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?

As Thelnebriati and FloralBunting say: he is dead so we will never know. And there have been disappointments and surprises when finding people's views. In that way it feels like a bit like civil war (though perhaps that should be uncivil if we are including twatter!).
I think @NecessaryScene made a very good point :

We're not doubting she knows him.
We're doubting she knows us

(Don't know why it won't make that bold!)

I'm part of a Discworld group and there are a depressing amount of posters on a current post who are fully immersed in gender ideology but bizarrely seem unclear as to the definition of GC. There is a amusing exchange between two posters, one of which said something about JKR being an awful transphobe and another poster asking what she said. The first poster posted an interpretation of JKR's essay (not the actual essay) and the second poster said 'well that doesn't say what she actually said' and the first poster had to say 'oh well, we'll have to agree to disagree'.

A example of no debate, no evidence in action.

(Don't know why it won't make that bold!)

Mark-up can't span paragraphs/linebreaks. Have to stick stars around each paragraph.

A example of no debate, no evidence in action.

Yay, postmodernism. Everyone gets to have their own truth. (Which makes debate actually pointless, except as a power struggle.)

Oops I like the first two, and Mort, but haven't liked some later ones (Sourcery, and one about postal service)...I tend to pick them up from charity shops when I come across them. I think I read Wyrd Sisters...but can't remember too much about it.
He wrote a lot so there must be something for everyone. I liked Cohen the Barbarian, yes a definite parody but a good observation, to me: what happens when you get old but all you know how to do is be a hero?

I've not watched any TP-derived series or films etc - the pictures can never be as good as the ones in your head.

But it does occur to me that he was pretty clear that the assumed gender of the 'dragon king' was irrelevant but her sex wasn't.

@Waitwhat23

I'm part of a Discworld group and there are a depressing amount of posters on a current post who are fully immersed in gender ideology but bizarrely seem unclear as to the definition of GC. There is a amusing exchange between two posters, one of which said something about JKR being an awful transphobe and another poster asking what she said. The first poster posted an interpretation of JKR's essay (not the actual essay) and the second poster said 'well that doesn't say what she actually said' and the first poster had to say 'oh well, we'll have to agree to disagree'.

A example of no debate, no evidence in action.

I think I'm part of the same group - the mischaracterisation of the GC position is incredibly depressing

@YetAnotherSpartacus

I thought Pratchett sold out women here by reinforcing that dwarves who were female were gendered as feminine - they were just repressing it. Patriarchy acted to suppress women's natural urges towards heels and sparkes and once 'liberated' this is what female dwarves 'naturally' gravitated towards.

Yes, I read the books when they were written (so not framed within more recent politics) and found that a bit clunky at the time. It read to me like he was trying to make a point about cultures that have a social expectation of feminine dress on women (which includes ours!) by flipping round and having a culture that enforced a dress-code that didn't signal female in any way at all, but it kind of fell a bit flat.

I do think over time he worked the theme around to be more subtle especially with the low king and so on.

Sounds like a good day for me to stay away from the idiocy of Twitter. A rather ridiculous argument to engage with - there are plenty of living public figures whose views have been articulated (on both sides of the topic) so why try to put words in the mouth of someone no longer with us.

Agree with the comments in this thread, TP clearly understood the challenges, limitations and restrictions faced by women because of their sex. He also created some great female characters. For that, I admire him.

It's just just you trying to restrict how people identify. Which you know you can only justify with a bunch of dishonest strawmen like this one.

I don't think anyone has an issue with how people identify.

Where I have an issue is the insistence that a trans woman's identity must also give her access to protections and opportunities that were intended to counterbalance the disadvantages that female-bodied people face in a patriarchal society.

It's a bait and switch - change the meaning of the word Woman then insist everyone who meets the new criteria gets everything set up under the old one.

That's not to say that trans woman don't have their own challenges, Of course they do. And if there was evidence that trans women have the same challenges and female people maybe it would be fair that they had the same rights and protections.

But they don't. Female people have a whole pile of challenges related to our reproductive role and how that clashes with society's power structures, while trans women have to deal with a society that doesn't accept them for who they believe they are, sometimes violently.

We both have challenges, but we are not the same.

We need to stop conflating sex and gender, recognise that both have their place, and work on making sure we pick the right one to matter in each context.

If they can posthumously try to 'trans' lesbians like Anne Lister, they can posthumously try to TRA Terry Pratchett, but it doesn't make it true.

Maybe his daughter does feel he wasn't GC (in whatever way she thinks that means), but is she suggesting he would therefore support the death and rape threats sent to JK Rowling?

How does she think he would answer the Staniland question? Would he have been happy for her, as a child and a young teen, to be exposed to men with penises in changing rooms and gyms and spas. Would he tell her off for looking at those penises?

Would he believe that women in prisons should be locked up with sex offenders with functioning penises, just because those sex offenders said they were also women?

I only 'knew' him through his books, but I'm thinking no. The man who wrote those books would not be supportive of any of those things.

I am completely in awe of JK Rowling. I'm completely disappointed in Stephen King. I'm not a bit surprised at Neil Gaiman. I've never liked his books anyway so he's no loss to me, but I'll never buy another Stephen King book and it actually pains me to write that. But there are other authors and other artists I will no longer support because they have thrown girls and women away, and I can't in good conscience make an exception for him.

The fact is, Terry Pratchett died six years ago and was ill for a long time before that. I doubt they spent a lot of time discussing the issue at the time, they had more to worry about. I've no doubt he was an accepting man and possibly made the same assumptions I did at the start of all this - people putting themselves through actual surgery to make their body fit their mindset - and I'm sure he wished the best for those people and supported them as he assumed them to be.

The last few years have proved this isn't the case, and that fully intact male-bodied people are gaining access to women's spaces without any sort of transition other than typing new pronouns onto Twitter. And sadly, Terry Pratchett is not here to see it, or say one way or another how he feels about that. But I can't believe he'd be all for it, and I think he may be more GC than his daughter gives him credit for.

I've also seen someone argue that JK Rowling does understand what being trans is and knows people can change sex, because she wrote the scene where a group of witches and wizards all take polyjuice potion to look like Harry, but they still call Tonks 'she' even though she has a male body at the time.

Completely oblivious to the fact that Tonks might have changed appearance for a short time, but she still hadn't changed sex, nor did she want to. No more so than Hermione changed species when she drank the potion and grew cat hair and a tail.

Being a lifelong sort of innate feminist has meant i don't enjoy/ like loads of stuff that most other people do.

It's very very annoying.

These groups seem to be actively looking for things in stuff they love to analyse to death/ have it 'ruined'.

Just realised actually TP and JKR in their most successful stuff it was fantasy.

Anyway.

They seem to be seeking to get angry and fucked off with things loved which does nothing to increase cheerfulness!

The seemingly very strong desire to read things into all sorts of stuff.
And then get all argumental and worked up and angry.

That doesn't lead to a relaxing time when consuming popular media!

I know this for a fact

They seem to be seeking to get angry and fucked off with things loved which does nothing to increase cheerfulness!

I'm pretty sure that's about the last thing TP would have wanted.

Cheery Littlebottom being from a species in which the two sexes are visually indistinguishable and then wanting to wear lipstick is funny because it's not like real life.

'NiceGerbil

First appeared 1996 Google tells me.

He was actively commenting on trans issues 25 years ago?!

Come off it.

No, he was commenting on the fact that society constrains women and prevents them doing/accessing things that are seen as unfeminine.'

30 years ago.
A feminist point.
Or at least one that feminists have been making for yonks. And a fair number of men agree with.

Nothing to do with the current trans things. Nothing to do with 'GC' as it's come to mean as a response to the trans things.

30 years ago.

Whoever on Twitter is doing oh yes she was oh no she wasn't.

I don't get this at all.

NG enjoyed earlier books but not later.

Can't remember why.

In general I've got a few authors I loved who went and wrote something just ugh and that was that. Really annoying.

Iain m banks and Micheal Marshall Smith it was.

I don't even want to reread all the Jeff noon as I loved them so much but I've got a feeling revisiting might change my mind.

The series says it's "inspired by" the world of Sir Terry Pratchett. That's usually a good indication it shares little with the original except possibly character and location names.

Haven't read the whole thread, but for what it's worth....

Monsterous Regiment was written a long long time before any of the transgender agenda was prominent. Sexism, however, was always there..... Its a book about sexism. Sexist stereotypes. How women are repressed by society. And I doubt Terry had the slightest idea what would be happening in 2021 when he wrote it or how it would fit into the new trans narrative.

I kean, who could have predicted this?!

Also for what it's worth, I am loving The Watch, and Cheery is my favourite character. I am just enjoying it for a brilliant piece of telly, a very interesting statement on gender and some fascinating casting choices.... If the trans lobby weren't so viciously coming for our rights, this is how we would all be seeing it, I reckon!!

I don't know what Sir Pterry would think today.

I am 100% certain that he would engage in civil conversation and discussion and that is it.

I don't actually see that it matters either way, because I have not arrived at my present point of view to in order to imitate any famous figure. I read different arguments. If there was an essay by Sir Pterry on why he supported trans activism, I'd certainly be eager to read it and see if it convinced me, but I wouldn't change my mind without reading it!

Clearly, people read stuff through their own lenses. I have all the Discworld books, the Trucker books, the Johnny books, Nation and so on. Quite keen on his work, you might say.

To me, as a feminist, Monstrous Regiment is one of my favourite books and it seems incredibly GC. I re-read it again and again because I find it cathartic. We have a bunch of girls in a very oppressive, sexist society, who cross-dress to escape its confines, all of them thinking that they're the only one who wished they had the same freedoms as boys, and all with separate, personal priorities. It also has the Homes for wayward girls, which draw on real world events, and there are sexually abusive men who prey on girls from there. There is a line there that haunts me from (I think) Tonker about one of the men who abused them, after Polly says he seemed nice.

"Yes. He was good at seeming".

And at the end, they all stand up and insit on having their achievements recognised as women. I love that so much.

Twitter shows me that many people read in a totally different way, and well, what's the point of arguing about people having different eyes and experiences?

But at the end of the day, I have no idea whether Sir Pterry would have agreed with male people in women's single sex hospital wards, or men in women's prisons, and I never will.

Many people care more about being kind to male people than they do female people, and so are on board with those issues.

I really do agree that his daughter is better placed than I am to answer what he would have thought.

@SnoopyLights

If they can posthumously try to 'trans' lesbians like Anne Lister, they can posthumously try to TRA Terry Pratchett, but it doesn't make it true.

Maybe his daughter does feel he wasn't GC (in whatever way she thinks that means), but is she suggesting he would therefore support the death and rape threats sent to JK Rowling?

How does she think he would answer the Staniland question? Would he have been happy for her, as a child and a young teen, to be exposed to men with penises in changing rooms and gyms and spas. Would he tell her off for looking at those penises?

Would he believe that women in prisons should be locked up with sex offenders with functioning penises, just because those sex offenders said they were also women?

I only 'knew' him through his books, but I'm thinking no. The man who wrote those books would not be supportive of any of those things.

I am completely in awe of JK Rowling. I'm completely disappointed in Stephen King. I'm not a bit surprised at Neil Gaiman. I've never liked his books anyway so he's no loss to me, but I'll never buy another Stephen King book and it actually pains me to write that. But there are other authors and other artists I will no longer support because they have thrown girls and women away, and I can't in good conscience make an exception for him.

The fact is, Terry Pratchett died six years ago and was ill for a long time before that. I doubt they spent a lot of time discussing the issue at the time, they had more to worry about. I've no doubt he was an accepting man and possibly made the same assumptions I did at the start of all this - people putting themselves through actual surgery to make their body fit their mindset - and I'm sure he wished the best for those people and supported them as he assumed them to be.

The last few years have proved this isn't the case, and that fully intact male-bodied people are gaining access to women's spaces without any sort of transition other than typing new pronouns onto Twitter. And sadly, Terry Pratchett is not here to see it, or say one way or another how he feels about that. But I can't believe he'd be all for it, and I think he may be more GC than his daughter gives him credit for.

I have been incredibly distressed today to see the Twitter mob describe Terry Pratchett and his words in a way I do not recognise. I have been an avid reader of his for more than 30 years and not one word of his that I have read would mean he unquestioningly went along with the TWAW and villification of women. I honestly think he wrote women breaking out of their expected gender roles because he saw them as a prison for women.

Every word he wrote about strong women and how they stood up and said "no" gave me the courage to do it too.

I agree with everything you have said. I feel like the TRAs are trying to take something precious from me. So many of them have said that we could not have read or understood his words and that we have no right to his works at all. I am feeling a bit lost TBH

LadyVymes, take heart. The most vocal on Twitter on this issue seem to me to be very young or at any rate lacking in life experiences. They are convinced that gender critical is a synonym for transphobic. They have swallowed whole the idea that gender matters and sex doesn't and anyway sex is a spectrum and who knows what sex they are? In most cases they will eventually learn, possibly as a result of having a child. Tiresome for now, though.

I'm a casual TP fan, so can't comment too much on characters or plot, but I do find it fascinating that the language around these issues has morphed and changed (again) to the point of obfuscating the obvious. (Perhaps TP would have been interested, too)

"GC" stands for Gender Critical but it now seems synonymous with "terf" and has lost all meaning.

It also interests me that people are saying things like "she's a GC" which also makes it seem synonymous with an insult rather than as a description of specific points of view.

Language is interesting.

"GC" stands for Gender Critical but it now seems synonymous with "terf" and has lost all meaning.

Both terms are used to refer to people who are neither radical feminists nor gender critical. It’s just enforced tribalism at the expense of engagement with people’s real concerns.

The nature of Twitter - likes, limited characters - doesn’t help.