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."

I'm reading a book where everything is set in the near future and one way of describing men is a 'y chromosome'. Perhaps that should be the way forward. A book prize for X chromosome people and one for Y chromosome people... because they is no way you can fudge the dna you're born with...

Right, I'm just off to buy 'The Mermaid of the Black Conch'

@DarcyJack

Right, I'm just off to buy 'The Mermaid of the Black Conch'

Excellent idea!

It would be quite something if all the adult human females longlisted asked to be removed so that this particular book was the only possible contender to win.

www.huckmag.com/art-and-culture/torrey-peters-i-worried-about-the-book-hurting-trans-women/

Interviewer: Some of the themes were so honest – sexuality, fetishes and detransition – things that trans people don’t feel able or ready to express because it almost feels like ammo for transphobes. Did that worry you at all?

Peters: It worried me in that I worried about trans women being hurt by it. I don’t worry about giving transphobes ammo, because they’re gonna find ammo no matter what.

The problem is that trans women themselves are believing them. They’re tapping into a kind of shame that trans women feel. So why are people afraid to talk about this? Because they’re ashamed that they have fetishes, they’re ashamed of their sexuality. Shame is usually what you’re afraid to speak. So the way you get rid of shame is you speak it. You speak in therapy, you speak with your friends, you read about it, and you realise that: ‘Oh, this actually is a very common experience.’

Everybody has fetishes. To have this double standard, where it’s like, you can see the kind of porn that’s wildly popular on like PornTube, and that’s fine, but trans women wanting to dress up in outfits is not okay? That’s shame. That’s not logic. Why should trans women be especially ashamed of having desire?

@imyournextdoorneighbour

I'm reading a book where everything is set in the near future and one way of describing men is a 'y chromosome'. Perhaps that should be the way forward. A book prize for X chromosome people and one for Y chromosome people... because they is no way you can fudge the dna you're born with...

It won't work, the goalposts will just move. I've already seen articles claiming that you can't really tell anyone's chromosomes, there just is noooo way to find out. A woke-bro friend shared one article, innocently commenting "would be really interesting to find out whether I'm really xy!" and I wanted to comment WHY DON'T YOU ASK YER WIFE WHO BIRTHED YER 3 BIOLOGICAL CHILDREN

Everybody has fetishes. To have this double standard, where it’s like, you can see the kind of porn that’s wildly popular on like PornTube, and that’s fine, but trans women wanting to dress up in outfits is not okay? That’s shame. That’s not logic. Why should trans women be especially ashamed of having desire?

Ah yes, Pornhub. Always a handy barometer of women's behaviour and feelings I find.

Why are there so many deletions?
The author has written a book that explicitedly makes it clear that they equate being a woman with being slapped, abused and called a bimbo or whore, and even "I want a man to love me so much he murders me. I want to die because I'm loved too much for him to tolerate my existence."
This isn't an interpretation by us or any kind of dishonest representation. This is stated explicitedly in the novel.
If the Woman's Prize thinks that a book that says womanhood is about being abused is acceptable, then we need to talk about it.

Just so we're clear-on the day a young woman's remains were found, a male, who writes sexual glorifications of violence against women is nominated for the women's literature prize?

That passage

Many deleted messages, now wondering what they said

Has a trans man won a male prize yet?

It’s always the women’s that is talked about in this way

It's outrageous.

And the author's justification for writing about their VAW fetish is that there is a ton of misogynistic porn online, so it's only fair to write books about it.

trans women wanting to dress up in outfits is not okay? That’s shame. That’s not logic.

And that's straw manning and gaslighting. No one said it's not okay to wear a dress if that's what you want to do, whoever you are. It's just incorrect to think that having a fetish about "women's clothes" has anything to do with being a woman.

Oh and porn that demeans and humiliates women and encourages men to think violence against women is fine, is NOT ok.

Everybody has fetishes. To have this double standard, where it’s like, you can see the kind of porn that’s wildly popular on like PornTube, and that’s fine, but trans women wanting to dress up in outfits is not okay? That’s shame. That’s not logic. Why should trans women be especially ashamed of having desire?

Because for some the very desire to be subordinate, submissive and demeaned is why they believe themselves to be women. They think that's how women feel, what they are, how they should be treated.

The author has written a book that explicitedly makes it clear that they equate being a woman with being slapped, abused and called a bimbo or whore, and even "I want a man to love me so much he murders me. I want to die because I'm loved too much for him to tolerate my existence."
This isn't an interpretation by us or any kind of dishonest representation. This is stated explicitedly in the novel.
If the Woman's Prize thinks that a book that says womanhood is about being abused is acceptable, then we need to talk about it.

Hear hear Turtles

I just wanted to chip in on this thread. Books matter to me. I try hard to support female authors when I buy books - the fact women get published matters to me. I saw this news and honestly felt I'd been punched in the stomach and that was before I read any excerpts of this author's writing.

Shame on the publishing industry. Shame on those women who are betraying their sex. I am so sorry for whichever woman it was who missed out on her place on this longest. It isn't right.

The Women's Prize has struggled with funding and sponsorship, especially after Bailey's stepped down as a main sponsor and became just one of a number of smaller partners and supporters in 2018.

Perhaps a campaign targeting sponsors, asking whether they are comfortable with their ££ sponsorship of a supposedly 'Women's Prize' supporting the sexual glorification of violence against women?

Needs a 'Strongly Worded' letter from the Baroness!

Anyone know anything about CEO of NatWest Alison Rose?
www.natwestgroup.com/who-we-are/board-and-governance/board-and-committees/profiles/alison-rose.html

@ACovidofWitches

I just wanted to chip in on this thread. Books matter to me. I try hard to support female authors when I buy books - the fact women get published matters to me. I saw this news and honestly felt I'd been punched in the stomach and that was before I read any excerpts of this author's writing.

Shame on the publishing industry. Shame on those women who are betraying their sex. I am so sorry for whichever woman it was who missed out on her place on this longest. It isn't right.

I felt exactly the same, like a punch in the gut.

I plan to big up every book on that longlist that I think is a genuine, worthy contender for the prize and ignore the other book.
The general consensus is that it should have been Monique Roffey's 'The Mermaid of the Black Conch' which lost out.

I am very happy to see Amanda Craig on the list though as she got "cancelled" for supporting JKR. Have just bought her book!

I think you either have a prize for a disadvantaged group ie females or you don't bother with segregating the sexes at all. If you are going to let males be nominated for female prizes you might as well just merge the categories

As very wise woman on MN once said - man on pay day, woman on awards night. How true that is today.

It's occurred to me that both Peters' book and 'Females' by Andrea Chu which both equate being female with being sexually submissive and subject to physical chastisement by men would be (rightly) absolutely panned by almost every media site if it were written by a religious right wing 'surrendered wife'.
Somehow, when the exact same belief is expressed by a trans woman, it's groundbreaking and exciting.
People's minds are so open that their brains have fallen out.

It is just so insulting to women, especially those of us who have experienced the reality of abuse at the hands of men.

Peters' is currently engaged to a woman who has a son. I hope the son doesn't read his step-parent's writing and believe that this is actually how women want to be treated.

@JustTurtlesAllTheWayDown

It's occurred to me that both Peters' book and 'Females' by Andrea Chu which both equate being female with being sexually submissive and subject to physical chastisement by men would be (rightly) absolutely panned by almost every media site if it were written by a religious right wing 'surrendered wife'. Somehow, when the exact same belief is expressed by a trans woman, it's groundbreaking and exciting. People's minds are so open that their brains have fallen out.

That is such a good point.

I'm looking forward to you reading and reviewing it. I wish I could gauge what had been left out for myself, but I'm always a year or so behind (at best!) for book releases. E.g. I see The Golden Rule is on the longlist, which I preordered in paperback last year. So I'll be reading that this summer.