Chilly
More bullying of women who refuse to endorse the gender mythology:
(A side point, before we go on – I just want to make a note of the self-admiration in the first tweet of saying “feel free to wander off, I shan’t mind a bit” – as if Twitter were a living room and people were gathered around her listening to a speech. There’s no such thing as “wandering off” on Twitter because no one knows you’re there to begin with. She can’t see people “wandering off” so why assure them that it’s ok to do so? Much less say that she “won’t mind” when she won’t even know? It’s a tangent, sorry, but I really hate that kind of fake self-effacement that’s really self-aggrandizement. It gets on my NERVES.)
Of course, Transgender Trend isn’t “transphobic.” Telling children they can’t be “born in the wrong body” is not any kind of phobic. It’s not true that any normal person would challenge such useful advice.
Not sure I believe any of that.
Imagine what it’s like being a woman facing shouts of “TERF” every day.
Ahhh sneaky, pretending gender ideology is in any way related to BLM or any other form of resistance to racism. If you can sneak in under the raincoat of anti-racism you’re golden.
Bam, there it is, at the very end, the admission that it’s an attack on Rachel Rooney.
Unfortunately, Philip Pullman saw fit to back it up.
Linking it to anti-racism is only so good as far as winning people on your own team, so to speak…
“woke” styled anti-racism is not a winner if the 2020 presidential election is anything to go by. We’re lucky that we didn’t get destroyed the way Labour did by wokeness.
Cool, maybe I’ll buy that book for my kids to inoculate them against this crazy trend so I don’t end up being one of those parents sadly watching their children doing serious damage to their bodies and futures. Thanks, Clara Vulliamy, for bringing it to my attention.
As for telling people they can leave, maybe she doesn’t know how Twitter works. She also rants about a book while mistakenly sharing a link that’s about stickers instead.
Manipulative – like the above tweets?
It’s interesting that one of the stickers she includes as “transphobic” says it’s okay for boys to play with dolls and girls to play with trucks – an admission that this is about gender stereotypes. Also the one that children have a right to be protected from the opposite sex – which is rather weak to begin with, since it’s typically girls that need to be protected from boys – but by calling that “transphobic”, she is essentially claiming that they don’t have the right to be protected from the opposite sex.
And why do I imagine that most of the ‘abuse’ she has received takes the form of “uh, boys can’t be girls” or “biology is reality” or “transwomen are tranwomen”. Or maybe criticizing the idea of mutilating children’s bodies over what may be (and probably is) a passing fancy, or a trendy joining-the-gang idea. Funny how we rarely see those ‘abusive’ tweets from so-called TERFs, but the women being targeted by TRAs are actually showing the nastiness and misogyny directed their way, and justified because reasons.
I’m surprised and saddened that Philip Pullman thinks that way. I assumed he would have had the same stance as J.K. Rowling. A bit depressing. if I’m honest.
I have a copy of that book (ended up with two copies, so I gave one away). It’s a delightful book, very positive, with all the illustrated characters in the book based on real kids who are named at the end of the book. It talks about how we all have different bodies with different characteristics, and they’re all wonderful, and we all like different things, and that’s great, too. The illustrations by Jessica Ahlberg are lovely.
It is infuriating that such a nice book is generating angry responses. For suggesting that our bodies are wonderful, that our bodies are ourselves? No; maybe for instilling a bit of bravery to resist the idea that bodies are somehow wrong. And for having the audacity to be published by an organization devoted to resisting that idea, rather than a comment on the book itself. Guilt by association, haven’t we seen that before?
I don’t know what has happened to Philip Pullman. i liked the first two volumes of his first trilogy, but felt the last didn’t measure up to the first two. The first two volumes of the trilogy coming out now, I have found very disappointing – at the base of it lies Spenser’s ‘The Faerie Queene’, but otherwise he seems intent on pouring in all the latest ideas, so that it reads at some times as a catalogue of fashionable (in some circles) attitudes, and has as well, in terms of the story-telling, the rather diffuse structure of ‘The Faerie Queene’. But some of his shorter pieces for young people I find overly didactic – and I think didacticism is his great fault. The didacticism is certainly to the fore in his latest trilogy.
I happened to meet the man once, when I was back in England one summer, at a book-signing for the second volume in the first trilogy, in Thatcham in Berkshire, where my mother was living at the time – I hadn’t known it was on, but saw a notice in the window as I passed the shop. I thought I’d get a signed copy for the sons of a close English friend back in Japan. I found him very charming and intelligent. We had a brief chat and I remarked that I was very happy to meet someone who admired Milton as much as I did, which pleased him.
Hahahaha, that was the VERY FIRST THING that I noticed. My hackles were raised.
It’s SO FAKE. Quit being so faaaaake, Danielllllllllle.
“Children need books, from reputable publishers, in which they see themselves, and are seen; not to be afraid or excluded, but to feel safe while they work things out, to be listened to and believed.”
Funnily enough, I think that’s exactly what the book does: the kids see other kids like themselves; the kids and their concerns are addressed directly (i.e., “seen”); shown that they don’t have to be afraid of themselves, or other kids, or biology, or their own bodies, or differences between people; that everyone has similar problems to solve, that people all have common experiences and feelings, and that people can help and support one another through difficulties (not alone or “excluded”); they can feel safe while they work things out (instead of alarm bells, and being hauled off to doctors because, “OMG!! Your body is all wrong!!); and kids can be listened to about their concerns, ideas, or problems, and paid attention to (believed) so that parents and other caregivers can support the child emotionally while they learn about what’s real and what isn’t.
Sounds all right to me.
If those statements are harmful and propagandistic, it follows that their reverse is not harmful nor propagandistic. So,
“Some children are born in the wrong body”
“Children do not have a right to privacy from the opposite sex”
“Medical sex-change treatment for children is not an experiment”
“It’s not OK for boys to play with dolls and girls to play with trucks”
“Kids should be taught in school that they can choose to be a boy or a girl”
are statements that TRAs consider harmless non-propaganda. Pretty fucking amazing.
Also, what is wrong with giving the statistics of the sexes being referred to gender clinics? 70% being female is either true or false. If true, how is it harmful or propagandistic to say it? If false, why did you not challenge it on the grounds of falsity?
Finally, a question for those TRAs that keep insisting that there is more to transness than just mismatching societal expectations placed on the sexes. How is it transphobic to say “it’s OK for boys play with dolls and girls to play with trucks”?
Oh and another thing I just noticed: that book cover, “My body is me”, directly contradicts the notion that a person might be born into the wrong body. How is it possible to have the wrong body if ‘your body is you / you are your body’?
Honestly, I only liked Pullman’s first book–I admit, catapult-wielding armored polar bears were just freakin’ cool. But I dropped the second book halfway through, as it lacked the aforementioned bears, and also was dull and plodding as dishwater.
But yes, it’s painful that a man who wrote an entire book about how circumcision is child mutilation is now advocating for experimental drug treatments for those same children.
Holms, #11; My Body is Me is the book that Vulliami is whining about, precisely because it does contradict the central tenet of the transgender cult, the crazy notion that one can have the wong body or a mismatch of male body/female brain (because that doozy is still being touted by people who should know better).
An insufferable prat wrote:
I disagree.
Strenuously.
Children need books from which they can learn how to interact with the world, both the external and internal. They need to start with the easy and progressively move to more and more challenging ideas, emotions, and situations. Such vicarious experience should absolutely include fear, exclusion, and isolation, because those are real facets of life that have to be navigated by every human. By encountering these things mediately through the written word, children can be safe even while their feelings of safety are tested via vicarious violence. Hansel and Gretel, anyone?
And that’s before we even touch on the subject of how stories (particularly myths) function to ground a healthy mind in a morally and emotionally significant universe.
Jesus Tap-dancing Christ, what’s with TRAs and trying to paralyze children’s development?
Well said, Nullius. Here’s A.S. Byatt on Beatrix Potter:
‘As a child, like many of my generation of British children, I read Beatrix Potter after having had her tales read to me. The stories were full of life – the puddle duck looking for somewhere to lay her eggs, the badger snoring and pretending to sleep, the little dog unintentionally ingesting a pie made of mouse. It may be that they are now out of date. When I looked up Potter on Google I found, somewhat to my bemusement, a series of letters condemning her for cruelty and unpleasantness. As a child, and as a parent, I found her matter of fact sense of how things are, and pain, difficulty, fear and satisfaction, exciting and satisfying. I was a child in a war, in a world of danger and death, but her stories revealed cruelty and fear in a storytelling context.’
Addendum: As for meeting authors, the only living author qua author whom I’d like to meet is Peter S. Beagle, because of The Last Unicorn, which perfectly exemplifies everything I love and Clara Vulliamy apparently hates.
What The Last Unicorn never does is make you feel “safe” and “included”. From beginning to end, the unicorn and her companions are in danger, and their existence outside the normal, in the wilderness of liminal chaos, is never in doubt. It’s precisely because of this that the world has weight and the characters’ choices have meaning. TLU is a story about what to do and who to be in a world where you are not safe and you are not included. It’s why it stuck with me, from the first time I encountered the Red Bull right up to now.
*grumble* *rant* *sigh*
I just want to shake the man’s hand and thank him for a true myth, but I doubt I’d be able to manage without choking up.
Timothy Harris @ 15:
Yes! That’s the thing, right there.
I am reminded of a scene from The Never Ending Story.
Yes, ‘The Never-Ending Story’ is splendid: it is morally complex, for one thing – something that was completely lost in the appallingly bad Hollywood-style film that was made of it, with Bastian astride the dreadful Disney-esque luck-dragon ending the film by getting his revenge on the boys that had bullied him. (My younger brother made some of the characters for that film, including the Stone Man and the giant turtle Morla – was it? – but he was NOT responsible for that bloody dragon.) I imagine Ende was appalled by the film, but you give away your rights… Another author who I imagine was appalled by the film made of something of his was Ted Hughes, a poet whom I am not greatly fond of (apart from his versions of Ovid), but who wrote some rather good children’s stories, amongst which was ‘The Iron Man’ – and which the American company that bought the rights for the film simply translated into patriotic cliches.
I’ve been rude about Disney, but earlier films of theirs – Pinocchio, for example – were far, far better than what they produce now. I live in Japan, and the films made by Miyazaki Hayao are infinitely better than the little nests of sentimental cliches that Disney now produce.
#13 AoS
Ah, that explains it.
#18 Tim
I remember he hated it and wanted his name removed from it. Here is what wiki sez: “Ende, who was reportedly “revolted” by the film, requested they halt production or change the film’s name, as he felt it had ultimately and drastically deviated from his novel; when they did neither, he sued them and subsequently lost the case.”
#18 Holms
I am not surprised that he was ‘revolted’ by it. So was I. The film was a travesty. And neither does it surprise me that he lost the case. Unless a clause is inserted in a publisher’s contract specifying that the author has the right to be consulted and to have a say in decisions about filming, s/he has no rights at all, so far as I can see.
His Dark Materials is showing on the BBC at the moment, and is quite wonderful. Dafne Kenn, who plays Lyra is absolutely right, in looks, stance, everything. The daemons are great and I wish I could have one of my own – a ferret, like Lyra’s Pan. Ruth Wilson as Mrs Coulter also superb. The effects and sets and costumes and fight scenes as well – everything is terrific. I couldn’t get through the books, so can’t say how good/close to the sources the interpretation is.
Also, I hate the assumption that you have to be seen in a book. Books aren’t about you – they’re about other people. I had an expurgated Gulliver when I was about 7 – it was about wondrous places and peoples. (Also a lot about bodily disgust in Brobdignag). Ditto Alice. Ditto The Swiss Family Robinson, Tom Sawyer. Ditto Enid Blyton, Noel Streatfield and a load of books about girls at boarding schools. I loved their exoticism.
I was demographically unexceptional as a child in the sixties/early seventies but I don’t recall ever reading about children like me. I’d have been bored and frustrated if some earlier incarnation of Clara Vulliamy (they’ve always existed) insisted I must read books that reflected my mundane existence. I suspect she’s keener to impose her own values than to provide children with what’s actually good for them. It is a civic duty to do one’s best to thwart such people.
Rooney has responded to Pullman in an extended thread on Twitter. Here is an unrolled version:
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1335610842222653441.html
I like Pullman’s work, I’ve been enjoying the new trilogy, and I joked about camping out on his doorstep until he finished the third volume after the doozy of a cliffhanger at the end of the second. I am sorely disappointed in his many comments related to gender identity. It is tough to separate art from artist. I have similar misgivings about Margaret Atwood, but I do expect I’ll read The Testaments eventually. Stephen King I’ll probably avoid.
At least we got a fine discussion out of Vulliamy’s ratty attack.
While I agree that books should broaden a child’s world, not be all about them, as someone who was in a weird, abnormal, and painful family, I did need to occasionally see books that were “about” me…I needed the sense that I had someplace I could anchor in a hostile world. I loved the books that were unsafe, and showed all sorts of different ideas and challenged what I believed or “knew” about the world, that were “unsafe” and frightening because of that. BUT…
It wasn’t until I was in Junior High that I ever saw anyone in books that remotely resembled me or my life, and that just made me, an outsider in a world that treated me like garbage (my classmates were awful to me, my parents were awful to me, even most of my teachers were awful to me, because…well, each of them had different reasons. My parents were awful to me for opposite reasons than the kids in school…). When I encountered the play The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds, I…well, I felt for the first time like someone knew, someone understood. I needed that.
But yeah, otherwise, I think we do need to be challenged. But a child with no anchor may sometimes, at least now and then, see books that are “about” them. That isn’t a ground for challenging this one book, though, because there are, unfortunately, many books and movies and stuff out there that will be “about” a child that thinks they are the opposite sex, and be totally supportive. They need books that challenge what the internet bubble they live in is telling them.
“It’s interesting that one of the stickers she includes as “transphobic” says it’s okay for boys to play with dolls and girls to play with trucks – an admission that this is about gender stereotypes.”
That one jumped out, screaming, at me.
It’s all about the boxes, and forcing you into them
Well, that’s me scouring the internet for a copy of the animated version of The Last Unicorn (one of favourites when I was a child!) AND a copy of the book (I didn’t even know there was a book!)
Tim Harris @ 18:
I’m largely forgiving of adaptions’ taking liberties in fitting the material to the destination medium. The Lord of the Rings changed and cut a lot from the books, and doing so made the films better than they would have been had they adhered slavishly to the text. The Fellowship of the Ring would not have been a better movie with the Tom Bombadil section included, and I’ll fight people on that. Contrast that with the 1984 David Lynch version of Dune. Do “weirding modules” make the story better? No, and that decision undercuts one of the novel’s thematic bases. (Apparently, the upcoming version, despite claiming to be loyal to the source material, is gender swapping characters because inclusion and representation. Les sigh. We’ll never get a Dune that’s played straight.) As inferior to the book as the movie adaptation of The Never Ending Story is, I wouldn’t call it “appallingly bad”. That’s a description I’d reserve for something like Birdemic: Shock and Terror.
But Miyazaki better than modern Disney? That’s a non-controversial claim in my neck of the woods, where I will admit to having ridden a cat-bus or two in my time. I’ll defend The Fox & the Hound until my dying breath, though.
But then, the Japanese attitude toward animation is and has long been significantly different from the American and European. We get inexplicable changes during localization, like extra voiceover inserted to explain things to the audience. Because kids are stupid or something.
My readiest example is from Dragon Ball Z. (It’s illustrative, regardless of your opinion of DBZ.) In the original version, Gohan’s emotional progression is silent. Tension builds during his silence, reflected by the musical cue, so the audience gets an emotional release when Gohan’s screaming rage explodes through the walls he’s built up. The narrator has a short, ≪ついに。。。≫ , then the music drops out. The “camera” locks onto Gohan’s face—for thirty-four straight seconds—as wind dries his tears. And the episode ends.
The US version says, “Why isn’t anyone saying anything? People say things when stuff happens. How can we know how to feel unless we’re told? Explaining things is tight. He should explain his feelings.” And so he does. And it ruins the scene.
Catwhisperer: While you’re at it, might as well pick up any of the other late 70s–early 80s nostalgia you don’t have:
* The Dark Crystal
* Labyrinth
* The Flight of Dragons, based on the book The Dragon and the George. This is another adaptation that took serious liberties with the material.
* The Hobbit & The Return of the King, based on something or other …
* Watership Down, based on the book of the same title.
* The Secret of NIMH, based on the book Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH.
* The Princess Bride, based on, but substantially different from, the book of the same name.
* Return to Oz, based on two of Baum’s Oz books.
My younger brother also worked on ‘Dark Crystal’, creating many of the characters; that film I liked.
The problem with the film of ‘The Never-ending Story’ was that it completely destroyed the whole character and thrust of the original for the sake of providing a cheap Hollywood frisson. The moral complexity of the book was reduced to a ‘right wins’ cliche.
One of the remarkable qualities of the best anime films by Miyazaki Hayao and other directors at Studio Ghibli is their moral complexity. They don’t simplify the world and basically condescend to children.
And in connexion Studio Ghibli, I saw one of the ‘Lord of the Rings’ films, and that was enough. They would among other things been far better done had they been made as (good, not Disney-like) anime films – the more ‘real’ such a film, about some magical and semi-mythical world, strives to be, the more it becomes subject to a law of diminishing returns and the more unreal. (The same is true of the Harry Potter films, of which I saw one, and one was enough – though it did have one remarkable scene with Kathryn Hunter playing a terrified witch before a court.) In any event, I am not now interested in ‘L of the R’, and could not read them again – at the age of 14, I read one volume a night beneath the bedclothes – a school-friend lent me one volume a day; I think ‘The Hobbit’ is a a far better book – it has a sense of humour among other things.
Ha, thanks for the list, Nullius! Not sure I’ll get into the ones I haven’t seen before now in my forties, and I have got the ones that were a big part of my childhood. Not that I think I would want to revisit the trauma of Watership Down.
Fun fact: I worked with horses for 17 years. We had a patch of concrete that the muck heap was built on, but the area in from of it was a nearly bottomless pit of mud and shit, churned up by tractor wheels. It never dried out, no matter the weather, although sometimes it crusted over just enough to briefly support the weight of a smallish child. We referred to this patch as “The Bog of Eternal Stench” at all times.
As for LotR, I will just say that Frodo Puggins is currently lying on my feet, snoring outrageously.
Nullius#30
I think I have to say that we all realise that an adaptation of a novel or story for the screen has first of all to think in terms of how a film works. That is given. Good writers of screenplays understand that but also respect the original text, not in the sense of adhering slavishly to the text (nobody seriously supposes that), but in the sense of seeking a way of representing the spirit of the text in cinematic form. I think of Harold Pinter’s screenplay for L.P. Hartley’s ‘The Go Between’, which is quite extraordinarily good. Or for example the screenplay for Studio Ghibli’s ‘Howl’s Moving Castle’, which is a better work artistically than the original story by Diana Wynne Jones. Or, for example, Pasternak’s screenplay for Grigori Kosintsev’s film of ‘Hamlet’. It really is not a matter of ‘taking liberties’. But liberties certainly were taken with the two extremely good works ‘The Never-Ending Story’ & Ted Hughes’s ‘The Iron Man’ – and liberties that resulted in travesties of the originals since they in no way came to terms with what was there in the originals, but transposed good and serious works into unbearable cliches that were wholly at odds with the seriousness, genuine humour, and imaginative energy of the originals.