Waterstones come out as GC and fire TRA for social media post

[woman2womanmeetswomanparrish]

Fantsatstic news, Christina Dalcher has sucessfully managed to get this TRA fired from their job at Waterstones for X comment.

https://x.com/TillyLovesBooks/status/1810337926850445453?t=WABH0ieBQdnUtaQL5FVlyQ&s=19

I ordered a copy of Sexed by Susannah Rustin, from Waterstones, to celebrate!

It's a fancy name for a shop assistant who probably has a post-grad degree in their subject area and reads hundreds of books a year to keep up with their subject knowledge. There's no need to be snide about someone's job just because you don't like their views.

I did not read it as a snide comment. The term 'bookseller' does lend itself to some other job function.

What's snide? I genuinely don't know what a "bookseller" is in this context. "Bookseller" sounds a bit like "showrunner" or something specific.

If it's shop assistant then that's helpful to know. I've worked in plenty of shops - perhaps you think that is a lowly job or something - I certainly don't. And I made no comment on her views. Please try reading before replying.

There is only one comment on the article now - I guess the Independent didn't like them!

I've been a bookseller, part-time, full-time, in huge shops and small ones.

I would say that most booksellers are over-qualified and extremely knowledgeable. But it is at the end of the day a shop job. Tilly works weekends. She is probably not having meetings with publishing reps (I don't think anyone from the shop floor probably is at Waterstones). It is a physical job (being on feet all day, carrying books) that requires dexterity of mind as well (do you know a blue book about Italy?), but ultimately is no better or worse than any other shop job (if you love the product).

She may help sell thousands of books but some of those are through affiliate links that are nothing to do with Waterstones.

I like the meme that says 'I wanted to end her career, not mine!'

@Lovenothate Sorry but you are ignorant, and your user name is very hypocritical. A FEMINIST AUTHOR didn't get a misogynistic, femphobic bigot fired. In fact, the author hadn't even commented to Waterstones. Other people, namely women who were horrified at the employees hateful bigotry contacted Waterstones. It appears she is rather troublesome and some say she was already on her last warning. It was all her own fault. But keep blaming the innocent feminist author, instead of the hate-filled internalised misogynist handmaiden for Fucking Around and Finding Out.

I am bemused at the thousands of books that Tilly may have sold as being some kind of appeal to authority. Tilly may be very qualified, I don’t doubt it. However, when you work in a bookstore, you are there to sell books. And if you have been there a long enough, I would expect most Waterstones employees to be able to claim
this.

The claim to have sold thousands of books for an employer when that is your main purpose at that work place, is really meaningless as an appeal to authority. Or was it another attempt at claiming special influencer status? Because Tilly claims to have influenced so many people to buy books from Waterstones when they would not have done so otherwise?

Thanks for explaining. I was trying to find out about the function of her job to understand how much actual influence she has in terms of restricting customers' access to books.

I wasn't sure if being a "bookseller" meant she was physically working in a shop selling books or if being a "bookseller" was something to do with being an influencer and promoting books on her blog on behalf of Waterstones or if she was a freelance agent-type person who sells books to the head office of Waterstones to stock in their shops.

It was a perfectly reasonable question not snide in the slightest

i was a style consultant for a big high street brand for 4 years

sounds really impressive now Ive written it like that….i was a shop assistant

@Humtum

Firstly, it wasn't a minor slip, it was a statement about destroying books, from a person who is supposed to support authors.

Publishers should, by law, not discriminate against people due to their lawfully held views, but they do, and it is disgraceful. Hopefully more people will be sacked for displaying this discrimination so blatantly.

I'm glad you like the Guardian book reviews but it is the opinion of one person and you need to read the book yourself to get a sense of it. Yes I have read it. Not my cup of tea but I wouldn't tear it up and 'pop' it in the bin, even if the author was Hitler.

People captured by trans ideology are often childish and weepy - my sweeping statement, but it isn't disproved by your assertion that some trans people are also in demanding jobs. People in demanding jobs can also be childish and weepy.

Annaliese Dodds, indeed I will 'watch this space' but I'm not reassured by her, or any other politian's waffle.

Non sex-segregated changing rooms and toilets exclude certain religious people (women) from using them. They are 'forbidden' by the rules of their culture or religion, or by their own beliefs about biological sex. Not just Muslims, some Jewish sects, some Christian ones. For male bodied people to demand access to female spaces based on their own (religious?) beliefs about an internalised sense of 'gender' is entitled. It excludes existing groups of women, and they could not care less. If trans is a real religion then perhaps they need a third space, in order not to clash with the existing rights of certain religious women to use facilities freely. Perhaps you wouldn't call this 'racist' but since the majority of the women in these cultures with these religions are non-white, that was the term I used.

Bookseller equals shop assistant in this context but can also mean 'person who orders books from publishers' or 'owner of independent bookstore.' For Tilly it is a fancy term for a shelf stacker with a masters in art history/literature or similar.

I could have been considered a ‘bookseller’ as I worked for a publisher and had direct influence over the books we sold. I think ‘what does the title bookseller mean’ is a very valid question.

She said destroying the several copies of the book. Most of us don't have several copies of one book at home. Quite obvious imo that she was talking about her employer's stock. Also they wouldn't want a book-burner working for them.

“Oh no. The consequences of my actions.”

Agree this is how it came across but her defenders are saying 'it was clearly her personal property' because of a tweet she made after the fact, sigh.

I don't think booksellers (unless they own the shop) have any right saying who good/bad authors are, when there are a bazillion of them with a clouded history, but we may still want to read what they have to say, even if only to judge them against it.

Is she busy throwing out Neil Gaiman because of the accusations this week (at the very least he has admitted to bathing with the young nanny on day one)? I doubt it.

This is a quote from Graham Linehan on twitter. If he thinks women who support LGBT/trans rights are "the worst people in the world" then he doesn't get out much does he? How ridiculous.

Handmaidens supporting MENS RIGHTS at the expense of women, makes them the lowest of low and the worst people. Only misogynist bigots and Male Supremacists can't see this. They truly are scum, imo, to advocate to treat women and girls as if we aren't human. And that is their end goal. Their purpose. And has been all along.

Yep, these Mens Rights Activists who attack JKR don't actually read and take in what she says. They accuse her of their own mindset, attitudes and actions. They assume everyone is as lowbrow us them.

Bookbanning, is FACISM. Who were these MRAs calling names? Feminists were called 'nazis' I think? I have not once, ever heard a feminist advocate for bookburning or bookbanning.

i do find it strange that TillyLovesBooks is prepared to destroy books because the author has views that Tilly doesn't agree with.

Back to the main point. When did people lose the ability to argue? debate? discuss? Irvine Welsh (sp?) is as GC as JKR but is he targetted by Tilly and their ilk? VOX (have ordered, haven't read) has 3,5 on Goodreads currently. The blurb tells me it's a bit Handmaid's Tale-ish so probably worth a look. There are a LOT of self-important reviews in there so. meh.

I really would like to reply on X to all the "oh poor Tilly. I wonder what DocStock has to say about people destroying books by authors they don't agree with and then losing their job?"

Brefugee you can't reply to Tilly as she has locked down her account

I listened to the Witch Trials of JK Rowling podcast. There's a whole section about when some Christian conservatives tried to get Harry Potter banned from school libraries, and JKR says something like, "There is no book in the world that I would ban."

I actually wonder whether that is true. I'm thinking of some of the pro trans books which are aimed at children and young people, such as the one with the drawing of the teenage girl pointing out all the things she hates about her body and describing her breasts as "fatty lumps that need to be gone".

I'd like to talk to her and say, "You know you said there's no book in the world that you would ban? Are you sure? Not even that one?"

But then if I did ever meet her there are a thousand things I'd love to ask her.

i don't want to reply to Tilly, i want to reply to all the idiots saying "oh nobody should lose their job because of their views"

but I'm not going to because the twitter pile-on wouldn't be worth it. But other people are. And i am Silently Judging.

as to book banning: again I'm with JKR on this. When Fatherland came out all those years ago it was immediately banned in Germany. I had a copy because i bought it in UK and i like Robert Harris. Didn't think much of the ban, because the book wasn't spreading Hitler's propaganda. Mein Kampf - not so much. But again, should it be banned? or should there be a much more open discussion about what it actually means? If we have good arguments against what Hitler (or anyone) says we should be prepared to stand up and refute it properly. Not just knee-jerk bans. Some of the books for children? yeah. I don't have much experience because i don't currently have small kids in my life. But i don't want 8 year olds learning about anal sex but banning them? frankly they shouldn't be published in the first place. i do want questioning older teenagers to be able to get answers though, so for older children there may be some value in books with answers.

I don't necessarily think people should lose their job because of wrongthink - especially not when it is not illegal wrongthink. Companies are very good at having social media polities, and i am ok with people falling foul of them and getting the book thrown at them, up to and including losing their job. In Tilly's case - she was too big for her boots, thought nobody could come for her, and that she is on the RSOH. FAFO indeed. I am not celebrating someone losing their job though.

We all know what would happen if an employee of Waterstones tweeted they were going to chuck a trans or trans rights author's books in the bin. The TRAs would want blood, and would be celebrating with glee when they got sacked.

Yes, the MRAs/TRAs would be marching outside their local Waterstones and bringing bags of knives, molotov cocktails and wire-wrapped baseball bats. That's what those violent maggots do.

Has anyone thought how gleeful Tilly comes across in her comment to Christina Dalcher?

With the "Oooh" and saying she'll "enjoy" tearing up her books.

I think that's what I find most distasteful about it. It's not that she simply disagrees with CD but that she seems delighted to have found a "transphobe."

It seems odd to be happy to have an excuse to destroy books that she apparently enjoyed reading.

Fresh comments are arriving: "there's a comment that I wrote, dear editor, dear editor (etc)... there's a gap in thread (etc)"