I agree with Squirrels, entirely. I think it's possible that, in the context of this discussion, I have ignored things that I would be less inclined to defend, because the attacks on other things seem palpably unjust and I am trying to get to the bottom of what is happening there. But the fact remains that I think Clanchy was telling unflinching truths in the service of exploring her own admitted prejudices, and that is not only worth doing - necessary, indeed, to combat them - but cannot be done at all without the honesty as a first step.
But in the course of this thread, I have been shocked by the argument that seeing ethnicity or skin-colour or any other physical reality is problematic in itself. Sure, if you mention it ("Oh hi, female Pterodactyl!") when it's not relevant it's problematic (although I note we tend not to apply this so much to fiction, where apparently we do need to know about the hero's hazel eyes and floppy hair). But Kimiko said that noticing race was racist if it wasn't relevant - and that seems to me not only misguided but dangerously misguided. Of course we notice race, how else has it become an axis of oppression? We couldn't just decide not to notice it even if we wanted to - and I refuse to believe that any social justice cause is best served by telling people to be less observant. Stereotypes come from broad-brush generalisations: the more sophisticated our attention becomes, the less likely we are to see patterns that do not exist - and the more likely we are to see patterns which do, including the patterns of racism and how that manifests. How do we even decide whether a pattern is emerging without acknowledging that there are differences between oppressor and oppressed? (By differences, I don't mean significant ones, obviously, just enough to work as an identifier. Like Kimiko's dark- and lighter-skinned Cubans.) And who benefits if we claim not to see race? The people who enjoy the status quo, that's who, the people who can smugly say they have no prejudice, no, honestly, nobody even notices race any more, it's just that you weren't quite the right fit for the job. (I mean, Kimiko, was it racist of Clanchy to notice that no BAME kids had won the Foyle Young Poets, and to ask why? Should she have shrugged and said, "Well, maybe they are black, it's not for me to draw conclusions about where they're from"?) We know this about sex. We know that it is better than nothing when a man acknowledges that he didn't realise quite how tricky it was for women doing his job, but he kind of gets it now. We would rather have an honest move forward than dishonest virtue-signalling.
And my final point (like Squirrels I'm going to try to step away 
) is that the exchange about "butch" was indeed very enlightening. It showed how hard it is, when we are sure of our good intentions, to hear anyone who disagrees; and it showed how impossible it is to locate offence precisely, categorically, so as to convince everyone that something was not only subjectively but objectively offensive. And I think it also hinted at the way that for some people any mention of a particular reality when not explicitly followed by "and of course that is an entirely neutral thing to be, in itself" sounds pejorative - while for others, the idea that you might need to add it is the offence. (Why has no one pointed out, on FWR, that a girl's facial hair is also not shameful in itself? Because there's an assumption that Clanchy is adding that detail in order to show that she's "not sufficiently feminine". And we think that, because she mentioned the moustache in the first place. Isn't that begging the question?)
These are thoughts about Clanchy and her book, and the specific issues which arise from that. But more than that, more than anything: because publishing a book and then withdrawing support from not only that book but that writer's entire oeuvre is utterly craven and shit, and deeply unhealthy for the whole industry, I do not think Clanchy should have been cancelled.