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.

I feel sorry for them.

Me too, actually. However annoying they are.

They are simply papering over the cracks to navigate a patriarchal society.

I wish they would go one or two steps further on, and realise that what they are doing is profoundly counter-productive

I know. They have the mindset of some confused and somewhat unhappy teenagers. But in the bodies of considerably older people. That’s a trans situation right there - minds not aligning with evidence of the body...

This is why I won’t collude in affirming them as whatever they say they are. This degree of arrested development and narcissism is not healthy beyond the age of - say - 18.

I wish them the peace of the middle aged woman. In some ways I am raging at everything but as to controlling how people see me and what they think of me and all that - I couldn’t give a shit. Five decades of being a woman and taking all the crap that comes with it will do that to a person

But agree - their thinking is so nearly there. There’s going to be some major shoring up to be done over the next few years to keep them safely in this mind bunker. Imagine the fear when doubts start to creep in ....

They are simply papering over the cracks to navigate a patriarchal society

Yeah, I've always thought along these lines as well.

I wouldn't go as far as feeling sorry for them - they are incredibly patronising, and adding hugely to the damage of young people by promoting gender ideology/Mermaids/puberty blockers etc.

But they are just coping with patriarchy/gender stereotypes - just like radical feminists - but coming from a different angle from us. So we say - fuck gender stereotypes, a girl can be a physicist and have short hair, and a boy can like pink and feminine things and still be a boy - they say kids! Change your bodies so you fit in with those gender stereotypes.

And I know which one I think is the best approach - and it doesn't involve medicalising kids.

I wish them the peace of the middle aged woman.

Oh, I love that line. 😁

I understand the empathetic posts, but I'm not able to get there, the same as I'm not able to do it for Jette-Knox.

Maybe in their naivete and good intent, they are doing their best, and being used by others with more nefarious intent, but they still have a significant platform.and influence which is actually damaging lives.

Well, they've built their entire lives & careers on being trans, it seems. I can sympathise a bit, but they're not teenagers; at some point one has to take responsibility for life choices and develop self awareness.

I wouldn't pass judgement on those choices if they weren't proselytising to impressionable children and young people. Nobody would be even discussing them if they didn't keep making these daft moral stands - as it is I can never remember which is which.

I've known some men who with a bit of knowledge that I didn't have 20 or 30 years ago I'd say are probably AGP who get along fine with women, and though I'd definitely not be up for having that brought into my sex life in a roleplaying sort of way that's about pretending to be a woman rather than just looking feminine I didn't mind it in general, and some of them were actually lovely people. It's specifically that thing where they go from "I like femininity" or even "I find femininity sexy" to "and that means I actually am a woman, somehow" where the line from man with somewhat unusual interests to man whose delusions make him a threat to women and very unpleasant to be around is crossed, as far as I can tell. Maybe it's just the subcultures I've been involved with, but I wonder if a lot of men are a little bit AGP in terms of femininity and sexiness and particularly sexiness in a more sort of receptive rather than aggressive way being all jumbled up in their heads. I guess the other thread someone started explains the psychology of it all in terms of what leads to some men crossing that line from playing around with it into it becoming an obsession that will ruin their life and the lives of the women around them. Like, think of the famous gender benders of the 70s and 80s - is that AGP, or some variation of it? Maybe that's the way the same underlying impulse manifests in men who're basically mentally healthy and who actually like women.

(Going back to conversation on previous page, sorry)

I am so impressed with that agency. They didn’t have to put out a statement like that - it wasn’t exactly brave but it doesn’t sit on the fence either.

Was the self-publishing comment a joke? Agents are fucking gold!

But then you get into, well, why are these things (makeup, more flamboyant clothing, trying to look sexy in a way that's about attracting the gaze of others) "feminine" anyway? Why are these not just things that some people like and others don't? It's so hard to disentangle what's just people trying to enjoy whatever they happen to enjoy within the bounds of what society says is appropriate for women versus for men and what's specifically about wanting to pretend to be a woman (or pretend to be a man I suppose, it's not as common among female transitioners but there's definitely a subset steeped in yaoi and online roleplaying for whom that is a factor and very much sexualized), especially given that so many of the men who are hardcore AGP are often dishonest about their motivations and in some cases not really self aware enough to be honest even if they were willing to be. It's one of those things where, OK, there are some cases where the fetishy nature of it all is so incredibly obvious that there's no way to miss it, but there are also cases where what you seem to have is just a man who has always liked "girl" things who may over time get those things mixed up with the idea that liking them means he's "supposed" to be a woman because society doesn't really cope well with the idea of men liking those things. So are those two hypothetical men suffering from the same condition, just to a different extent and with differing abilities to process it in a psychologically healthy way, or are these totally different and unlinked?

I've been thinking about it a lot recently, kind of mulling over the men who I know/have known who were for lack of a better word very "girly" but who see themselves as men and wondering how they fit in to the overall pattern.

(Again,apologies if everyone else has moved on already and I'm boring people, feel free to ignore if not interested.)

On this - "They wear wedding rings and staged a “protest wedding” in 2017, because, being both legally female — Fox still has a female birth certificate — they are not yet able to have the non-binary marriage they would like."

Why does it matter what "gender" the form records for them? If they want to get married they can, why does the government paperwork bit have to reflect their deep inner essences? That's not what the government is for.

They really are fighting their own shadows aren't they.

I read in another interview that they only joined the agency in September but then go on to say that they started complaining about tweets in December, and by June have gone. So the majority of the short time with the agency they were trying to control what the business was allowed to say.

Educators?

I suppose it could be that they joined the agency with the specific goal of educating publishing, but I'd tend to go with more of the Occams razor view that these are just people who will be massively controlling and so obsessive about it that they'll fall out with people wherever they go and whatever they're involved in.

And then say that 'every day we face abuse'.

I don't believe for a second that fox and owl face abuse daily.
They live in Brighton and surround themselves with like minded people. They are self employed so don't have to work with anyone they don't want to.
Unless people are abusing them BECAUSE they are obnoxious wankers on the TV sometimes, they are NOT being abused on a regular basis.

I think these two define abuse as "awareness that someone, somewhere, thinks differently from me".

I'm quite impressed with the article in the Standard - gives them a fair hearing but does actually challenge.

Comments are also heartening.

To a narcissist people not thinking they're wonderful is "abuse".

I do like how that article was written in the Standard. It described Fox and Owl in their own words with their own arguements with no drama and the results were very telling.

The pair are also accusing the head of the company, Neil Blair, of retweeting “quite a lot of transphobic posts” from other people and have sent some screenshots to prove their point. @HadleyFreeman, for example, had tweeted: “As a sidenote, I really think if these actors are now so mortified to be associated with J K Rowling and her words, they ought to donate to charity all the money they’ve made by speaking her words. But maybe slagging off a woman, getting the cred and keeping the cash is simpler.”

This does not seem transphobic, but Owl and Fox are unequivocal. “While these tweets might not be seen as transphobic or abusive on face value, they are endorsing a very particular point of view, which is very misleading and feeds into toxic narratives. It’s clear to us where he stands and what he believes, which is that trans people aren’t who they say they are.”

It is toxic and transphobic to disbelieve someone who claims they have changed from a man into a woman or vice versa. Okaaaaay.

@LillianBland

I wish them the peace of the middle aged woman.

Oh, I love that line. 😁

brilliant!

It’s clear to us where he stands and what he believes, which is that trans people aren’t who they say they are

Pretty sure no one is denying that Fox and Owl are, y'know, Fox and Owl. It's more a case of disagreeing with what they say they are.

So are those two hypothetical men suffering from the same condition, just to a different extent and with differing abilities to process it in a psychologically healthy way, or are these totally different and unlinked?

Of course they're linked; they're both instances of men internalising sexist stereotypes about femininity and failing to adequately separate stereotype from biological reality. Standard bloke stuff, in other words.

Plenty of difference too, obviously - the latter group are likely to have faced rather different behavioural policing from their peers, and I'd charitably call them confused and in need of feminist consciousness-raising rather that actively malevolent. But at heart it's sexist stereotypes all the way, regardless of whether it's a case of getting off on the shackles of our oppression or just happening to like stuff that our society codes as pink.

Anybody see Andrew Doyle's article about JK today?
Never heard of him but article is mocking those who demonise her for "radical" beliefs that men and women have different anatomies.

@Keto where is that article published?