Big news – another open letter saying eeek transphobia eeek. Great, because there haven’t been enough of those yet.

A group of individuals from across the books industry has written an open letter to The Bookseller which has warned “transphobia is still perfectly acceptable in the British book industry”, arguing that what is needed is “quiet statements of acceptance from companies and organisations within our industry”. 

But how are these individuals defining “transphobia”? It tends to mean just not agreeing with the magical dualist claims of trans ideology.

The three-page letter, entitled ‘The Paradox of Tolerance’, is signed anonymously from a number of trade figures, including publishers, writers, illustrators and booksellers. It is published below this article. The Bookseller has been passed some details of signatories but has been unable to independently verify these for reasons of confidentiality.

Then how does The Bookseller know the signatories are trade figures, including publishers, writers, illustrators and booksellers? How does it know they’re not just claiming to be those things? Maybe they’re trans trade figures, including trans publishers, trans writers, trans illustrators and trans booksellers.

Why, really, is The Bookseller publishing an anonymous letter at all?

The letter reads: “The hardest thing to say here is that the deepest damage is being done unwittingly, by those who don’t understand, or who want to try and take no side.  It is easy to express abhorrence of discrimination in literature, but we all need to express it in our own day to day lives too.” It calls on organisations to make specific statements of acceptance and discusses previous forms of discrimination in regards to “homosexuals, Jews, disabled people, people of colour, Muslims, suffragettes, even left-handed people in our past”. 

Not women though. Women have never faced discrimination. Women are just Karens.

This is an edited version of the letter passed to The Bookseller:

‘The Paradox of Tolerance’

Somebody, sooner or later, must speak up. So here we stand together, a group of writers, illustrators, booksellers and publishers, to make a start and say what others dare not say or can’t quite articulate. At this moment what needs to be expressed most urgently is the distinction between a petty anxiety and the horror that rises when you become aware that you are witnessing a persecution. 

Transphobia is still perfectly acceptable in the British book industry. Our industry excuses it, says that to view transgender individuals as having less than full human rights is OK and an opinion as valid as others. Our industry is still very comfortable about giving this form of prejudice a powerful platform. 

Nonsense. That’s just an outright lie. Who has ever said that to view transgender individuals as having less than full human rights is OK?

It kind of gives away the fact that they have no case, doesn’t it, when they tell a whopper like that. It’s not a human right to pretend to be something you’re not, and it’s especially not a human right to try to force other people to agree that you’re something you’re not.

There are a few individuals who are openly using language about the transgender and non-binary community that isolates that community and pushes them away from being fully accepted as part of society.

What language?

Again, they fail to say. If they had something they would tell us about it, so I conclude that they don’t.

 If your opinion makes you blind to the shunning and demonising of a young community who are trans or non-binary, then we’d like to invite you to reconsider the extent to which you have understood the implications of voicing your opinion or allowing discrimination and persecution to go unchallenged.

They should see the shunning and demonising that feminist women have been getting lately.

Far from being the ‘cancel culture’, some have labelled it, it is the opposite: the whole point of calling out prejudiced views is to ensure that as many people as possible are welcomed and included.

Welcomed and included in what? Women don’t have to welcome and include men in all settings and circumstances; women are allowed to have some women-only organizations and spaces.

Those of us who have studied history can see perhaps more clearly than many that the language and accusations against the trans community are *exactly* those that have been used against: homosexuals, Jews, disabled people, people of colour, Muslims, suffragettes, even left-handed people in our past.

No they aren’t.

The language is very revealing: people will say that it upsets the natural order of things; there’s an implication of something monstrous; they’ll say that these people are dangerous; these people look different; they aren’t proper people somehow, not what they should be; it is just a phase, it is an illness.

No they don’t. Especially not in the book industry they don’t. There are probably many people who say things like that around the dinner table, but this isn’t an open letter to people around dinner tables, it’s a letter to people in the book industry. They don’t talk like that string of nonsense.

If you re-read many of the speeches and comments from the those who seek to tell us that speaking about transgender people this way is a valid opinion, and in your mind replace the word transgender with ‘Jews’ or ‘Refugees’ or ‘Gay Men’, you’ll see how unpleasantly familiar it becomes.  

Funny how their examples never include women. I wonder why that might be.

In the case of transgender people there is even talk of segregating them from others in public spaces.

No there isn’t. There are women insisting that we have a right to segregated spaces for our own safety, which means that women who identify as trans can come in but men can’t. Nobody is saying trans people as such should be “segregated from others in public spaces.”

There are surprisingly many more paragraphs, but given the crudity of the ones I’ve slogged through already I think I won’t be reading them.