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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Yet another woman - a writer - sacked after TRA campaign.

230 replies

WildishBambino · 01/07/2020 16:12

Having seen Hachette and the Blair Partnership stand up for JKR, I had some hope for the publishing industry.

There's a series of children's books called The Warrior Cats. Proper children's books, aimed at the 8-12 age range, and not part of YA fiction. Published by Harper Collins, but put together by Working Partners.

The books are written by 'Erin Hunter' which is collective pseudonym for a bunch of female writers. One of which was a Scottish writer Gillian Philip.

When JKR was attacked, Philip changed her twitter handle to include a message of support. This attracted the ire of the TRAs and also it appears the Furries (because of the anthropomorphic cats I assume). She received a huge amount of sexualised abuse via Twitter, which she just retweeted and said 'Bring it on homophobes and lesbian-haters'.

Her twitter feed is now gone, but you can view a cache <a class="break-all" href="https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Qisq_6YhRvwJ:twitter.com/Gillian_Philip+&cd=8&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk&client=firefox-b-d" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">here

As she wouldn't recant, the TRAs facilitated a mass spamming of complaints to her employer Working Partners.

Within 24 hours James Noble is the managing editor at Working Partners personally emailed complainants to say she was sacked.

This really doesn't seem to have been picked up by the media, presumably because it involves a children's author far less well-known than JKR. But it shows what happens to women who step out of line when they aren't too big to cancel.

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gardenbird48 · 10/08/2020 08:43

[quote ScrimpshawTheSecond]Article on the daily mail site today:

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8490821/Best-selling-childrens-author-sacked-posting-hashtag-stand-JK-Rowling-Twitter.html?fbclid=IwAR1VulF1KLpQKajRcraBU7Bs4t-sxfxqg5mWgo8IOR7vZgagaCRzAnDoo7k[/quote]
Thanks for the interesting article - she has been treated so badly.
I don’t understand on what grounds her publishers could terminate her contract so suddenly - surely they can’t argue gross misconduct and therefore she could take them to an employment tribunal?
I guess Maya’s experience doesn’t bode well for that but I still can’t see how they have any legal grounds for sacking her without comeback. I know there is some great legal expertise on here but I know enough to be sure that it is quite hard to dismiss someone summarily without following due process or do women who express their opinions now automatically forfeit all legal employment protection?

WinterIsGone · 10/08/2020 08:49

Sadly, it's also not that prominent in The Times. It's in the Scotland section, because she's a Scottish author. However, this affects the whole country, in my opinion.

GameofPhones · 10/08/2020 10:21

Just bought 'Bad Faith' from Kindle. Her book 'Click Bait' also looks ironically relevant - anyone read it?

CatandtheFiddle · 10/08/2020 17:10

Has someone posted this link?

wildwomanwritingclub.wordpress.com/2020/06/10/what-it-costs-women_speak-out/

I think Ms Phillips story is in there.

It's shocking: women and girls all over the world are being raped, murdered and abused. In industrialised countries, we're still paid less than men, and suffer all sorts of direct and indirect discrimination because we are women. But the "progressive" thing to do is to sack & silence women?

CatandtheFiddle · 10/08/2020 17:15

Anyway, I just hope there is someone here in Columbus, OH, who would like to talk strategy for addressing these issues & maybe meet in person

ThatDonna, you could try Spinster. There seem to be more US-based feminists on Spinster than here - Mumsnet is a predominantly UK site.

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