Terry Pratchett - Twitter

[Baystard]

Terry Pratchett and Monstrous Regiment trending on twitter this morning, claims that GC community trying to posthumously recruit Sir Terry, and his daughter saying he would be appalled, etc.

As a Pratchett enthusiast I'm a bit lost. Some people are quoting about dwarves, but I thought in their culture it was unacceptable to be anything but male, and that Cherry was biologically female but repressed by culture into hiding it. I didn't interpret Pratchett as meaning that dwarves were all biologically male and that Cheery was trans. Have I missed something?

I wonder how many on Twitter saw the trans Cheery on the dreadful BBC programme and that's where they've got the idea that Cheery was trans.

@JellySlice great post. Granny Weatherwax isn't kind (and is feared to a great extent by the people she helps) but she is the person who does what needs to be done. Also, interesting point about Angua - she's non binary in terms of sex and species I suppose - or could it be more accurately described as fluid?

@JellySlice

Is Angua trans-species, then?

She is genuinely non-binary. The binary being human/non-human. She doesn't change sex when she takes her werewolf form.

No, she's not human at all. She is a werewolf all the time, regardless whether she takes her vulpine form or her humanoid form. So she isn't non-binary, either.

Angua is form-fluid. She is not species-fluid.

plenty of women are thoroughly aware what GC means and still don't agree with

Both of you have shown in this very thread that you don't.

@Kotatsu I have avoided the series like the plague. It's like they've heard the books and characters being discussed by someone at a distance and have written down what they vaguely remember.

There's nothing intellectually curious about obsessively clinging to rigid gender binary, even if you call it "sex-based" instead.

Please look at this website. The threads on miscarriage, the threads on breastfeeding, the current thread on life changing injuries after birth.

You think these things happen to people randomly? You think they have anything at all to do with identity? You think you can identify out of the need for a C-section? Most women give birth, (hence continuation of human race) but to choose not to give birth women also need access to birth control. To work during and after pregnancy women need specific rights.

The difference between being forced into a gender role and having freedom is not the ability to have your identity affirmed, it is very specific rights that only affect women.

It’s mind boggling that in 2021 this still has to be explained. The only possible explanation can be sexism in men and denial in women.

I've started watching the series, after learning about it on this thread. For some reason I'm reminded of Peter Richardson playing Al Pacino playing Arthur Scargill. It might be watchable on its own terms, but there is nothing Pratchettlike about it.

@MarciaDidia

The series is interesting. It's a while since I read the books and I'd forgotten Cheery's backstory and it isn't helped by Cheery in the series being human sized. But I think Cheery's backstory does come back into it and actually the character worked very well. I was initially a bit sniffy "typical, they've transed Cheery, way too miss the point" but I don't think they did.

As an aside, I really got into the series after the the first couple of episodes - you have to put aside some of the departures from the books. The only character I didn't think worked well was Anna Chancellor as the Patrician. She wasn't quite politely menacing enough for me.

I didn't think she was bad. I.missed there being no corporal nobbs

@Thelnebriati

I don't think that its acceptable to put words into the mouths of dead people; I don't see why dead naming is outrageous but this is acceptable.

Terry Pratchett was a humane person who wrote humorous books. He had a light touch when it came to political satire, which is why his books are amusing.
I don't think he would have used trans issues in his books.

Absolutely agree with all of this, except the last sentence. Because (as others have said) I don't think any of us can know

I.missed there being no corporal nobbs

Oh, there was a Corporal Nobbs. You missed him because he bore absolutely no resemblance to the character in the book (much like everyone else in the pitiful series - which would be pitiful on its own merit, even if it wasn't also ignoring/butchering well known and clearly characterised people already)

As an aside, I really got into the series after the the first couple of episodes - you have to put aside some of the departures from the books. The only character I didn't think worked well was Anna Chancellor as the Patrician. She wasn't quite politely menacing enough for me.

Jesus - I only watched the whole thing so I could have an informed opinion - not a single character was even close, let alone the fully-fledged, subtle and nuanced person that TP wrote!

Anna Chancellor wasn't even half-way to the worst casting decision (she would have been fine with some decent dialogue perhaps)

and some of the departures? As another poster said, what the series resembled was someone giving 2 liners on characters and the plot, and someone with no talent filling in what they thought would work. It was truly awful, even without pretending it was TP inspired. Hell, they even managed to make Vimes' Boot theory of economic inequality seem rubbish, and don't get me started on Death singing a song, or the other musical number!!!!

I have a very low threshold for watchable, and this series was below even that.

@merrymouse

There's nothing intellectually curious about obsessively clinging to rigid gender binary, even if you call it "sex-based" instead.

Please look at this website. The threads on miscarriage, the threads on breastfeeding, the current thread on life changing injuries after birth.

You think these things happen to people randomly? You think they have anything at all to do with identity? You think you can identify out of the need for a C-section? Most women give birth, (hence continuation of human race) but to choose not to give birth women also need access to birth control. To work during and after pregnancy women need specific rights.

The difference between being forced into a gender role and having freedom is not the ability to have your identity affirmed, it is very specific rights that only affect women.

It’s mind boggling that in 2021 this still has to be explained. The only possible explanation can be sexism in men and denial in women.

What an excellent post!

@Binglebong

The entire premis of Monstrous Regiment was that women felt restricted by the roles society expected of them and the only way to do what they wanted was pretend to be men. None of them actually believed themselves to be male - it was a satire on societies limited social roles.

I agree with Binglebong. Satire on stereotypes, nothing more. Twas written before any of the Twaw/TERF situation was in the media, it's easy now to see it through the lens of the current zeitgeist

@merrymouse

There's nothing intellectually curious about obsessively clinging to rigid gender binary, even if you call it "sex-based" instead.

Please look at this website. The threads on miscarriage, the threads on breastfeeding, the current thread on life changing injuries after birth.

You think these things happen to people randomly? You think they have anything at all to do with identity? You think you can identify out of the need for a C-section? Most women give birth, (hence continuation of human race) but to choose not to give birth women also need access to birth control. To work during and after pregnancy women need specific rights.

The difference between being forced into a gender role and having freedom is not the ability to have your identity affirmed, it is very specific rights that only affect women.

It’s mind boggling that in 2021 this still has to be explained. The only possible explanation can be sexism in men and denial in women.

🙌🙌🙌

Is deriding trans women as "men in dresses" (which is definitely used as a pejorative) and shaming them for expressing any joy in feminine expression how you express your "support" for people "wearing whatever they want"?

No one is 'deriding' transwomen.

We are just saying that wanting to wear dresses and express in a stereotypically 'feminine' way does not make you an actual woman. Because obviously that would be hugely sexist and regressive.

I have seen this today (not sure how it started, who has been saying that TP would be GC?) and it has definitely been clear that a lot of people don't know what 'gender critical' means.

How can you accuse a 'gender critical' person of wanting to uphold 'gender stereotypes'? The clue is in the name!

@kotatsu when the showrunner did a tweet promoting the show and thanking people for their involvement, he didn't even mention Terry Pratchett! A huge list of names and not one mention of the person who came up with the world and the characters! Rhiannon Pratchett basically said the series has nothing to do with her Father's creation.

Makes sense - it bares no relation bar names and vague occupations.

@jackgrealishcurtains The comment about 'deriding transwomen' was made at a comment I made and bore no resemblance to what I said. I suspect they are here for a very specific agenda and/or screenshots.

Terry Pratchett is one of my favourite authors. My greatest sadness about Discworld is that he created an entire universe and yet still made it one where women were treated as lesser than men. It probably didn't even occur to him in the mid 80's to do anything different.

I felt that Cheery was written as someone who wanted to express that she was female in a non-gendered society, therefore used the same way of expressing this as humans. I was saddened that they changed this for the series as the entire core of her being was to be female. I was probably even more annoyed about the changes to Sybil though. She could change the entire world by putting pen to paper (at least for goblins), but the male showrunners decided as usual that all "strong female characters" must be excellent at martial arts.

Arguing over what a dead person would or would not think about a subject is peak social media time suckage.

You cannot win. No one can win except the companies swallowing up our finite lives.

My take is that they want Terry because they can't have JK.

And on the subject, I don't know what he would have thought about this but I can hazard a pretty good bet what he would have thought of the behaviour of some people towards JK.

he created an entire universe and yet still made it one where women were treated as lesser than men

Could he have done anything else though? It was a world mirroring ours, dragging itself through the last 500 years of history in fast-forward.

And part of that story was women acquiring rights, starting right back in book 3 or 4, as pretty much the first "serious" subject.

Many, indeed most, of the sins of our world were reflected there, and sexism was one of many.

Or am I missing your point?

the male showrunners decided as usual that all "strong female characters" must be excellent at martial arts.

It's almost like parody, isn't it. Sigh.

I am not going to venture an opinion on what Sir Terry would have said about this Twitter storm. (although I think he would have steered clear). However I am very much enjoying myself thinking about Nanny Ogg's take on it.

The Hedgehog Can Never Be Buggered At All.

Could he have done anything else though?

Actually, he could have done things a lot differently. But they wouldn't have worked out so well.

His first 2 discworld books were set in a pretty stereotypical medieval Tolkein-like fantasy universe. They were, largely, a parody/satire of fantasy tropes.

So they had to be pretty straight fantasy worlds, including male domination. "Wokifying" them by not having women treated as lesser than men might have been possible, but wouldn't have made much sense for the sort of scattergun stuff in those Rincewind books.

But after that, it seems he realised what he could do with what he started from. He could use that world as a starting point, then proceed parody most of recent human history, and a fair few cultural artefacts along the way. But that still relied on starting from a broadly-accurate medieval starting point, so you could actually work through societal change.

(There's a reason many/most Pratchett fans will tell people to not start from the beginning - the first 2 books are not representative, and far from the best. Mainly useful as worldbuilding background, but even then, they're not that important. I started at Soul Music (#16), as I recall. Not bad. Book 4, Mort, is probably a great starting point for those who would normally like to come in from the start, but 3, Equal Rites is more on topic for this forum. I just think the style hadn't quite settled yet.).