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."

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.

Yes. I think when it's a TW author, the emperor's new clothes effect comes into full force as reviewers and interviewers think "this makes no sense, it's apparently shockingly misogynistic, but it can't be, because TWAW and the most oppressed people ever and stunning and brave!" So they - some entirely well-meaningly I think - come up with descriptors like "provocative" and "thought=provoking" and groundbreaking" to mean "I don't really understand what's going on but that's because I'm just a cis sinner who doesn't get it, I have to say something positive"

(NB I am not saying "shockingly misogynistic" applies to all books by TW - but in respect to the type of content Turtles was talking about.)

I hope the son doesn't read his step-parent's writing and believe that this is actually how women want to be treated.

I’m sure you’ve equally objected to Shades of Grey.

If you use Advanced Search, you'll find the threads about the books and the cinematic adaptation. They went down as well on mumsnet as it would if I announced I didn't think women should drive.

https://www.womensprizeforfiction.co.uk/features/features/news/announcing-our-2021-judging-panel
These are the other judges, in addition to Bernadine Evaristo, if anyone is interested. I'm assuming drew up the list together?
Elizabeth Day
Vick Hope
Nesrine Malik
Sarah-Jane Mee

@Anovaneway

I hope the son doesn't read his step-parent's writing and believe that this is actually how women want to be treated.

I’m sure you’ve equally objected to Shades of Grey.

Yes I did. It was a frequent topic of conversation among my friends, how awful it was that violence and controlling behaviour was being glorified by 50 Shades. I don't remember that being a controversial opinion.

I also found the premise of 50 Shades appalling too. It's not so much that it's light BDSM porn, it's that abuse presented as a good relationship/representation of what women want.

Also it didn't get longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction IIRC.

@Mn753

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?

Relax - no males were nominated.

Big thanks to this thread for bringing 'Mermaids of the Black Conch' to my awareness. Going to buy that and books on the longlist by women. Rather than ones written by people with penises.

The similarity with 50 Shades struck me too. It was roundly lampooned and ridiculed by the media, and ignored completely by the literary establishment who considered it to be silly women's fiction and utterly beneath their notice, even though in the UK it's the fastest selling paperback of all time.

I wonder what the crucial difference could be between EL James's sneered-at book and Torrey Peters' Women's Prize listed one?

You should be on the stage, Shizuku!

Yes, and if it was just another 50 shades of grey style book celebrating fetishes, then fine. But Peters is saying that this is fetish is what makes them a woman. And what makes them eligible for this prize, as someone born male. They say they are eligible BECAUSE of these fetishes, because they make them a woman, because that's how women think. So if they think like that it means they're a woman too.

It's interesting the idea that a book doesn't have to have literary merit to be long listed as Evaristo has said. What exactly are the criteria then?

I've watched the video of the judges and Evaristo is looked for new voices and situations she's never thought of before. I'm sure she could spend an evening on PornHub and find quite a lot of scenarios she's never considered before. Do they have literary merit? Another of the judges is looking for a voice that speaks to women right now. I don't know many women who get off on being hit or fantasise about being murdered.

Take your gross fantasies elsewhere frankly.

Setting my watch to see how long post by StellaAndCrow lasts

Also it didn't get longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction IIRC.

Well no. It was shit.

70% buyers in the U.K. were female. The film was the biggest ever opening weekend for a female director at the time and was mostly watched by women. Which is interesting/ amazing feat.

The Mermaid of Black Conch, by Monique Roffey, didn't make the longlist despite many hoping it would. It is only 99p on Kindle at the moment

www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B086MDPKNC/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1&tag=mumsnetforu03-21

"March 1976: St Constance, a tiny Caribbean village on the island of Black Conch, at the start of the rainy season. A fisherman sings to himself in his pirogue, waiting for a catch but attracts a sea-dweller he doesn't expect. Aycayia, a beautiful young woman cursed by jealous wives to live as a mermaid, has been swimming the Caribbean Sea for centuries. And she is entranced by this man David and his song."

@HopeClearwater

Setting my watch to see how long post by StellaAndCrow lasts

Counting down . . .

I also very much hope this book wins and is widely read and reviewed. A question often asked on Mumsnet, and little answered, is "in what way is a transwoman the same as a woman".

From the excerpts I have seen, this book is going to be a very helpful resource to answer this question, and to illustrate what transwomen think women are.

More excerpts from this novel here. twitter.com/AugustaAndarta/status/1369807644089851906?s=19

One thing that intrigues me is that when it was announced the book had made it on the long list, there were twitter comments highly commending it and mentioning particular books that hadn't got in the long list. E.g. Mermaid of the Black Conch.

You could read such comments two different ways, couldn't you.

cis sinner - thanks WindyPudding

I keep reading that passage linked by Turtles earlier, where the narrator talks about “watching cis women affirm their genders through male violence” and that the narrator can “hear the strange sense of satisfaction when they talk about the men that have hurt them - the unspoken subtext of it being because I am a woman.”

Fucking HELL.

We get hurt because we are women. There’s no bloody subtext!

There’s no satisfaction in that. Male violence doesn’t happen to us because of gender. It certainly doesn’t affirm anything to do with gender. It affirms fucking biology if anything.

It’s honestly quite gross to read this, given what’s being reported in the news, on social media.

We’re not playing at being afraid. We’re not revelling in it.

If you think 50 Shades of Grey was popular around here, you really have no idea about feminism (and haven't bothered to do a simple search to find out)

It's also kind of blatantly factually wrong. Either sex can be physically attacked and harmed in a relationship. Women tend to be the main victims and men tend to be the main perpetrators, and partly for biological reasons, it's far more common for the harm to the woman to be more serious or fatal – but the suggestion that womanhood and victimhood are inherently linked - let alone that women want that - just ignores the facts.

I'm still wondering how much this kind of writing has to do with what the author is trying to say. An author of this stuff could be saying "look at this awful misogyny" - the narrator doesn't have to be the hero. OTOH it could simply just be the tidal wave of excruciatingly offensive badly written porn that these excepts suggest. To find out what the book as a whole is trying to do, I'd have to read it and I don't want to :(

When the Prize mentioned last year that it wouldn't be limited to women, Lissa Evans announced that she had asked her publisher not to put her latest book forward for the prize. Her books are well worth a purchase if you want to support her decision.