Phillip Pullman

[Dollpiglet]

I'm not a huge user of Twitter but I do follow Phillip Pullman who seems to have stepped out on this issue now. I'm gutted!

twitter.com/PhilipPullman/status/1417467807873241088?s=19

Patronising guff from Phillip Pullman who assumes greater wisdom than mere women. Similar to that "heartfelt letter "Aisling Bee shared which said JKR should ask her husband before tweeting.

His treatment of Rooney was appalling, as was his tweet about the LGB Alliance.

He scolds people for not seeing both sides of the argument, while quite stubbornly refusing to listen to people putting the feminist side. He seems to be both deeply nasty and lacking in intellectual curiosity, which doesn't make for a winning combination.

I don’t think there is any need to sign a letter or petition, but he does the thing where he only ever makes the easiest argument.

Instead of engaging with the core issue - a class of people who are and have been oppressed to a phenomenal degree are increasingly prevented from naming their class - he just sticks to easy ‘be kind’ platitudes.

The problem with Philip Pullman is that he believes his own publicity and thinks he's some sort of towering intellectual, so of course he has looked at all sides of the issue and considered the philosophical implications, without resorting to shouting or making demands like those nasty females. Unfortunately in reality he's a pompous patronising git, with no grasp of the issues at all, and his main motivation seems to be crawling around the likes of Clara Vulliamy (the instigator of Rachel Rooney's cancellation and a proper bully)

Pullman's stance is quite interesting and reveals a lot about how this has all gone wrong.
He's been skipping in and out on the issue for a while. I think he started with the standard unaware 'just be kind' stance and then, like many people, went away and 'educated himself'.
Like a lot of intelligent men, he does understand the issues, he just struggles to accept the "unfairness" of women saying no to something that some male people really want to have.
He's wearing patriarchy blinkers and they're embedded pretty deep.
His 'may I respectfully invite you to change your tone' tweet nails that down further. He seems quite offronted so many women are disagreeing with him.
twitter.com/PhilipPullman/status/1417550855188983814

so of course he has looked at all sides of the issue and considered the philosophical implications

He either doesn’t care or understand that regardless of whether he thinks the issues are ‘unresolvable’, they will resolve one way or another.

I think the likely answer is that he doesn’t care, but lacks the self knowledge to understand this. He is happy to express an opinion on other contentious religious and political issues.

He is even happy to offend others when this may cause them deep personal pain - e.g. because they have a deeply held religious faith.

He seems quite offronted so many women are disagreeing with him.

Yes. And, again, disagreeing without abuse. He even takes the attitude that a woman was threatening him through her censorious tweet asking him to step up and actually do something about the abuse Jo Rowling receives.

He has a very high boundary for the tone people take when they talk to him on line. Yet, shows no understanding of others boundaries being crossed by those he seeks to support.

He really is a great example of if you have nothing useful to say don't say anything at all. All he is demonstrating is who completely clueless he is regarding women and what they have to put up with on Twitter. Tone policing JKR when she's receiving rape and death threats and then whining when people are respectfully giving their views. (I'm assuming nobody has told him to die in a grease fire yet?) Is the epitome of male entitlement and obliviousness to what is happening here in the real world.

Yes and this is it isn't it? The unfairness of women saying no. Not all women, but sufficient numbers, and how very dare they? Women are not allowed to say no. It is what it comes down to. No amount of pussyfooting around pretending to be ultra clever will change that. Every man who supports this ideology, supports the idea that women are not allowed to say no.

I agree he thinks he's grasped the issues but he hasn't. If and when he does, his intelligence (which he does have IMO) will kick in and the penny will drop, that genderist ideology is exactly like the religious extremism and control he's spent so long opposing.

I don't think he understands really but is pretending, because otherwise I would expect him to take sides on this quite strongly. Like JKR he can't realIy lose his reputation, and as a man he'd be treated less badly than her. I think he just assumes he knows better than women so won't really listen to them.

@JustSpeculation

I've found myself thinking more and more about Robert Pirsig's "Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance" recently. He looks at the world in terms of a romantic understanding vs a classical one, by which he means seeing quality in impressions and appearance on the one side, and on the other seeing it in the underlying systems and principles behind the world. It has always struck me that GC types are much more classical, and the TRA types more romantic. Pullman is a complete romantic. To TRAs, we are square and they are hip.

I must re-read the book.

That's very interesting. I must read ZATAOMM. I can't believe I've reached the age I am without already having done it.

@nauticant

Rachel Rooney wrote the book My Body is Me and became Public Enemy No.1 to the trans activists. She had huge amounts of abuse but over the course of a year it had diminished.

Step up Philip Pullman:

twitter.com/RooneyRachel/status/1335539340676632576

who decided to freshen up the target on Rachel Rooney's back but in a unpleasant and underhand way. Notice by the way that Pullman's tweet tightly restricts who can reply. This goes well beyond cowardly.

Can anyone not blocked tell me what Clara said in the tweet that Philip pulled is replying to? Opening in incognito just keeps taking me to the main profile not the actual tweet.

I think the character of Mrs Coulter gives us some insight into how PP views women.

He thinks this will stop the screamers coming after him (not would he be quite so snotty with them if/when they do).

Good luck with that strategy Pip...

Like a lot of intelligent men, he does understand the issues, he just struggles to accept the "unfairness" of women saying no to something that some male people really want to have.

Possibly the most succinct explanation I've seen of what this is all about.

It continues to fascinate me that the men who do get it are not necessarily the ones you'd expect to get it, while the men who don't get it are often those who have nurtured a public reputation of themselves as liberal-minded free thinkers.

After Ian Huntley murdered two little girls while being employed as a school caretaker, there were attempts to increase the safety of children by ensuring everyone having access to them in schools and clubs was properly checked. A database was proposed, to replace the creaky CRB/DBA checks. It would have enabled us to quickly check anyone applying for a job working with children and anyone coming into schools to work with them for any reason would need to be checked.

Philip Pullman was so vocally outraged that, at one point, I really began to wonder why he was so upset about it.
We had exactly the same failure to grasp the facts: he was adamant that it was a personal insult to expect him to undergo checks.
He effectively scuppered the whole initiative by making it about him and his ego, forgetting all about the children it was designed to protect.

I’m not surprised to see further evidence of this attitude from him.

Clara has a lot of clout in the world of children's publishing, being the daughter of Shirley Hughes. She brought that clout to bear against Rachel Rooney, because RR wrote "My body is me", and she & her minions denounced RR for wrong think and drove her out of publishing. It was pure bullying - which Philip Pullman claims to be against - but he publicly supported Clara in that reply to her tweet whingeing about people being "hateful" (ie calling out her being a bully). This all happened some time ago so might be difficult to find now, plus Vulliamy uses block lists

Tanith I'd totally forgotten about that! it was appalling behaviour and totally anti-safeguarding. He took exactly the same pompous attitude of "how very dare you question the almighty great Philip Pullman", rather than accepting that it would have been a very effective initiative

For Manderley

Pullman Replying to
@ClaraVulliamy
Clara, I think you're wonderful. You have my full and unceasing support in this matter, as in everything else. It's hard to ignore the hateful voices who scream, but there are other voices that sometimes get drowned in the noise, and here's one.

9:57 am · 6 Dec 2020

[quote Dollpiglet]I'm not a huge user of Twitter but I do follow Phillip Pullman who seems to have stepped out on this issue now. I'm gutted!

twitter.com/PhilipPullman/status/1417467807873241088?s=19[/quote]
Can't stand him. Pompous oaf who slags off Tolkien and C S Lewis because they were believers. Militant atheist who writes about spiritual realms etc.I suppose that figures though; yet another 'atheist' who thinks consciousness has its own sex which pervades our bodies in some wifty wafty way. Plonker.

What an absolute arse. “Here’s a woman who people had ceased to bully for a little while - let me offer her up to you and all the other bullies again as a sacrifice.”

Oh, and I think his writing is inconsistent and often tedious.

It continues to fascinate me that the men who do get it are not necessarily the ones you'd expect to get it, while the men who don't get it are often those who have nurtured a public reputation of themselves as liberal-minded free thinkers.

I think this is fascinating too, and also applies to some women, though mainly men.

It may be that if you see yourself as a liberal-minded free thinker, you don't think you need any further information to be right. You're already on board with whatever is most righteous and politically correct, so anyone trying to get to to see beyond must by trying to get you to take a step back from perfect right-on-ness. So you just don't listen.

Whereas if you don't see yourself like that, you might be more likely to let your reasoning capacity consider things and be surprised by things.

@Abhannmor "yet another 'atheist' who thinks consciousness has its own sex which pervades our bodies in some wifty wafty way. Plonker."

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣👏👏👏👏👏👏👏

You are all far less cynical than me. I think he's doing it deliberately. No one can be that obtuse. I think he ls tweeting stuff deliberately and then sitting back and watching (what he sees as) women flapping about

@Helleofabore

For Manderley

Pullman Replying to
@ClaraVulliamy
Clara, I think you're wonderful. You have my full and unceasing support in this matter, as in everything else. It's hard to ignore the hateful voices who scream, but there are other voices that sometimes get drowned in the noise, and here's one.

9:57 am · 6 Dec 2020

Thanks for this. It was Clara's tweet that he's replying to I can't see, but I suspect most people who use this board will be blocked by her.

I was initially going to defend pullman in that I think it should be possible to say ' I disagree with jkr but I condemn the threats' without being quizzed on your opinion on the substantive issue and receiving loads of replies saying 'why do you disagree with her?'. It should be OK just to condemn the threats as a freestanding point. But I had forgotten that he effectively joined in the bullying of Rachel Rooney by supporting Clara the main one leading the campaign against R R and her book. So now I'm just thinking pullman is a numpty.