JK Rowling - Thread 2

[MoleSmokes]

Thread 1 started by @MsMcWibble here:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3772685-JK-Rowling
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twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1207646162813100033

Dress however you please.
Call yourself whatever you like.
Sleep with any consenting adult who’ll have you.
Live your best life in peace and security.
But force women out of their jobs for stating that sex is real?
#IStandWithMaya #ThisIsNotADrill
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To start off thread 2 - everyone saying the time was right for this to hit the news stands right after the Election was right!

Maya Forstater's Employment Tribunal case is, by virtue of JK Rowling's support, more popular in The Spectator than Boris Johnson by Boris Johnson, The Tories and The Labour Party!

MOST POPULAR in The Spectator

1. In just a few words, JK Rowling has changed the transgender debate (James Kirkup)

1. Boris Johnson: Perhaps my campaign was ‘clunking’. But sometimes, clunking is what you need (Boris Johnson)
2. We’ve just had the best decade in human history. Seriously (Matt Ridley)
3. Keir Starmer looks and sounds middle class precisely because he’s working class (Isabel Hardman)
4. Let’s make David Lammy Labour’s next leader (Rod Liddle)
5. A new leader won’t stop the far left’s domination of Labour (Nick Cohen)

www.spectator.co.uk/

Agents were definitely looking for trans stories for YA a few years ago.
If anything they are probably steering clear now after they saw what happened to John Boyne.

The indies will publish bunches of trans narratives, and they’ll win all kinds of awards, like the recent Governor General’s award in poetry in Canada — but they won’t sell many copies outside of the literati.

Precisely. Indies aren't eligible for the really big prizes, like the Booker, but a small publisher might take the risk, win a big prize, and sell 67 copies.

....and they'd win the big prize not because the book is really good, but because it is "daring" and stunning" and crosses boundaries*. A bit like that woman who won the Turner for an unmade bed.

I hereby predict Pips Bunce or Munroe Bergdorf or that Juno whatnot winning the Women’s Prize for Fiction. And a few people fawning. Meanwhile women’s stories remain untold.

To put it bluntly, it’s happened before for women, people of colour and currently working-class voices.

Well, in some of those groups it was necessary

Of course, I didn’t think that needed to be spelt out.

I wasn’t talking about books or works of art/productions/scripts necessarily being about trans experiences, I meant works by trans authors & creators. I wouldn’t be surprised if Lily Madigan wrote an autobiography or even branched into YA. That’s the fictional genre where imo there definitely is a market and it already exists. Leading YA writer and Stonewall ambassador Juno Dawson Is trans. Although her books (which are excellent I believe) don’t tend to have trans main characters, although do feature some. I think the YA trans romance story may happen though. Many teenagers call themselves pan and/or are staunch trans allies - I’m not the only mother & teen daughter combo I know of whose don’t agree on self-ID...

I usually avoid the smugfest on Radio 4 that is The Museum of Curiosity but tonight's show has JK Rowling on so I'm giving it a listen.

As a bonus Bridget Christie is a current presenter of the programme.

Eugene Gu is still opining because another medic had the gumption to disagree with his response to JRK (respectfully):

Sweidan:
Dr. Gu - respectfully you are physiologically/biologically incorrect. Sex is defined by gametes. I support transgender rights. However, sex is a biological definition. Gender is fluid. Ms. Rowling is correct. To argue against her is to argue against science
twitter.com/ajsweidan/status/1208463702552264704

Gu:
Attending physicians from #MedTwitter come on social media to spout transphobic ideas and pass it off as medicine. There are intersex individuals who can produce both gametes and classifying sex as non-binary rather than bimodal is medical malpractice for your intersex patients. [Thread, of course.]

twitter.com/eugenegu/status/1209169793514762246?s=20

As ever, the lack of actual understanding of DSDs is disappointing.

Yes, there is already some trans literature in the genre LGBT, but it really is a niche genre. Also, I'm sure the erotica genre will have a new examples, though I'd guess mostly by indies , ie self-published. LGB erotica is already relatively big. The T is no doubt waiting in the wings, again piggybacking on the gay movement. But it will never be commercial enough.

And you are right about more writers being in demand. I "know" some of these writers.

I work in literary arts programming and 2020 offerings include a rash of gender queer offerings. If you aren’t trans or allied, you aren’t welcome. There has already been a twitter based shitstorm over an alleged misgendering (which was actually deadnaming, which actually wasn’t, because the person concerned had actually registered using their ‘dead name’. Questions of identity and colonialism abound.
I’m looking forward to 2020, when I’ll probably get sacked for not having pronouns in my signature block.
I don’t share the optimism of lamahaha. Our local uni has a creative writing prof that walked into a tenured position without a PhD on the back of a recent transition. No single white female need apply for an academic position in a creative department. (I use white to denote the particular horror reserved for white feminism.)
The majority of my time is spent trying to guess people’s pronouns by stalking social media, lest I bring down the sky.

There are intersex individuals who can produce both gametes

I want information on this, because I'm fairly certain this is plain not true. Can anyone brilliant confirm?

And again (and again and again and again) people born with DSDs do NOT prove perfectly typical biologically male people turn into females at will. Any more than people born with no legs prove that I can shed limbs at will.

The future is already here in poetry, not sure about literary fiction. 'Queer' voices are dominant, and the 'white c*s heteronormative canon' is to be set on fire, apparently.

Our local uni has a creative writing prof that walked into a tenured position without a PhD on the back of a recent transition

That's shocking. Someone I know with three publications (novels, mainstream publishing), a 20 year history of teaching creative writing in private and tertiary settings AND a PhD is struggling to get anything more in a university setting than casual, sessional work. And they are of colour. I should tell them to ID as non-binary.

If they are female, I wouldn’t get their hopes up. Male, absolutely. Done deal.

I think the difference with historical efforts to get working class, female and black voices represented in literature (all still under-represented, btw, which is one of the reasons I am so ??? at the willingness to ditch these efforts for something more fashionable) is that the writers from these groups were largely non-authoritarian.

There's a very clear difference between asserting your own literary voice, experience and text, even if that means taking space from others, and not only asserting your own voice and taking space, but also demanding that others who are not you conform to your vision of the text.

As always, women writers, working class writers, writers of color and LBG writers will cop the inevitable backlash that's coming from the literary establishment.

I should add for clarity - some 'queer' poets are decent poets. I tend not to like their work, because it is often dense and self-referential in a way I don't respond to stylistically, but IDing as 'queer' or 'trans' or 'NB' does not mean being talentless. There are likely a few 'queer' poets whose work will last.

Michelle yes it is true but very rare. A chimera can occur if a foetus absorbs its twin, and could therefore have some cells with different DNA from others. Still only 2 gametes though.

Male, absolutely. Done deal

There was a point in the late 90's, early 2000's, when post-colonialism was all the rage, and this person was consistently invited to opine on this having no interest or no background in post-colonialism. They write within the mainstream (white) tradition, and the invitations were solely on the basis of race.

It's interesting to me how quickly universities have moved on from their stated desire to right the wrongs of post-colonialism, in favour of a new trend.

I will mention it to them (not as a serious suggestion, of course, but as a factor in the difficulties they are currently having - zero academic papers on queering Proust!)

Another friend of a friend is in a department where they are writing a book on a famous GC feminist, and no-one in the dept will engage with her on her work. Racism is passe, sexism is passe, classism was never NOT passe...

Nachthexe (like your name -- are you really?) I can believe that you're right and that T is very trendy right now. I was referring though to them becoming a commercial success. Think New York Times, or (and this is the big one; NYT is I believe for hardback) Amazon Top 100 bestsellers. If you look at the latter list you'll see it's dominated by a few genres: romance, crime/thriller, psychological fiction. This requires thousands of book sales a day. I can't see that happening, frankly... readers aren't adventurous.

^ was just about to correct: psychological suspense (not fiction)

@nachthexe yep depressingly my experience. I’ve more of less bowed out of the work I was doing in a certain field. Doing that work well means being able to play with ideas in a safe space, but a space isn’t creative or safe for me if I can’t politely object to gender neutral toilets or people being able to change sex without fearing total hostility.

intersex individuals that can produce both gamates

Wikipedia
Humans can rarely be born with both types of gonadal tissue ( ovarian and tesicular) but there is no documented case of a human having both types of tissue that actually functions. Most people with both types of tissue are infertile, but some can make eggs or more rarely sperm

#ownvoices is such crap. How is anyone supposed to have a lasting career if you can ONLY write about characters like yourself? No matter how many diversity boxes you tick, eventually the times will change and you won't be trendy anymore.
And if your experience of being X doesn't line up with the prescribed version you'll get in trouble anyway.

#ownvoices is such crap

Yep. It undermines the very point of fiction.

Thank you MIdge and Endo

My very first essay as an undergrad in the early nineties was essentially ‘can you write about a subject if you haven’t experienced it’. I actually got a C in part because I argued that it was impossible to fully depict something you hadn’t experienced. (In my defence, the subject referenced was quite niche and I got sidetracked by an obligation to myself and others with experience, and apparently forgot that I was answering an Eng Lit question )
These days, my complete gaffe and utter lack of thought would probably have resulted in an A. It’s a bizarre world where a lack of critical thinking is lauded.

It’s a bizarre world where a lack of critical thinking is lauded.

It's a world that's very good for the 'leaders'.

Michelle yes it is true but very rare. A chimera can occur if a foetus absorbs its twin, and could therefore have some cells with different DNA from others. Still only 2 gametes though.

Claire Graham writes useful accounts about DSDs and lots of mythology around them (confirming that particular types are very rare; debunking the 'same prevalence as redheads' or whatever that trope is):

mrkhvoice.com/index.php/2019/08/01/why-do-trans-activists-claim-to-be-intersex/