I imagine part of it is that they are enraged by the upcoming TV series, and desperate for some small victim to bully.
 

Do people not have the right to boycott things that fund causes they don't agree with?

I can't speak with knowledge about the laws where you live but the rollback of trans and more broadly LGBTQ rights and protections here in the US has already done tangible harm to those communities. We have already seen an uptick in hospitals refusing care for trans folks and there is a real concern we will see a rise in deaths, mostly due to suicide, this year in that community.

While I personally find the Harry Potter boycotts a little silly because Rowling isn't personally involved with the franchise anymore I still understand people wanting to boycott the brand since it provides her with income and she is using her money towards promoting and lobbying for her beliefs.
 

A boycott isn't always intended to cause specific damage to whatever's being boycotted. It's a way of drawing attention to an issue. It's also a way to externalise a personal sense of discomfiture and alleviate it by collectively acknowledging and sharing it.

Some things people do, they do because they believe doing them will effect change. Other things they do because doing them makes them feel better about things they feel they can't change. Virtue signalling isn't the only reason people express public disapproval for things they don't like and conversely, failing to express disapproval risks being received as tacit acceptance.

Doing something that makes you feel better about yourself isn't necesarily worthless, even if it doesn't actually affect anything other than your own feelings.
 

I'm happy to support J.K Rowling against cancel culture. She's allowed to fight for Womens rights and it doesn't make her evil.
 

Do people not have the right to boycott things that fund causes they don't agree with?

As long as it is really just a boycott, not buying the product they associate with the cause they don't agree with, that is okay. Unfortunately the Hogwarts Legacy "boycott" mostly consisted of harassment up to the point of death threats not to JK Rowling, not to the company making Hogwarts Legacy, but to small streamers that had the audacity to stream themselves playing a video game.
Boycotting is fine, trying to enforce the boycott by harassment is not.
 

Unfortunately the amount of unhinged and deranged people on the internet means any group over X size will likely have some of them. That doesn't mean most people who are in that group subscribe or condone those actions.

Game developers routinely get death threats and calls to be fired when they release patches people don't like. Streamers talk about receiving death threats, stalkers, getting swatted fairly often.

Not trying to minimize the actions of the losers who do those things but I'm just trying to point out its unfortunately become fairly common these days with anyone or anything that has reached a certain size.
 

I totally agree. But given that anonymity often brings out the worst in people, I really dislike this sort of online protest, because we know what will happen if somebody organizes one.
 

Yeah I get what you mean. And in the US its often hard to get law enforcement to take these threats and harassment people get seriously. So there is often no help for the victims.
 

In a nice example of unintended consequences, Codenames Harry Potter has now shot up to the top of the BGG hotness list, just based on the number of hostile posts about the game on the forums. If the activists hadn't "boycotted" this game, it would never have reached this prominent level of exposure.
 

So as an example as to why people dislike Rowling and her activism look up the recent articles of her calling for a boycott of Mark's & Spencer's.

A mother and her daughter were at the store and in the bra and underwear section and were approached by an employee asking if they needed help with anything. A totally normal interaction that happens all the time in stores.

The difference with this one is that the employee "appeared to be a Trans woman" so the mother and daughter were apparently so offended they decided to complain and now Rowling has jumped on the story and is calling for a boycott of the store and ban of all transgender employees from "women only spaces".

We dont even know if the employee was even trans as the mother's own accounts claims she assumed the employee was trans due to her height.

Calling for a boycott of a store and banning of people from certain sections of a store just because you get offended at the mere existence of a person seems far more silly to me than people continuing to boycott anything related to Harry Potter.

This is why her activism is not about Woman's rights as she proclaims. It's about trying to make trans woman invisible. Inevitable her efforts will fail because trans woman will continue to exist as they always have but Rowling is clearly a person with a bigoted agenda towards that minority group.
 

The problem is that nobody wants to have a honest discussion of why we have "women only spaces", and certain activities with gender separation, in what cases that separation still makes sense, and where it is incompatible with gender attribution by self-identification. In my opinion both the trans-excluding feminists and the trans women have valid points, and it should be possible to reach reasonable compromises (e.g. testosterone levels in athletes). But right now both sides just exaggerate their respective problems in order to sway public opinion and start stupid boycotts.
 

And no, the irony of you first defending the right to boycott and then complaining about one from the other side didn't escape me. :)
 

I think the entire notion that a store that sells general goods needs to have employees of a specific gender banned from entire sections of the store nonsensical.

When I go to Walmart I dont cringe in horror if I see a female employee stocking goods in the male underwear aisle. Nor would I be shocked and offended if I was standing in front of the condoms and sex toys that are locked behind glass and a female employee asked me if I needed help.

For as much as conservatives like to say leftists like me are snowflakes they sure do get offended at the most mundane things.
 

I defend everyone's right to boycott. Rowling is entitled to boycott whatever store for whatever reasons she wishes.

I can also call her a bigot for her stated reasons.

Like I said I personally find the boycotts of Harry Potter stuff pointless because she isnt even involved in the franchise. It's just a useless as the people who boycotted Minecraft despite Notch having sold the game years ago.

But people can do what they wish and I support people's right to boycott, respectfully of course, for whatever reasons they wish.