I'm a writer (earning a living as a writer, and trad published) and I can't tell you how often I see male writers or wannabe writers ranting that the only reason they've been rejected from every publisher is because they're a white man, or because they're privately educated, white men are soooo oppressed, and "publishers are all Woke these days, they only want to publish black trans lesbians." And that's so clearly massive bollocks when you look at what actually does get published or programmed and what sells and wins awards. Statistically, being a white man MASSIVELY increases your chances of being published. Being privately educated quadruples your chance of landing a job. I have to restrain myself from saying, "Maybe the reason your book was rejected by every publisher is just because it's shit? Maybe the reason you're so convinced of your own genius and feel entitled to a book deal is because you grew up being told you were better than everyone else?" A lot of people really resent minorities taking even 1 slice of the pie because they feel entitled to the whole pie. Don't conflate that with any issues around wokeness or gender ideology. The Times is cherry picking a tiny number of books because they want to exploit gender stuff as a way to attack diversity as a concept. The vast, vast majority of books published are not "woke".
The publishing world itself is still very very elitist and almost impossible to get into unless you're white and privately educated. And there's a lot of racism in the industry, and a lot of resentment towards anything to do with "diversity" because people want publishing to continue to be the domain of white privately educated people. They might pretend to be woke but it's all very superficial and all for show. They'll happily put up a sign saying "gender neutral toilet" but they won't hire a single black person for a senior role. In my experience of working in the literary world, the most "performatively woke" people are the ones most likely to be angry if a black writer wins a writing competition over them, and immediately turn around and say "well they only won because they're black". I honestly have lost track of how many self-declared "woke" types have told me "minorities have it easy because they can just play the minority card."
It's alarming to see the failure of books about trans issues being used to attack anything to do with "diversity." Whoever said that you can't get on in the book world unless you're "diverse", I'm sorry but that's clearly such complete nonsense. I can easily believe that someone in publishing said that, but it's obviously not true. Something like 95% of trad published books are written by white writers. I actually wrote a newspaper article a few years ago about stats around gender in publishing that I had to do a lot of research for, and the publishing industry is just dire for women in every respect. It's insanely difficult to get published as a woman unless you're writing chick lit or cosy crime, and those genres are belittled and undermined (and the reason they're undermined is because they're perceived as female). Women writers are far less likely to be nominated for awards, receive substantially less media attention, more sexist media attention, and are treated more harshly by critics.
This is why diversity (genuine diversity, not performative wokeness) is crucial and shouldn't be pooh poohed. It shouldn't be the case that being black or being a woman automatically reduces your chance of getting a job or being published.