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

[WildishBambino]

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.

Gillian if you're reading, do you need any help? Are you looking to bring any legal challenges? If you're passing the hat round, get word out.

@NearlyGranny

Do you think this author, less well known and influential than JKR, has been targeted as a sort of whipping boy, just because they could? A proxy victim because they couldn't get Rowling herself sacked?

Absolutely

I'd guess she's not an employee so no recourse to tribunals.

This reminds me of the beautiful but sad blog shared here by Wild Women Writing Club with stories from women writers and artists who had been hounded out of their livelihoods for wrongthink and it struck me then that the arts is a very difficult area to make a living in, there must be a huge temptation to destroy competitors and "cancel culture" makes it easy and morally justifiable. I wonder if that is why her writing collective dropped her (if that's what happened) - the money to share between fewer people.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if JKR could put together a huge mass lawsuit representing all the woman who have been hounded and sacked from their jobs for speaking a biological truth.

Gillian, if you are reading, I am so sorry this has happened to you. You were incredibly brave to speak up when thousands are too afraid.

She may not have an employment law claim, but her work collective will be covered by some sort of contract which may have been breached.

Lionel Shriver, JKR, Gillian. Where are the other GC authors? The big hitters need to be looking after the less well known. There needs to be a collective fight back. They can't take everyone down.

Why are these big companies bowing down to these nobodies?

Tbh, a list of publishers who have done this kind of thing would be useful. 'Who to avoid in publishing'.

@justanotherneighinparadise

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if JKR could put together a huge mass lawsuit representing all the woman who have been hounded and sacked from their jobs for speaking a biological truth.

Better yet, launch a new imprint that is feminist-friendly.

Wow. Just read that twitter cache. vile.
The Warrior Cats books are charming, children's adventures. Bit odd - cats being all co-operative in clans, but good fun. They were massively popular with my yr7s a couple of years ago, and still get borrowed.
The bizarre comments show that these books also (like HP) attract that strange 'adult' fandom, people who are now angry to find that one of the authors does not subscribe to their every quirk.
Unbelievable that a serious business would give these unhinged people any credence at all.
I mean, I've read a couple, and I can talk about them, but it's my job to know about children's literature; I don't invest my emotional well being in it....

Chris Snowdon is one of the directors. Charles Nettleton is the other.

Chris Snowdon is on LinkedIn.

Polite letters of support might be helpful. And no, she won’t be employed, she will be contracted to each individual book to which she contributes.

Young adult and teen books are the worst genre for this type of censorship. Those editing them employ “sensitivity readers”.

The original editor of Warriors was Victoria Holmes. The readers decided one of the stories she created did not fit with the canon and worse, one of the older cats had a relationship with one of the much younger cats. There were threats and death-wishes towards Holmes and an astonishing furore. Almost like a precursor to the reaction to JK Rowling.

www.reddit.com/r/WarriorCats/comments/67x9b2/out_of_the_loop_why_did_vicky_holmes_leave/

Hello all, I have been lurking since finding out about the whole JK Rowling saga. Hope it's alright if I join the MN sisterhood even if I'm a couple of years off from being a mum yet!

Could we support Gillian by all buying one of her books en masse? I'm not familiar with her work but looking on Amazon there is one called "Bad Faith" which could work. If anyone has an idea of how we could make an impact with something like that, my wallet is open and ready to support (another) brave female author!

Bad Faith is a very good book, no one who buys it will be disappointed! What makes me utterly furious about the sacking of Gillian Philip is that she has never made a transphobic comment or any hate speech against trans people. But simply agreeing with another writer that sex cannot be wished away, is a sackable offence?! I am getting tired of this shit.

What the fuck is going on in this country when women are being sacked for receiving sexual abuse

It's a fecking joke

Bad Faith is a very good book, no one who buys it will be disappointed!

This is a nice idea. We could also leave positive reviews, having done so. I have loved it in the past when women have rallied round businesses and people who have been attacked.

Just to be clear, the writers who work on Warrior Cats are not a collective, they are all employed by HC and it is HC and HC only who made the decision to push Gillian off a cliff to appease the trans activists howling for her blood because she simply added a hashtag that said she agreed with JK Rowling. So our protests should be directed solely at them.

Brilliant idea.
I just bought if from a link via her website .

She gets brilliant reviews for her books. Might be nice if the Blair Partnership were to take her on.

Bravelands are also Gillian's books and a sales spike might send the best protest to HC. Children's publishers are always banging on abut the 'gatekeepers', the people who buy books on behalf of children. They seem to have forgotten that the vast majority of gatekeepers are women, not the woke kids who they employ now that they have sacked senior staff!

I just wanted to pop by and say that I spotted a name on the Scottish letter of a female author that I read during university.
I enjoyed her novel and it made me smile to see her name there.
I won’t name her (for obvious reasons), but sending .

Bravelands also appear to be written by the collective "Erin Hunter" though. I don't want to send a message that I support the publisher that ousted Gillian for supporting women.

Why aren't comedians who have done blackface and been racist for years getting sacked? Why does it take years for LBC to notice that Hopkins and Farage are awful racists and that they should maybe sack them, when TRAs can target and get women authors cancelled at the drop of a hat?

More importantly, how do we communicate with people who support cancellation culture to get them to see why it's such a problem before something they care about is canceled?

Gillian has got in touch with the Free Speech Union and we're seeing what we can to help.

Quite a few gender critical feminists have joined the FSU, perhaps because they saw us standing up for Selina Todd when she was no-platformed at Oxford.

If you go to the Blogs section of our website, you can see how we've tried to help Stella Perrett and Posey Parker.

freespeechunion.org/blog/

This is awful to read. My children both absolutely adore Gillian's Ravenstorm Island books.

@talesofginza

Hello all, I have been lurking since finding out about the whole JK Rowling saga. Hope it's alright if I join the MN sisterhood even if I'm a couple of years off from being a mum yet!

Could we support Gillian by all buying one of her books en masse? I'm not familiar with her work but looking on Amazon there is one called "Bad Faith" which could work. If anyone has an idea of how we could make an impact with something like that, my wallet is open and ready to support (another) brave female author!

Brilliant idea, @talesofginza, thank you for the suggestion.

[quote TobyYoung]Gillian has got in touch with the Free Speech Union and we're seeing what we can to help.

Quite a few gender critical feminists have joined the FSU, perhaps because they saw us standing up for Selina Todd when she was no-platformed at Oxford.

If you go to the Blogs section of our website, you can see how we've tried to help Stella Perrett and Posey Parker.

freespeechunion.org/blog/[/quote]
Thanks Toby and welcome to Mumsnet!