Another cheat succeeds
A trans woman has been nominated for the Women’s prize for fiction for the first time, with Torrey Peters making the longlist for the £30,000 award for her acclaimed debut Detransition, Baby.
Oh do shut up.
The whole point of having a Women’s prize for fiction is to get around the problem that women get overlooked so easily. “Trans women” are men; men should not be candidates for prizes designated for women.
Peters’ longlisting comes after organisers clarified in 2020 that it was open to any “cis woman, a transgender woman or anyone who is legally defined as a woman or of the female sex”. “It’s a prize for women, and trans women are women, so …” said chair of judges and author Bernardine Evaristo.
But trans women are not women, so…
Akwaeke Emezi, the non-binary transgender author who was nominated for the Women’s prize in 2019, has previously said they would not allow their future books to be entered because organisers had asked for information on their sex as defined “by law”. On Wednesday, organisers said they asked publishers to confirm eligibility “when submitting and confirming again at longlist stage”.
Well then we can’t have women’s anything. If we’re not allowed to confirm that women are women then men will take advantage.
Peters is up against former winner Ali Smith, chosen this time for the last in her quartet of seasonal novels, Summer; and comedian turned novelist Dawn French, picked for her “warm, compassionate, funny” look at motherhood, Because of You.
I certainly hope Smith or French wins.
I’m trying to get my head around the 2019 nomination of a “nonbinary transgender author” for the WOMEN’S prize. Is this person a woman? Trans FROM what TO what? Doesn’t “nonbinary” imply that this person does not identify as a woman? If so, why is this person applying for a WOMEN’S prize? I gather from context that this person is MtF, and was rejected over not being female, but don’t the “nonbinary” bit and the “they” pronouns apply in his mind somehow? What, “women’s” is supposed to mean merely “not men”?
I think it’s like this.
1. Transwomen are the most womany women possible.
2. Nonbinary = Super Duper Trans.
3. ∴ “Nonbinary Women” = the most womeny women possible.
As I suspected, the “non-binary transgender author” is a woman. A woman of color who’s got a message, the same message all enby women give. Instead of saying “I’m a woman and I don’t fit gendered ideas of what a woman is” she says “I don’t fit gendered ideas of what a woman is, therefore I’m not a woman.”
So inspirational.
Sastra, in that case there’s no reason that she shouldn’t be eligible for the prize, if her writing be any good.
Maybe non-binary means you get to pick your sex based on what’s convenient. You want a woman’s prize, you identify as a woman. You want a better job, a raise, more respect, you identify as a man. You’re just at home, doing your own thing, watching TV while petting your cat and sipping a cafe con leche, you are neither.
iknklast, if you like cats then you’re a woman. Men like dogs. This is established medical fact.
Guess I’m a woman, then. Good to know. Sometimes I’m not so certain. I mean, I don’t wear dresses, or make up, or fingernail polish. I definitely don’t wear heels. I’d rather watch science shows than soap operas, and tromping in a wetland is way more fun than shopping in a mall (or any other kind of store). I can read a map.
Still, I don’t like sports, I eat (and enjoy) vegetables, and I never pile the larger dishes on top of the smaller ones when I’m putting dishes away.
Confusing…so it’s good to clear it up so easily. Cats. I’m a woman.
Ophelia, I think I messed up my email again. I don’t even know why those emails show on my menu! I never used them here until they showed up one day and I hit them by accident. One of them isn’t even mine!
Yep, I fixed it.
I messed my name up once, once, and now the name field permanently has “H” as a selectable option.
@8 & 10 – clear your cookies. You’ll have to re enter logins, but all the old ones will be gone.
I completely forgot you could do that site by site
iknklast:
You want to walk down the street without getting abducted and murdered, possibly by a serving officer of the Metropolitan Police? You know how to identify.
Sorry to bring the mood down, it’s something that’s happening over here that’s hit a lot of women very hard and made a lot of blog commentators (well, me) very angry.
Then I’m nonbinary! This is great! Why has nobody told me about this system before? It clears up so much confusion.
The stupidity of “non-binary transgender” just irks me so. It’s a fucking contradiction. If you’re non-binary, you’re neither a woman nor a man, and you’re neither trans nor cis. Fucking non-binary binary snowflakes.
#11, #12, how do I do that site by site? I don’t want to lose saved log ins that I struggle to remember.
he specific menu path will vary by browser, so I can only talk you through the Firefox menus. In Firefox, click ‘options’. In the new tab that opens, click ‘privacy and security’ on the left. Scrolls down to ‘cookies and site data’, click ‘manage data’. A window with a search bar will appear, search there for any specific website. If you have stored data of any sort for that site, it will be selectable. Select it, click ‘remove selected’ then ‘save changes’.
For other browsers, the functions and menus will have similarish names, but your best bet is to google ‘manage coockies [browser]’ or use the browser’s seach or help function.
Holms, I tried that in Firefox, and it didn’t work. Thanks, though. I need to call my computer guru because my computer is having some issues, and I’ll have him show me how to do it. I don’t know why it didn’t, but that seems to be the way my technology is going lately…see how much stress it is possible to accumulate before I erupt.
Torrey’s writing: https://mobile.twitter.com/legalfeminist/status/1369942219818479621