Phillip Pullman

[Dollpiglet]

I'm not a huge user of Twitter but I do follow Phillip Pullman who seems to have stepped out on this issue now. I'm gutted!

twitter.com/PhilipPullman/status/1417467807873241088?s=19

[Kit19]

sorry OP but he's wekk known for being an utter bellend about this issue. Pretending he doesnt understand & lots of faux naievete about what happened to JKR. I must admit the explosion of anger against the tweeter who asked him to support JKR shows that he completely knows he's being seen.

He's such an arse. If he genuinely doesnt want to get involved then say nothing but he cant help but pontificate. He knows damn well what a woman is but he just cant bear to be seen as the bad guy

[Siablue]

Ages before the JKR thing he compared puberty blockers to the oblation board in an interview with the guardian. He knows and agrees with her and doesn’t want to support her because he is a big cowardy custard.

It’s a shame because he has faced down religious fundamentalism before but as JKR observed : it takes courage to stand up to your enemies but even greater courage to stand up to your friends.

I still love his books though.

[potniatheron]

A lot of male public figures do this. They are too cowardly to step into the ring and pick a side. Too cowardly to properly engage with the issue, even though they must see the logical weakness of TRA arguments and the horrible abuse they level at women. Stephen King is the same. Seems to be a thing with male authors. They don't want to p*ss off their fellow men.

[JustSpeculation]

I've found myself thinking more and more about Robert Pirsig's "Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance" recently. He looks at the world in terms of a romantic understanding vs a classical one, by which he means seeing quality in impressions and appearance on the one side, and on the other seeing it in the underlying systems and principles behind the world. It has always struck me that GC types are much more classical, and the TRA types more romantic. Pullman is a complete romantic. To TRAs, we are square and they are hip.

I must re-read the book.

[TheCountessofFitzdotterel]

I was quite shocked by the way he snapped so aggressively at Blablafishcakes when she had been perfectly polite to him.
Clearly he has an unpleasant side as well as being a coward.

[Theeyeballsinthesky]

Me too Countess. It very much smacked of fear & cowardice. He knows what a woman is when he wants to be ridiculously over aggressive on twitter

[ValancyRedfern]

justspeculation that book sounds fascinating.

His Dark Materials is literally about how evil it is to freeze kids pre-puberty. What an absolute tool.

[NecessaryScene]

Pullman is a complete romantic. To TRAs, we are square and they are hip.

Interesting. Yes, maybe a bit of a blind spot to pathological romanticism? That harm can be done as much by too much attention to feelings and insufficient to systems, as by the reverse.

All His Dark Materials baddies were very much classical in those terms, weren't they? He needs to stop to think what a romantic baddie would look like.

[EishetChayil]

He is purposefully and very cynically covering his own back.

The man who came up with the Order of St Alexander knows exactly what totalitarian, dangerous, and extremist ideology is when he sees it.

[JustSpeculation]

That harm can be done as much by too much attention to feelings and insufficient to systems, as by the reverse.

Exactly. Without an understanding of systems, you don't realise what a stultifying conformity your feelings can create...and how oppressive they become.

[nauticant]

Rachel Rooney wrote the book My Body is Me and became Public Enemy No.1 to the trans activists. She had huge amounts of abuse but over the course of a year it had diminished.

Step up Philip Pullman:

twitter.com/RooneyRachel/status/1335539340676632576

who decided to freshen up the target on Rachel Rooney's back but in a unpleasant and underhand way. Notice by the way that Pullman's tweet tightly restricts who can reply. This goes well beyond cowardly.

[merrymouse]

Seems to be a thing with male authors. They don't want to pss off their fellow men.*

So much easier to just say ‘be kind’ and retreat (‘I can’t possibly contribute, it just seems toxic on both sides’) when asked to engage.

I don’t expect men to agree on every single issue relating to toilets, just the main things like the female sex class exists, people don’t randomly give birth and this is politically significant.

Much of the plot of Dark Materials is powered by the fact that Mrs Coulter’s choices were so restricted by being female. However according to the ideology that Pullman refuses to criticise, all she needed to do was get Lord Azriel to have the baby and identify as a man. Job done.

[teawamutu]

I saw him offering up the de Beauvoir quote as supporting the case for TWAW once. I pointed out he clearly hadn't read the book. He didn't reply.

Lazy, mansplaining, cowardly twunt. A huge disappointment because I loved those books and can't see them the same way knowing the author lacks integrity.

[Whatsnewpussyhat]

Unfortunately it seems that most of these men will always back their own sex.

The virtue signalling costs them nothing and they get patted on the head for their blatant misogyny.

[sashagabadon]

Philip Pullman is a massage be disappointment on Twitter. Not just on this issue but his political nonsense too. I enjoyed his Lyra books, think the TV show is a bit boring but otherwise had a favourable opinion on him. I now think he is a Wally, like many others on Twitter who really should be told by someone to put down their phones!

[sashagabadon]

I also think in the literature world there is a lot of jealousy generally between authors but specifically directed at authors that do very very well. There is a TV show about his triology now but prior to that there was a stage show which by all accounts was good but didn’t last that long and a Hollywood film that flopped.
Compare that to Harry Potter world and no comparison

[Redapplewreath]

Man frequently displays his sense of entitlement to discuss and pat other men on the back while they tell women who and what men will call them, what men will permit them and what rules men will set to them. And somehow has a big enough ego to think women will somehow be taking him seriously and doing what he says.

Man is massive sexist bellend, high on his own sense of self importance, and utterly irrelevant to this debate with no skin whatsoever in the game. And is making a twit of himself.

[IvyTwines2]

His books feature a world in which children have daemon souls who are constantly shapeshifting in childhood but then become fixed in one form forever at puberty. And that's it. He does not see adults, or even teenagers, as people who go on changing, growing, maturing. I've long thought that was a disappointing message to send to children: now I think it's a dangerous one too.

[Redapplewreath]

And in that tweet is paternalistically scolding women for their sad 'single vision' and 'inability to see other points of view' with apparently no sense of the very obvious irony or how far he's jamming his foot down his mouth. Daddy thinks he knows best, apparently.

[KittenKong]

He did this before - called LGB alliance names last time didn’t he?

Oh the irony - fantasy writer believes in... well. He also
Comes across as a rather grouchy, nasty bully. Of course he may be lovely, but a writer would be able to express himself aLittle better eh?

[Beamur]

Unless I am missing something, he hasn't actually said what topic he's scolding people about?
Loved the first few Dark Materials books, recent ones increasingly dreary. I think he must hate Lyra. She was a wonderful character as a child but an increasingly unlikeable adult. Interestingly her character has become estranged from her own Daemon by following a philosophy which denies Pans existence... despite the fact she can see and hear him she's become infatuated with a way of thinking that teaches that he isn't real. Curious huh.

[nauticant]

Here's his standard operating procedure: he tweets something that stirs up anger against a woman, he gets pushback, and then scuttles away saying he's just an old bloke for whom it's too complicated or assumes victim status for himself. An unpleasant way to engage with this issue.

twitter.com/PhilipPullman/status/1270105447924727808

[nauticant]

The tweet by Pullman in the OP appears to be a follow-up to a conversation he had an hour or so before Beamur:

twitter.com/PhilipPullman/status/1417455238039150626

[Beamur]

He's a piece of work isn't he.
Thanks for reminding me why I don't bother with Twitter.

[Helleofabore]

It is quite apparent that he takes umbridge at being asked to take a side. He is very comfy being a pontificating fence sitter, hence the ‘single vision’ tweet. He will continue to wish for a considered resolution because he had little need for it to go a particular direction.

It is quite hilarious though to see him writhe about Blahblahfishcakes language. FFS!!! She politely asked him to put his signature on the petition. yes it ‘could’ be interpreted as being emotionally manipulative.

His answer:

Polite? I don't think so. 'I didn't see your name on the list - here's another chance to sign it.' Your tone reminded me of those aides in the Bush White House who'd say 'Missed you at Bible Study this morning', half reproachful, half threatening.

He basically implied she threatened him and used a totally upside down example. Like she has any ‘power’ over him…

This is from a polite interchange, how would he cope with the abuse that he, rightly, condemned being meted out by those he wants women to stop being ‘single visioned’ about?