), designates the object of justice. When a person declares he has a right to a thing, he means he has a kind of dominion over such thing, which others are obliged to recognize. Right may therefore be defined as a moral or legal authority to possess, claim, and use a thing as one’s own.”
From there it notes how a thief who steals an object might have physical control of the object, but he does not have a right to it because “his act is an injustice, a violation of right, and he is bound to return the stolen object to its owner.”
Nevertheless, Rowling continues, “However, Emma and Dan in particular have both made it clear over the last few years that they think our former professional association gives them a particular right - nay, obligation - to critique me and my views in public. Years after they finished acting in Potter, they continue to assume the role of de facto spokespeople for the world I created.”
“When you’ve known people since they were ten years old it’s hard to shake a certain protectiveness. Until quite recently, I hadn’t managed to throw off the memory of children who needed to be gently coaxed through their dialogue in a big scary film studio. For the past few years, I’ve repeatedly declined invitations from journalists to comment on Emma specifically, most notably on the Witch Trials of JK Rowling. Ironically, I told the producers that I didn’t want her to be hounded as the result of anything I said,” she wrote. “The television presenter in the attached clip highlights Emma’s ‘all witches’ speech, and in truth, that was a turning point for me, but it had a postscript that hurt far more than the speech itself. Emma asked someone to pass on a handwritten note from her to me, which contained the single sentence ‘I’m so sorry for what you’re going through’ (she has my phone number). This was back when the death, rape and torture threats against me were at their peak, at a time when my personal security measures had had to be tightened considerably and I was constantly worried for my family’s safety. Emma had just publicly poured more petrol on the flames, yet thought a one line expression of concern from her would reassure me of her fundamental sympathy and kindness.”
From there, Rowling put Watson on blast, “Like other people who’ve never experienced adult life uncushioned by wealth and fame, Emma has so little experience of real life she’s ignorant of how ignorant she is. She’ll never need a homeless shelter. She’s never going to be placed on a mixed sex public hospital ward. I’d be astounded if she’s been in a high street changing room since childhood. Her ‘public bathroom’ is single occupancy and comes with a security man standing guard outside the door. Has she had to strip off in a newly mixed-sex changing room at a council-run swimming pool? Is she ever likely to need a state-run rape crisis centre that refuses to guarantee an all-female service? To find herself sharing a prison cell with a male rapist who’s identified into the women’s prison?”
In contrast, Rowling wrote, “I wasn’t a multimillionaire at fourteen. I lived in poverty while writing the book that made Emma famous. I therefore understand from my own life experience what the trashing of women’s rights in which Emma has so enthusiastically participated means to women and girls without her privileges.”
“The greatest irony here is that, had Emma not decided in her most recent interview to declare that she loves and treasures me - a change of tack I suspect she’s adopted because she’s noticed full-throated condemnation of me is no longer quite as fashionable as it was - I might never have been this honest,” she concluded. “Adults can’t expect to cosy up to an activist movement that regularly calls for a friend’s assassination, then assert their right to the former friend’s love, as though the friend was in fact their mother. Emma is rightly free to disagree with me and indeed to discuss her feelings about me in public - but I have the same right, and I’ve finally decided to exercise it.”
One thing that is very interesting is that Emma’s comments are largely unintelligible. I have a hard time figuring out what her point is and the way she speaks and the words she uses makes me instantly want to skip over them. JKR is one or two orders of magnitude more clear. I may not agree with her but at least I know what she’s saying.
"Argle bargle." - Emma Watson