Baroness Nicholson 'cancelled' by Booker board

Sometimes I think that maybe it needs to play out and let the wokesters see what they've lost when they grow up

I have daughters and I sometimes reach this point. They are so wilfully blinkered on this, so resolute in their refusal to listen and think*. It's almost as if they're scared to find out things that will make them question the wisdom of their tribe.

And at that point I have to mentally shrug and know that I've tried, and leave them to it.

(*That said, there are signs that the ground is shifting. Small signs, but reasons for optimism.)

Not only that, Amazon are refusing to allow her publisher to buy adverts for the book. The Amazon equivalent of YouTube demonetizing a channel, in terms of the impact on her sales.

Awful! Hopefully it will sell through word of mouth.

I’m a middle aged woman with no daughters,

You have son(s)? You might have granddaughters one day!

I have one daughter and two granddaughter and for them I must fight on. Also another one on the way, could be another girl.
But I get that some people are just so exhausted they want to give up. It's two steps forward, one back sometimes.

my right to marry or the right of transpeople to exist because that is not a debate & there's nothing polite about it. Otherwise, normal service resumed.

Nobody has debated either.

Of course, any women 'politely debating' their right to name and definite themselves can get to fuck.

I think Damian Barr neither knows nor cares why women might need to be able to talk about sex.

Ironically, I suspect most posters on FWR would disagree with Baroness Nicholson's bill that aimed to reduce the legal limit for abortions to 12 weeks. However, I can't disagree with her if I can't talk about sex, and there will never be a point when women can stop talking about abortions, because it will always be a service that can be taken away.

[quote Lamahaha]It's disappointing, how few authors come out as GC. We could do with a few more big names. I understand the mid-list and debut authors not wanting to speak up; publishing staff tend to be young and you really never know how woke they are. Cancelled and declined books could be the ruin of us.

In the meantime, here's an author on Twitter promoting a book that looks interesting, about the damage done to transitioning girls. Of course, it's published by a conservative small publisher. A mainstream publisher wouldn't touch something like this.

twitter.com/AbigailShrier/status/1230222085345042433[/quote]
Not only that, Amazon are refusing to allow her publisher to buy adverts for the book. The Amazon equivalent of YouTube demonetizing a channel, in terms of the impact on her sales.

Damian Barr has just tweeted:
"I've unlocked so I can thank everybody who has done their bit to get the right thing done. I will not be 'politely debating' my right to marry or the right of transpeople to exist because that is not a debate & there's nothing polite about it. Otherwise, normal service resumed."

Many apparently otherwise intelligent people are liking and congratulating him for this staggering piece of gaslighty misinformation (the fecking 'right to exist' bollocks again...) and lauding the victory of 'courage and love' that resulted in Baroness Nicholson's removal.

Of course, any women 'politely debating' their right to name and definite themselves can get to fuck. That's not open to debate either, it seems - changes in the law and language will simply be imposed by the wokerati. So progressive and brave.

The truly frightening thing is that people have bought into this because of the dishonest reporting and misrepresentation. People I just know would pause and look deeper if the facts were laid out without such monstrous bias.

It's disappointing, how few authors come out as GC. We could do with a few more big names. I understand the mid-list and debut authors not wanting to speak up; publishing staff tend to be young and you really never know how woke they are. Cancelled and declined books could be the ruin of us.

In the meantime, here's an author on Twitter promoting a book that looks interesting, about the damage done to transitioning girls. Of course, it's published by a conservative small publisher. A mainstream publisher wouldn't touch something like this.

twitter.com/AbigailShrier/status/1230222085345042433

*They are on very shaky ground if they indulge in trial by twitter and don't allow for the possibility that people might have changed their minds.

We are all on very shaky ground as this is the way society seems to operate now. *

Ain’t that the truth. Our silly kids who are writing all sorts of nonsense right now on social media platforms will have to stand by their 15 year old opinions in 20 years time when the wrong thinkers of tomorrow are pillored. It’s almost sci fi!!

teaandtoast123

I have pointed out to people more than once that without freedom of speech many of their dearly held beliefs would not have been embraced. They just look at you like a deer in the headlights.

www.spectator.co.uk/article/a-simple-solution-to-the-jk-rowling-trans-row

Sorry poppyfileds! yes. I didn't mean to @ you either!

"Thinking something and it being the truth are two entirely separate things..."

Two examples of how women's rights have been eroded recently.

www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/19/charities-report-rise-in-maltese-requests-for-abortion-pills-during-lockdown

www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-52899248

You don't need to actively discriminate against women to reduce equality. You just need to assume that men are the default humans. You can't fight for women's rights if you can't talk about sex.

Yes, just like gender ideologists THINK they are being progressive, but thinking it and being true and two different things.

Yes, I'm interested in how attempting to embed rigid sex stereotypes that even 1950s society might have found regressive, or medicalising gender nonconformity into heteronormativity to the point young girls are having double mastectomies and on hormones for life because they like the wrong toys or didn't want to wear dresses is "progressive"? Or how silencing anyone who doesn't agree with an ideology about their own lives with threats of violence and rape is an example of a free and liberated, progressive society? Or how behaving exactly like that bastion of liberalism, Iran, does to gay people (by transitioning them) isn't in fact a sign of deep conservatism and embedded homophobia in the ideology. I'm all ears, honestly.

@merrymouse - did you mean that for SweetPetrichor ? That's her post not mine.

A woman is an adult human female
A girl is a juvenile human female

I do hope Petrichor can explain to me how my daughter's or niece's rights would not be eroded if they suddenly found themselves faced with a male-bodied person in a 1 to 1 sporting contest.

Literature is open, plural and questioning

This statement is about the 20th century. It is an assertion of classic liberal values. Freedom of speech, freedom of thought, dissent. It is incompatible with cancel culture and # no debate. It is incompatible with orthodoxy and hunt the heretic. I think many of us thought the Robespierre faction were an anomaly. They were a fringe group. That there would be a return to classic liberal values. Every day provides another demonstration of how wrong we were about that.

not to express them in transphobic manners

Find something 'transphobic' on this thread, and we can discuss.

@poppyfieldsinmay I do see that women with gender critical views THINK they see women's and girls equality being eroded.

Eroded? It's no longer even clear what you mean when you say 'women and girls'. I'm not trying to be facetious - I genuinely don't know.

Meanwhile who bullied a trans woman? How? What did Baroness Nicholson say that was transphobic?

I do see that women with gender critical views THINK they see women's and girls equality being eroded. Thinking something and it being the truth are two entirely separate things... but not to express them in transphobic manners
Yes, just like gender ideologists THINK they are being progressive, but thinking it and being true and two different things.
And, if you follow this debate at all, you will clearly see that any questioning of the gender ideology is labelled transphobic. You know that. You know there is a deliberate attempt to silence and intimidate people. You know it.

• should add, heavily skewed to US publications, but the London Review of Books has always had a dishonourable mention.

For anyone interested, the VIDA count of women in publishing is always interesting. By interesting, I mean depressing.

www.vidaweb.org/

It all made mroe sense, of course, when they were counting males and females. They now seem to be celebrating how publications are upping their 'non binary' writers. Ach.