TWIBS: Moldemort Loves AI
J.K. Rowling seems to have given in to the lying hallucination machine, sharing a video on her X account that includes indecipherable AI jibberish.
Humor by Aly Gibbs
This Week in Barrel Scraping (TWIBS) is Assigned Media’s longest running column! Every Friday, Aly Gibbs digs deep from the well of transphobia and finds the most obnoxious, goofy thing transphobes have said or obsessed over during the week and tears it to shreds.
Okay… well. Since it’s been a pretty slow news week, let’s talk about J.K. Rowling again.
I know, I know! I shouldn’t even be acknowledging her, right? She’s evil, she’s transphobic, she funds transphobia, we all know what her deal is and I probably don’t need to shine a light on her nastiness. I can already hear the scolding, and I’m inclined to agree… usually. Listen, when you see what she’s up to this week, you’ll be glad I shared it with you.
Moldemort, Queen of Transphobia and winner of the Most Rotted Brain UK award five years running, has been taken in by the AI boogeyman. Hold on, they call it the bogeyman, right? Why aren’t we calling him the boogerman, then? Sorry, totally not the point.
Anyway, yeah, Rowling shared a video on the morning of September 8th that shows Dr. Helen Webberley mocking transphobes for being frightened of “willies,” also known as penises by those of us who are not uncompensated victims of twee UK vernacular, and calling them phallophobes. Dr. Webberley includes a helpful screenshot of a description of phallophobia, which is described as a fear of the penis and masculinity.
I don’t personally associate penises with masculinity right off the bat, of course. Those of you who date trans girls will undoubtedly be familiar with the concept of the feminine penis. Surely, I don’t need to explain the feminine penis to any of you, do I? Obviously not. So, Dr. Webberley is replied to by “Aja the Empress,” who says there’s something wrong with the good doctor, and Webberley answers simply: At least I ain’t scared of willies.
Well done, doctor, well done.
So, the altercation between Dr. Webberley and some random transphobe did take place, but what happens next in the video shared by Rowling is absolutely bizarre. The video shifts from a low quality screencap of a real encounter on X to two more screenshots of absolute mind boggling fucking jibberish generated by some sort of AI service, I guess, in what could pass for ancient Greek maybe? You can judge for yourself.
So that’s bizarre.
Rowling included with the unhinged video her own thoughts on Webberley’s accusations of phallophobia: “Tell me again how gender identity ideology isn’t homophobic. Would you trust this UK doctor, who was suspended from practicing by the medical council and now heads up quasi-medical trans advocacy group GenderGP, to be sympathetic to a young girl who’s attracted to other girls?”
If you don’t know, GenderGP is a private care service in the UK for trans folks seeking help with medical transition. They have used doctors located abroad, and headquartered themselves outside of the UK, to avoid interference by the UK’s government who despise transgender people and would very much prefer if they weren’t allowed to be happy or healthy. Dr. Webberley and her husband have been embroiled in some scandals related to the service, though she has been exonerated of those charges in the past. Best I can tell, Dr. Webberley no longer explicitly practices medicine (she decided not to renew her license, feeling that her work as an advocate would be more beneficial than her work as a doctor, given the state of trans care in the UK), and spends most of her time tirelessly advocating for the transgender community.
Which is more than can be said for many doctors and hospitals on our side of the pond.
It’s extremely unclear to me what’s going on with Rowling here, and so I am forced to conclude that the mold has liquified another layer of her already ailing brain. Please focus your thoughts and prayers on the mold at this time, urging its good work along as best you can.
Aly Gibbs (She/They), formerly Alyssa Steinsiek, is a trans writer who reports on news important to the queer community.
