Emma Watson and *That* Author
a reflection
All right it's been a few days and I have more or less resolved how I feel about this Emma Watson/bigot author situation now that I've seen the response by the author
Emma Watson was a 10 year old girl who was brought into a magical world by a woman who seemed to really understand her. You have to consider how very much Emma Watson identified with the character that she played. She says over and over how much of her own personality is reflected in the character. This is the same for both Rupert and Daniel.
Emma is always going to love that author because Emma loved her as a child and we never stop loving someone no matter how horrible they are. I don't even acknowledge the man on my birth certificate as my father but I still love him. I despise him and he has no place in my life, but I will never not love him and if he needed bone marrow, I would consider it. I can value his life while despising everything he does. The door between us is permanently closed and locked, but I can't destroy or remove the door.
I feel like that's basically what she was saying. There's always that hope that this person we love will come to our senses and be who we need again and we don't get to take that away from her. It might be unrealistic but all of us still nurture that tiny hope about someone we love. She should not get penalized for being able to speak intelligently, emotionally mature, and with nuance. Whether people want to acknowledge it or not, both things absolutely can be true at the same time.
She is also someone who has had absolutely every movement of hers analyzed from the time she was 10 years old. She has to be 100% correct on every single issue all the time and that's simply impossible. She gets some space to use the not exact perfect word that the world wants at the moment. No bigotry isn't an opinion, but we lose the higher moral ground by castigating her for one single word.
Refusing to acknowledge these facts are part of the problem, so let's acknowledge them. It's time to start naming the elephant in the room instead of ignoring it. No, bigotry isn't an opinion, but she has the right to make a mistake. She is allowed to love the author and hold out hope, even if people don't want to recognize that or even recognize that that's what she's saying by it. Other people not being as emotionally mature or understanding the nuance does not make her wrong.
Moving ahead on our assumptions and reacting by our feelings on what we think she said is wrong. That's exactly why I stepped back to analyze how I felt about it and intelligently analyze her words as well as the impact before actually coming up with a stance (that is always open to evolution). We go straight from "happened" to "this is my permanent position" to "payback" entirely too quickly.
I think it is very telling and a sign of progress that we are analyzing her and making sure they will hold even her accountable, but let's make sure that when we hold someone accountable, we are doing so for the right reasons and the right kind of accountability. "No one is above accountability" includes us, and too many of us don't want to see that. Reflexively jumping on a phrase or a statement without considering the context and intent as well as the impact is exactly what we're fighting, so we simply can't do it.
What Emma Watson is experiencing as a woman having met the author as a girl is completely different from what Rupert and Daniel did. Emma Watson was a young powerful intelligent girl growing up in a world that diminishes little girls like her and now there is this woman who broke every glass ceiling there was and taught her how to do this.
We can never diminish the impact that the author had on Emma for so many years before her true colors were revealed. How many of us loved someone who later turned out to be a monster? A lot of us started seeing that in 2008 and then especially in 2020 and 2024.
Emma Watson has every right to protect her childhood and to acknowledge the love that she has. Love does not end like that or it's not truly love. The fact that Emma Watson does still feel love for this woman is a testament to the capacity and the generosity of her heart, not condoning the author's behavior.
So many of us struggle with that same cognitive dissonance and we have never had to on this level. We have never had someone that we have loved from childhood become a global terrorist. I mean come on now. If all of the fans have a hard time, how much harder is it for someone who literally lived as that character for her entire childhood? Who had a close personal relationship with this woman from childhood?
Emma Watson is never going to be able to separate the love that she had from that author's later actions and nobody should ever ask her to. We can all have the capacity to say "I love you but you are not in my life. I can love you and still hate what you do. The love won't end but it will never be enough." She does not need to be hated for still loving a monster just because they're a monster. She gets credit for having the generosity of heart and having the emotional awareness to have that nuance.
How many of us cover for a racist uncle or say "that's just how your mom is"? How many of us make excuses and don't hold them accountable? She held that author accountable from the very beginning.
The authors response, if anything, just elevates Emma Watson. Emma has stayed classy this entire time. She has been dignified, and she has shown us that even when we truly despise someone's actions, everyone deserves a measure of dignity and respect. She has shown how to hold someone we love accountable but to do so with class
Ironically that author taught us an empowered us to hold her accountable, and then gets mad when we do.
Well you know what? My dad is a piece of shit but he taught me a lot of powerful things that I'm using...
... including my writing ability. I wrote a critical piece using her own world against her, particularly how she literally taught us to hold her accountable
Thank You, Mr Longbottom
Trans women are women