Will The Gender Lunatics Show Remorse?
JK Rowling Thinks They'll Regret It...I'm Not So Sure
"Child, in a decade's time you're going to be deeply embarrassed that you supported this misogynistic, lesbophobic shit," wrote J. K. Rowling to yet another of her online trolls. "You'll be really glad I hid your name when I told you so. To future you: you're welcome. We were all young and dumb once."
I like that she begins with "child" because it feels like she forever reaches us through the books that taught a generation of children about magic, love and friendship. But in doing so, she also highlights something we're quick to forget.
Many of the most fervent ideologues are children and young adults drunk on passion, hubris and a touch of the Dunning-Krugers. Who would deny them that?
This particular spat started when Rowling posted the following on X:
Her words are so absolutely true and well-meaning (the intention is to prevent men from accessing lesbian dating apps and meetings) that it is hard to see how someone might take exception.
Yet, here's Rowling's anonymous foe:
It might shock some readers that anybody could find Rowling's words "appalling, evil stuff". As is customary, the troll doesn't explain why it is evil and appalling. I suspect that they don't know and might revert to the thought-terminating cliché of "transphobic" to cover their ignorance.
Yet, in her thoughtful response, Rowling deliberately hid the user's name while explaining that they would come to regret their lunacy. "We are all young and dumb once".
This is a truism for all of humanity.
But does it hold that we all come to regret our ideologies? Do those of us who resisted the temptation of virtue points from a captivating magical ideology get an apology?
Will the ideologues who drank the Kool-Aid* one day apologise to those their convictions hurt - both the victims of gender surgery and people like J. K. Rowling and Graham Linehan?
*Despite the saying, they actually mixed Flavor Aid - not Kool-Aid - with cyanide and other toxic substances to commit mass suicide in the Jonestown Massacre.
Or will it happen so gradually that they'll be - by the end - on the realist side, forgetting that they ever lost their minds? And what of us? Will we remind them of their appalling behaviour? Or will that feel like beating a surrendered enemy? Not very English, as Lord Darlington naively tells those who distrust the Germans before World War II in The Remains of the Day.
What does real history tell us? How did those who cheered - quietly or otherwise - the Nazis reappraise their actions and be reappraised?
For the most part, they didn't show regret.
Many of them fled to Argentina and other distant lands. Josef Mengele, the infamous doctor of Auschwitz, performed unimaginably disgusting experiments on concentration camp prisoners. Infuriatingly, he evaded capture and lived to old age in South America. His letters suggest he showed no remorse.
Heinrich Himmler, Klaus Barbie and Rudolf Höss were among the most infamous and ghastly Nazis. None showed a flicker of remorse. A few, including Albert Speer and Oskar Gröning, showed regret, although it is unclear if they did so to receive more lenient punishments. Others claimed they had been following orders or weren't aware of the full horrors of the concentration camps.
I sometimes imagine the existence of social media during The Holocaust. I don't think it's far-fetched to conceive of a world where the atrocity is denied (because that still happens today) in real time. Trolls would tell Jews they were exaggerating or brought it upon themselves.
How do East Germans feel today, examining the files of the neighbours who betrayed them? Everyone was just doing what they were told. They went along with it.
I know from my work on cults that those who leave Scientology tend not to feel guilty about what they did in the cult. They see themselves as victims of 'the ideology'. They’re not wrong. But it feels like the members they treated so badly deserve some sense of closure.
Some of my interviewees on YouTube - including former high-ranking scientologist Mike Rinder - committed atrocities while in the cult. However, their books and interviews tend to be about the evil of the organisation. They frame themselves as victims - only occasionally referencing their own guilt as a throwaway token gesture.
That's not to say we don't regret our decisions when we were younger. Pick up a diary entry or an online chat with a friend from a year ago. It feels like a different person. But that's not the same as owning up—with abject horror and embarrassment—to the horrors you caused.
Right now, we really do inhabit a really strange world:
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