American Booksellers Association and Abigail Shrier

[lionheart]

Sorry if there is already a thread--I couldn't find it.

Interesting.

From the American Booksellers' Association website:

"The American Booksellers for Free Expression (ABFE)is the bookseller's voice in the fight for free speech. Its mission is to promote and protect the free exchange of ideas, particularly those contained in books, by opposing restrictions on the freedom of speech; issuing statements on significant free expression controversies; participating in legal cases involving First Amendment rights; collaborating with other groups with an interest in free speech; and providing education about the importance of free expression to booksellers, other members of the book industry, politicians, the press and the public:

• Banned Books Week
• Kids' Right to Read
• Partners Program and Products
• Free Expression Resources on BookWeb.org

Have a free speech emergency? Contact ABFE Director Dave Grogan at 845-242-8605."

(Hello, yes, Dave? We have a free speech emergency right here… )

If anyone should be fired or asked to resign (as demanded in the predictable replies to the set of tweets linked above) - or more likely given a time-out, as I’m sure it must have been Take Your Child to Work Day - it's whoever sent those overwrought, misinformed apology tweets from the ABAbook account in the first place.

Further: "we also apologize to the LGBTQIA+ community at large... " ??? Desisters and detransitioners are PART of the LGBTQIA community and ALSO have opinions, feelings, needs, rights, and experiences. You should apologise to them for any hurt you've caused by pandering to the bullies who keep lodging these nuisance complaints. The Royal Academy of Arts (London) might have some tips for you.

We apologize to our trans members and to the trans community for this terrible incident and the pain we caused them.

I should hope so. Poor babies. I hope they survive this terrible incident and may even, one day, be able to risk looking at a book cover again...

@HeirloomTomato

I got the Kindle version. Much safer. No risk it’ll up and murder me in the middle of the night.

Don't be so sure and don't let your guard down.

Nice catch on their supposed commitment to free speech, ferret! Can anyone in the US give Dave a quick ring to break the news to him that unfortunately his coat looks like it’s on a shoogly peg as free speech is definitely out

Anyone who lived through the controversy around The Satanic Verses is probably having the same powerful sense of deja vu that I am right now. I think we’re all probably quite surprised that in this adaptation the Ayatollah Khomeini is being played by the American Booksellers Association, though, which is certainly not a casting decision anyone would have expected a few years ago.

First time is a tragedy, second time is a farce? Don’t think Marx could have seen this one coming either

Unlike The Satanic Verses though, Irreversible Damage is worth a read

Oh dear... the American Booksellers Association have locked their Twitter account overnight. Hopefully they are having a good old think about how they uphold their commitments to free speech...

@Olderbadger1

One of the totally proportionate responses on twatter, that edifice of reasonable eloquence...

@AnneOgborn
Replace every single person on your selection committee with a trans person. Commit to sending a pro trans book with every order for the next 5 years and drop the book's publisher, and any other publisher who publishes hate. Publish a complete account of how this happened, including names of all employees involved. Fire all involved in the decision and their managers, transitively up to the CEO.

Jesus wept.

This is actually serious? They've got to be taking the piss surely?

Bless.

Wonder if the ABA has had to issue similar grovelling for having given an award to The Education of Little Tree, a book which co-opts the experiences of Native Americans and claims to be autobiography, but actually turned out to have been written by a segregationist Klan member. Or maybe that doesn't matter as much to them.

One of the responses to ABA I saw on Twitter went something like:

Do you distribute the Bible?

@lionheart

Wait 'til after midnight.

For God's sake don't feed it after midnight!!!

Don't you just love it when the opposition helps out the GC cause. They are kind aren't they 😂😂😂

I see their commitment to free speech is written on soggy tissue paper.

Good grief . These clowns are in the business of selling books - and they don't understand the English language.

Holy hyperbole! How DO these people function in day-to-day life?!

@Sophoclesthefox

Unlike The Satanic Verses though, Irreversible Damage is worth a read

Good to hear. I'm one of the many who only read TSV because of the fatwa.

I got through it, but I'm never ever going to reread it ever again.

have been challenging myself to outdo it, but short of a free TERF scalp with every trans book, I came up blank.

Don't give them ideas

Same Purgatory! My parents bought it to see what the fuss was about and didn't read past the first few pages, and then somehow or another I got stuck with it as one of a few books when I had nothing else to read. So I read it.

I hadn't yet got around to buying Irreversible Damage, but I've got it in my basket now. Want to show the publishers that people do want to read these books.

I do wonder what percentage of purchasers actually finished TSV. At times, it was harder going than A-level French poetry.

I did not get through it. I felt I ought to, but Christ his meandering brand of whimsical/dull does not do it for me

@Sophoclesthefox

I did not get through it. I felt I ought to, but Christ his meandering brand of whimsical/dull does not do it for me

I confess I did not get through it either. I did finish Ulysses but only because I was on a very, very long train journey

Anyone who lived through the controversy around The Satanic Verses is probably having the same powerful sense of deja vu that I am right now. I think we’re all probably quite surprised that in this adaptation the Ayatollah Khomeini is being played by the American Booksellers Association, though

The whole gender identity thing makes me feel I’m living in an implausible dystopian fantasy novel. Book-banning organised by booksellers adds a whole new farcical twist.

Trying to imagine where you could have been going to have a train journey long enough to get through Ulysses, clymene 😱

Twice round the world?

I got the audiobook, which turns out to be a violent act. In my left ear I have Abigail Shrier trying to read her book aloud and in my right I have a TRA going “LALALA I CAN’T HEAR YOU!”