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

@Tesla73

I find this tweet odd as I thought he'd gone full on in his commitment to the cause just like Gaiman

Related, I just saw that Gaiman once retweeted (with the #Istandwith hashtag) a tweet by a certain fishy organisation that even they later thought wiser to delete.

@FindTheTruth

he's outdoing himself now twitter.com/chimenesuleyman/status/1424690206159081472

Chimene Suleyman @chimenesuleyman
Ok so you just compared me and two other brown/Muslim women to ISIS and the Taliban? Is this a sick joke?

Quote Tweet
Philip Pullman @PhilipPullman
Replying to @LiseHencken and @NABurkinshaw
Critics of Kate Clanchy: is this the kind of support you welcome? Someone who thinks it's not necessary to read a book before condemning it? What a shameful attitude. It would find a comfortable home in Isis or the Taliban.

Oh dear. Cancelled in 3...2...1

I think his attitude in this is a close reflection of what he presents in His Dark materials. If we look at those as a kind of response to people like Tolkien and Lewis, or a criticism of Christianity or Catholicism or religion, they are such a straw man that it is difficult to imagine he hasn't done it on purpose. Yes, let's present a complete caricature or twisting of what those people or things actually believe, and then make them look stupid. That'll show them how smart I am. Any complaints, and I'll say that it's not important to accurately represent stupid ideas to show they are stupid, especially in a literary context.

Yes it is a strawman isn't it? The "My body is me" book is not hateful, yet Pullman misrepresented Rachael Rooney as a 'hateful voice' to make it easier to attack her. And I BET hasn't read it!

Society of Authors distances itself from Philip Pullman’s tweets

www.theguardian.com/books/2021/aug/11/society-of-authors-philip-pullman-tweets-kate-clanchy

So he's now deleted his tweet saying
“Writers of colour (including children) and people of colour who are not writers (including children, again), your experiences and imaginations deserve every kind of respect” he added.

Pass the sick bag. Total arrogant hypocrite.

What does that even mean?

I'm sorry, maybe it's just me, but I feel like being talked to that way would not be empowering, but rather embarrassing and annoying.

The Pullman incident is covered (although not in the main topic) in a blog post at the website TheMarySue (which identifies as feminist) - www.themarysue.com/philip-pullman-kate-clanchy-racism/

While they certainly criticise Pullman, the overall trend seems to be one of condemning women and drawing attention to their femaleness: "he activated her white women fragility trap card. ... Like 'Central Park Karen', Mary Beard, and infinite white women before them, Clanchy weaponized her tears."

It may be that some of the criticisms of Clanchy are justified (in fact at first sight it appears so) but that doesn't mean that so much emphasis should be placed on her being a woman, as though women are particularly bad in the blogger's eyes.

Perhaps it seems OTT for Clanchy to say she was very frightened (but I don't know, she said she had started to receive threats). But what is even more OTT was this risible comment from the blogger: "Clanchy has indicated that she’ll be editing the text for future editions. The sensitivity readers (plural) that should be hired for this process better be well compensated for the trauma they will be taking on."

Trauma? Well first of all, just over over-sensitive would you need to be to be traumatised by a few misjudged words and phrases? Secondly, if such over-sensitive people do exist, why would you hire them as your editors, and why would they seek that kind of work?

Sensitivity readers?

Are they kind of like the State Committee for Publishing?

@transdimensional I used to sometimes read 'The Mary Sue' until they did an attack on JKR based on Twitter accounts she followed in mid 2019. Way back then, I was gobsmacked that people noticed and wanted to police who people followed, let alone that they would be so unselfconscious about their own wankiness that they'd actually want to publish a piece on it in public. Were they expecting her to go oops, sorry, grovel and unfollow?

I'm a Spectator/Times/Telegraph/Spiked- grow up and stop whinging sort of person but extracts from Kate Glanchy's book on various Twitter threads are pretty appalling.

@transdimensional I used to sometimes read 'The Mary Sue' until they did an attack on JKR based on Twitter accounts she followed in mid 2019.

They wrote something awful quite recently too.

@Ereshkigalangcleg they were gunning for her long before the #IStandWithMaya tweet. Depressingly, fantasy series fandom seems to be a major breeding ground for all this, especially the 'young women hating middle aged women' incarnation of it.

@KimikosNightmare

I'm a Spectator/Times/Telegraph/Spiked- grow up and stop whinging sort of person but extracts from Kate Glanchy's book on various Twitter threads are pretty appalling.

Agreed. Classist and racist, and so condescending. I read her "memoir" about her Eastern European cleaner a while ago, and thought it was pretty patronising.

[quote MondayYogurt]Society of Authors distances itself from Philip Pullman’s tweets

www.theguardian.com/books/2021/aug/11/society-of-authors-philip-pullman-tweets-kate-clanchy[/quote]
Does anyone have a recent copy of Private Eye who could confirm this summary is accurate, please?

And, of course the Society of Authors saw the policy in the other images as the logical next step in their commitment.

twitter.com/AmandaPCraig/status/1438474116907012096

Apparently he was sentenced to unconscious bias training, in his absence.

The Kate Clanchy book is wonderful. I’d recommend reading the whole book rather than a few quotes taken out of context. A former student wrote in the Sunday Times that she was very happy with the way she was portrayed in the book.

Per Private Eye Pullman was sentenced to undergo urgent re-education as the first stage of what the committee called his
'rehabilitation'

@Melroses

twitter.com/AmandaPCraig/status/1438474116907012096

Apparently he was sentenced to unconscious bias training, in his absence.

It couldn't happen to a better person as he sways this way and that, desperately trying to keep onside with the bullies.

He need to realise that these people are toxic and there's no point in trying to appease them. They're drunk with the power that intimidating others gives them and nothing will stop them - until their turn for being in the firing line arrives.

@KimThomas

The Kate Clanchy book is wonderful. I’d recommend reading the whole book rather than a few quotes taken out of context. A former student wrote in the Sunday Times that she was very happy with the way she was portrayed in the book.

I have read it, and I maintain that it is classist and very othering.

He's been being really quite extraordinarily obnoxious on Twitter today.

@merrymouse

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.

This is not different from the Dark Materials books, though, which are supposedly critical of various theological ideas, which he represents in a very shallow and weak form. Reading them is like, yeah, that would be a bad idea, if that was really what it's supposed to be about. It's an entertaining enough story but much less compelling because it's sidestepping the more difficult elements.

< Wonders if the Unconscious Bias training had the right effect >

@IvyTwines

He's been being really quite extraordinarily obnoxious on Twitter today.

Yes , he told someone to go to hell. Odd thing for such a fervent atheist to say. As someone pointed out - not something that the much maligned, by Pullman, C.S Lewis would ever have said.

I don't think that Lewis would have had Twitter. He wrote an essay, a rather good one actually, about how the radio was impacting people's thinking because they never had to be really alone with their thoughts for long periods of time.