Rachel Rooney criticised by Philip Pulman

No hidden messages. It is not the Da Vinci code

He had a thread going about pronoun antecedents. I suspect he was trying to be subtly witty/goady. This was fun though:

From some of his posted I get the impression that Pullman is actually deliberately trolling.

Phillip Pullman, who wrote a trilogy about ideologically rigid, obsessive adults cutting away essential parts of children before they'd had the chance to reach adulthood and settle into themselves.

Yep. TRAs are the Magisterium.

I hadn't heard of this book, but will be buying a few copies.

Not on twitter. No idea who or what. Looked it up. Found an article that explains:

' My Body is Me!, by Rachel Rooney, has been described as representing “an extreme ideology that explicitly targets children” by a fellow children’s author, Clara Vulliamy, creator of the Dotty Detective series.

Rooney, 57, wrote the book to counteract what she described as an “explosion” of titles that promoted the idea that children who felt confused about their gender may be “trapped in the wrong body”.

She said that her book, illustrated by Jessica Ahlberg, taught children to be comfortable with their bodies and featured characters of different races and with disabilities. The book says: “You’re born in your body, you don’t have a spare, so love it, hug it, treat it with care.”

Here's a link to thearticle but it is a year old and doesn't have Philip Pullman :

www.peaktrans.org/rachel-rooneys-childrens-book-my-body-is-me-labelled-anti%E2%80%91trans-extremism-the-times-16-12-19/

I'm so disappointed in Philip Pullman - it won't stop me enjoying HDM series 2 but what a knob!

Now now, you know what you have to do is burn his books and insist that he has ruined your life for, like, ever.

Oh and he didn't actually write His Dark Materials you know, it was those amazing young actors who improvised the whole thing, and then he wrote it down and sent it back in time.

CV is Shirley Hughes’ daughter, so obviously she is in a position of considerable influence not only based on her own career as a writer/illustrator but as manager of her mother’s works too. There’s a big power imbalance there.

I can’t see her tweets (am surprised! Sure I used to) and would love to understand context in this latest between CV/PP/RR.

I think CV might have a personal vested interest with a trans person in their family, although I very much could be misremembering or misattributing this, and can’t see anything to back that up so please don’t treat that as gospel at all. But if so it would explain why CV is so persistent in attacking RR (who I think anyone can see hasn’t done anything hateful by writing a perfectly sweet uncontroversial picture book).

How shameful of him not to respond to Rachel. what an intellectually lazy coward

Pullman is a rich old white man who has become that way after years of the wokerati blowing smoke up his arse. Unlike Rowling, he doesn't have the courage to bite the hand that feeds him.

His bumbling fool act is despicable

iirc, Philip Pullman was one of those who signed a letter of support for JK Rowling and free speech earlier this year. I'm pretty sure that "no one has the right to never be offended" is a quote of his.
So condemning the book, which he doesn't seem to have read, as hateful seems a bit odd. It wouldn't excuse him, of course, but I do wonder if he's received online abuse for his prior views and this is a response to that?

I assume he is pals with the person who wrote the abuse? Because he certainly didn’t read the book did he?

From Twitter

Phillip Pullman, who wrote a trilogy about ideologically rigid, obsessive adults cutting away essential parts of children before they'd had the chance to reach adulthood and settle into themselves.

Rachel Rooney is a wonderful writer and has immense courage

I admire her ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

My impression is that this all comes back to the fact that Transgender Trend published the book. I don't know if Rachel was unable to find a publisher so they stepped in, or if they commissioned it. TT is kryptonite to the TRAs. PP has accepted unquestioningly what CV has said about facing a horrible pile on after her last ill-judged attack on Rachel. As she has me blocked, I didn't see what she was sent, but I'd be amazed if it was as nasty as the stuff routinely thrown at Transgender Trend and Rachel. Perhaps he knows CV personally. He obviously doesn't know Rachel. He's shown before he knows sod all about the issues that have brought Transgender Trend into being. He's just made a lazy kneejerk response as a gesture of support to a friend/acquaintance/colleague without making the slightest effort to check whether there might be another side to the story, or to avoid the implication that Rachel is one of the hateful people. This is verging on libellous, so it's a very stupid thing for a published writer to do.

Deeimng a book about kids being happy in their bodies hateful, is as ridiculous as claiming a ruling that stengthens safeguarding and affords the same protections in medicine for GNC kids is hateful tbh. Imagine being on that 'side' and claiming to be 'the good guys' who care abut such kids?! Its ridiculous.

It makes me rage. Rachel doesn't deserve any of it. And I don't want to cancel him but I cant take his work seriously anymore because his actions are the opposite of his writing. A weak man.