Open letter by UK writers in solidarity (not with us obviously)

Serafina, would you be amenable to making a thread to expand on this? I'd be really interested to hear.more, if you had the time and inclination.

Robin Ince

I don’t really care about this random group’s opinion, but this is worrying: https://archive.ph/eoDSN

The younger generation has a different opinion…at leadt on the surface. When I read the article, it seems they have misunderstood a few things, and if this “constructive ambiguity” was exposed. They might feel differently, although some might find it too difficult to change their minds for tribal/social reasons.

This is far from over.

Where have you been for the last four years

Damn, I thought Billy Bragg was one of the good guys, so disappointed.

Damn, I thought Billy Bragg was one of the good guys, so disappointed.

Serafina, would you be amenable to making a thread to expand on this? I'd be really interested to hear.more, if you had the time and inclination.

It's hilarious, because essentialism has nothing to bloody do with biology.

The idea that there is a core, or essence of humanity beyond our material bodies - 'I think, therefore I am', is at its root. And this idea of a core, unified, rational subject had started to break down by the mid-nineteenth century. Although this breakdown is often placed with the mid-20th-century existentialists it in fact started long before this and had certainly taken root strongly by the 1890s.

Essentialism is the gendered idea that women are nurturers, carers, support humans etc - gendered attributes arbitrarily attached to our sex and accepted as 'natural, common-sense' discourse. What it is not, is the biololgical fact that we have a vag and tits.

Are these people really as stupid and uninformed as they appear? (Disclaimer: that was a rhetorical question) 😖

Gary Neville and Roy Keane are not on there, so it can't be the Real Jamie, just someone who identifies as him.

The rest are all z listers with one or two exceptions of being professional luvvies.

Billy Bragg was so well-informed about this debate that he said something that revealed he thought puberty blockers were the same as beta blockers.

He's not on that list though so is he reverse ferreting I wonder?

Either way I'll never forgive him. He knows what a woman is.

I feel the same way about Philip Pullman. Arsehole.

What a shame, he wrote some beautiful songs a few decades ago. Now he can’t think straight, sad.

Yes I saw that and can only conclude that here is an artsy fartsy Jamie Carragher out there as it ain’t him I’m pretty certain of that!

Glad to see that none of my favourite writers are on there and the only name I recognise, apart from those already mentioned, is Elizabeth Day.

His best song was a Woody Guthrie cover.

What a shame, he wrote some beautiful songs a few decades ago. Now he can’t think straight, sad.

Apologies, my perimenopausal brain got Holly Webb muddled with Daisy Meadows. Holly Webb is indeed a person, so can take full responsibility for adding her name to the stupid letter 😄

Well you certainly missed Billy Bragg spewing his particularly vomit-worthy brand of progressive misogyny on a daily basis for the last few years.

Gave up on twitter a long time ago thankfully. Obviously missed out on some vile stuff.

They are relying on The Good Law Project for a legal opinion 😂

Spotted a couple of names I know - Russell T Davies, Sara Pascoe, Billy Bragg - no surprises there.

BTW I find the word ‘bioessentialism’ really annoying - it’s meant to sound divisive and right wing but believing in biological facts is logical.

Really?

The UK Supreme Court ruling of 17th April 2025 was the result of a coordinated and privately funded attack on the human rights and dignity of trans and non-binary people in the UK

You think a letter that starts like this and continues in this vein, which says the court was on shaky legal ground, could be signed by someone who supports the ruling? You think this is not polarising language? Or extremist language?

The court action was not an attack on anyone but a defence of the existing legal protections women had under the Equality Act. I am tired of this whopper of a lie that it is trans rights that have been eroded, whereas in the past ten years it is women's existing legal rights that in practice, and in actual demonstrable reality have been eroded. This court case clarifies women' existing legal rights and reminded everyone of the rights trans people have AS trans people under the law.

So these writers are openly lying about what has actually happened.

What Equity and the Writers Guild should have done is write to assert to women and to trans people that they will uphold both groups clarified legal rights. Because that is how to signal you are not being polarising.