George Chesterton at the Telegraph talks to Rachel Rooney about the Trans Board of Censorship.
“This is the book that ended my career,” says Rachel Rooney, holding a copy of My Body is Me, a picture book for three to six-year-olds published in 2019. You could not find a more innocuous, inclusive and warm-hearted children’s paperback if you tried, yet it led to bitter recriminations for its award-winning creator, a torrent of abuse and ultimately her cancellation by the publishing world.
Her “crime” was to be a gender-critical feminist voice in an industry that was, and largely remains, adherent to a rigid gender ideology.
Rigid, yes, but more to the point, batshit crazy. I think the batshit crazy part should always be at the top of the page. It’s an ideology that flatly denies physical reality and embraces magic. It’s like a brand new Catholic church but without the cookies.
Rooney, now 63, found that being out of step with trans orthodoxy and publicly declaring a belief in the binary nature of biological sex – even when the book in question made no reference to gender or sex – was fatal for the career she had always dreamt of, as well as her livelihood.
Except it’s not a belief. It’s an awareness, an acceptance, a refusal to deny a plain physical reality that everyone is aware of despite all the lies. We don’t “believe” that women are not men, we know that women are not men.
“In 2018, when gender self-ID was being discussed [as part of a consultation on reforms to the Gender Recognition Act], I thought, ‘I can’t not say something. It’s ridiculous.’ So I started speaking up very quietly, just a few things here and there, to people around me or on social media.”
At about the same time, she was contacted by the children’s illustrator, Jessica Ahlberg, on behalf of Transgender Trend, a gender-critical organisation, to ask if she would collaborate on a picture book about body positivity. Ahlberg – the daughter of authors, Janet and Allan Ahlberg, described by Rooney as “children’s literature royalty” – asked her to provide the words for the picture book that became My Body is Me. Rooney’s work was provided for free, and she receives no royalties for any sales.
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Even before it was published, Rooney was already being attacked by fellow authors on social media for her unfashionable views. In the summer of 2019, she contacted the Society of Authors, her trade union, to point out that the list of “protected characteristics” on its website included gender and gender identity but not sex, which was legally incorrect, and the society agreed to change it.
But, after the book came out, “it just went ballistic among the children’s publishing community, especially following the criticism of [children’s author], Clara Vulliamy”.
In December 2019, Vulliamy posted a succession of messages on X vilifying Rooney and encouraging the organisation that promotes author visits to schools, Authors Aloud UK, not to endorse My Body is Me, saying it propagated an “extreme ideology” that “targets children”.
The “extreme ideology” that says boys are not girls and girls are not boys. The extremiosity is hard to endure.
Rooney used to visit two or three schools a month to supplement her income, but once the attacks became widespread, these bookings stopped completely. She was told by a publisher that some booksellers were refusing to stock her work.
Rooney contacted the Society of Authors to complain that the criticism could constitute restraint of trade because it could potentially damage her ability to make a living, but the official response was that it couldn’t get involved in disputes. It has since transpired from internal emails, after a subject access request Rooney made in 2023, that the matter was passed to the former chief executive, Nicola Solomons, a lawyer who admitted that Vulliamy’s comments were “potentially defamatory”.
But Vulliamy is one of the cool kids, so keep it under wraps.
