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

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.

It always seems to come down to clothes, ignoring that the majority of people on any given high street are wearing jeans, trousers or leggings. I'm senior in a male dominated profession and substantially out earn my (male) partner who does more childcare than me. I also like baking and skiing - am I gender conforming or not?

There's just over 1200 signatories so far but an awful lot more writers, it's only a tiny fraction of them.

Philip Pullman not on list
Julia Donaldson not on list

But unfortunately @WarriorN Robin Ince is on it

I like the ones that put in a little plug for their business, next to their names.

Timothy Allsop, Turn of Phrase and Allsop Therapy

Shame there was no room for a link to the website.

The 'big names' are the ones whose last work of note was about 5 years ago. Much like lockdown, gender ideology is very 2020.

Maybe she's just one of those people who always agrees with whoever she is talking to.

I love that bloke holding the ' Feminism is the refusal to define a woman' placard.

Imagine that boldly proclaiming, ' I'm a bit thick, me.'

Lots of names on there I recognise but more that I don’t.

It’s hard to contend with the fact that women and our rights seem so inconsequential to so many people but at one time, I also thought the kind thing was to wholly accept TWAW without thinking about the impact on women so I’m hopeful that some of these people may also not have considered it from that perspective.

Presumably self ID, so we're all writers too in that case (we write on MN after all)

Its somewhat ironic that one of their main points is that no trans voices were heard, when so much of what they have put forward has had women's voices completely excluded.

That was hard to read. But only coz I was mostly thinking "who?"

And we know the arts and literary world is largely captured.

Absolutely tons of #bekind women. 🙄

I don't see what the issue is on the letter. Its basically saying let's not let this cause extremism. That's not a polarising opinion surely. It looks to me like you could both support the ruling and sign the letter.

The main thing writers should be defending is free speech. I no longer listen to literary critics or literary scholars. The vast majority have surrendered to Left-wing activists and woke bullies. I generally ignore the Booker Prize for the same reason. Books are now published, praised, taught in universities, etc, not because they are any good but because they tick certain boxes. And classics are being downgraded because the Left don't like the author, not because the work is bad.

Harold Bloom was warning about this 40 years ago. When attempts were made to edit Roald Dahl's books, for example, every major writer should been rioting in the streets. Forget the content. It's the principle. And then the Left have the f-ing nerve to whinge about the rise of fascism. They're the fascists. They're the ones shutting down free speech, locking people up for 'offensive' tweets, demanding the libraries be 'de-colonised', etc.

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.

If they got together a list of GC people it would be a long one, trouble is all the time people are being intimidated by TRA no one much is going to sign that list

Although I recognise only a few of the names, it's good to have a list of a writers to avoid.
Just as Russell T Davies has become extremely tiresome and one note, so I expect they will be.

Never heard of most of them. Maybe it's their way of getting their names in print. Pathetic really.

Those I have heard of I will avoid from now on.

Is this a list of names plucked from a phone book?

My favourites are the grifters that give a wee explanation for their unknown grift.

Alice Oseman, who got popular off promoting yaoi nonsense to teen girls, can't even spell her own name correctly.

I am with you, though not so much confused as cross.

When my grandmother was a child, if a little boy expressed interest in something girly, he would probably be taken out behind the woodshed to have it beaten out of him. Young girls could get away with being Tomboys sometimes, but were, in general, expected to outgrow that. That is, if you stepped out of the box allocated to your sex, you were summarily put back in.

When I was a child (70s/80s), there was a huge push to get rid of the boxes. Women could be firemen and builders, men could grow their hair long and wear makeup. It was all about “gender nonconformity” - but critically, everyone stayed the same sex. That was important, because wearing a dress as a man was the thing that was sticking it to the old, stuffy, gender norms.

Transgenderism is so regressive in this regard. It is back to putting people in boxes - but this time, instead of behaviour and dress code boxes based on your sex, they are “sex” boxes based on your behaviour and dress code. If you are a girl and you don’t want to wear makeup or show off your boobs, then you must actually be a man. If you’re a man and you like pink and flower arranging, then you’re actually a woman. Why?!? We worked so hard to get rid of those effing boxes - why do you want to get back into them?

Cross.

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!

Fact check fail in the first sentence - got the date of the judgment wrong.

I was interested to spot one name on there of someone I know personally, and have had conversations with in the past couple of years which made me think she was fairly gender-critical, but the sector she writes in is full-on TRA territory, as are her adult DC. I wonder if her views have actually changed, or if she felt pressured to sign it?

Jamie Carragher!?

Actually a list of sports people would be a lot more interesting

is it 2019 again?

their pompous fuck wittery letters didnt work before and they won’t work now

Still they can all congratulate each other on how lovely and kind they are to men

I'm enjoying Warrior's new emphatic double-posting.