(The following is a thread from Gillian Phillips that explains the whole story)
Well.
This is the website of @MakeHerstory1, an organisation that campaigns to end modern slavery and trafficking. The very wonderful and admirable @OnjaliRauf is very involved. makingherstory.org.uk/contact/
Hat tip to @RooneyRachel for the original tweet. 1/
Onjali is also an extremely talented author who has been shortlisted for the @LambethPhoenix #PhoenixBookAward. Look, here she is on their shortlist.
You see those other shortlisted books? One of them is represented by ASH Literary Agency. Alice Sutherland-Hawes (she/her), who set up this agency, was of course delighted. So she decided the agency Twitter account would tweet about it, and why not?
It’s all good sporting fun, though. It must be, because the ASH shortlisted author has a good giggle about it, via emoji.
These people - and I cannot stress this strongly enough - are beneath contempt.
So, yes: a privileged middle class white woman decided, quite deliberately, to erase a Muslim woman who works to end human trafficking and slavery.
And she thinks she’s the good guy.
It just never fails to astonish. I think they're going to be writing PhD's on this stuff in the future; how a misogynistic men's rights movement funded by US billionaires, marketed by an international law firm, used by incels & sex offenders and posing a serious threat to the rights and safeguarding of women and children, came to be the "virtuous" cause du jour.
And how is anyone so blind drunk on their own sense of moral superiority that they can proudly and publicly denigrate someone who literally spends their time fighting human trafficking and slavery? And here's the kicker - she'll probably get masses of supportive tweets from equally smug half-wits congratulating her on her superior virtues.
Falsifying the shortlist of a literary awards. And being proud of out of it. That should be circled in the literature scene. The vast majority of writers won't be so fond of it.
Living in her little Creed of the Unicorn bubble she doesn't even notice how she is ruining her reputation. Well, not that I'm particularly sorry for her - I never did like deliberate idiots - but this degree of unprofessionalism is mind blowing.