TW nominated for the womens prize for fiction

[Kit19]

for fucks fucking sake!

"Peters’ longlisting comes after organisers clarified in 2020 that it was open to any “cis woman, a transgender woman or anyone who is legally defined as a woman or of the female sex”. “It’s a prize for women, and trans women are women, so …” said chair of judges and author Bernardine Evaristo."

Sounds pretty typical transactivist logic

Scream #nodebate
Harrass, threaten & dox women who raise questions
And then when women become afraid to put their real names to letters say “ha!! They don’t even use their real names, don’t listen to them”

It's an excellent letter. That there is no response to except the usual cries of bigotry. The Women's Prize don't appear to have a very good understanding of the law. Only male individuals with a GRC are "legally defined as women" in the EA2010. All other MTF trans people are legally defined as men with the protected characteristic of gender reassignment.

twitter.com/WomensPrize/status/1379794107107803137?s=20

Stonewall law in action, yet again.

Hi School librarian here (got the MSc, member of CILIP, fortunate to be employed by a school that values my expertise)
Very much in agreement with Jennie's comment
there should be some accountability about what is stocked - and why - in a school library. This isn't quite the same as advocating censorship....
All libraries should have a published policy on how the stock is chosen and maintained. When buying books for children the school and librarian have a duty of care - not the same as censorship - and should take pains to ensure that the material is age-appropriate, and factually accurate.
This is a time-consuming and skilled job. There's no way it will happen consistently without a dedicated librarian to do it. I consider the choice of books in my library part of my safeguarding duty to the students.
Sadly, we are an increasingly rare breed, and there are definitely things I say on this board that I wouldn't consider saying to most of the school librarians I know.

@DisgustedofManchester

Hasn't an open letter of complaint been submitted about including a trans author signed by many authors, many of whom, such as Daphne Du Maurier are in fact dead?

If people can decide that dead people like Marsha P Johnson were actually trans, I don’t see why we can’t also decide that dead people are actually alive.

Or you could just stop with the faux naivety and acknowledge that it’s patently obvious that some signatories to the letter were fearful of putting their real names on there because of the inevitable abuse they would receive.

A great response from WWWC:

https://wildwomanwritingclub.wordpress.com/2021/04/08/follow-up-the-the-open-letter-to-the-womens-prize/

The Women’s Prize seems confused about what the law enables it to do. It seems to be shifting the goalposts, and playing with language, in a manner which suggests it has taken legal & policy advice from Stonewall, or one of its subsidiaries, or even from the EHRC which has been “captured” by Stonewall’s biased misinterpretation of equality law.
https://legalfeminist.org.uk/2021/02/01/submission-and-compliance/
You may not have noticed that, in recent months, public institutions have been distancing themselves from Stonewall. The reasons for this have been debated in Parliament, and are set out in the report, below, which was sent to MPs in January 2021. In short, it has lobbied to remove women’s sex-based rights in law. However, it failed to do so when GRA reform was rejected. That you still adopted a gender self-ID policy speaks to the degree of confusion and misinformation deliberately caused by Stonewall.

Excellent follow up. I hope this gets publicity.

Serpent’s Tail (the publisher) have been tweeting about how proud they are of the book and how well it’s doing in the face of all the hate. One employee said they’d like to send a copy of ‘Detransition, Baby’ to every person who signed the open letter along with a photocopy of their hand with the middle finger extended. Delightful and not at all bullying... who’s denouncing that I wonder.

The women's prize twitter account now seem to have turned into a fan account just for that book, retweets of praise for it all over the place. They really cannot bow low enough can they? Shameful.

Vomit-inducingly cringey.

YouSetTheTone I didn't see that. Can you send a link to the tweet?

I actually really hope Torrey's book wins, it will open SO many eyes to what is going on.

@SmallPug

YouSetTheTone I didn't see that. Can you send a link to the tweet?

I’ve looked for it but I can’t find it. I swear I’m not going mad and I saw it. I remember raising my eyebrow and thinking it was strong language for a tweet from a publishing company employee. Is it possible to delete tweets without leaving a trace or does it say ‘tweet deleted’?

Can female authors really not compete equally with men ?
Do men or TW have some advantage I'm not seeing?

Can’t speak for men, though that probably speaks for itself. But I work with a company that churns out children’s and young adult books. I work with a female editor at the company. It’s very competitive -very difficult for writers to get a break with them.

My contact tells me the owners are desperate to find a bona fide trans author. Publishing is easily as captured as academia.

YouSetTheTone I think it is poss for it to delete if it was a tweet on its own and not in a chain. I've been really shocked to see the capture in publishing. Running out of people to respect.

SmallPug it was an original tweet so maybe it was deleted without trace. I’ve found the account it came from but no sign of it.
I work in publishing and I definitely know some GC people but I guess we’re mostly too scared to speak out.
My workplace as yet hasn’t made any move towards suggesting we use pronouns but I’ve decided that if they do I will decline and give my reasons why.

Responses to The Bookseller tweet with the WPFF statement in it are universally critical of WPFF so that was cheering at least.

YouSetTheTone I'm crap at mumsnet but can you DM me who it was? Knowing there are some others is like a small beacon of light. I'm beginning to feel like Winston smith.

Really peeved (to put it politely) that the i paper had a two page interview with the author with no mention of the controversy this decision has aroused or any background as to why. Shame on them.

@MummBraTheEverLeaking

The women's prize twitter account now seem to have turned into a fan account just for that book, retweets of praise for it all over the place. They really cannot bow low enough can they? Shameful.

Maybe that's why they're such admirers of Peters - women, submissive? Enjoy a slap in the face? Absolutely!

SmallPug - done!

@Liquorishtoffee

Why not transmen?

That's an excellent question.

I haven't RTFT. Setting aside the feminist angle, this is why I don't bother with 'prize' books any more. It's all about shock value and headlines, the actual literature seems a bit secondary.

The women's prize for playwriting is also at it now (pandering to males that is). Not only that but "identity as female".

FEMALE. Not a woman. A female - that is sex. Now they've come for female ffs 🤬

Identify that should say

@MummBraTheEverLeaking

The women's prize for playwriting is also at it now (pandering to males that is). Not only that but "identity as female".

FEMALE. Not a woman. A female - that is sex. Now they've come for female ffs 🤬

Maybe this is what happens with an education system that splits the arts and sciences at school and continues to do so at uni.

@MummBraTheEverLeaking

The women's prize for playwriting is also at it now (pandering to males that is). Not only that but "identity as female".

FEMALE. Not a woman. A female - that is sex. Now they've come for female ffs 🤬

I've emailed them to point out their error. If anyone else wants to here is the email address:

[email protected]

It's getting ridiculous now.