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."

Absolutely. If it does get deleted, then the dog that doesn’t bark is telling you something you need to know.

The core of the sissification fetish is the extreme humiliation of the male subject.

What is the most humiliating thing possible? Being a woman. Being a woman is the most humiliating, objectifiyng, lowest state possible in the male sissy's eyes. Women are the lowest form of life, and so they, the sissy, pursue "feminisation". If forced, so much the better.

"feminisation" into a weak submissive sexually available "cum dumpster" (not my terminology) who has zero control or agency is considered the pinnacle of female expression. The sissy is to be used and abused because they are a woman and that is what women are for.

A great topic for a female book prize.... if the book were critically exploring the topic and what it means. Which it isn't.

I await my cancellation.

No wonder I’m womanning in such a sub standard manner.

it's because you don't realise your total inferiority and the sheer humiliation of your existence in a female body. Duh.

Dammit. I knew I was missing something. I will keep thinking I matter!

The whole of StroppyCuntNet is apparently terrible at womanning. We get it wrong every time. Luckily there are generous people who are willing to come and point out the error of our ways.

In some ways it would be better if that book had won, it would have got headlines and outrage and it would have to be discussed. Whereas now a female author has still lost out but it’s only MN and a few authors that will have noticed a TW being on the longlist.

@thinkingaboutLangCleg

The shortlist has just been announced, and Peters isn’t on it.

It’s
No One Is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood
Unsettled Ground by Claire Fuller
Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi
The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett
How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House by Cherie Jones

Congratulations to all this year's shortlisted authors.

Hoping Transcendent Kingdom wins - that was a brilliant, moving book. By a woman. About important, human issues.

Thanks for the rec, BlackWave. Will order! Would be nice to have a thread discussing the books .

Yes, thanks, BlackWave - Transcendent Kingdom looks good, if a bit gloomy.

Have people read the others, and if so, can they recommend? I haven't read any of them! Piranesi has had superb reviews but it is so very much not my kind of thing (I didn't get on with Jonathan Strange) I'm hesitant about buying it.

@Shedbuilder

I heard this announced on Front Row, BBC Radio 4, last night and John Wilson who hosted the show asked judge Bernadine Evaristo why the trans author's title hadn't made the shortlist. He didn't ask why any of the others had failed to make the shortlist. IIRC BE had a slight intake of breath and then pointed out that it was one of ten books that hadn't made the cut.

That comment by Peters in 2012, Arabella Scott, is breathtaking. That a male-bodied person who says they don't think of themselves as a woman but that they sometimes enjoy presenting as a woman should make a women's prize list of any kind is sickening.

Because it wasn't as good as the other books, by a long shot. Which is obvious to anyone who can read. What a ridiculous question. So oppressed and vulnerable and yet the centre of attention.

Whatabout whatabout whatabout eh? So he didn’t wonder aloud if this book was given space on the long list on that very basis?

Royal Corgi, Bernadine Evaristo gave a brief summing-up of all the titles and they sounded so bleak and depressing that she had to keep assuring listeners that these were inspiring, heart-warming, dramatic, etcetera (add your own adjectives of choice). Sounded to me like tale after tale of abuse, deprivation and suffering, to be frank — but then you could describe Dickens and a lot of other great books in the same words, couldn't you, so don't let me put you off.

Piranesi is very different to Jonathan Strange RoyalCorgi I love both but they are nothing like each other.

I see this point was made up thread but this just raises the question of why there is a women's prize for fiction?

There's no physical advantage that requires separate contests so surely it'd be better to have equal representation in non gendered prizes. So 49-49-1-1 split women-men-transwomen-trans men

How would you achieve this equal representation?

You could take a soft approach, like set long term targets that push for nominations from a wider group or just force it. Rank each subset and then take the top x number from each list to get the proportions right.

My point is gender shouldn't be relevant in literature.

So quotas to stop oppressed groups being marginalised and passed over in literature, but they'd all be going for the same prize and prize money?

Why would this be meaningfully better for authors than having a separate women's prize, a separate LGBT prize and so on? It's exactly the same thing as you describe, except winning your subcategory can currently win you prize money and extra publicity for your book.

There is also the Jhalak prizes.

Here is their FAQ page explaining why it exists. www.jhalakprize.com/faqs

I just don't like the idea of marginalising experience. I'm on shaky ground because I've not thought about it very deeply but surely the aim should be to strip bias out of a general prize so gender and orientation don't matter.

Arguably being an 'oppressed group' should make you a better writer and therefore stronger contender. Surely it's harder for a middle class white guy from the Home Counties to come up with something original with a fresh voice or perspective?

I'm not really saying there shouldn't be prizes to redress the imbalance. More that there shouldn't need to be.

Getting het up about someone socialised as a man taking a woman's slot on a woman's shortlist seems the wrong place to focus in literary awards overall.

I bet if someone wrote a really good (ok who am I kidding, mediocre would do) novel about the modern trans experience it would storm many awards and the bestseller list.

@ThinkAboutItTomorrow

I just don't like the idea of marginalising experience. I'm on shaky ground because I've not thought about it very deeply but surely the aim should be to strip bias out of a general prize so gender and orientation don't matter.

Arguably being an 'oppressed group' should make you a better writer and therefore stronger contender. Surely it's harder for a middle class white guy from the Home Counties to come up with something original with a fresh voice or perspective?

No being marginalised doesn't automatically make you a better writer.

Traditionally male writers have enjoyed more review space, often a wife cooking their meals and providing their childcare, and a view that their work is serious art and not 'confessional' or 'domestic'. A male writer is automatically viewed as serious, weighty etc.

If Brooklyn had been written by Maeve Binchy and not Colm Toibin its reception would have been very different.

The reason these prizes were founded was to address those imbalances.

But yes these days women writers are absolutely killing it and men have to work a little harder. Plus more women read fiction and funnily enough there is now more choice out there for them they read more books by women.

Still a place for women only fiction prizes though.

VIDA count used to be quite good on the subject.

Although many more women than men are published, many FEWER women than men are reviewed, win prizes, get acclaim, etc. It was a quite surprisingly uneven field. (I haven't actually checked this for a while, it may have changed in the past few years)

www.vidaweb.org/the-count/

@ThinkAboutItTomorrow

I see this point was made up thread but this just raises the question of why there is a women's prize for fiction?

There's no physical advantage that requires separate contests so surely it'd be better to have equal representation in non gendered prizes. So 49-49-1-1 split women-men-transwomen-trans men

You're assuming that there's no bias against women, aren't you? Despite women's fiction for generations being classed as 'soft' and 'domestic', despite all the evidence that even women are unconsciously biassed against women:

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000jmn5

Not at all @Shedbuilder. I know there's a bias. I realised even I had it (20 years ago) when I was surprised Pat Barker was a woman. Not proud of that.

But I think 'special' women's prizes make that impression worse. We compete separately in sport because physically we can't keep up. Having a separate prize for literature feels like saying women can't compete, our writing is different and should be judged to a different standard.

I know that's not the intent but it's a risk.