His Dense Materials

Victoria Smith on the unheroic Philip Pullman

I’m thinking of writing a dystopian novel, possibly for the YA market. Pitch: Lyra lives in a world dominated by a powerful church called Mermaids that strictly controls the populace’s beliefs and teachings. When young, vulnerable children – gay, autistic, gender non-conforming – start to disappear, she realises something terrible is afoot. Aided by a clan of witches who are very, very ancient (over 35) and hail from a dark, secret place (Mumsnet), she travels to the kingdom of GIDS. There she discovers that children are being subjected to experimental treatments in order to test the relationship between their mortal bodies and gendered souls. Naturally she is perfectly okay with this. I mean, c’mon. I’m not going to write a story in which the heroine’s a massive TERF. 

This, it seems to me, is largely the position taken by His Dark Materials author Phillip Pullman, a writer who’s not afraid to confront the establishment in the form of organised religion, but is bloody terrified of questioning the concept of gender identity. First he’s unsure what to think – “Am I alone in finding the trans argument impossible to follow?“ – as though the whole of Christian theology is but a mere trifle compared to the deep thoughts of Paris Lees. Then he’s misunderstanding Simone de Beauvoir’s “one is not born, rather one becomes, a woman” (to be fair, to understand it properly you’d have to read the next sentence, which is probably a bit taxing after ploughing through all that Lees). Finally, he’s offering his “full and unceasing support” to an author who’s just declared Rachel Rooney’s perfectly charming My Body Is Me transphobic “propaganda”. Pullman does not appear to have read this children’s picture book, no doubt exhausted after that one sentence of The Second Sex. Poor Phillip. This is why he spent much of yesterday gaslighting those defending Rooney. 

“Anybody with the slightest bit of sense would see I said absolutely nothing whatsoever about her book,” he tweeted, as though offering “unceasing support” to someone trashing a book and an author isn’t taking a position on anything whatsoever. It’s a bit like when one of my kids tells me he wasn’t kicking his brother – “my foot just touched him” – or that he didn’t just tell him to fuck off – “I was quoting someone telling someone else to fuck off!” My eldest child is thirteen. Have to say that by the time he gets to Pullman’s age – or indeed 14 – I will expect better (which includes reading more than one sentence of Beauvoir. Children’s picture books he can do already). 

Why does this happen? Why do so many authors who are perfectly capable of exploring the dynamics of totalitarianism and resistance within their fictional works become so cowardly when it comes to dealing with such issues in real life? Margaret Atwood pens The Handmaid’s Tale, a perfect exploration of reproductive exploitation under patriarchy, then not only has not one word to say about the rise of commercial surrogacy, but starts to wang on about gender-switching worms when asked about sex-based oppression. Kiran Millwood Hargrave writes The Mercies, about a literal witch hunt, then refuses to sit on a judging panel with Amanda Craig on the basis that Craig signed a letter criticising misogynist attacks on JK Rowling. It’s very hard to resist the temptation to start yelling “but you’re just like THING in your THING and they’re, like, the BADDIE!” (Look, I have several degrees in literature and can vouch for this as a perfectly acceptable mode of critique. It’s better than Pullman on Beauvoir, at any rate.)

Much as I’d love to say that The Handmaid’s Tale, The Mercies and the His Dark Materials trilogy are rubbish, they’re not. Each offers a fine analysis of oppressive ideologies, opportunities for resistance and the pressures that force individuals to betray one another. Nevertheless, I have reached the following conclusion: never expect an author whose characters prize integrity over reputation to embody that principle in real life. Pullman’s recent actions reveal His Dark Materials as less a statement of defiance in the face of authority so much as a purification ritual, a performance for one’s equally pure, liberal peers.

As someone – I forget who – once wrote, “it takes a great deal of bravery to stand up to our enemies, but just as much to stand up to our friends”. Far easier to offer them “full and unceasing support”, even when they’re trying to destroy a fellow writer’s career. After all, it’s only real children, real bodies at stake. As an author of a certain stripe, Mr Pullman needs to reserve his sympathy for the fictional ones.