Phillip Pullman

He's such a disappointment, isn't he?

On the related topic though, but not wanting to derail, Robert M Pirsig also wrote 'Lila: An Inquiry into Morals' which I'm going to have to dig out and read again. I think I got my head round it after reading it for the second time, but that was 25 years ago so might be worth revisiting!

Can anyone not blocked tell me what Clara said in the tweet
that Philip pulled is replying to? Opening in incognito just
keeps taking me to the main profile not the actual tweet.

@Manderleyagain

Useful thread:
twitter.com/yatakalam/status/1335917371043827712

Show us on the book sale charts where JK hurt you, Philip.

Not a week goes by without me seeing or hearing at least one reference to Harry Potter. It remains a huge phenomenon. How many authors could claim the same legacy?

Show us on the book sale charts where JK hurt you, Philip.

I read the book when it first came out and it blew my mind. It has always stayed with me. Of course, I was 16, which is an age when your mind is very open to being blown. I'm going to read it again now, in my dotage, and see what I think....

he was adamant that it was a personal insult to expect him to undergo checks

All that I've seen tells me his very large ego drives many of his interactions about this issue. For those thinking that Pullman might become aware of what's going on and realise that supporting bullying and opposing safeguarding is the wrong way to go, I think his ego will stop him admitting to being wrong.

He's dropping off the radar. Lots of schools are ditching his texts in the drive to have more modern writers at the forefront.
Without primaries pushing his texts, he'll have to rely on the publicity generated by the series and any 'tweets' he chooses to do.
Myself I will be buying Ds his books via charity shops. On the other hand buying the full illustrated Harry Potter series when Ds old enough.
I always found the characterisation of Mrs Coulter inconsistent myself.

I agree fine. That tweet throwing Rachel Rooney to the wolves looked pretty bloody deliberate to me.

I was initially going to defend pullman in that I think it should be possible to say ' I disagree with jkr but I condemn the threats' without being quizzed on your opinion on the substantive issue and receiving loads of replies saying 'why do you disagree with her?'. It should be OK just to condemn the threats as a freestanding point. But I had forgotten that he effectively joined in the bullying of Rachel Rooney by supporting Clara the main one leading the campaign against R R and her book. So now I'm just thinking pullman is a numpty.

You are all far less cynical than me. I think he's doing it deliberately. No one can be that obtuse. I think he ls tweeting stuff deliberately and then sitting back and watching (what he sees as) women flapping about

@Abhannmor "yet another 'atheist' who thinks consciousness has its own sex which pervades our bodies in some wifty wafty way. Plonker."

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣👏👏👏👏👏👏👏

It continues to fascinate me that the men who do get it are not necessarily the ones you'd expect to get it, while the men who don't get it are often those who have nurtured a public reputation of themselves as liberal-minded free thinkers.

I think this is fascinating too, and also applies to some women, though mainly men.

It may be that if you see yourself as a liberal-minded free thinker, you don't think you need any further information to be right. You're already on board with whatever is most righteous and politically correct, so anyone trying to get to to see beyond must by trying to get you to take a step back from perfect right-on-ness. So you just don't listen.

Whereas if you don't see yourself like that, you might be more likely to let your reasoning capacity consider things and be surprised by things.

What an absolute arse. “Here’s a woman who people had ceased to bully for a little while - let me offer her up to you and all the other bullies again as a sacrifice.”

Oh, and I think his writing is inconsistent and often tedious.

[quote 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[/quote]
Can't stand him. Pompous oaf who slags off Tolkien and C S Lewis because they were believers. Militant atheist who writes about spiritual realms etc.I suppose that figures though; yet another 'atheist' who thinks consciousness has its own sex which pervades our bodies in some wifty wafty way. Plonker.

For Manderley

Pullman Replying to
@ClaraVulliamy
Clara, I think you're wonderful. You have my full and unceasing support in this matter, as in everything else. It's hard to ignore the hateful voices who scream, but there are other voices that sometimes get drowned in the noise, and here's one.

9:57 am · 6 Dec 2020

Tanith I'd totally forgotten about that! it was appalling behaviour and totally anti-safeguarding. He took exactly the same pompous attitude of "how very dare you question the almighty great Philip Pullman", rather than accepting that it would have been a very effective initiative

Clara has a lot of clout in the world of children's publishing, being the daughter of Shirley Hughes. She brought that clout to bear against Rachel Rooney, because RR wrote "My body is me", and she & her minions denounced RR for wrong think and drove her out of publishing. It was pure bullying - which Philip Pullman claims to be against - but he publicly supported Clara in that reply to her tweet whingeing about people being "hateful" (ie calling out her being a bully). This all happened some time ago so might be difficult to find now, plus Vulliamy uses block lists

After Ian Huntley murdered two little girls while being employed as a school caretaker, there were attempts to increase the safety of children by ensuring everyone having access to them in schools and clubs was properly checked. A database was proposed, to replace the creaky CRB/DBA checks. It would have enabled us to quickly check anyone applying for a job working with children and anyone coming into schools to work with them for any reason would need to be checked.

Philip Pullman was so vocally outraged that, at one point, I really began to wonder why he was so upset about it.
We had exactly the same failure to grasp the facts: he was adamant that it was a personal insult to expect him to undergo checks.
He effectively scuppered the whole initiative by making it about him and his ego, forgetting all about the children it was designed to protect.

I’m not surprised to see further evidence of this attitude from him.

Like a lot of intelligent men, he does understand the issues, he just struggles to accept the "unfairness" of women saying no to something that some male people really want to have.

Possibly the most succinct explanation I've seen of what this is all about.

It continues to fascinate me that the men who do get it are not necessarily the ones you'd expect to get it, while the men who don't get it are often those who have nurtured a public reputation of themselves as liberal-minded free thinkers.

He thinks this will stop the screamers coming after him (not would he be quite so snotty with them if/when they do).

Good luck with that strategy Pip...

I think the character of Mrs Coulter gives us some insight into how PP views women.