Article in The Bookseller about cancel culture/JKR etc. Cautiously optimistic!

No Squirrels I agree - I think it is as Ishiguro says it's partly down to algorithms.

I can feel myself becoming more and more entrenched in the gender critical camp with absolutely no room for nuance as well, possibly because it's 'my side' and what I am shown on social media reflects my standpoint because that's what I click on/like etc.

Just as the TWAW brigade appear to have no nuance, I wonder if I am losing mine too. I don't think I am, but how do I know?

Where it stops for me is the blatant misogyny and the way that women are being trampled on by the TRAs and men are being left alone. And the drugging of children. There's no room for me to feel balanced about those because like most women over 40 I'm jaded and I also know how easily led I was as a teenager.

One of the things I find infuriating about this debate is how the ‘I am an intersectional ally’ means ALL issues pertaining to ‘diversity’ must be treated the same and if you disagree on some aspects you’re immediately old, bigoted, upholding outdated power structures, punching down, disingenuous etc.

So you can’t (as David Shelley, CEO of Hachette has done) set up award-winning diversity and inclusion networks and initiatives, give your staff opportunities to respond and have a voice but still retain the business decision-making skill to say No, refusing to work on JKR’s The Ickabog (non-controversial charity donation fairy-story publishing) because she said she supports women’s rights and nothing offensive about trans people is not a valid choice as an employee - and still be considered on the side of diversity and free speech. Despite your openly gay status, your career-long support of PEN (whose guiding principle is freedom of expression in writing), your track record as an editor who took on JKR before he knew she was JKR - so the ‘cash cow status’ didn’t apply - and your willingness to listen and not shut down debate.

This was an excellent summation of how Hachette handled the earlier JKR row, I think: www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.spectator.co.uk/article/a-simple-solution-to-the-jk-rowling-trans-row/amp

Fwiw, I like Sam Missingham - I don’t agree with her on this but she is a sharp astute woman who calls out industry bullshit and I still like her even though I don’t agree with her on this issue. I also like MN even though it makes me a TERF, apparently. I like a lot of the people I see frothing on publishing/book Twitter about this. I feel a great deal of sympathy for the recent grads and the junior staff who feel exploited and affronted by this - even though I think they’re wrong. I actually didn’t like Clare Alexander’s statements as reported so much, because she uses a bit of patronising language (‘clever girl’) and dismisses the young and sets it up as an ageist debate. But I appreciate her speaking up.

I genuinely don’t understand why we cannot be allowed to hold a plurality of diverse opinions on diverse ‘intersections’ of rights and the expression of debate on them without such vitriol. It’s so reductive.

i know quite a few writers who are gc but are quiet and 'the american market' is a factor- being published can be a brutal experience anyway, no one wants to poke the woke...

This is the problem. Writers are arguably outside of polite society to a certain extent and allowed to question, but in this case they risk their contracts being cancelled and more or less being shunned by the industry, which is already so competitive. JKR and Ishiguro are saying what many can't because they are too big to lose their careers at this point. I'm sure this has been said before, but a lot of writers owe her thanks for saying what many are surely thinking.

On the other hand a certain book didn't make the shortlist...

I know of someone whose relative worked at Hachette (entry level) during the JK 'scandal'. When a bunch of the young 'uns in the office staged a refusal to work on any more of her books they were dragged one by one into the boss' office (not sure which one) and told in no uncertain terms that not one of them was bigger or more important to the company than the client, and they could either tow the line or leave.

Funnily enough, the majority backed down.

You would think that publishing would be a place where people could argue eloquently and respectfully

I see you've not worked in the industry.

But it identifies as liberal and progressive Absinthe and that's what really matters. [Nods wisely]

nauticant that is exactly it. And such a shame for writerly types to deprive themselves of so many interesting voices and stories and viewpoints. Their loss.

"We are important women, with important voices, and we discuss important things. Those women over there? They need to limit what they discuss to hearth and home and children."

The Mumsnet responses are hilarious. "I don't get it. I thought they started out a a forum to help mums"

Er, you can still find all of that here. And ignore what makes you feel 'unsafe.' It's OK. You'll cope.

It's a shame how much entertainment, wisdom, support and company these people will deprive themselves of in the name of woke. But parenting forums have always been dismissed by misogynists - they have no idea what they are missing.

Yeah, she's right off on one today.

If you've come here to tell me that you hate woke culture, I simply couldn't care less. Get your ass to Mumsnet.

IvyTwines2 I can just imagine. For a supposedly progressive, open-minded industry the book world can be nauseatingly sexist. Onjali Rauf sounds very brave from what I've just read - I will follow her on Twitter and risk a shunning!

I'd like to understand a bit more about the distinction between the definition he's given, and what he would regard to be the definition of "cancel culture." I'm not saying he's wrong at all, but I've been starting to accept that there is a cancel culture and it IS the definition he's given for "other than cancel culture."

It's one of those irritating rhetorical tricks where you deny that X exists but acknowledge that the aspects of X that make up X do exist. It's taking the knee to the progressive-approved statement "cancel culture doesn't exist" while knowing it's not true.

Interesting - I heard an podcast between Kazuo Ishiguro and Elizabeth Day where he was making a few comments about reality versus what you want to be true and knew exactly what he was getting at. He also falls into the category of 'too big to cancel' so can comment as an author, but I bet they won't go after him like they did JKR. Funny that.

If she hadn't found another way to write the book would this man have been written about at all by anyone - so would anyone have got to know about his life -( I suspect the anwer there is no).

Yeah, I didn't really agree with what he said - because he is talking about cancel culture - that he is fighting against - just because cancel culture mightn't always work, doesn't mean it doesn't exist or its pressures aren't there.

I thought this bit was interesting:

He also said he did not believe there was such a thing as “cancel culture”. Instead, people were being driven by social media companies whose algorithms feed off conflict and drive decision making. People of all age groups were becoming “siloed”, leading to less room for contrary viewpoints, he said.

I'd like to understand a bit more about the distinction between the definition he's given, and what he would regard to be the definition of "cancel culture." I'm not saying he's wrong at all, but I've been starting to accept that there is a cancel culture and it IS the definition he's given for "other than cancel culture."

The agent gave the example of one of her clients, a white English female historian, who had wanted to write a book about Tony Small, a black American slave who ended up as a man of property in Ireland and London.

Alexander explained: “Both American and British editors said 'you can't do that, you're a white woman, we can't publish that book'.

That's appalling - thank goodness the woman managed to find a "suitable" way to tell his story as it sounds fascinating. Some of my favourite easy reading is the No 1. Ladies Detective Agency novels - sounds like they'd be banned as well now, and who would that benefit?

i feel that way too-
over the past few years, ive been disappointed by so many people/sectors- the publishing industry on this is a big one.
(also massive respect for others, obvs)

i know quite a few writers who are gc but are quiet and 'the american market' is a factor- being published can be a brutal experience anyway, no one wants to poke the woke...

the way tra's have positioned themselves as the only anti-racists in town fucks me off too.

solidarity abs