Open letter to The Bookseller says 'transphobia acceptable in British book industry'

[Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g]

t.co/eqdwe7Cqu1?amp=1

'signed anonymously from a number of trade figures, including publishers, writers, illustrators and booksellers' - no editors, though, judging by the rambling, over-long text. It seems to be in part a response to the evidence given to Parliament last week by the CEO of Hachette, who are JKR's publishers, about cancel culture. JKR not namechecked but I bet they had her in mind.

Some fairly robust responses on Twitter, I see.

@Justhadathought

We need to start to understand and talk about gender as a spectrum, a whole colour wheel, rather than just pink and blue

Oh, for goodness sake!

Who on earth is talking about 'pink and blue'?

Trans people usually, they have a pink and blue flag.

The paragraph about the colour wheel has been repeated twice.

The writers do not seem to have engaged with the arguments of the other side, at any point. It reads as if they think we believe in pink souls and blue souls, but the sticking point is whether there can be green [non-binary] souls.

For my part, I believe that there are 7 billion different shades of "gender" and I call them personalities.

Also, this quote Women's refuges are not underfunded because of transgender womenexisting. That's... not what anyone said. We said that some women would feel unable to use mixed-sex facilities.

Who on earth is talking about 'pink and blue'?

It's grimly funny, isn' t it? We're so amazingly open minded, we believe that not everyone falls into a pink and blue box and people don't have to conform to gender stereotypes! We think lesbians should be allowed to love whoever they want! We even think non-white women are women! We think "trans kids are perfect just as they are" (1) We're super feminist! We think human beings are "complex and nuanced"! We believe in listening to the voices of the marginalised! We honour and respect the wisdom of indigenous people! We're anti-capitalist, anti-corporate and anti-establishment! We're on the right side of history!

And meanwhile everything they do, and every single thing they say about the other groups that they claim to support, contradicts every damn word of the above. They're a bunch of reactionary authoritarians who can't even handle the knowledge that they're reactionary authoritarians (because they're conformist to the bone) so they project their hideous backwards racist worldviews onto anyone who dares to stand up to them.

(1) actual quote from the ACLU

Oh WinterTrees and WindyPudding (and everyone). You give me hope! My concern is that the vicious she/hers are taking over as the older generation leaves publishing. Thanks for that story too nauticant. We just need the bloody Grauniad to start actually reporting on it (though that Observer interview of David Bell by Rachel Cooke was excellent).

discusses previous forms of discrimination in regards to “homosexuals, Jews, disabled people, people of colour, Muslims, suffragettes, even left-handed people in our past”

Previous forms - hahahahaha. No discrimination now against those people.
It's just certain others apparently.

The fact that the letter was so badly written surely can't have failed to have registered with people. There is a lot of poorly written fiction being published but most people in publishing still know it's poorly written fiction...

Surely there are people who look at that and then look at what, say, J K Rowling wrote, and starts to compare them with a degree of critical thinking?

Sunlight...?!

YouSetTheTone you'd hope, wouldn't you, but in publishing people are educated but not always intelligent.

Great piece by Douglas Murray on this.

unherd.com/2021/05/publishing-is-now-a-leftist-bubble/

Sorry just started a new thread with that - its a corker.

Not at all, worth its own thread I think.

Certainly is! He doesn't hold back, does he. Quite right too.

What level of delusion is demanded of a person for them to work in what is the most left-leaning business in one of the most liberal societies on earth, and still imagine yourself dwelling among aspiring Nazis? Imagine looking at the politics section of Waterstones, or even the now heavily-political children’s section, and not being at least aware that British publishing might be somewhat more liberal than the public at large?

I felt like cheering at this whole article. Bloody brilliant.