Margaret Atwood

[MummBRaaarrrTheEverLeaking]

twitter.com/MargaretAtwood/status/1450429768067846145?t=8q-A8MlvzZsx6pt4Vu1_LA&s=19

Has retweeted an article from the Toronto Star "why can't we say woman anymore" and bloody hell are they coming for the latest witch burning in the comments!

Ranging from disappointment to the usual sweary abuse. I thought oh how long till the capitulation begins, turns out I didn't have to wait long!

She's following it up with retweets about 'we can say people when it's accurate and inclusive' and then defending the article because the writer isn't "a terf"???

Not really sure what she's trying to achieve here, anyone?

she can signal that she is undergoing a shift of some sort.

I believe her further 'response' to the outcry, of posting two tweets from a feminist organisation, are a signal.

What a golden bridge looks like in this case is sticking up for her. Providing a calm, supportive voice that acknowledges the bravery it takes to admit one was wrong, to stand up for what one believes in even if (especially) when one knows it will bring opprobrium. And ESPECIALLY when that involves a change of belief/thinking.

Someone posted Sarah Ditum in The Times on another thread. For me, this is about the power of lobby groups, whatever the subject and how they have so poisoned the public debate that so many people have been mislead as to what is at stake. They've been ensorcelled by the #BeKind #NoDebate thought-terminating clichés into not understanding the consequences or that women's rights and the hard won safeguarding protections are being dismantled in plain sight.

Let’s say there’s a contentious social issue. It doesn’t matter what the issue is. Assisted dying, drug reform, abortion rights — pick your poisonous divide. Legal changes are mooted. Lobby groups campaign for and against the proposals, and in an ideal world this would be the point at which we got a fair and frank exchange of views on the public stage.

But now let’s say that one (and only one) of the lobby groups is also providing training to public bodies on the issue at hand. It runs schemes through which organisations can be accredited as “champions” or ranked in a league table for their performance, too: a cannabis liberalisation campaign might mark down employers who banned staff from having a spliff on the job…

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/bec8f37c-3111-11ec-afd6-aa3ee2eb8a34?shareToken=b9f03dca73809fa4993bbd16c6acc001

I haven’t seen the link posted yet for the archived version of the article.

archive.md/zzN8I

Apologies if it has been posted already.

I don't care if she wants to be forgiven, I just care that she will speak truth and refrain from attacking other women. That's all.

Blimey, talk about excessive moderation. in case anyone's wondering there was nothing remarkable in my deleted post.

I would forgive Atwood because I think looking more reasonable than, well, no, I won't say any more in case I get deleted again for saying something innocuous.

@ArabellaScott

I don't care if she wants to be forgiven, I just care that she will speak truth and refrain from attacking other women. That's all.

Exactly.

And, as for Thing is I don’t think she gets it because she says - read it she is not a terf. She doesn’t get it does she?

I wonder if MA's experience of seeing how quickly she has been denounced as The Thing Called Terf That She Knows Herself Not to Be will cause her to reflect on whether the words terf and transphobic have any meaning if they are applied to something of which she approves (as well as herself).

It would be astonishing if she did, but it's not even that important that MA gets it now or if it's the equivalent of a voyage to Ithaca for her as long as it makes her pause, reflect, and decline any future invitations to undermine/blame/attack other women.

I am not in Atwood's head, so I vote for a golden bridge. I was a literature major, not a women's studies major. Coming from a conservative community, I would never have come to feminism if it weren't for literary writers like Doris Lessing, Adrienne Rich and Margaret Atwood. These women shaped my entire life and subsequently the lives of my daughters and I will forever be indebted to them to opening my mind to how women are uniquely oppressed by reason of our sex. While Atwood's writing is heroic, Atwood is a human like the rest of us and there are probably a complex set of reasons why she's reacted to gender activism in the way she has.

Also, mainstream US news just picked up the story. www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/handmaids-tale-author-margaret-atwood-faces-backlash-for-gender-neutrality-tweet/ar-AAPIuMo

Funny how a lot of the replies are saying that "people" is "more precise language".

precise
adjective
marked by exactness and accuracy of expression or detail.

I wouldn't therefore call "people" (and other "inclusive" words) precise. I'd call them vague. If you said that London is a city in Europe, you aren't being precise. It's not untrue, London is indeed a city in Europe but the statement doesn't give you any idea of where it might be on a map. Identifying it precisely would be to say that it is in the South West of England.

TRAs do love mangling language, don't they?

In the Mail:

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10110001/Handmaids-Tale-author-Margaret-Atwood-branded-transphobic-row-gender-neutral-language.html

In the Mail article "echoes of JK Rowling".

I'm happy that the tweet hasn't been deleted, no-one wants to walk into that kind of abusive storm.

Newsweek: www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/handmaids-tale-author-margaret-atwood-faces-backlash-for-gender-neutrality-tweet/ar-AAPIuMo

A lot of the commentary is how Atwood has always been trash/racist/bigoted/a rubbish author. It's very Orwellian; X has always been an enemy of the people. I'm simultaneously fascinated and horrified at how totalitarian this movement is. It's like we're getting to see how all those regimes happened.

I wonder if she has reflected on the similarities between her and JKR now.

I'm just placemarking out of curiosity to see her recant. I wonder what it feels like to have the internet turn on you like that, I imagine that it's quite terrifying.

Absolutely, Esma. Eurasia has always been at war with Eastasia.

@Lammysaurus

Well, she's correct, the writer is not a TERF, not that Margaret Atwood should even be using that term. However, the small addled children who live on Twitter no doubt think everyone who isn't exactly like them and doesn't prattle misogynist nonsense all day long is a "TERF" and have no idea what it means.

If they met an actual TERF - which is very unlikely - they'd probably wet their pants.

Sophie Lewis, New York Times (2019) says this though, ‘With time, the term TERF has become a catchall for all anti-trans feminists, radical or not.’

@EsmaCannonball

A lot of the commentary is how Atwood has always been trash/racist/bigoted/a rubbish author. It's very Orwellian; X has always been an enemy of the people. I'm simultaneously fascinated and horrified at how totalitarian this movement is. It's like we're getting to see how all those regimes happened.

Absolutely and it is terrifying. Even more so if you are an academic. Feminist and women’s issues are conspicuously absent from a university course that I am studying. I feel as if the term ‘women’ and associated terms are being eradicated.

I'm hanging in here to see how this goes. It was always anachronistic (I know there's a better word. It escapes me) for her to be running with the ladz.

It looks as though she's literally just understood what she supported before- not a gentle welcoming of refugees from toxic masculinity but the careful dismantling of women's rights to facilitate an invasion of that same toxic masculinity.

‘ “There’s more than a whiff of misogyny to it. Why ‘woman’ the no-speak word and not ‘man’’? Why not ‘persons who urinate standing up’ or ‘people who eject semen’?” ‘ From the article in the Toronto Star referred to by Margaret Atwood.

I had that same thought just yesterday!

Does anyone have a quick summary of Margaret Atwood’s history of ‘running with the ladz’?

I had always read her as Feminist.

One could get the impression that everyone is guilty, perhaps they've been guility from birth*, but trans activisim will give a conditional reprieve so long as you toe the line, but if you do step out of line, you will be punished for your guilt.

• this applies in the case of white privilege and can apply for the other varieties

@EsmaCannonball

A lot of the commentary is how Atwood has always been trash/racist/bigoted/a rubbish author. It's very Orwellian; X has always been an enemy of the people. I'm simultaneously fascinated and horrified at how totalitarian this movement is. It's like we're getting to see how all those regimes happened.

They did this with JKR too. Apparently goblins are anti semetic and Cho Chang's name is stereotypical (King Critical on YouTube did a good video refuting this nonsense).

@IrisAtwood

Does anyone have a quick summary of Margaret Atwood’s history of ‘running with the ladz’?

I had always read her as Feminist.

She joined the pile on to JKR. She supported the 'cancelling' of another female writer. Presumably unthinkingly, having not read JKRs piece, but that would be irresponsible of her.

Here are a couple of open letters related to Atwood and her brushes with the subject:

Atwood signed this letter in Nov 2020:

'As members of the writing and publishing community of the United States and Canada, we stand firmly in support of trans and non-binary people and their rights.
We are writers, editors, journalists, agents, and professionals in multiple forms of publishing. We believe in the power of words. We want to do our part to help shape the curve of history toward justice and fairness.
To that end, we say: non-binary people are non-binary, trans women are women, trans men are men, trans rights are human rights.
Your pronouns matter.
You matter.
You are loved.'

docs.google.com/document/d/1E2wUhFjDHFaoQLQkFeG0HIhKUFknmTw076hctywqxUc/edit

She also had previously signed a letter in Harpers warning against intolerance, that Rowling had also signed:

www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jul/08/jk-rowling-rushdie-and-atwood-warn-against-intolerance-in-open-letter