Lionel Shriver & "groups of women"

[SoaringSwallow]

m.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/jun/13/lionel-shriver-fired-contest-judge-after-criticizi/

Writer Lionel Shriver was just interviewed on BBC R4 Today programme after being dropped from judging a writing competition (it was at about 8.50). She had criticised Penguin Random House's new quota model for publishing saying We can safely infer from that email that if an agent submits a manuscript written by a gay transgender Caribbean who dropped out of school at seven and powers around town on a mobility scooter, it will be published, whether or not said manuscript is an incoherent, tedious, meandering and insensible pile of mixed-paper recycling. Good luck with that business model.^^ As a result, the magazine Mslexia that was holding the competition dropped her as a judge.

In the Today interview the Shriver said she supports "women" writes. The Mslexia rep mentioned that Shriver was discouraging "groups of women" (or similar) from writing. In fact the rep said a LOT of good things about Shriver, her writing her work etc, strange considering they were dropping her. The sole reason she seemed to be dropped was due to "groups of women" issue.

Got me wondering if transactivists had petitioned and Mslexia dropped her for fear of being labelled anti-trans. Maybe not, but anybody know?

The article is just background on the situation, my point is from the actual BBC interview which it's too early to post a link to.

I wouldn't say the "trans" bit stands out from that. She just comes across as a grumpy old fart of the kind that tells you white men are the most discriminated against. Which, tbh, she quite often does.

It's beside the point but I disagree with Shriver on this!

Anyway I would think it's undoubtedly the flippant reference to transgender that got her biffed.

You aren't allowed to joke about the One True Faith.

I love Lionel Shriver's books and style of writing. I read this column in the Spectator and she is mainly arueing against quotas and saying the only thing that should get you published is the quality of your writing. Being from a minority shouldn't work against you, but it shouldn't get your work published just because you are from a minority.
Penguin Random House said they weren't imposing quotas but if they aren't suddenly going to start publishing people they hadn't published before because of a new "diversity policy" then what is the point of the diversity policy?
In the last women have been discriminated against due to their sex. This shouldn't happen, but I don't want to read mediocre women writers either.

Her comments were deeply unPC and inappropriate, and I'm not surprised she was dropped. I get the point she was making but the fact is, everyone is afraid of speaking their mind these days in case someone is "offended", and organizations like Mslexia will distance themselves from anyone who might make them look guilty by association.

I don't think Penguin's initiative is a bad one, as long as it doesn't lower the bar if they're filling "quotas". I don't know Shriver's writing or character but she made the point in a very clumsy way.

The quote was from a column and included some humour. She made it clear there and in the interview that she was opposed to quotas and that quotas was, in effect, what Random House was advocating. She sounded rational and right to me.
Now if bad literature is being published solely because it is written by white men, that would be horribly wrong too.

Lionel should pay attention. The Good Immigrant, to use the most well known example, should not have had to crowdfund to get published. It should have a choice of mainstream publishers. I've supported several anthologies over at Unbound because I know the resulting books will be high quality but won't get a look in via the big five.

Lionel Shriver is referred to in this artile below by David Aaronovitch on the importance of free speech and its suppression with regards discussion of the wider implications around the GRA:

(extract)
"Shriver’s a survivor and she can probably do without any more judging (or being judged). But Mslexia’s formulation gave perfect shape to the problem that I’d been thinking about in these past few months as chairman of Index on Censorship, the free speech advocacy organisation. Why is it that some of the people who should be most protective of free speech and actual open debate are now almost hostile to it in practice?

So I’ll take a much less amusing example. Last year the government promised changes to the Gender Recognition Act (GRA) which
would, among other things, give legal status to the gender choice of an individual, rather than to the biological sex that they were born with, without the need for lengthy psychiatric assessment.

Needless to say, such a change would be welcome for many trans people, who would no longer have to prove that they suffered from a nebulous condition dubbed “gender dysphoria”. But you don’t have to be a tabloid leader writer to see that there are some big problems to be dealt with here, some practical, some anthropological, some philosophical...." continues

thread with share token access to the article:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3277408-David-Aaronovitch-comment-in-Times