Gender critical Twitter is on fire today...

[tabbycatstripy]

...after a Muslim children’s writer outed herself as gender critical, and when she received the usual ‘disappointed’ comments and accusations of being a ‘terf’, the ratio was clear: most people either support her, or they prefer not to say anything.

The tide has turned. Some of her accusers have been forced to delete their tweets, after their publishers were tagged in to the abusive content.

You love to see it.

They went after Onjali Raúf again?

In case you missed it, here's a guide to one of the lowest points so far.

How trans activists in publishing hijacked a children's book competition to pursue a personal vendetta

They think there are only six of us and our socks.

Children's authors seem to be the worst people in the world. That little clique on twitter are absolute poison. Horrible people, just school bullies.

Yep. That is it poisonous authors. Or perhaps wee jealous idiots. Hard call same outlook

Absolutely this. Her own experiences through her faith and her (international) charity work puts her in a very good position to highlight the conflict of rights at the heart of everything here. That is all she is doing. And her peers should really be paying more attention. That they don't really speaks volumes.

Onjali is fab and brave.

Which other authors gave her a kicking?

As a mum of a 7 year old voracious reader DD I'd like to know who to swerve in the bookshop.

Bet they've all got puckered faces, like a dog reversing.

A few of these delightful people mentioned in this Rachel Rooney thread.

twitter.com/RooneyRachel/status/1529441977183379456

Trawling through literary twitter's quote-tweets of Hachette Kids and Onjali Raúf it seems to be the usual set who are involved in every single attempt to get a gender-critical writer sacked. Back in 2020, Jane Harris revealed this one in children's and teens' publishing was responsible for getting Amanda Craig dropped from judging a literary competition. Twitter thread

Authors you can cheerfully support include Rachel Rooney, Gillian Philip, and Onjali Raúf.

I'd also recommend Maz Evans, who has not expressed any views either way, but who, in all innocence, extended her professional congratulations to Onjali Raúf a year or so ago. The TRA mob started sending private messages to her about raping her, telling her that they knew where her children went to school. Maz still hasn't expressed any views either way, but she refused to be terrified out of being friendly with Onjali. For that display of courage, I bought her books for my offspring and they are very much loved, to the extent that Mini-Pot demanded that I preorder the next book in the current series.

There are so many great authors out there for kids - JKR among them of course (The Ickabog was amazing) but so many others.

There are enough authors who are against the TRA agenda of sterilising kids with untested drugs that honestly, I don't think I'm going to be buying from authors with pronouns in their bio anymore.

When trawling through the bookshop, support Lissa Evans, who writes for children and adults, and who has been calm, measured and courageous.

If you are ever deliberating over a book, I find checking authors' twitter profiles can be very helpful. The ones who are dedicated to the hatred of gender-critical women usually can't help but go on and on and on about it in their twitter posts. I've given a fair few authors a swerve now. I also refuse to buy any book from an author represented by Ash Literary Agency

I buy a lot of books and it costs me a fortune. In order to restrict my somewhat compulsive buying I've started checking modern authors' twitter bios for pronouns. It stops the ravening booklust immediately.

Yes to Lissa Evans. I loved Wed Wabbit so much.

Yep, we've got that, and both of the Small/Big Change for Stuart books.

I have a similar procedure to Tiphaine and you'd think I'd be saving money. Instead I'm spending more, because I keep discovering new authors every time someone speaks up.

And the frustrating thing is that all the authors who speak up turn out to be really good writers, whose books are full of wit, humour and sharp observations of human behaviour. So then I have to buy all their other books, too. Aaargh!

I've found that refusing to buy any book when there are pronouns in the authors bio or anywhere else, makes for a much higher quality selection of books.

I actually purchased "The Boy at the Back of the Class" a couple of weeks ago for my son & he loved it.
He was hooked right from the beginning with the 'friendly winking' bit as it made him laugh out loud.

Just went & ordered "The Great (Food) Bank Heist" because the other book was so good.

Both by Onjali Rauf - she is a fabulous writer.

Onjali is a wonderful writer, she was a guest at a literary festival I attended just before lockdown, now I love her more. She’s very brave, I haven’t seen Twitter but I imagine some of those criticising her are other female writers. (of to take a look and offer her support)

I mostly swerve books by the TRA writers as well, but it’s easy in most cases because they don’t look like books I’d enjoy reading. I have actually bought some of them (Christine Burns, Shon Fae) because they at least have skin in the game and I want to hear their arguments. I’m not buying books written by she/her bullies who think they have a right to police whether a Muslim woman laughs at a joke about toilets.

Thanks, Tabby. This bears repeating, again and again.

Indeed. I hadn't heard of Onjali before, but I've had a look now and I'm interested. I buy quite a few children's books.

Good tip, thanks. I spend silly amounts of money on books (you'd see if we met that I'm not spending it on high-fashion clothes!) so this would be a useful way to weed out authors I don't want to support.

I'm already buying children's books and teen fiction to support women I admire, like Rachel Rooney and Gillian Philip. I meant to pass them on to friends with children at home. But at present they're on display for visitors.

I sometimes do purchase books from authors with pronouns in bio, because I think in the toxic world of publishing, it's much more difficult for women to get away with not having them without incurring the wrath of the internet mob. So I felt a blanket prohibition on my part would risk indirectly discriminating against female authors.

Pompous as it may sound, I do sincerely feel that gender identity theory is a philosophical belief that other people are entitled to hold, just like any other religion, and I try to remind myself I think that when I'm most frustrated. My issue with various authors is not their sincerely held belief that TWAW, but the fact they aren't willing to tolerate differences in belief from others. It's the difference between being a Christian, and being a Christian who incites violence against atheists and people of other faiths.

So what I do is keyword searches on twitter accounts to gauge how they act on that belief. For example, to see if they've ever bullied Rachel Rooney or Onjali. It's not foolproof, but it's been enough to cancel multiple book purchases.

I've bought and read two of her books, The Boy at the Back of the Class and the one about domestic violence. My daughter read them and I then donated them to the school library.

‘Pompous as it may sound, I do sincerely feel that gender identity theory is a philosophical belief that other people are entitled to hold, just like any other religion, and I try to remind myself I think that when I'm most frustrated.’

Of course, but (as you say) it’s a belief system (faith-based) and it’s not okay to force others to adhere to your belief system.

That's the actual issue. Not (well, not entirely) the belief; but the fact that it's being imposed on everyone else and the consequences of rebellion are brutal.

Well yes, they can believe what they want, but the no debate and cancel culture is shutting down discussions about putting children on an irreversible medical pathway using untested drugs with no safety data for use in children for this reason. These conversations are important. There's enough information about detransitioners with horrendous medical complications for these people to be slightly more clued in than a knee jerk 'bigot' response. They are CHILDREN's authors.