Publishers statement re E.J.Levy's book about a woman doctor. The nutters cry he was a transman not a woman you evil transphobes.

[Jog22]

twitter.com/littlebrown/status/1100453326431416321?s=19

twitter.com/littlebrown/status/1100453326431416321?s=19

Jesus wept.
I hope I am never stuck in a lift with these tedious complainers.

Shall we do a mumsnet reverse boycott and buy the fecking book en masse?

I'm definetly buying it.

I'm absolutely buying it.

yep, I'm in, it can find a home on my kindle

I'm really confused by that statement. Are they changing the pronouns or not?

I hadn’t realised that when they bang on about being on the right side of history, they actually mean they’re planning to colonise and rewrite it just to be certain.

I'm really confused by that statement. Are they changing the pronouns or not?

Sounds to me like they want Levy to change her book.

The fact is we have no way of knowing which of the options available today Barry would have taken - simply be a female doctor (maybe in the military, maybe gender nonconforming), or be a transman (maybe a doctor, maybe in the military, maybe not).

Forcing an author to change their fictionalised narrative sets a bad precedent.

I’m very confused. We’ve gone from pitying and understanding women who had to pretend they were men, to people asserting they were men all along. Someone wants to whitewash women’s history.

Stop shouting. We can’t hear you.

Sounds to me like they want Levy to change her book.

See that's what I thought, but I've seen TRAs howling about transphobia. They seem to have massively pissed off everyone

And tbh, I'd also think it would be wrong if this story was the opposite way round and an author who'd written a trans narrative version of Barry's life (and the publisher) was pressured to change it. I can't imagine that actually happening though.

That’s quite a carefully worded statement. I would guess they will do what the author wants.

I don’t know if the US side is the same but Little, Brown UK are part of a huge French company (that in turn is owned by an arms dealer). I doubt they actually give a shit about these odious little toads.

Can we buy a preprint with "she" and then the people who don't want to read it anyway because it's about a biological woman, and those are not worth bothering with, can have a remaindered version with "he".

They should publish it as she and include a free Sharpie with each book so the gender fascists can cross out all of the "s"s....

I'll buy it. I despise those pious TRAs. Anyway, what happened to literary freedom? Wasn't The Tempest reimagined with a female Prospero recently? Anything is possible in fiction.

I find the statement confusing too.

What do these people think - she had to hide being trans?!! FFS.

I am very confused, who is this Doctor, what was in the last will and testament? And who cares?

Did some googling, seems an interesting story but so not the transman story they so desperately want.

On the book theme I listened to a radio 3 version of Virginia Wolf's Orlando earlier this week in the car and was disappointed they had a male playing Orlando all the way through. The male put on a camper voice when Orlando was supposed to have changed sex (it's VW's Dr Who attempt but with writing a poem rather than saving the universe as the aim) but still sounded very male.
I suppose Orlando has been done with a female playing the male version (Tilda Swinton) so maybe the men of the BBC thought they'd get their own back.
Considering VW based the novel on Vita Sackville West who was a bisexual mother and gardener (I love Sissinghurst) it seemed very bizarre.

When is the book out?

I imagine that, as it's a fictional account, it'll go far deeper than pronouns. Presumably the conflict driving the entire plot is about how Barry has to disguise her sex, and not how she has a deeply held belief that she really is a man. The author would have to write a whole different book.

I don’t think it’s anywhere close to being published -it only got acquired by Little Brown very recently, and that’s in the US so could be even longer till it hits the UK. At least a year, I would guess - she may not have even written the whole book yet!

There are some good quotes on the twitter feed.

Do better - the clarion call of the tedious and Anyone adhering to reality is labelled a TERF

Amnesty International already got a pasting over her

mobile.twitter.com/amnestyuk_lgbti/status/1099218443222564864

Wasn't The Tempest reimagined with a female Prospero recently?
When Shakespeare wrote his plays, all the parts were played by men. And I think pretty well all of them have been recast with women.
All this hoo-hah is a replay of last year's fuss over casting a woman in a film bio of a transman; transactivists wanted the part to be played by a transman. The film had to be dropped as a result - the backers, I believe, wanted a big-name star.

The TAs obviously counted this as a success and are using the same tactics here; some of them are now demanding that the publishers hire a trans writer to write a Barry biography!