Philip Pullman is confused

It's just a deluge of 'be nice', though. Most of the replies don't acknowledge the debate at all, they just say 'be nice' and compare it to gay rights.

Entirely possible. Sunlight being the best disinfectant and all that.

Is he really confused, or is he enabling debate?

Get folk to make their case, to his audience, and then let his audience and followers see and decide for themselves.

He's not dim.

If that comedian were on Twitter he probably wouldn't feel so free to make gender critical jokes, though...
Ironically, staying off Twitter is a strategy to make yourself NOT be silenced.

So sad to see committed secularist Pullman being confused by the quasi-religious cult of trans activism. I thought he was more intelligent than that.

Sitting on the fence.

Writes books about the horror of living under a totalitarian regime but can't recognise that when the dictionary definition of 'woman' is being disputed and erased that something very dark is afoot.

Bad show, Philip Pullman. Get one of the women in your life to explain it to you.

Being confused is a luxury men have. We don’t get that privilege.

But Posie was interviewed in relation to a comment about a specific person, as was Graham Linehan. So as long as Philip Pullman keeps it vague he should be fine. Also he's a man.

So he's both lazy and cowardly atm.

I was so disappointed with this when I saw it last night, I almost can't bear to see where it's gone today.

Poet Rachel Rooney has challenged him on the "women be nice" point, though, and I know she's already taken some crap from a certain TRA. If anyone's brave it's her.

I went to see a stand up comedian a couple of nights ago and there was at least 4 jokes aimed squarely at all the gender fluid/trans malarkey. Damn shame he's not really on Twitter.

Unfortunately the comments are mostly depressingly stupid.

Including "Gender is a construct that humans made up. If some folks are a different gender to the one we assume they are, we should listen to them rather than running for our pitchforks"

Or how about we drop the whole crap and recognise people can have all sorts of personalities but sex matters...

But Glinner is on!

It's a strange thing I've noticed, but a lot of the people I know or have seen publicly arguing 'the full trans orthodoxy' as I call it are actually atheists who are very critical of organised religion and things like homeopathy and pride themselves on their critical thinking skills.

Yet somehow can't see that the religion of genderism is just as much based on supernatural unproveable claims as Christianity is. Just goes to show how important the packaging is when it comes to belief systems.

"Oh, my ears and whiskers - I feel I want to day something but look at dear JKR, she was completely hounded and she's considerably richer than moi..."

Fair point arranfan

He's about to head into "nasty feminists" territory, I fear.

All he will find out is what he can say on Twitter, rather than what everybody else thinks (or even, heaven forbid, what's actually true). And the more twitter silences people the less representative it becomes.

Someone who wrote a most excellent series of books which had a strong theme of how totalitarian religion is a Very Bad Thing and how mutilating children is a Very Bad Thing can I’m sure form their own opinion on this.

Gosh yes! Can someone tweet that to him?

I understand how he feels. there's so much bizarre "information" around, I can see it would take a while to understand. If I hadn't been on MN, I think I would have had a very confused stage too!

twitter can’t actually hurt you

I'm loth to disagree with you, Bowlofbabelfish but wasn't Posie Parker interviewed by Police for something arising from Twitter?

Oh I agree with earlier posters who say he knows exactly what he thinks. Shame he doesn't have the courage to say it.

Totally agree with you Bowl.

I'm very disappointed. Pullman is definitely clever enough to understand humans can't change sex. If he really isn't, my copies of his books will be heading to the charity shop.

Oh. How disappointing that Philip Pullman has lost the ability to formulate an opinion.

Someone who wrote a most excellent series of books which had a strong theme of how totalitarian religion is a Very Bad Thing and how mutilating children is a Very Bad Thing can I’m sure form their own opinion on this.

My thoughts precisely. Philip knows exactly what Philip thinks and is just having a wee test to see if he can say it and it's only the women writers like proto-dementia Joanne who cannot.

Pusillanimous and I expected better of him.

And I mean I’m sure I’d have been as cowardly as the next person if faced with the stake, but twitter can’t actually hurt you. And people telling you you’re a bigoted transphobic whatever can’t hurt you.

So why fold? Stand up. Be counted. Humans. Cannot. Change. Sex.