Comment by lostgame | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lostgame | Hacker News Reader

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I know it may sound pedantic to the uninitiated, but the name immediately triggered me / made me uninterested - as it would to any trans person I know - because it's using a name from Harry Potter. Something we have a hard time just 'getting over' or 'ignoring', and certainly shouldn't be asked to.

The author, JK Rowling, is currently on the single biggest hate campaign I've seen a celebrity run against trans rights.

It's negatively affecting the connotations of being associated with the 'Potterverse,' and support for Potter these days is widely considered inconsiderate, especially in the ever growing queer community.

Simply using a name like this was enough to turn me off, and certainly I would not want any friends to have a similarly triggering experience, so I therefore can't recommend it's use, either.

While Potter actually used to be a portal of expression for these types of people, it is now associated with repression and ignorance.

It sucks that any time I see media related / referencing Potter I honestly am immediately disgusted, but this is clearly what Rowling wants. She has had many chances to step down and apologize to her fan base, but she insists on invalidating us.

I grew up with those books, they meant a lot to me, and actually produced a crisis of faith to me with regards to separating art from the artist.

Michael Jackson was, pretty definitely, a child molester. I listened to his music for years after until I finally decided I couldn't do it, as a survivor of sexual assault myself, it makes it difficult to be caught casually listening to him.

The Potter books are good, but there are a lot of other great books out there (and inspiration for names!) that wouldn't immediately turn off any and all potential trans customers like myself.

I will note that it could be amazingly positive PR for you guys if you chose to rename the app for this program, I know I myself would sent it to a few of my queer tech blogging friends.

Unfortunately, to even be a fan of Potter any more is to be a fan in spite of, or choosing to ignore Rowling's continuing, relentless campaign to invalidate us as people, and has drawn tangible battle lines between fan communities.

I hear you and I agree I'd rather not be triggering that. I tried asking a few people and trying to come up with a different name and people didn't understand it as easily. Horcruxes give you an idea of what it's doing basically just from the name (you could even imagine a cryptographer inventing this system just from hearing the name it is so obvious).

Do you have an idea for another name for it that will communicate the idea as well? Maybe you can activate your queer tech blogging friends so that we can come up with a new name? (and then I can resubmit under the new name, since Notion will change and kill this link once I change the name).

What else can be split up into pieces and you have to get all of them?

If this is a conversation you're willing to have (and kudos for that, and I'm glad you're previously aware of the issue), it's something I'd love to help discuss - I'm a software dev as well, so I understand how the concept of the functionality is well suited for the metaphor - however, I'm positive another solution could be found. :) And, again, it'll of course be great PR and could draw some positive attention to the service. I've made a throwaway email - psyche at theoic dot me - as obviously the nature of HN makes it difficult to communicate here.

I'd love to just offer a little bit of help, brainstorm for a bit, and I think it's fantastic that you're aware of the issue and wanting to take the steps forward. Knowing is half the battle. ;)

I appreciate the response, regardless of anything - I know it might seem like an extreme response without context, but Potter truly has been an extremely hot button issue lately.

email sent

Oh, fantastic. I'll be sure to get back to you within an hour or two while it's still fresh in our minds. :)

A Crypto Megazord! Or is that too dated? :D

I don't follow.

Well I guess that answers that! Megazord is the robot formed when all the Power Rangers assemble their smaller robots together. Voltron might be more widely known?

By the way, I don't think you should take this being downvoted as disagreement (I understand that what Rowling says is unacceptable and I expect most people would agree with that) but rather that people are not interested in dragging this proposal into a gender discussion. I'm also not sure it's helpful to try to erase everything any disagreeable person ever did from history: if a slave owner had a hand in writing the constitution, that shouldn't mean the constitution must never be referenced. For all I know the author of Alice in Wonderland might also have been a trans hater and we shouldn't talk about AiW, either. You can boycott sales and create awareness to try and make a difference, but let's not drag discussions about something completely different into a political discussion when the name is a reference to a fictional story written by someone who later turned out to be transphobic.

I'm not sure what you're trying to say, or why you're making a blanket statemeny of a point that is so blatantly false that above comments prove incorrect.

It was relevant and important enough to the author to contact me, and they are apparently interested in having this discussion. They didn't need to engage in this discussion, but they felt it important. Just because it's not important to you, doesn't mean it's not important to a lot of others here.

I would certainly avoid blanket statements like 'people are not interested in ___' - I'm not sure if you read the author's reply before yours, but I think what you clearly meant is that you don't care.

Which is your right, but please don't put thoughts or words in other people's mouths, especially when there is dissenting evidence of your statements only a comment above.

I'm glad you can feel it's not relevant. Unless you're trans, or a direct ally, you have the benefit of it not affecting you. Great.

But I'm not the only trans person on this forum. This shit matters to us - matters to our allies, including, evidently, the author of the software - and it's our right, and sometime our obligation, to speak up. Get over it. :P

You can feel free not to engage, which would have been preferred to your insinuation that nobody here wants to have that conversation - which is obviously and blantanly untrue, and born out of the privilege to not have it affect you.

(1) You're putting words in my mouth, (2) this discussion is completely off-topic, and (3) you managed to write a rather long comment without any question marks after starting with "not sure what you're trying to say". You could ask for clarification if you want any, rather than invent insinuations.

The first point of my comment was to make you not feel like people don't care about your comment but indicate that this is just not the place for it, hence downvotes. You can take that as the positive message I tried to send... or not. The second part (that "I'm also not sure it's helpful..." part), I should just have left out, it was diving into the topic that I wanted to stay out of, and I suppose that's what most of your reply comes from. I guess the last subsentence of my comment was trying to steer it back, but I should just have left it at the first sentence.

I'll not reply further in this thread because I don't think it's constructive for the actual topic that this thread is about. If you want to talk to me and actually understand what I wrote rather than the invented meaning, feel free to use the contact info in my profile. I tried to use yours to explain, but there was none.

> Unless you're trans, or a direct ally

This is not a war. Please realize that the vast majority of us are on the same team.

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