Authors quit JK Rowling's literary agency

[donquixotedelamancha]

www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jun/22/authors-quit-jk-rowling-agency-over-transgender-rights

The ever entertaining TRA power couple Fox and Owl were apparently represented by the same agents as the wonderful Ms Rowling.

They, along with some bloke called Drew Davies, have severed ties because the agents refused to issue a public statement slagging off their biggest client.

Being bastions of professionalism they left by telling the guardian.

A google about suggests that Fox Fisher was employed by Mermaids to film their ‘secret retreats’.

Although someone seems to have made an attempt at cleaning up a few of the references to this online?

arts.brighton.ac.uk/arts/news-and-events/articles/transformingmedia

I couldn’t get the Fox Fisher.com link to open, so it’s just a screenshot from google, saying that Fox attended Mermaids secret retreats to show films, to chat with...’

The next screenshot is the LinkedIn page for MyGenderation, showing a founding date of 2013 (pre Owl-era)

And then way down the google rankings comes this interview:

llamapost.com/2014/12/07/fox-fisher-trans-activist-gender-documenter-artist/

(Screenshot of relevant section)

So Fisher (F) is a long term fixture of Susie Green’s PR machine (internally and externally).

[quote TheSingingKettle49]@Lamahaha I’ve just read it and I’m shocked that they are supposedly professional writers, it reads like a 14 year olds homework that they forgot and had to do on the bus. Maybe I should go into publishing, I’m shit at writing too! [/quote]
You could pen a novel about 4 unemployed writers

I've had a look for the Guardian Instagram story, and can't find it. Can anyone do a link please?

Just watched that video. So much to unpack

The “deviant” comment. The assertion that children of two or three knowing that they’re trans, just like they know which flavour of squash they want and whether they prefer pink or blue (er, that seems to be the point that Fox was making). Fox talking about being misunderstood as a bad and naughty child, a tomboy, but Fox wasn’t bad, Fox was trans. Fox going through the “wrong puberty”.

Hoo boy.

Link to the vlog here if anyone else wants to watch it.

drive.google.com/file/d/171cgzvR6b2Tv1XT9Re9lCGg7iMh5Ho45/view

Guardian insta on this
www.instagram.com/p/CBvkw3ToJrn/?igshid=1ue89cacvy9gy

Link to the vlog here if anyone else wants to watch it.

Oh god, that bit at the end- fox claims that a child was taken away from his mum by social services just for being trans.

Abusers are very convincing liers. There is simply no way SS can take a child from a home where care is at an acceptable level. Spreading this sort of myth is very dangerous.

To be fair on Fox, I didn't get the impression that they are saying that they think it is deviant to be LGB, but rather that it is thought by some to be deviant and therefore it wasn't helpful to associate being trans with being LGB because it might also be considered deviant by association. Maybe I'm too charitable.

I'm a bit confused about this.
Their publishing agents gave them a platform for a transgender voice, where they published books about being transgender teens.
Now, they have resigned from their publishing agent (ergo losing that voice) and are saying that the agent didn't do enough for trans rights and equality? The agents have evidenced their support for genuine freedom of speech, there. All fox and owl have done is evidence their belief that the only speech that should be free is their own. Ergh. Get gone.

Cutting nose off to spite face comes to mind.

They also seemed to be making the point that being trans is about [notions of] gender rather than about sexuality and that therefore they don’t go together. Finally they seemed also to be dying that gender was relevant to small children in a way that sexuality isn’t and therefore talking about LGB in that context was unhelpful.

*saying

I mean, if I was going to play 'whose the most deviant'.....
What an odd comment, perhaps revealing some intolerance in their world somewhere.

I'd go with their suggestion trans isn't about being LGB. Obviously. So why the TQI etc alliance?

I remember when a bit of S&M or B&D was a bedroom choice, and no one's business but your own.

Now it's as if everything has to be acknowledged and a public lifestyle choice.

I don't believe that it's playing out how they they thought it would. In fact it's going the opposite way. This is the thing about Twitter and remaining in your echo chamber. Real life is rather different.

Last week’s Newsnight report on the NHS. paediatric gender identity service mentions multiple incidences of homophobia:

www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-51806962

Susie Green has been lobbying GIDS and coaching kids on what to say in assessments for years. There is clearly a massive problem with homophobia within Mermaids (not saying all families of ‘trans kids’ are motivated by homophobia, simply that it’s present in the culture that Mermaids has built - which was what Fox Fisher revealed in the video).

I agree that Fox’s ‘deviant-sort-of-thing’ was commentary about general views of Mermaids organisers and/or service users, rather than a personal belief of Fox’s. We don’t know whether Fox agrees or disagrees with that viewpoint, although Fox is clearly happy to be associated with Mermaids and has been working with/for Mermaids for a number of years (The My Genderation website suggestS buying the ‘Trans Teens Survival Guide’ book via an Amazon link that benefits Mermaids, for example).

Screenshot:

To be fair on Fox, I didn't get the impression that they are saying that they think it is deviant to be LGB, but rather that it is thought by some to be deviant and therefore it wasn't helpful to associate being trans with being LGB because it might also be considered deviant by association. Maybe I'm too charitable.

I think what you've got to ask yourself is, why would Fox think it was reasonable/acceptable to pander to homophobia simply to push the trans agenda?

Totally agree Eresh. I just don’t like it when an out of context, un-nuanced sound bite or narrative gets let loose.

But why would people who are supportive of trans consider an LGB person to be deviant? Could it be that homophobia or at least some prejudice of LGB is prevalent in a significant number of parents who are keen to put their kids on puberty blockers?

Which is what the Newsnight report last week said, Flapjak.

I've transcribed Fox's comment and I just cannot, with the best will in the world, make head or tail of it.

'It doesn’t help to have Trans, the T, latched onto LGB because when it comes to kids I do believe … uh, yeah well, obviously, when it, you know for anyone, we’re talking about gender we’re not talking about sexuality, and that kind of muddies the waters a little bit because - uh - people start to think it’s a deviant kind of thing.'

Ah, okay, found the rest of the clip. My word, what a lot of absolute codswallop. A child can tell you if they like pink or blue, therefore they are ready to know that they are trans? Where does this nonsense come from?

• and yes, definitely using the word 'deviant' in reference to homosexuality, there. How very unpleasant. How very telling.

There is so much fallacy in there, it's hard to know where to start.

They know if they like orange squash or milk, so they know if they are trans.
No, one is a momentary, changeable choice with no influence on anything else or on the future. Being transdermal as a child is not.

They know if the like pink or blue so they know if they're trans.
Liking pink and being a boy does not equal trans.

And on and on. What a load of cobblers!

The child also presumably knows what both orange squash and milk taste like, so can make an informed choice as to which they like better. The child has no clue what it would be like to be the opposite sex, and no understanding of what "trans" might mean, and will not reach the level of abstract reasoning required to understand that concept for quite some time.