The latest in UK children's publishing and the racism of gender ideology

[notyourhandmaid]

For anyone not aware, children's publishing is pretty woke...

The current crisis is a 'known transphobe' being appointed to - essentially - write some blogs. Authors, agents and others in the field are earnestly sharing their vague denouncements - sample here.

twitter.com/Magic_Kitten/status/1369064586029240320
twitter.com/claravulliamy/status/1369181157795971072
twitter.com/alibelle/status/1368961402287894530
twitter.com/andtheHare/status/1369067423006097410
twitter.com/ldlapinski/status/1369209722407186432

This is the awful woman they refer to - an award-winning writer for young people, who also runs two charities, one looking at the trafficking of girls and women in the UK, and the other providing funds for refugee aid teams.
www.booktrust.org.uk/news-and-features/writer-in-residence/#!?q=&sortOption=MostRecent&pageNo=1

The accusations of 'transphobia' are based on a speech at a WPUK meeting in Sept 2019 womansplaceuk.org/2019/10/01/the-sheer-audacity-of-our-existence/

"As I look around in today’s world, I see more and more bewildered women and girls feeling confused, alienated and afraid.
Women like myself and my Sikh or Hindu or Jewish friends who need single-space places to safely unveil, wash up and reconfigure ourselves; or women who are breastfeeding and lactating and needing a space to let it all hang out; or women going through the menopause or chemotherapy who need safe spaces to just be looked after, or young girls on their first ever periods or sprouting breasts who need space for support and reassurance."

As with JKR's essay, there is no suggestion that people might actually read things for themselves and make up their own minds. The writer's been labelled as one of the bad ones. That's it.

These are mostly (though not exclusively) white, middle-class women criticising a woman of colour who writes about and works to support refugees, victims of domestic violence, victims of trafficking. But not overtly - perhaps because they know that it would look incredibly racist to do so (many of them have condemned JKR on more than one occasion). Perhaps because 'transphobia' is supposed to come from 'the far right' and be allied with 'white supremacy'. Perhaps because they know that with all the evidence to hand, no one in their right mind would think that someone like this is 'bad' rather than 'good'.

It reminds me of the abuse Hibo Wardere and other FGM campaigners get, for focusing on material reality rather than inner identities. And it reminds me of the ways in which 'black women' and 'trans women' are so often paired together as the groups that must be included in your definition of 'women', as though these are simply two different kinds of women when 'black women' is an obvious subset of 'women'. It just seems so unbelievably privileged and the kind of behaviour that gender ideologues/TRAs claim GC feminists engage in.

The level of DARVO-ing is too much sometimes!

lots of cis there though...

its a cautious article but there isnt a clear way forward i guess.

I know. She would have been pilloried for not using the term, though.

She's gone again?

twitter.com/redbreastedbird/status/1369581944351186947

This California-born blonde straight white woman of extreme middle-class-ness dares lecture people on what it was like growing up gay in the UK under Section 28.

And conflates gay rights and trans rights, as she did when a criticism of her portrayal of a lesbian teenage girl in 1930s England led her to... do a fundraiser for Mermaids. (It was a lovely portrayal and something many posters here would champion if it didn't also mean cheering on a cruel bully)

She's younger than me and went to Cheltenham Ladies College. Amount of times she stood up for male schoolmates being picked on for being gay is gonna be nil.

So she can fuck right off with lecturing the rest of us.

Nothing smells as bad as privileged women giving away the rights of less privileged women to earn woke cookies

This isn't the first time I've dug into a younger woman's background and discovered they went to a girls' single-sex school either, btw. Interesting, eh.

[quote notyourhandmaid]I'm glad to see Maz Evans is back! Before this went down, she wrote a great piece for The Bookseller on 'the climate of fear' (citing Ishiguro) - www.thebookseller.com/blogs/climate-fear-1239411[/quote]
Don’t suppose anyone saw Maz Evans’ response, before she deleted her account again? She was such a thoughtful voice on Twitter. It’s such a shame. Hopefully she’ll be back again in due course.

I remain extremely disappointed in general writerly Twitter for promoting this ‘transphobic’ narrative. I note there’s a big reactionary counter-push to get Juno Dawson’s latest book What the T into school libraries as a response to this Booktrust appointment. It’s so ... urgh. I don’t know. Onjali Rauf’s books don’t need countering with trans-positive non-fiction. Onjali Rauf’s books in schools (or her speaking in schools etc) aren’t about her personal opinion of women’s only spaces. (But if I was her I might be thinking up characters and plots...) Why do the two need to be connected?

Plus Juno Dawson’s book is hardly going to suffer from terrible sales as it will be flagged on any LGBTQI reading list and school librarians will order it anyway (alongside Juno’s This Book is Gay - written when the author was gay.)

It’s just all so fucking disappointing.

@NecessaryScene1

the main character in her series is an Asian girl within a very white British school. So she talks about the importance of diversity - while herself being a white woman who engages in this kind of bullying behaviour.

That sounds very problematic. Is the performative woke bullying an attempt to stave off her own cancellation for "writing while the wrong race"? The rest of the pack could presumably tear her down in an instant if they got the sniff of wrongthink.

Robin Stevens is married to the co-founder of Knights Of, an excellent indie children’s publisher (& bookshop) who are committed to diverse voices. She won’t get torn down for wrongthink this side of Never.

So it’s not that at all. I think it comes from a very genuine place, wanting diversity and also the ‘Be Nice’ affirmation narrative. (As well as being good friends with people like Juno Dawson etc who are trans - it’s a small world.) Doesn’t stop her position on this being uncritical and unkind on social media.

She’s a great writer for children. As is Onjali Rauf. As is Maz Evans. As are some of the other writers supporting one side or the other.

I think agenders rather than genders are the real issue. No one should be pushing agenders (or, indeed, gender) at children.

Just bought two of Her books. The boy at the back of the class and The star outside my window.

If you come from a privileged background, I suspect the struggles of Juno Dawson et al are a bit easier to empathise with than, oooh, the problems of refugee girls with a bit of a foreign accent, who wear hijab and want a single-sex school toilet to adjust their hijab in.

@PotholeParadies

This isn't the first time I've dug into a younger woman's background and discovered they went to a girls' single-sex school either, btw. Interesting, eh.

It is interesting, is t it? I’ve never thought about it from this perspective before, but if you spent your formative teen years in a school where you actually are never exposed to the whole male gaze thing (in fact, you might desire it as it’s so absent) then you might not instinctively understand how important that female-only space can be. Familiarity breeds contempt, maybe? Plus if you’re used to a supportive female-only environment perhaps you become more generous about the idea of extending it to others (trans etc) who you believe would fit in/benefit from that - rather than being automatically on the defensive.

Plus single-sex schools are pretty much exclusively middle class and up, aren’t they? Not many single sex comprehensives in deprived areas that I know of.

NoSquirrels & PotholeParadies
I find it an interesting observation too but I went to a single sex school & we were all well aware that when we left the gates to run cross country or get on the bus home our safe bubble was burst & we had men/boys commenting on our uniform etc if anything it has always highlighted the importance of single sex spaces to me

I would imagine the middle class factor is the bigger issue

The part I can never understand is why a woman who is happy for spaces to be mixed sex doesn’t defer to the women who say they are unhappy - why on earth do they imagine that their consent can be transferred to others?

I guess I’m thinking single sex boarding schools rather than day schools, gibbons (Steven ms was a weekly boarder I think) but point taken, yes. And I agree middle class is the main issue.

I think there are lot of interesting phenomena going on in general. Joe Biden, for example, is on the record as having not been on the side of gay rights. I personally think he feels guilty about having made the wrong call now and sees supporting trans rights as his second chance.

Amongst people younger than us, I think there's an element of wanting to prove they would have been the "good guys" about gay rights if they'd had the opportunity to do so. Reading about historical struggles, if you are of a thoughtful frame of mind (and even the worst writers are!), is always a bit challenging, because you automatically ask yourself, "and where would I have been in this?" instead of merrily assuming you would have been a mainstay of the resistance.

It's why section 28 gets brought up again and again. They think this proves they would have campaigned against it too, if they'd been born early enough.

"It's why section 28 gets brought up again and again. They think this proves they would have campaigned against it too, if they'd been born early enough."

And yet they don't take the time to stop and wonder why so many of the generation who were there, who did actually campaign against Section 28, are now the ones expressing concern about the huge increase in teenagers seeking to transition, especially girls? It's not 'getting more conservative as you get older': it's a generation who grew up before social media and increasingly misogynistic online porn, seeing the impact of it on those who have never known anything but.

Worse than that, they will outright declare that other people must have supported S.28. They just can't compute that we didn't.

Agree 100 percent with your assessment of Biden Potholes. He seems to think supporting trans is about not discriminating against those who look and love differently. While part of that is true, I don't think there's been much thought at all about sex-based protections for women and girls.

Thinking about it more I suppose part of it is that a lot of well-intentioned, left-leaning liberals don't expect oppressed groups to blatantly lie. The extremist trans lobby regularly lies that trans people are the most oppressed in the world ever, that being trans is closely equivalent to being gay, and that once you say you are trans, that's it, you definitely are and there could be no other factors in that decision - ands people don't think to question that. I'd put Biden in that camp certainly.

It takes looking into it more closely to understand that statistics are being twisted and misrepresented, that there's a lot of fetishism and men's rights activism associated with trans extremism and the urge to be MTF, that many people from teen girls to male sex offenders in prison could have other reasons for announcing they are "trans" - and that the whole concept of "transgender" (as opposed to transsexual) doesn't stand up to logical interrogation.

TRAs use the history of homophobia and the fight for gay rights as a way to get unquestioning support, because no one wants to be a nasty bigoted old homophobe, and trans is the same thing right? This leads them to accept the idea that those questioning the whole thing are hateful bigots who just hate people for being "different" - even though that makes no sense on closer inspection.

In children's literature/publishing, the focus is often on the child and on the lovely, cosy and heartwarming concept of everyone being accepted and valued, even if they are "different" - countless picture books are about this. Or in older chapter books, the story is often written from the POV of the "different" character or their friend, and this is a big trend too. "Transgender" offers a whole new raft of publishing possibilities for this - as well as for "non-fiction" books encouraging kids to consider that they are the opposite sex or NB.

To understand that it's massively regressive and potentially horrifyingly harmful, you have to bring scientific and/or feminist analysis which most people in children's books don't have as they tend to be middle class arts graduates.

Worse than that, they will outright declare that other people must have supported S.28. They just can't compute that we didn't.

Yes one of the most mindblowing contradictions is claiming that anyone who questions trans ideology is a right-wing conservative bigot who would have opposed gay rights, while trying to impose trans ideology and trans women on radical feminist LESBIANS. Yes because lefty feminist lesbians are the ones who opposed gay rights...

Just bought Onjali's book and will be donating to her charities too.

I work in this industry and have personally met both Maz and Onjali. They were both absolutely delightful. Maz is great fun and has an amazing work ethic. I would have loved to have taken Onjali out for coffee so we could have properly talked about the things she's passionate about. She is doing SO MUCH GOOD in the world. She is striving to make life better for women, for refugees, she's utterly passionate about it. What's more, they both write brilliant books.

So Robin Stevens and Kiran MH - are they usually so vocal? I'm shocked, I had no idea! Are there other children's authors in the same group of voices?

I've been looking at second hand children's books recently - like the Puffins of the '70s and '80s - and it struck me that there seemed to have been a golden age of fiction for primary school aged children. Imaginative, unpretentious stories about ordinary children. Writers often from humble backgrounds themselves; men and women. Those books are just so alive and enlivening.

I look at the landscape now and I see a lot of fantasy novels by overprivileged young women who spend a lot of time on social media. A lot of David Walliams type silly stuff aimed at boys.

Was it ever thus, and we only remember and keep the good stuff? Am I being unfair to the current crop of authors (I might be)?

You should speak to the author Rachel Rooney, who has been targeted by a group in the same way. I've seen some of it on twitter from members of this group.

(I don't mean to make the old Puffins sound all gritty and worthy - far from it! But the premise is usually "ordinary child from working-class family encounters a magical situation", you know?).