Philip Pullman ducks the real issue...

[Birdsweepsin]

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/5573dece-7c96-11ed-bcd8-855e06175970?shareToken=27a5fe54ad7b6adab0c0eb0e7a7ff679

Lots to chew over in here. But no mention of JKR, or the similarities between what happens to children in his books (dust) and what's happening to kids right now.

The closest we get is the SoA argument which is also weirdly reported....

Pullman’s most incendiary Twitter skirmish came last year when he defended Kate Clanchy, whose memoir, Some Kids I Taught and What They Taught Me, has been accused of racial and ableist stereotyping. Responding to a comment he wrongly assumed was about Clanchy, Pullman wrote that critics who had not read her book would “find a comfortable home in Isis or the Taliban”. The Society of Authors distanced themselves from his comments, and this year he resigned as its president in protest.

He is still palpably angry about the affair. “The Society of Authors behaved so badly, so carelessly, that it was impossible for me to remain as president,” he says. “It got completely mixed up with people’s views on trans and the gender thing, which had absolutely nothing to do with what authors ought to be thinking about. To let yourself be carried away on this idiotic political frenzy seems to me a matter of terrible regret.”

He's a weird mish-mash. I think he is committed to freedom of speech and thought, and allowing writers the kind of room they need, but he's always been oddly dumb about gender ideology - he doesn't seem to get what it's really about.

Pullman is fully aware of gender ideology. He is scared of the TRAs hence the faux naivety. Coward.

Even if you assume he genuinely doesn’t know the ins and outs of it… wouldn’t any normal person, after seeing and receiving vitriol about their position on an issue, take the time to catch up on it?

It’s not like this only started last week.

I am coming to the same conclusion @MingeofDeath

He wrote an endorsement for a book written someone who identified as a woman. So I am guessing his sympathies are with his own sex???

Pullman's refusal to comment on the parallels between the children in his trilogy (it's expanding, of course, and he'll catch up with Douglas Adams soon...) and what happened at GIDS is very odd. Surely he is aware of them? So is it cowardice? I'm struggling to think of another explanation, despite his avowed freedom to speak out: Those like him, who are financially secure and not beholden to institutions, have a responsibility to speak their minds, he says. “I’m extremely lucky to be in the position I am. I know people who would like to protest against the situation that governs them but can’t do so because they’ve got a family and if they lose their job . . . If I’ve got something to say that I think is worth hearing, I’ll say it.”

How refreshing in this censorious age to talk to someone who has little fear of cancellation.

He’s a strange one, everything would point to him being (for want of a term) ‘gender critical’ but then he somehow isn’t.

I’m not sure about that, DogsAkimbo. The Northern Lights books actually have a rather rigid understanding of gender. Daemons are always the opposite gender. Not the opposite sex - trans people have same-sex daemons (so the trans person’s gendered soul is visible to everyone). And not the sex/gender you’re attracted to - gay people have opposite-gender daemons like everyone else.

This seems to be a yin-yang idea of male and female energies in balance etc. The gender essentialism bothered me back when the first book appeared.

Plus it’s a very male perspective. Why can’t women ever have a single-sex space? Not All Daemons, obviously - Pan is delightful - but some lesbian feminists won’t even have male pets, however congenial. Why should they have to share their entire lives with a male daemon?

And to add insult to injury, why should lesbian feminists be told that a male daemon is an essential complement to the female nature and a suppressed aspect of the self? No thank you.

He's a weird mish-mash. I think he is committed to freedom of speech and thought, and allowing writers the kind of room they need, but he's always been oddly dumb about gender ideology - he doesn't seem to get what it's really about.

He’s a strange one, everything would point to him being (for want of a term) ‘gender critical’ but then he somehow isn’t.

There’s definitely a contradiction between his free speech position and his attempts to undermine those people who want to discuss the conflict between women’s rights and trans rights. Telling people what they “ought to be thinking about” is a bit paternalistic and patronising. Perhaps he’s got a trans / trans activist / social justice grandchild or all the women in his life are “twaw”. If every woman you know is of the “be kind” variety I think it must be quite hard for a man to take a different stance.

Daemons are always the opposite gender. Not the opposite sex - trans people have same-sex daemons (so the trans person’s gendered soul is visible to everyone).

Are there trans people in the His Dark Materials trilogy? It’s been years since I read it.

Are there trans people in the His Dark Materials trilogy? It’s been years since I read it.

I don't recall, but it's quite amusing if it's as described.

a) "Trans" actually would be a real observable thing, and you could have a definitive test for it, hence removing a lot of safeguarding issues.
b) You could come up with real statistics about this clearly definable population.
c) "Trans" identification is then based on determining the sex of the daemons and comparing to the sex of the human - this concept is 100% sex based, and has no reliance on anything invisible like "gender".

So this form of "trans" is 100% GC-aligned, and nothing to do with the current "transgender".

The Dark Materials equivalent of transgender would be someone insisting they were "trans" despite their daemon clearly being the opposite sex as them. So, for example, a man with a female daemon insisting on being treated the same as a man with a male daemon, or a woman with a male daemon.

"Gender" has to be invented to cover unobservable or impossible things.

In answer to my own question, it’s likely that Pullman did not deliberately write about “trans” is His Dark Materials trilogy. Pullman did have same “gender” daemons but he said this might be because they were gay or had some other special power like 2nd sight. Fans have since speculated that this could indicate “trans” identity.

In Pullman’s trilogy (and it’s “equel”, the Book of Dust), characters have dæmons, manifestations of their inner selves that take the form of animals.

Usually, these are of the opposite gender, however some are of the same, prompting theories that these characters are members of the LGBT+ community.

Philip Pullman has previously hinted such theories might be right. In 2000, he said: “Occasionally, no doubt, people do have a dæmon of the same sex. That might indicate homosexuality, or it might indicate some other sort of gift or quality, such as second sight.

“I do not know. But I don’t have to know everything about what I write.”

Most of the characters in the trilogy have dæmons with a different gender to them. However there are mentions of a few people with same-gender dæmons.

Some have theorised that this could be an indication they are gay and/or trans, and that non-binary characters have dæmons with fluid presentations.

CONTENT WARNING ⚠️ Pink News link…

www.thepinknews.com/2020/12/25/his-dark-materials-lgbt-characters-daemons-same-gender/

Yes good point.

In Pullman's fictional universe, your previously fluid childhood soul is eternally fixed in one form forever at the age of puberty, as though one's character, personality, soul, daemon will never alter again. I wonder, does he think that is true of real world humans too, that we never change the way we feel about ourselves or others after puberty, and thus supports the idea that a child should be medicalised to be frozen for life in the 'gender' they or their parents believe themselves to be age 6 or 9 or 13?

He absolutely is aware of the issues - a number of us have had conversations with him on Twitter (and been told that we are bigots)