Edinburgh International Book Festival has not invited authors of gender critical books

Thank for a bit of insight into how you came to formulate your views and also your input on book festival decision making process. I did want to know how such programming was decided and influenced.

I think I was a bit disappointed with the programme since it did highlight the theme of repair so I had hoped that we might have had a more fulsome discussion at the festival and that the programmers were going to “go there” but sadly not yet or at least not explicitly.

Also there was a panel on queer rights and realities I did attend and while informative in some ways, it did also underline how people are still speaking to their own echo chambers which sadly means that we can’t evolve the discussion further until people are ready to set aside some of the stronger emotions evoked (not that strong emotion is not justified in many cases).

I had hoped that a leading book festival which is where people tend to exercise intellect and the power of careful reflection was the forum to recalibrate the discussion. It is the place where thought and feeling meet but sadly not to be this year.

I said the last of what I had to say in my last comment in which I shared some of my sources. But thank you for time in responding.

I do understand both sides of the discussions and the importance around the implications of changes to the law in terms of women’s safety and the years it’s taken to get here. And that that we have to do right but the most vulnerable within that. So can absolutely understand why the idea that someone, although presenting as a woman but has male genitalia going into safe spaces, is concerning for a lot of people. Particular when the trauma caused by violence has been perpetrated by someone with a penis. But in my mind I see safe spaces as protection from predatory men. Which of course isn’t all men and it isn’t, by a long shot, all trans women. I think predatory men will abuse any law, structure and loop hole in place to attack women and I don’t believe other vulnerable people within our society should be restricted from safe space because of that. I see such similarities between the dangers that face both women and trans women and the protections both groups need from predatory males. And because I take the stance that trans women are not men I don’t think the answer is keeping them out of single sex spaces or excluding them from women only events. Not a perfect solution I know. And not a perfect answer by a long shot. And not most likely a convincing one for most on this thread. But I have spent a lot of time with this subject and looking into it, since about 2017 ish when it first started to come on my radar. And this is the ‘side’, for want of a better word, that I have come down on. I am also guilty, like most, for getting frustrated with opposing views when things become heated or when accused of not doing the research.

But as you say, I came across this thread because of the commentary surrounding the book festival and it was this I was originally commenting on. Full disclosure, I don’t work for the book festival but do work across the creative sector, including literature, so do have some knowledge of how the process works. It is my understanding that authors aren’t invited to book festivals but events are pitched by their agents/publishers to EIBF/members of the programming team and discussions are had from there on. Hosts of events ie the people leading the discussions with the authors will be invited in some cases but in other cases the authors choose their own. Obviously not all events are chosen and for what reasons I can’t comment on but there is a process to go through beyond just being invited. Same with film festivals. There will be an element of programming that comes from connections made by the directors, producers of the festivals when they visit other international festivals and events and tie-ins with them might include invited guests as part of a focus on a particular country or theme. With it being an international book festival it will have 1000s of pitches and planning will take place over months. So my initial comment was really to flag that there other things at play. And a huge amount of great authors and books released - bestseller or otherwise - that will be in consideration and also not chosen.

Also, I have known of Jenny Lindsay’s writing for many years - way before the GC debate - and was never that impressed by it, if I’m to be honest. And my recollection is that she wasn’t really in that much demand as a writer, up until recently. Admittedly, I’ve not read Hounded but mostly because, like a lot of people, I have a stack of books next to my bed I’d rather read. So this, coupled with the bit of knowledge I have of the programming process, led me to respond that ‘maybe the books are just not that good’ and ‘maybe they didn’t go through the correct channels’

Anyway, I am going to take a step away from this thread now. This is the most of spent on the internet for a long time as it’s not an environment I enjoy so much. But thank you again for your time on this

There are all sorts of reasons why a book might not have been included. But those are not the reasons that the organisers themselves stated.

The justifications that @DistantBlue and @LemonLymanDotCom gave are feeble. Book festival organisers are supposed to be in touch with the local and contemporary literary scene and at a high-profile festival like Edinburgh they help to shape that scene. The organisers are perfectly capable of responding to the format if they choose to. And they should be capable of seeking out relevant authors and inviting proposals for a relevant event. They shouldn't just passively respond to whatever the commercial agents send to them.

Well said. Looks like another bookseller / publishing person on this thread who knows what they're talking about. Authors/ publishers/ agents pitch events for festivals. Nobody has been cancelled if they weren’t programmed in the first place.

Also to point out, The Women Who Wouldn’t Wheesht is an edited collection. Book festivals very rarely host events for collections, which makes sense cos there’s no ‘single author’ but volume editors instead.

Imagine having the hide, the gall, the front to talk about Palestine when you are pushing a first world patriarchal privileged luxury metaphysical belief that promotes male oppression of womens rights. Check the privilege! Do you think anyone in Palestine gives a stuff what pronoun they are called right now?

Further, does anyone think a male would identify as a woman under the Talibanic Afghanistan? Would these 'transwomen' on a visit to Afghanistan, identify as a woman there? Would they fuck! We all know they would run with their Male Privilege. Sadly, us women cannot identify out of our oppression. That's the difference.

DistantBlue · 25/08/2025 11:47

I actually raised a number of points as to why they were maybe not included in the bill and, as ever, you're not able to answer to any of them

Yet you apparently missed the words of the organiser, who set out why she chose to discriminate illegally against GC women.

As for your links, are you aware that they are all highly partisan propaganda outfits, which regard getting a double take as genocide?

So many typos in that last post, sorry. It's too late to edit.

Yet you've been brainwashed to think males re-badged as 'trans' somehow makes the male sex now oppressed. The FACT is, trans is the most CELEBRATED, the most POWERFUL, the most PROTECTED and the most PRIVILEGED group there is. They are UNTOUCHABLE. They are a sacred caste. In less than one generation, they have managed to change the definition of women, erase female spaces, infiltrate government, institutions and organisations. NO OTHER MINORITY GROUP has had that power. Not even gay men, who took literally DECADES AND DECADES to get any rights. Trans are the most powerful sacred caste. Most of your links (including the williams 'institute' which admitted themselves the study wasn't valid) rely on 'self reporting'. A woman misgendering (correct-sexing) a male is called "literal violence". Women saying no to males in female spaces is called an act of hate. A few of those studies have males saying they received strange looks - again, called 'hate'. None of these have any actual violence. Just saying NO to males.

However, lets look at who you identify with; lets look at your mob. Women have been beaten up by aggressive male trans activists at rallies. A 72 year old woman in Auckland, NZ had her eye socket fractured male a male TRA. Women have had things thrown at them, not just soup. Sarah-Jane Baker (transwoman) said terfs should be punched. Not long after, a woman was beaten very badly in Scotland, based off that rhetoric. Women talking about their rape at rallies are drowned by men counter protesters with megaphones and drums. They've marched and urinated on feminist statues.

Tell me, when have GC women ever committed ANY, ANY of that? EVER? The images are violent rape threats and death threats from YOUR side. Tell me now how 'vulnerable' these VIOLENT MALES are, and how us women and girls are the danger. This is your side, I would be MORTIFIED is I allied with these (and only 4 out of a folder of 1600-odd threats of rape and violence from transwomen and trans activists):

The view that the female sex is human, exists and deserves human rights are supported by news outlets? Really? And that's a 'bad' thing? If those outlets said animal cruelty is bad, would you spitefully out of your political purist echo chamber suddenly say animal cruelty is good, because you are so pugilistic and so politically tribalist you won't even be seen to agreeing with anyone across the isle? That shows how shallow and small minded your side of the argument is. Hitler liked dogs. Do you like dogs? Grow up.

@DistantBlue Your post is a whole host of already debunked misogynist nonsense we've heard over and over and over again. Probably around 20,000 times on this section of the site alone. You are not reinventing the wheel. You are not posing any arguments that we haven't seen and adequately demolished before.

I mean, I could tell you that 80% of violence against women is Intimate Partner Violence so you’re more likely to be raped, assaulted or murdered by a man you are close to than any other demographic so wasting your time protesting trans women is making women no safer.

The common denominator is MALES. Transwomen are MALE. And our spaces aren't just for safety, but privacy and dignity away from the male gaze.

I could tell you that trans people make up less than 1% of the population and thus much less of a threat to you than men – who make up nearly 50% of the population and won’t give a shit about coming into a woman’s toilet to cause harm.

Ummmm.... Transwomen ARE men. They are male. As males, they are 50% of the population. Not 1%. And statistics and data prove that transwomen commit sexual assault 5 times higher than other males. And transwomen have raped women in toilets numerous times, so your ignorance and ill-informed nonsense is sad. Transwomen are no less dangerous than any other male. They ARE male. They are fully intact males with penis and testicles, just wearing a dress. That's the only difference.

I could tell that trans woman are 4 times more likely than cis gendered women to be attacked, raped and assaulted and your persistent demonisation of them are contributing to how unsafe they continue to be. And the perpetrator of that violence is the same demographic which carries out the majority of assaults and attacks on cis women and so perhaps your time would be better spent working with transwomen rather than against them and try and make us all safer.

That nonsense was DEBUNKED by the own 'institute' it came out of and they admitted their little 'survey' was too small, and self-selective and unreliable.

COMMON BLOOD SENSE tells one that a MALE IN A DRESS is NOT 'more likely' to be attacked than a gay male or an ACTUAL woman and girl. Only an idiot believes a male wearing a dress is more at risk of attack than an ACTUAL woman.

I could argue that for every one Isla Bryson there are 1000s of transwomen who are good people and are just trying to get on with their life in peace and quiet without having to justify their existence to a baying mob in which a trans person’s existence really doesn’t have much of an impact on their lives beyond maybe having to go to the toilet in a cubicle next to them at some point, which you might not actually notice because they pass for an actual woman.

For every male rapist there are 1000s of males who are good people and are just trying to get on with their life in peace and quiet, that does not mean we allow any and all males in our spaces. Our spaces exist based on the WORST CASE SCENARIO, not based on the majority of 'good' men.

I could argue that I have biological female friends who identify as such, who have been misgendered in the past because they don't look stereotypically female and are now concerned about being questioned when going to the bathroom because of the supreme court ruling

And we can argue that any women being on HIGH ALERT, is due to males being allowed to enter our spaces, IN THE FIRST FUCKING PLACE!! If it weren't happening, we wouldn't be so hypervigilant. You are blaming us for our NATURAL REACTION and not looking at what caused it, in the first place.

I could argue that you don’t seem bothered by the idea of transmen which leaves a massive hole in your argument

Umm..... because transmen, as FEMALES, are not a threat to us. You're not a deep thinker, are you.

I could argue that this is yet another schism within feminism created by privileged women – of which there have been many over the years including with working class women, women of colour and lesbians. Always borne out of the fear that the inclusion of these other demographics, might water down your argument.

On the contrary; it's the privileged women who will never have to; use a public pool or public change room, use domestic violence or rape services, use public toilets frequently, who hold a privileged view. It's the working class women, the victims who need to go to Domestic Violence shelters, etc who are at the coalface and who are affected the most by the removal of our HARD WON single sex spaces. The privileged wealthy woman with money and her own pool at home who won't be touched by males in public female spaces and are protected.

At a push I could maybe see that there is a conversation to be had about trans women in sport, but your Queen Bee JK Rowling put paid to that by having a pop at a female boxer – a biological woman no less – because she looked too much like a man and ridiculing any sensible discussion that might have been had.

If you mean Imane Khelif, JK was VINDICATED. You're way behind. Medical reports PROVE he is male with internal testes, a prostate, a micropenis. And no female organs at all. And has male chromosomes. He is a biological MALE. Maybe you should catch up before spewing your ignorance everywhere. https://www.francsjeux.com/en/short/A-medical-report-relaunches-the-Imane-Khelif-case Other supporting images attached.

I could argue that one of the main things that feminism was borne out of was the frustration of being told what a woman can and can’t be, what she should and shouldn’t look like, and yet this is exactly what you’re doing and the hypocrisy of that is eye watering.

Wrong! Feminism was borne out of the need to defend the rights of the oppressed female sex class. Feminism centres females. It is literally in the name. It does not centre any male. Even if they're wearing a dress.

I could argue that just because it’s the law, it doesn’t mean it’s right

Sounding very much like a misogynist male. 'Just because womens rights to safety, privacy and dignity are safeguarded in law doesn't mean it's right.' You'd be at home in Talibanic Afghanistan.

I could argue that there’s a genocide happening in Palestine and why should we bother giving a shit about your petty ‘nose out of joint’ complaints about less than 1% of the population that most likely has no bearing on you or your day to day life

It's 50% of the population. MALE. Not '1%'. And likewise, WE could argue that I could argue that there’s a genocide happening in Palestine and why should we bother giving a shit about your petty need to centre a male's pronouns and need to expose his penis to rape survivors like me, in the ladies toilets and changerooms? Trans is a LUXURY FIRST WORLD PRIVILEGE. Why should they care where they pee or what pronoun they are called, WHEN THERE IS A FAMINE IN PALESTINE? See?

When you vomit hateful misogynist bile that women and girls and rape survivors like me don't have a right to our hard won single sex spaces, that our foremother feminists FOUGHT HARD FOR, and use the 10 year old debunked lies, you aren't adding anything. All you are doing is showing your ignorance of the vulnerability of the most OPPRESSED SEX CLASS, in order to defend the oppressors and predators. Either read through the threads and you will see all of your 'arguments' were debunked YEARS AGO and are well out of date, and you're late and slow on the uptake. So get some new arguments before you attempt to argue that a rape survivor like me should not have our sex-based rights and spaces enshrined in law because you are captured by a first world luxury privileged misogynist cult, when children are LITERALLY DYING IN PALESTINE!

Would you mind clarifying what part of my stance you disagree with? It would be really helpful to make sure I understand accurately where you are coming from.

I think your position is based on relativistic premise that we all bring our own subjectivities and experience to the debate of varying weight and emphasis, but I maybe wrong. Is there another reason or reasons that you have come to the conclusion that valid voices are currently being drowned out?

I am also interested in how the submission process for the book festival works. Are writers individually invited to submitted? What takes precedence? The committee selected theme or a review of what seem to be the pressing issues of the book reading public? I, again, don’t want to make assumptions on that but I do think there was the theme of repair and you and I are of the same mind, I think, that the debate needs to move but to what purpose and in what form is still up for grabs.

As much as it appears to be a bit of a bear pit here, the long form nature of the message board is more reflective of the type of enlightening discussions that can happen at a book festival where issues are not reduced to 240 characters and citations and other evidence is recorded and revisited. Hence the habit of the Mnetters of “keeping receipts”.

I will look at your links to examine how they bring an alternative position to mine and get back to you on them. Meanwhile, others who are interested in a more in depth discussion may wish to do the same. I usually find that some of the links presented will have been brought up before and thought about quite extensively. Hopefully others who have contributed in the past can reference back and bring out summaries.

Well said Marie. Similar to my background. My mammy was bright as a button but never got the chance to stay on beyond 14 and I have know that getting to go to uni as a single parent which I did, later on was a privilege she could only dream of.

That fits with my memory, but I'd add that lots of the changes in law, and in public bodies' practice, began earlier under the Blair/Brown government. Most people didn't notice because Press For Change had a conscious strategy of getting changes through under the radar, mostly by quietly lobbying politicians. Christine Burns says this explicitly in his book.

The handful of things that were debated - well, mostly that was the GRA, which was sold as a bureaucratic adjustment that would make life easier for 5000 post-op transsexuals and have minimal impact on anyone else.

The people who noticed what was going on were few in number - sometimes it seemed like it was just Julie Bindel - and really out on a limb.

I was vaguely aware of potential issues for a long time - I think my first red flag was the Vancouver Rape Relief saga - but I initially put that down as the sort of mad thing that happens in Canada.

So there's a common narrative that says nobody had a problem with any of these social changes until very recently, and then for unexplained reasons (TRA commentators often hallucinate injections of money from Trump, Putin or the US Christian Right) all these mean women start kicking off about the nice harmless transwomen who have been using women's facilities for years and not causing any trouble.

It would be more honest to say that lots of these changes were made on the QT, behind our backs, and were a done deal before we noticed them. The authorities did the equivalent of putting their trans measures in a basement in a locked filing cabinet with a sign saying "beware of the leopard".

Although I disagree with your stance I do hear what you’re saying in this comment. I agree, I think a well informed and educated debate is vital for such a big conversation that affects so many people and will have a lot of long lasting knock on effects for those involved on all sides. Thank you for taking the time to respond.

You make an interesting point but I am not sure that your starting point that trans rights for the MTF cohort was accepted by most women in the first place and then a subsequent split came from the debate polarising.

The debate didn’t really begin in any substantive fashion until the FWS ruling. On here; there were discussions about hang on something really odd is going on about 2017/18, when women started getting shut down for asking questions they considered pertinent.

Stonewall’s campaigning slogan was “trans women are women. Get over it”. I am leaving out the capitalisation because I don’t do shouty; but I do think was designed to truncate discussion. As was #no debate.

My recall of 2013/14 as a significant donor to Stonewall was that once the same sex marriage was won there was a pivot to trans rights and as a boring common-or-garden lesbian and a mum I took my eye off the ball and wasn’t really following developments.

But between 2013-2018 my perception was that the organisation changed from a same sex rights organisation to a trans rights organisation whose definition of who was trans was slippery and nebulous and it was risky to even question why this transformation had come about.

Then GRR, legal overreach, Stonewall law blah blah blah.

Now I think it is time for those who defend trans rights, as they were put forward by Stonewall, to justify their position with persuasion, solid evidence and other means of showing that they considered other protected groups under the equality act’s remit than solely those of transwomen. We are at the point the balancing rights should be at the forefront of people’s minds.

So far I have found justification for transwomen’s rights to enter biological women’s spaces and redefine what it means to be a same-sex attracted woman disingenuous and unconvincing.

I am all for an educated and well-informed debate so let discussion commence properly.

https://www.jkrowling.com/opinions/the-twilight-of-nicola-sturgeon-j-k-rowling-reviews-frankly/

This masterpiece again

To clarify, the point I was making was not that current GC discussions exclude those demographics I outlined. I was pointing out that historically, throughout a lot of discourse around women’s rights, those demographics have previously felt excluded from the conversation because of a vocal minority - particularly women of colour and lesbians during the second wave of feminism in 1970s. And I was talking to this current split between women and trans women following a similar pattern. I absolutely understand that there is a wealth of voices with valid things to bring much to the conversation on both sides. But I still think it’s accurate to say that a vocal minority are not allowing nuanced conversations to be had or heard

Hello:
Woman of working class background (split shifts in my parent’s Chinese takeaway every weekend from aged 14 and each holiday to supplement my grant as the first in my family to go to uni).

Also Lesbian with wife and two kiddos who came to mumsnet for tips to get my children to sleep through and came back for the discussion of the rights of women.

Since I represent all three demographics of the the groups targeted by privileged women for exclusion, I can say from my lived experience of this debate and attendance at the book festival, Distant Blue’s binary representation of the debate on this particular point is Piffle™️

Education, or at least what we used to think of as education, is a very good thing. I learn a lot from people who've got a solid grounding in law or medicine or economics or quantitative sociology or what have you.

I have a rather low level of respect for theoreticians, but that takes us into the realm of Bad Education. If you want to see the people I mean, go along to the Historical Materialism conference, where you'll find very little history or materialism, but a lot of people with doctorates spouting Queer Theory gibberish.

Some people from the theoretician class are on the GC side of this particular issue. I don't pay much attention to them. They also don't pay much attention to us, except to say "ZOMG! The Daily Mail! GB News! Tommy Robinson!" when we commit thought crimes like wondering if it's worthwhile voting Labour.

I have little interest in schisms in the theoretician class. That's not where the key issues are at.

DistantBlue A vocal educated group that see themselves as the leaders and representatives of the GC demographic who garner the most airtime and are driving the public narrative.
Anybody you'd like to name, DistantBlue ?
I'm not aware of anybody who presents themselves as 'the leaders and representatives of the GC demographic' - there are some familiar names, but they are often familiar because of a stand they have taken, rather than a desire to be a leader. When someone is brave and takes on 'the system' to assert women's rights, they become a recognised figure.

A vocal educated group..'
Are we so far post-factual, so 'we've had enough of experts' as Michael Gove said, that being educated is a bad thing?

I think education is a good thing. It is particularly useful in establishing those verifiable facts I mentioned in a previous post - a formal education isn't everything, but there are areas of knowledge where formal qualifications are needed, and the opinions of those who have spent years studying topics carry more weight than somebody with lots of opinions but no basis for them.

During the Olympics, when the issue of males taking part in the women's boxing competition came to the fore, there was a long and detailed discussion on this board about DSDs [I don't think you read it, as you are still referring to Imane Khelif as a woman].

We benefitted greatly from having posters who had expertise in areas such as genetics, physiology, etc. The fact that they were educated made their contributions to the discussion distinct, and distinctly useful.
It lifted the discussion beyond the level of opinion.

Maybe my respect for education comes from a family background where formal education ended when you were 14, and I was the first person in my family to go to university - no grants where I come from, so I had to work as well as study.
I wouldn't say I knew more than them because I went to uni, but I know different things, and I know them more deeply, and that's what I value education for.

So if the most prominent GC spokeswomen are educated and vocal - that's fine by me!

I didn’t say you were unthinking at all. And yes it does say more about me which is why I expressly said ‘it’s my experience’. That’s all I can base most things on. What I’ve read and what I experience. Of course I absolutely recognise that there are a lot of people from a huge gamut of society that have an opinion on this subject, on both sides of it. That’s not the point I was making. The point I was making is exactly what you have cited. A vocal educated group that see themselves as the leaders and representatives of the GC demographic who garner the most airtime and are driving the public narrative. I’m not saying it’s right but I do think it’s fair to say that this group are, for a lot of us, who we think of as the main commentators when discussing this topic and the increasing schism within feminism because they’re the most vocal and the most prominent

Is your scolding not going as well as you hoped?

There are, it's true, some GC women with privileged backgrounds, who are educated to university level, and never shut up about being educated to university level, and imagine themselves to be "leaders". Let's call them Group A.

Whereas here there are lots of women of diverse backgrounds, of all different ages and classes and ethnicities and sexual orientations, and even some men, who have come to this issue with an extremely wide range of practical experience. This means there are a range of viewpoints, a lot of interesting discussions, and if there's one unifying theme it's a total commitment to women's boundaries and to child safeguarding.

Group A are sometimes frustrated that we, who don't live in their very specific subculture, don't automatically accept them as the leaders to be followed.

If you've only encountered Group A, and you assume us to be their unthinking followers, that says more about you than us.

DistantBlue You'll stick to your guns and look at it all through a trans exclusionary lens and I will stick to my guns and look at it through a trans-inclusionary lens and thus we're in a pretty much lose-lose situation.

There is a third way - let's forget about 'lenses', and stick to verifiable scientific facts, like that humans are either male or female, DSDs confirm rather than challenge that, and it is not possible to swap around between being a man or being a woman - verifiable facts like that.

That's a useful place to start from, as scientific fact doesn't care about how you or I feel about things, who is a 'winner' or a 'loser', or who has the sticker guns

You'll stick to your guns and look at it all through a trans exclusionary lens and I will stick to my guns and look at it through a trans-inclusionary lens and thus we're in a pretty much lose-lose situation.

I think this sums up the problem really neatly. You think everything is about trans. You are unable to see that to women, women actually matter, and that what I as a GC feminist care about is opposing gender stereotypes, protecting women's rights as a sex class, and protecting children from a harmful ideology (and I mean literally harmful as in they will end up with damage to their bodies, not "someone might disagree with me" harmful).

I am not "trans-exclusionary", but you need to think I am in order to see our arguments as bad and mean and hurtful. I am exclusionary of males from the category of females. I don't think trans people should be excluded from anything because they are trans, and they shouldn't be persecuted or discriminated against for being trans. But the fact is you can't change sex, TW are male, and furthermore their behaviour is male and transitioning doesn't change that, in fact it is associated with a higher rate of typically male crime. That means they are not female, they pose the same danger to females as males generally do or more, and so it is reasonable that they are not categorised as female when it matters (for safety, privacy, dignity, fairness and when women simply want to meet or organise on their own).

"Trans-inclusionary" means accepting TW as females, but they are not. To make that claim, counter to reality and the law, is actually the unreasonable behaviour here - especially as it's often backed up by violent sexual threats. All GC women are doing is saying no to that unreasonable, aggressive, woman-disrespecting demand.