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.

And sometimes all it takes for evil to triumph is for people to do nothing. I think putting pronouns in your bio just so you can stay 'in' with the cool girls / TRA handmaidens in publishing when there are real potential harms to children from this agenda and they're shutting down debate about it is pretty awful.

Great post @PurgatoryOfPotholes.

Lissa's books for adults are fantastic! She's a wonderful writer: funny, compassionate, warm-hearted. Do read Old Baggage, Crooked Heart and V for Victory, which make up a brilliant trilogy. Old Baggage is about a former suffragette who still has the fighting spirit in the 1920s.

emperor, I can't really disagree there. Every word you say is true.

You've reminded me of JKR's recent reference to the story about the grocer twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1516793678265827333?s=21&t=Mz4FXOG1mFYu6Qdx4CsjeQ. I do see your point and in theory I do absolutely agree with you. It must be hard for women authors especially to go against the grain. Even so, seeing their willingness to pay even lip service to a belief system I think is misogynist and homophobic gives me the ick and I just do not want to read a word they've written then.

Also a Lissa Evans fan

@PurgatoryOfPotholes I do so agree with what you say. I have actually read and enjoyed books by several of the TRA children’s authors. I accept that they hold views which I don’t agree with. That’s their choice. What I find intolerable is that they seem incapable of extending the same courtesy to authors who take a different stance on this one issue. A recent tweet by one of them basically accuses GC authors of being unkind to trans children. Well, leaving aside the question of whether there’s such a thing as a trans child, I defy them to find anything that’s unkind to any child in Rachel Rooney’s poems, or Onjali’s books. Or in anything they have said. Quite the opposite actually.

I was pleased to see Katharine Quarmby tweeting her support for Onjali’s right to speak and calling out for diversity within publishing to include diversity of view.

twitter.com/katharineq/status/1529732442772459520?s=21&t=BkbIiYecGMjpXdrQS--9dg

So disappointed that Robin Stevens is anti freedom of speech and for an ideology that thinks children should be given medication that hasn't been tested and shuts down any debate about that.

Won't be buying any more of her books. I did think they were a bit ridiculous and poorly written but DD loved them - still I've got her a couple of Onjali Rauf's now, which seem to be a bit more substantive and the writing style is better, and I'm sure she won't notice that Robin Stevens is off the list. Some good suggestions for new authors upthread too.

I spend WAY too much money on children's books.

Onjali Rauf's books are wonderful. I bought them for my children after the last appalling attack on her, and my girls love them very much.

Yeah, I've been refusing to buy books by Robin Stevens since November 2020, since the time she tried to guilt-trip us all into putting pronouns in bio because Kamala Harris does. Put pronouns in your bio or say grace before your meals? No problem. Order me to do so? Not happening.

For those using screenreaders

Robin's tweet in November: Our vice-president elect has her pronouns in her bio. What’s your excuse?

It was accompanied by an image of Kamala Harris's twitter profile, which does indeed have pronouns in.

Link to Twitter

If you have a squint at her wikipedia entry, you will see that she doesn't exactly come from the wrong side of the tracks. She can do without my money.

I think she picked an argument with whoever runs the Levins Solicitors account. Big mistake. Huge.

I scrolled up from here to see it.

twitter.com/LevinsLaw/status/1529923379448451073

Oh dear. I cringed in embarrassment for Robin.

Thanks for alerting us to that, it's hilarious.

How can she possibly argue that anything Onjali says is hate speech? Can she not see how ridiculous this is? Has she actually read any of her books?

I must admit I'd not heard of Onjali Rauf until this thread (I don't have children so I'm afraid my knowledge of children's literature starts and ends with the books I read and JK Rowling). But now I have heard of her, every single time I need to buy a child a present, it will be one of Rauf's books. She sounds bloody awesome.

Sadly it’s not about demographic. Most publishers won’t even look at your work if you’re GC and it’s an industry built on relationships.

I do think not having pronouns in bios is a statement of GC for the most part. A very quiet rebellion. It’s complicated deeply by the notion that TRAs want to frame it as a child protection issue (both sides do, actually) so it’s a real career killer.

I love or for this. As a religious but progressive Jew with an orthodox background, single sex spaces are essential in some contexts.

Let's be adding Katharine Quarmby's children's books to the list of Women in Children's Publishing who deserve our money then. Her titles all sound really interesting, actually.

katharinequarmby.com/books-for-children/

This may be true but I'm betting the GC mothers market is probably much bigger than the TRA market, and more and more women are waking up.

Does anyone have recommendations of GC publishers we can support? Happy to try new authors under a GC Publishing house, that thinks that we should be free to discuss the evidence around giving children experimental drugs.

The fact is that whilst TRAs frame it as child protection in a 'suicide, no debate' way, GC women talk about safeguarding frameworks and are willing to enage and discuss and talk about the evidence around puberty blockers.

One is a reasonable position of being willing to discuss evidence and what's best for children and the other is an attempt to stifle debate.

Neither publish children's fiction AFAIK, but for adult fiction and non-fiction, try Spinifex Press (feminist press) and Lightning Eye books, which publishes and employs extremely GC author Simon Edge. I'm not sure trans activists can come in range of Simon Edge without exploding in rage.

www.eye-books.com/post/lightning-a-new-deal-for-authors

They really are. A bunch of self righteous head girls.

I've seen Frank Cottrell-Boyce (children's author- wrote Sputnik's Guide to Life on Earth, which has some similarities to The Hitch-hiker's Guide to the Galaxy) stick up for Onjali Raúf before, so let's stick him on the List of Decent People in Children's Publishing.

@theemperorhasnoclothes
“The people calling her a transphobe and saying it's 'hate' haven't thought through the issues of mixed sex (by stealth) toilets and other spaces for Muslim women and girls.“

This is something that always baffles me.
People who are usually very vocal in their support of ethnic minorities seem to have a blind spot when it comes to transwomen in women‘s spaces.
For some reason they seem to completely disregard the fact that by including transwomen in those spaces they might exclude Muslim women and girls.