And when you look at the people who signed
The Bookseller reports on Mslexia’s shunning of Amanda Craig:
Amanda Craig has been dropped as a competition judge by women’s writing magazine Mslexia over her signing of a letter to the Times in defence of J K Rowling.
…Craig has said she is “very disappointed” by the decision taken after her involvement protesting “relentless bullying and death threats to a fellow author”. She also called on professional bodies, including the Society of Authors and English PEN, to defend authors from such bullying.
…
Craig had been appointed a judge for the Mslexia Fiction & Memoir Competition 2020 alongside novelist Kiran Millwood Hargrave and literary agent Joanna Moult. Hargrave said on Twitter that she “wasn’t comfortable to sit on a panel of judges alongside Amanda because of the letter”. She said she had offered to step down herself in order to let Craig remain on the panel.
Craig said: “I was going to judge this prize as a favour to a magazine I’ve supported virtually since it began. I’m very sad, because I love finding new talent,” said Craig. “But I am just very disappointed in them [Mslexia] because it seems quite clear to me what I am protesting against, like the other signatories, is the relentless bullying and death threats to a fellow author. It’s clear that is what that letter was about. It wasn’t about views on trans matters, which I know there is a broad spectrum of opinion about; it was to show someone I very much admire as a writer support. So it’s disappointing and ironic that a magazine, founded to support and champion women writers, should have fallen in this ridiculous way. I’m afraid it’s pretty damaging for them.”
All the more so when the point of contention is whether or not men can literally transmogrify into women. If anything short of agreeing – noisily, enthusiastically, publicly – that men can become women is grounds for punishment and ostracism, then we’re in a realm of thought-policing in the most grimly literal sense possible.
Hargrave–who was to be Craig’s co-judge on the panel and has since been attacked on social media over her stance on the issue–said from her point of view she was glad Mslexia had “taken a stand in support of a persecuted minority”.
Men? Men are not a persecuted minority.
One of the organisers behind a letter published in the Guardian on Wednesday (30th September) in solidarity with the non-binary and trans community, she said: “Following Amanda’s signing of the Times letter, I spoke with Mslexia and offered to step down as my views are antithetical with the signees. I’ve seen a lot of talk about how it was a letter opposing bullying, but where was the support for the trans community Rowling put in harm’s way with her views?”
Rowling didn’t put “the trans community” in harm’s way with her views. That’s the usual manipulative lying crap and it is a pack of lies.
“I do not support hate speech, towards anyone. I never condone or participate in it. And when you look at the people who signed –Graham Linehan, Lionel Shriver–it’s clear there is alignment with transphobia. That is unacceptable to me, and to Mslexia, who are after all a magazine for women who write. You can’t exclude trans women from that definition and truly represent all women.”
Yes you can. That’s exactly what you can do. What you can’t do is the other thing: include men in the definition of women and truly represent all women. Support and help and love and hang out with gender-nonconforming men all you like, by all means, but don’t try to bully us into agreeing that their gender nonconformity means they are literally women. That’s just stupid.
“If they had asked me to step down, I would have without fanfare or public statement. I’m disappointed the same courtesy wasn’t afforded me, and that I have been subject to character attacks by people with a track record of spreading hatred. The debate has become a binary of ‘supporting’ Amanda, or ‘supporting’ me and Mslexia.”
Whose fault is that? Nothing required Hargrave to ostracize Craig; the decision to do so was all hers, and was malevolent and destructive. Yes it created a “binary” but she’s the one who created it. We think she did a bad destructive anti-woman thing and we get to say so, even if it does create a “binary.”
“Really, it’s about trans people’s right to exist and have their existence enshrined in law.”
Like hell it is. Nobody disputes trans people’s right to exist. It’s not about existence, it’s about definition. Catastrophizing talk of a right to exist is just more bullying.
“I did not set out to ‘cancel’ Amanda, and the very people who say I have now seek to ‘cancel’ me. Those who claim to hate bullying share my name and invite others to ridicule me and the work I do – the hypocrisy is astonishing. Judging a prize is an honour, not a right, and I am glad Mslexia have taken a stand in support of a persecuted minority.”
There’s that “persecuted minority” again. Men are not a persecuted minority.
So much stale empty jargon thrown down like poker chips. Look behind the damn jargon to see if it even means anything. Use your brain instead of your box of slogans.
When the LGB community requested their rights, they were requesting only those rights everyone else has, and nothing they demanded or received had the effect of reducing anyone else’s rights (although many Christians feel it did, they are wrong, because there is no right not to have someone you dislike living in your neighborhood).
When women demanded, and received, the right to vote, it did not take the right to vote away from any other group, nor reduce the rights of any other group. When they demanded, and received, the right to work in the job of their choice, it did not reduce the right of any other individual to do the same, only increased the competition for the available jobs.
When people of color demand the right to walk in peace without being targeted for the color of their skin, it is not demanding anything that takes rights away from other people, since there is no right to bully and harass people you hate.
When trans demand the right to be seen as they see themselves, this does demand a right no one else has. It isn’t inherently harmful, but it carries harm along with it, because that then leads to demands to women’s private spaces, set up to protect women from men, who are larger, more powerful, and more aggressive than women, and who have been socialized to believe everything belongs to them…including women. This movement is substantially different than all the other movements. It is closer to religion, as we’ve discussed, but also closer to authoritarianism, with the demands that we police our every word and every thought if we don’t want to find ourselves cancelled. It is like Christianity in its attempts to commandeer the machinery of the government to enforce “rightthink”, and like Christianity, has been successful to an extent. And like Christianity, they want to take that success further, to ultimate success, where all of us think what we are told to think, say what we are told to say, do what we are told to do, and shut our mouths when some enormous male-bodied person comes into the bathroom with us, assaults us, and then gets sent to a woman’s prison where he will have many victims. All he has to do is say “I am a woman’.
And watch religion grow even more powerful if they adopt this tactic.
“I identify as someone who knows and loves God. So when people deny God, they’re saying that I can’t be someone who knows and loves God. They’re denying my existence. I want my existence enshrined in law: God exists. That’s more inclusive, and you’ll be on the right side of history. Thank you.”
I am sorry to say I have and have read this book The Mercies. by KMH, It is about a witchhunt ………
More Performative Purity, in which Wrong Opinions, Thoughts and Views make people “uncomfortable” and cause them “harm.”
Uncomfortable how? Is she afraid that Craig is going to stick tacks on her chair? Do these judges actually sit beside each other while doing their judging? Aren’t they each in their own spaces and only a virtual panel? Is Hargrave uncomfortable that her name might appear on the same computer screen as that of someone she disagrees with?
Are “Rowling’s views” pushing people off tube platforms or in front of trams?
But then you’re spreading lies about Rowling’s views and claiming these (unspecified, unevidenced) views (which she does not actually hold) are putting trans people “in harm’s way.” This might not meet a definition of hate speech, but it’s certainly calculatedly evil. You’re not only repeating the lie but amplifying it and adding to it.
Have a look in the mirror. See above re: hate speech against JKR.
They can’t afford to do that because the empty jargon and the box of slogans is all they’ve got. It’s all bluff and bullying. Their purpose is to short circuit and completely bypass debate, because they cannot win on the merits of their case. The cards they hold in their hand are blank.
There is no “there” there.
There is no Emperor.
Don’t tell that to TAs or they might implode in a fit of narc rage. Not that that would be a bad thing…
not Bruce, it does seem like malignant narcissism is all the rage these days.