25 Comments

To those asking where they can complain, here is the board https://www.womensprizeforfiction.co.uk/about/the-board

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No obvious email or feedback link on the website. “Oh we didn’t get any negative feedback from women ” ...because no one could find a link or reply. Or have access or knowledge of it. Oldest trick in the book. If you can navigate to a relevant link that doesn’t take expensive high tech and 10 valuable life hours hours to comment or complain ... let us know.This is how they win by sneaky sabotage and obstruction and a lack of openness, consultation or transparency.

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Done

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Politics and gross misogyny aside, the writing is absolute dross. If the judges believe this is worthy of the shortlist I question their basic ability to separate good writing from bad writing.

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It really is horrible. I have noticed over time that authors in general have trouble writing thoughts and dialogue in a way that people would actually say those things in real life, but Peters doesn't even try.

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Dear god what have we come to...... I’m so fucking angry. It’s just further proof that the TRAs are so aggressive and have terrified entire organisations into total capitulation to their sick desires and demands.... bloody scary.

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I feel physically sick reading that and completely degraded and disregarded as a woman.

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It’s almost obligatory to have a man on women’s shortlists now. The Women’s Poetry Prize and Mslexia both encourage transwomen to take part. I would love to know who missed out on a place because of this decision. How hard it is for the arts to centre women!

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This is the longlist. Shortlist to be announced 28th April and winner 7th July. Let's hope sanity prevails and this book goes no further

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Mar 13, 2021
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Yes indeed. I do not know what the hell they were thinking. It’s mad

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This is just horrendous

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It’s a woman’s penis ! Ffs!

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I wonder if they kept minutes of their discussions? You'd think with money at stake there would be some record keeping. As well as what on earth were they thinking, I'd be interested to know whether any other transwomen were in the running. I get that with wokeness they felt there should be a TW on the list, but I can't believe there isn't a published TW who can write better. Or at least about something less obviously offensive, since they have already said there doesn't need to be any literary merit, just good storytelling. And I definitely want to know which woman lost out on a place to this bilge.

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Utterly nauseating. I cannot believe our society has fallen so far, so fast. Notice that his entire conception of what a woman is comes from porn. The pornification of our society will be its demise.

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I have written to a variety of contacts on the website, hoping that the judges may, perhaps, see my comments. I wrote:

Dear Ladies (I will assume that all of you are biological ladies)

"Detransition, Baby" - which appears to be an order to detransition? - is an excellent example of "sissy porn". The author describes with casual, male authority the victim's degradation and humiliation as traits of "femininity". No, not in any woman I have ever known. The narrative and the characters described are pathological as the author is obsessed with sexual domination, aka pornography.

I am calling out this novel as an example of shallow, narcissistic prose, the product of an intensely self-promoting, wounded narcissist. He should be in therapy. He is, as he has ably demonstrated, an "autogynaephile", a man who gets off on the idea of himself as a "woman" - a doll, a "hole", a dehumanised wreck.

Please read these two websites for more understanding of narcissism: https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/basics/narcissism and https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/communication-success/201807/8-signs-narcissistic-rage

This is not literature.

Please discard this so-called "novel" from the long-list for the Women's Prize for Fiction.

Yours sincerely

Una-Jane Winfield

(Transwidow - www.transwidows.com)

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I've just emailed Rosie. . . this nearly broke me yesterday. I know so many women who'ev written amazing novels and this man is, at best, taking the place of a woman on the list and, at worst, promoting the worst kind of vile, misognistic pornography that not only damages women and girls but can also warp the impressionable minds of young boys and men. Just disgusting. I actually felt sick when I read this. . . .

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Wow that's great!

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I could not read very much of that, it was too vile and made me feel sick.

If the judges even managed to read that book all the way through, they are very sick people.

What on earth compelled them to short-list it? Greed? Fear?

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🤢 this pornified version of reality invading women’s already minimal space is all so dangerous to women and children. This trash will probably be bought up en masse by public libraries. Where our children can be read to by cross dressing males. As they say in the G rated movies “what the fucking fuck?!” There will be no safe mixed sex spaces left with men even ones in dresses. We will be forced to book burn. Friendship, respect, trust and amity between the sexes has gone. All women are open to abuse and objectification without consequence. Criminal Men can do and say whatever bilge and bad behaviour they want and women not only don’t exist as a class but must be silent about it. Hopeless. No respect. I doubt women will take this much longer because now it’s down to both they and their children’s’ survival. The public sphere as a safe space is being systematically destroyed...by men to benefit men. Ugly, regressive and medieval.

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This makes me nauseous.

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Not an easy email to find, but the listed email for wueries and questions is rosie@womensprizeforfiction.co.uk

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Wouldn't it be great if one of the high-profile women also on the longlist spoke out. . . even pulled out - in protest? And made a lot of noise about it. . .

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I complained about this a week or so ago; not about the content - I haven't read it and don't want to - but just about the fact that a man is on the shortlist for a women's literary prize. No reply yet.

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