Lauren Hough on writing, mentorship, and losing her Lambda nomination
March 22, 2022 10:44 AM Subscribe

The most incredible thing about writing a book is that anyone can do it. I didn’t need a degree or any special training. All I needed was a library card and a laptop. I didn’t always have my own laptop, so I wrote my first book on a work laptop, sitting in my work van behind Home Depots and grocery stores.

posted by mecran01 (111 comments total) 20 users marked this as a favorite

I wish the author had centered this more on the specific harms done to her instead of extrapolating about the apparently omnipotent power of 'YA twitter'. The fact that the tilt on her experience that she's provided is poised perfectly to plug into reactionary "cancel culture" screeds makes me wary of her trustworthiness in a way that I wouldn't be if she had stuck to her specific experience. I'm sure it feels very bad to have a few hundred people criticizing you on twitter, but the idea that those individuals somehow directly control a major literary award like a shadowy puppetmaster feels paranoid and under-thought. If a prestigious literary award is acting harmfully mercurial towards its nominees, surely that's on them more than anyone?
posted by dusty potato at 11:01 AM on March 22, 2022 [22 favorites]

The Lambda email appears to attribute the withdrawal of the nomination directly to "the Twitter disputes last week," so...?

I expect this is one side of the story, though, and I don't want to jump to conclusions without the other.
posted by praemunire at 11:09 AM on March 22, 2022 [4 favorites]

This is not the first time Lauren Hough has been at the center of Twitter controversy: https://bookandfilmglobe.com/author-stuff/writer-lauren-hough-targets-goodreads-reviews/
posted by overglow at 11:09 AM on March 22, 2022 [4 favorites]

I just heard about this from Mac blog daring fireball - an usual topic for that blog. It’s actually a bit unclear right now what has happened, as there might have been some tweets deleted, and nobody seems to have read the book in question. I don’t know if it’s going to be possible to discuss this very well as its both emotive AND unclear.
posted by The River Ivel at 11:10 AM on March 22, 2022

I spent some time reading her Twitter feed last night. She comes across as an extremely narcissistic and combative person. She argues with people, calls them idiots and assholes, admits she has a friend search for her name and will block anyone who has even a mild criticism of her.

I’m still learning about “gendercide” and all the other arguments therein but it’s not surprising that this group wants to distance themselves from her.
posted by girlmightlive at 11:11 AM on March 22, 2022 [11 favorites]

Frowner, Lauren Hough didn't write the book in question, Sandra Newman did.

Very few people have had a chance to actually read the book, because it hasn't been published yet. It kind of seems unhelpful for people to be having these discussions when people can't even read the book and make their own judgements.
posted by ssg at 11:12 AM on March 22, 2022 [23 favorites]

The Lambda email appears to attribute the withdrawal of the nomination directly to "the Twitter disputes last week," so...?

I didn't know anything about this situation other than from the perspective in the OP, but upon some brief further research a public statement from Lambda reads very differently:

“In a series of now-deleted tweets, Lauren Hough exhibited what we believed to be a troubling hostility toward transgender critics and trans-allies and used her substantial platform — due in part to her excellent book — to harmfully engage with readers and critics,” Cleopatra Acquaye and Maxwell Scales, Lambda Literary’s interim co-executive directors, said in a joint statement Monday. “As an L.G.B.T.Q. organization, we cannot knowingly reward individuals who exhibit disdain and disrespect for the autonomy of an entire segment of the community we have committed ourselves to supporting.”

I find it frankly rather cowardly (but not unexpected, knowing how institutions work) that the explanation given directly to the author via email was heavily soft-pedaled in a way that allows her to propagate a "silenced arbitrarily" narrative.
posted by dusty potato at 11:14 AM on March 22, 2022 [17 favorites]

It can often be touching to see essayists defend novelists. Not here. The "remove and imprison males" trope is one I've come across in online fiction so I'm not surprised someone managed to get a publishing deal out of it. It will be interesting to see how Sandra Newman approaches not only transmen but also the possibility of problematizing how a female society will deal with intellectual and physical disabilities, male babies and intersexuality as well as the contextuality of multicultural postmodernism, parody and pastiche in (presumably) a governed approach to what womanhood is. I am for trans rights and I look forward to this book.
posted by parmanparman at 11:26 AM on March 22, 2022 [3 favorites]

dusty potato: thanks. I felt like Hough's account could not have been the whole story. But what is the whole story? I don't know. Absolutely, there are ways to tweet that an organization like Lambda would consider disqualifying. Did she tweet like that? I don't know.

I read Mardoll's close reading of The Men. I trust Mardoll's close readings because I have read them before, and although I have issues with his takes sometimes, he's honest. Also, I for some reason find out a lot of SF/F and horror news from the Midnight Pals twitter account, which jokes about it.
posted by Countess Elena at 11:36 AM on March 22, 2022 [18 favorites]

I'm pretty sure Lauren Hough just needs to stay off Twitter. Period.
posted by thivaia at 11:41 AM on March 22, 2022 [12 favorites]

Following up CountessElena, thread from Mardoll about the current situation with screenshots of various tweets and things. The index of review, as blog posts for those who do not like twitter threads!
posted by foxfirefey at 11:41 AM on March 22, 2022 [14 favorites]

I'm also really looking forward to reading the book when it comes out. Newman's previous novel The Heavens was excellent. Based on that novel, I'm pretty confident that The Men isn't going to be a simplistic moral tale about gender. Newman isn't really writing SF or using SF tropes in the usual way. Maybe the treatment of trans people in the book will be problematic, but I guess I'll find that out once I read it.

This Twitter dispute seems like it doesn't really reflect well on anyone involved.
posted by ssg at 11:42 AM on March 22, 2022 [4 favorites]

Very few people have had a chance to actually read the book, because it hasn't been published yet. It kind of seems unhelpful for people to be having these discussions when people can't even read the book and make their own judgements.

Ana Mardoll, who is trans, has read an advanced copy of the book, and Hough was reacting to Mardoll's critique of the book. We can't judge the book, but we can judge whether Hough reacted appropriately to Mardoll. (Or we would have been able to, had Hough not deleted her tweets.) And frankly, having witnessed Hough's last weird twitter meltdown, I'm not totally inclined to give her the benefit of the doubt. She's clearly got some issues, and she seems to have a problem with flying off the handle on Twitter, especially when faced with criticism from people whom she sees as inferior to her and her friends. It is ok for people to take issue with a book, even if you think they're wrong. It is ok for people to criticize a book that you like, even if you think they're not as important or worthy as you. Sometimes people disagree about books. And if you're a public figure with a public internet presence, there may be consequences if you use that platform to behave like a jerk. I think Lambda Literary probably overreacted (but then I haven't seen exactly what Hough said), but I also think that Hough might want to rethink how she uses Twitter. And I wish that people would cut it out with the bad faith framing of this issue, because it's making Ana Mardoll a target of abuse, and xie hasn't done anything wrong other than provide a close reading of a book.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 11:43 AM on March 22, 2022 [36 favorites]

It seems that the letter that Hough cites as Lambda telling her that her nomination is being withdrawn is NOT from Lambda, but from her publisher.

https://twitter.com/diannaeanderson/status/1506306716551495686

Seems like there's a pattern of dishonesty from Hough.
posted by lewedswiver at 11:44 AM on March 22, 2022 [11 favorites]

ArbitraryAndCapricious: Mardoll does NOT think that Hough's original reactions were based on his review, as stated in the thread I linked: "Which I think is very unlikely; Lauren's behavior re: THE MEN occurred *before* my read and review of the book, and she did not engage @ me directly to my knowledge*." However, current reactions definitely do include Mardoll.
posted by foxfirefey at 11:48 AM on March 22, 2022 [3 favorites]

One of the people coming down on the book is Benjanun S., which, whew.
posted by praemunire at 11:55 AM on March 22, 2022 [6 favorites]

Just want to add that after looking into this a bit further, the feeling of untrustworthiness I got from only having read Hough's own account has been confirmed plentifully and it seems pretty clear that she is someone spinning out who cares more about angling herself for a spot in the cancel culture gravy train than about any harm she might be causing. (I actually had previously read some of the criticism of Newman on twitter but didn't connect it to this thread since Hough's take in the OP was, unsurprisingly, so favorable to the two of them.)
posted by dusty potato at 11:57 AM on March 22, 2022 [4 favorites]

Poking around a bit more...if we're arguing about tweets that none of us have seen, I'm not sure we can have this discussion profitably? The handful of tweets I've seen screencapped are intemperate, but intemperate in the line of "read the book first, critics," so I'm wondering if there is more being referred to. Otherwise, we are just wandering around recreating elephants out of our own presumptions.
posted by praemunire at 11:58 AM on March 22, 2022 [8 favorites]

This is Newman of The Heavens? Holy fucking shit. That is a fucking amazing book. I am really dreading finding out she’s what, a TERF?
posted by angrycat at 12:24 PM on March 22, 2022 [2 favorites]

One of the people coming down on the book is Benjanun S., which, whew.

I still have her blocked but in all fairness she's strongly anti-terf these days. Otoh she's got overlapping circles with me that acted badly during the attack helicopter saga and at the time i truly had forgotten about her, so I'm not sure if she indulged in her winterfox habits when that went down.
posted by cendawanita at 12:25 PM on March 22, 2022 [4 favorites]

If the central conceit of the book as Ana Mardoll tweets is that demons make a deal to remove the Y chromosome from existence as the source of all evil and Trans women get lumped in, then Newman's contention that the book does not intend to erase Trans identity is some serious mental gymnastics at absolute best. I hesitate to call anyone a TERF, but it's hard to imagine writing a book that both condemns maleness and equates the Y chromosome with the same as not being the work of a TERF by definition. Surely the reader they claim they used to pinpoint any issues pointed out the easy tweaks that could've saved this book from such contentiousness. Nearly all powerful supernatural beings could've presumably used a filter like identity instead of genetics? Or are we to assume that hell is rife with genetic sequencers?
posted by BrotherCaine at 12:44 PM on March 22, 2022 [9 favorites]

Thank you Countess Elena for linking to Mardoll's reading.
posted by BrotherCaine at 12:46 PM on March 22, 2022

I have not necessarily wanted to talk about this On Here because I am worried that it is something that we will Not Do Well, but here we are, I guess.

FROWNER, that you repeatedly credit the book to Hough doesn't help.

Hough did not write the book in question. Hough defended the book in question, or more correctly, Hough defended the author of the book in question.
posted by dobbs at 12:49 PM on March 22, 2022 [3 favorites]

I'm not gonna say it's the best ever, but April Daniels tackles some of the issues with gendercide in her Nemesis series.
posted by BrotherCaine at 1:01 PM on March 22, 2022

FROWNER, that you repeatedly credit the book to Hough doesn't help.

Just for everyone's information - I asked the mods to delete my comment! I think it should be deleted because it has a major error and is early in the thread! I flagged it with a note!

If people want to flag it for removal, I would appreciate it. The relevant parts can easily be reposted without the large, glaring error.
posted by Frowner at 1:10 PM on March 22, 2022 [17 favorites]

For what it's worth, your comment was very helpful for me in understanding the context missing from the OP, and I think the error you made was big and clear enough to be obvious and mentally correctable to anyone paying attention.
posted by dusty potato at 1:16 PM on March 22, 2022 [3 favorites]

Just want to add that after looking into this a bit further, the feeling of untrustworthiness I got from only having read Hough's own account has been confirmed plentifully and it seems pretty clear that she is someone spinning out who cares more about angling herself for a spot in the cancel culture gravy train than about any harm she might be causing.

I'm not in a position to psychoanalyze Hough, but that's not my interpretation of her behavior, fwiw. I think that a lot of prominent authors get pissed off by what they see as obnoxious internet criticism, but most of them rant about it to their group chat, not to the whole world on Twitter. Hough is just saying publicly what a lot of people are saying privately, but it's different when you say it publicly, especially when you're a reasonably prominent person and you point all your followers in the direction of the people you're mad at. I think that Hough is used to thinking about herself as an underdog, and she thinks that what she's doing is sticking up for herself and her friends. Because she's dealt with a lot of adversity in her life and is reasonably new to being a big-name author, she isn't used to thinking of herself as someone who can deploy power against more-marginalized people. And she keeps getting herself intro trouble because she thinks she's a scrappy underdog fighting back against bullies, and other people see a famous author using her power to punish less-powerful people who criticize her and her friends' work.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 1:17 PM on March 22, 2022 [32 favorites]

So is Newman kind of a magical-realism type author, who happened to wander into the realm of Gender Apocalypse this time? Though apparently some people have also taken issue with her use of AAVE-speaking characters in another apocalypse novel, The Country of Ice Cream Star?

I can get her and Hough's confusion, especially if Newman had been getting praise all along, at suddenly getting a Twitter call-out.

But I be also live in a state where transgender kids are being threatened by their own government, so, you know, I think it is past time for people to give a shit about trans representation even if it's uncomfortable.

Hough's role in this is way over the top; literary disputes happen. People have opinions at you. It's part of the deal.
posted by emjaybee at 1:24 PM on March 22, 2022 [10 favorites]

I see a lot of people saying that nobody has read it.

The maradoll review, and xie read the book's advanced reader copy, is pretty clear as to how problematic the book is in multiple ways.
posted by Chrysopoeia at 1:29 PM on March 22, 2022 [18 favorites]

@ArbitraryAndCapricious-- Definitely don't disagree with what you're saying. My impression isn't that she's acting out of a primary motivation towards grift. However, I think when people like this publicly dig themselves deeper and deeper and refuse to engage in any self-reflection or listening, they reach a point where they are understandably and semi-irredeemably cast out by more sensitive peers, at which point the whole cancel culture culture has an infrastructure ready in place to take them in and feed their bruised ego. I wish I didn't suspect this is the ultimate direction, but I've seen it play out as such way too many times to believe otherwise.
posted by dusty potato at 1:33 PM on March 22, 2022 [7 favorites]

I think that Hough is used to thinking about herself as an underdog, and she thinks that what she's doing is sticking up for herself and her friends. Because she's dealt with a lot of adversity in her life and is reasonably new to being a big-name author, she isn't used to thinking of herself as someone who can deploy power against more-marginalized people. And she keeps getting herself intro trouble because she thinks she's a scrappy underdog fighting back against bullies, and other people see a famous author using her power to punish less-powerful people who criticize her and her friends' work.

A not uncommon issue. I remember the Penny Arcade writers digging into this a bit during one of their apologies, where in that context it was (paraphrased from shaky memory) "geeks/nerds used to be bullied, now we've won, but I still want to pound someone into the ground when they criticize Firefly (or something), but I'm not a kid anymore. I have more fans than I know how to think about, a convention, wealth."

That said, that that was one among many apologies suggests how that went in the long term. But it was a moment of clarity, & I think that pattern shows up in a fair number of places. If you think you're an underdog (especially if it's "otherwise in alignment with kyriarchal norms, but for one thing"), there's no shortage of terrible things you can justify to yourself.
posted by CrystalDave at 1:33 PM on March 22, 2022 [10 favorites]

The maradoll review, and xie read the book's advanced reader copy, is pretty clear as to how problematic the book is in multiple ways.

You needn't think xir (?) reading is in bad faith to not necessarily want to resign all your critical judgment to xir. Further, if the issue is the tweets of Hough, then not having the tweets of Hough available is a bigger issue than only having one other person's review of Newman's book.
posted by praemunire at 1:36 PM on March 22, 2022 [1 favorite]

For those interested, here's an article about what happened the last time Hough got mad at people on Twitter. Long story short, she got mad at people for giving her book 4 stars instead of 5 on Goodreads and things spiraled down quickly from there.

There's some speculation in the article that the internet outrage drives book sales, so I'm wondering if all of this outrage on Hough's part will help sales of The Men. And maybe whether that's the point?
posted by HiddenInput at 2:06 PM on March 22, 2022 [5 favorites]

Ana Maradoll's analysis, using direct quotes from Sandra Newman's book, seems pretty conclusive that the men book is at best gender essentialist, and at worst, horribly anti LGBTQIA+, and pretty close to right wing. Based solely on Anas very long twitter discussion, plus some of the nastiness apparently surrounding Hough (and the Conservative Uncle her own post abruptly dipped into out of the blue), I'm absolutely convinced defending Newman's book is not the actions of LGBTQIA+ allies, no matter who wrote it or how they identify. This, from the evidence presented, is not a good book and paints the LGBTQIA people in a terrible light.
posted by Jacen at 2:08 PM on March 22, 2022 [13 favorites]

Someone tell me, is Hough the same person who wrote an essay about what it was like to be a cable TV installer as a six-foot-tall woman? That was pretty great. I would be sorry to think someone so talented was also Like This on Twitter. (She wouldn't be the only terrific author to do that, but still, disappointing.)
posted by Countess Elena at 2:08 PM on March 22, 2022 [5 favorites]

Someone tell me, is Hough the same person who wrote an essay about what it was like to be a cable TV installer as a six-foot-tall woman?

I believe she was, yeah. She also had a twitter thread about how she saved a suicidal Lyft passenger's life by logging out of duty and teaching them to drive stick. She deleted the thread when it started going viral, not wanting the attention.
posted by dobbs at 2:23 PM on March 22, 2022 [2 favorites]

Ehhh. The tweets are gone, the book hasn't been released yet, so now there are only personalities left to discuss. Instead of "Is this tweet really all that bad?" we can only ask "Is this person all that bad?" Instead of "Is this book transphobic?" we have to relegate ourselves to "Is the person who reviewed an advance copy of the unreleased book more likely to be right about the book, or wrong?"

It makes for terrible conversations! It's all tribalism and no there there.

And, like, if we must get into personalities (since that is all there is to talk about here) I don't trust people who start these terrible conversations, especially when they're the ones who deleted the tweets and made sure the conversation would HAVE to be terrible before they started it.
posted by MiraK at 2:25 PM on March 22, 2022 [6 favorites]

Since my stupid mistake post upthread is gone, hooray!, I'm going to make a comment that has a little information about gendercide books and why I think they are not defensible. This pertains to Newman's book that Hough defends, and I think it's worthwhile to know what is being defended.

So as you know, Bob, "gendercide" SFF novels are books in which all or almost all cis men or sometimes cis women disappear from the world. Sometimes they die of a plague, sometimes there is a war, sometimes magic happens, sometimes it's a fertility issue and babies of one gender stop being born. Sometimes only cis men or only cis women settle an islant/planet or are marooned on an island/planet. These novels are mostly by women and mostly about societies of women, although Joanna Russ wrote a hilarious short essay about a bunch of pulp anti-feminist men-only books and of course James Tiptree famously wrote "The Screwfly Solution".

Women-only societies are a big theme in science fiction from very early on, mostly books by white women (although there's a famous important one by IIRC an iranian writer that I cannot find even though I've read an excerpt). In general, they are either "women are good, divisions among women are not that important" or "women are evil and hive-insect-like, conformity ensues". Early ones tend to minimize homosexuality - either by emphasizing pure, chaste love or by saying that all the women are sex-starved and can't wait until the lone men wander in. Racial hierarchies either continue unchanged as in Charlotte Perkins Gilman or, as in second-wave and onward feminist versions, are nominally abolished but the way characters of color are written makes it clear that this is in name only.

As you probably infer, trans women (and trans men, who tend to be totally treated as "butch lesbians but more so") don't make a big appearance in gendercide books until relatively recently. In The Female Man, Russ writes that cis men will be forced into femininity under patriarchy and therefore forced into a kind of "womanhood", but although this section reads pretty transphobically, it's really written as if trans women just....don't exist at all. (Russ later apologized and said that she hadn't intended this as a commentary on trans women, she'd just written in ignorance.) A lot of the other seventies through nineties books (In The Mother's Land, The Wanderground, Ammonite, etc) just don't talk about trans or nonbinary people. These books do not attempt to keep up with science.

Julia Serrano has a great twitter thread about why gender plagues are risible science.

There just aren't a lot of gendercide books that don't essentialize gender - not just at the genetic level but at the social level, because the whole didactic point of these books, how they work as feminism, is to say that most problems come from patriarchy which comes from men - that's it. This reasoning is inherent in the genre, because otherwise you'd have a book that was really mostly like a novel about a regular genocide - you would not expect a society which suddenly lost 50% of its members to immediately recuperate, rebuild better than before, find new love, etc. You'd expect, based on the actual human history that we have, that people would be incredibly fucked up about it. There are a few gendercide books which show this, but they are mostly not books that foreground feminism. Gendercide books don't make sense as feminist books unless they make essentialist arguments about gender, because the purpose of the books is to show that society without men is very different and better.

This is also why they are racist. They require us all to believe that if men vanished, Priti Patel and Ann Coulter and Betsy DeVos and innumerable racist police-calling private citizens would change rapidly, or that they would immediately be shut down by the hitherto silenced legions of other "good" women. Women as slaveholders, women as lynchers, women as cops, women as anti-immigrant politicians and union-busters - well, you can't exactly tell a didactic feminist gendercide story if you're just going to say "absent men, class and race structure everything and it's still all fucked up'. Or rather, you could, but there are very few gendercide books that do.

In theory, one could write a non-transphobic gender plague book - Manhunt, by Gretchen Felker-Martin, is a well-reviewed recent book (haven't read it yet; it's a bit gory) which attempts to write one from a trans viewpoint. One could write a book which attempted to imagine a scientifically plausible gender plague, one could write a book using magic which of course gets rid of trans men but not trans women, etc.

But the origin and purpose of these books has always been to argue that a society run by women only for women only is not just possible (ie, 19th century feminists wanting to argue for women's rights to education, etc) but actually better. Or else they've been written by men in order to argue that women can't govern themselves and that patriarchy is both necessary and secretly desired by women. They are foundationally conservative books.

That these books are pure didacticism only makes sense, because gender plagues simply don't work like that and aliens aren't going to zap away all the cis men. These stories only make sense as parables, as particularly didactic thought experiments. They're not the kind of science fiction that attempts to imagine the future; they're utopia-adjacent.

~
The main thing that bugs me personally about gendercide books (and the main "are the straights/cis all right" moment) is the idea that people would just motor onward after losing their husbands/fathers/friends/mentors. When straight cis women write this, I tend to feel that it's really almost a mockery of queerness, because these books tend to treat queer relationships as a fallback, like "oh of course in utopia after all the men were gone, I definitely would sleep with a sexy lady".

Like, I have actual trans women friends. Even if I, an actual transmasculine person, lived on after a gender plague, I would be utterly fucked up about my friends' deaths. Write a gendercide novel that's like an AIDS novel, where everyone who remains is devastated, we lose generations of creative, vital people, survivors are ridden by guilt, everyone's relationships and sexuality are death-haunted in the following decades, people descend into a bleak nihilism in the face of meaningless and horrible deaths...that would be a gender plague novel I could get behind.

Gender plague novels seldom take the premise seriously, that's part of it. They treat it as a moral tale for people who wouldn't really lose anything if all the trans women died.
posted by Frowner at 3:11 PM on March 22, 2022 [97 favorites]

Ana Valens writing for The Mary Sue: "Let's unpack the transphobia in the 'gender plague' novel."
posted by ejs at 3:21 PM on March 22, 2022 [4 favorites]

Frowner, thank you for your comment on gendercide books. In particular, your note "otherwise you'd have a book that was really mostly like a novel about a regular genocide" is something I'm going to be sitting with.

Back when I knew less, I really enjoyed the graphic novel series Y: The Last Man. It falls into the trap Serano mentions: "...it can't be "all of them," because they're all different. so did the magical entities do karyotyping on ppl? or PCR on a specific gene? what about ppl whose Y chromosomes vary in those particular ways? how did they decide which Y chromosomes "count" and which do not?!?..." So I was glad to learn that trans author Charlie Jane Anders worked on improving the story for the TV adaptation to "not create a TV show that gave aid and comfort to transphobic bigots". I haven't watched it so I don't have an opinion on whether the staff succeeded....

A trope-subverting gendercide book that came out a few years ago: Virginia Bergin's Who Runs the World? (also known as The XY). A spoiler-y review by trans critic Cheryl Morgan. I have not yet read it.
posted by brainwane at 4:13 PM on March 22, 2022 [5 favorites]

This is a side note, but, yes, @cendawanita, Benjanun S did participate in the mass vilification/harassment of Isabel Fall when the helicopter story dropped.
posted by moonlight on vermont at 4:29 PM on March 22, 2022 [4 favorites]

Frowner ,thank you, that comment is schooling me in all kinds of ways. Gendercide "feminist" fiction has been like nails-on-chalkboard for me because, I've thought, it's essentialism that tries to pretend it isn't, or else it's fiction that tries to say women are just as good as men which is feminist in what universe?? But it's more nuanced than that and there are more layers to it. So much of what you're saying is things I hadn't considered, not from that angle, not in those words.

That these books are pure didacticism only makes sense, because gender plagues simply don't work like that and aliens aren't going to zap away all the cis men. These stories only make sense as parables, as particularly didactic thought experiments. They're not the kind of science fiction that attempts to imagine the future; they're utopia-adjacent.

One book I used to think was a great subversion of this trope - THE POWER, by Naomi Alderman (not *strictly* gendercide but still) - is called into question because of your comment. It still is subversive in terms of just this bit ^^ , because it goes a lot further than saying "the women will be just fine" OR "the women can't manage anything" or anything simplistic or essentialist like that... but it fails a lot of other ways. The book pointedly avoids mentioning transgender people even when it seems like it's building up to it, and jesus christ, I don't think I read a single gay or lesbian or bi character in it. The one moment I recall when a man says he "could have let" another man kiss him is an extremely straight dude in a moment when the weight of gender-based oppression falls on him most heavily. Ugh. It's cis straight people everywhere all the time. I may be forgetting something but even if I am it's something small and throwaway... and definitely not even that for trans people.
posted by MiraK at 5:26 PM on March 22, 2022 [4 favorites]

These screenshots appear to be (some of) the original tweets: https://m.imgur.com/a/Hc9LcQR

I highly doubt that anyone would have cared if Hough had put out a statement along the lines of "Sandra Newman is a friend, I read an early copy of the novel, and do not believe it to be transphobic." As it is, one can easily see why a small non-profit might not want to be associated with someone whose professional persona, from her verified Twitter account, involves reacting like the above.
posted by rishabguha at 5:51 PM on March 22, 2022 [11 favorites]

Oh man The Power is a book that starts as a wish fulfillment and ends with abusive women reenacting all the sins of abusive men. Cynical as fuck.

And there were sort-of trans analogue characters, a girl whose power was weaker and a boy who had a weak power, right?

This stuff sells, but it doesn't really take us anywhere good or useful. Gender essentialism is a trap no matter who "wins."
posted by emjaybee at 5:56 PM on March 22, 2022 [6 favorites]

emjaybee, I can't think of a book I've read in the 21st century that was quite as disappointing as The Power. I'm pretty sure it could have been a much better book. feels like a hell of a missed opportunity.
posted by elkevelvet at 6:23 PM on March 22, 2022 [2 favorites]

And there were sort-of trans analogue characters, a girl whose power was weaker and a boy who had a weak power, right?

Yeah and I thought that's obviously where these characters were going. Instead the boy with powers just vanishes from the narrative and the girl with weak powers begs to get "unblocked" and "healed" by the head of the women's religious order, and gets her wish. If read as a trans analogue this is just horrible, so the most generous reading is actually to assume trans people don't exist in THE POWER. Yuck.
posted by MiraK at 6:36 PM on March 22, 2022 [1 favorite]

I’ve been following Hough since, I think, her essay on working for the cable company. She’s prickly as fuck, and is quick to fight. Is Twitter a great place for that? Most definitely not. She’s still a great follow, though she’s definitely not blameless in most of the fights she finds herself in.

However, I think it’s important to be clear about the goodreads fiasco. She, as far as I remember, jokingly called out people giving her book four stars on Goodreads, and as far as I know, prior to that had no idea how fucking toxic Goodreads can be. That led to a fuckton of people on Goodreads given her book a zero or one star review (I don’t know their system, so I can’t be sure), including people proudly saying they hadn’t read the book, they just wanted to ruin her rating on the site.

The whole thing blew up, and I don’t doubt it scarred her a bit, and having been the target of an actual mob of people on the internet trying to ruin her up-until-then pretty awesome newfound life as a published author, now she sees someone who has been a mentor to her going through a similar thing, and her insistence on asking people if they’ve read it probably goes back to that. She says she was asked to read it in early drafts, specifically to check for tone deafness or problematic themes. It’s essentially the worst of all possible situations to put her in, and she is reacting as poorly as anyone following her could expect.

For her to be labeled a terf is absolutely fucking ridiculous, and anyone doing that is doing pretty much what she thinks is going on with her friend’s book: wading in to a pile on without knowing exactly why the pile on is happening. The book may well be tone deaf (at best) garbage. Hough is trying, badly, to help a friend and mentor in the only way that she knows how. It just happens that the only way she knows how is the absolute worst way to respond.
posted by Ghidorah at 7:02 PM on March 22, 2022 [7 favorites]

When you say "in the only way that she knows how", what do you mean? Perhaps merely that it's commensurate with your experiences with her, but it seems pretty difficult to credit on its face.
posted by Earthtopus at 7:20 PM on March 22, 2022

I mean, there's no way anyone signing on with the book's premise *isn't* a terf. Let's break it down.

Is it feminist? Solid bet, unless we're going with "no, it's actually one big fake-out".
Is it *radical* in its feminism? Well, it's purporting the Y-chromosome as the root of all evil.
Is it trans-exclusionary? By all quotes, yeah. Trans women get consigned to man-hell where they briefly recognize their existence before going back to devouring children, trans men exist briefly to be beaten (to death?) by a mob of virtuous women and forgotten.

I know applications of the term have drifted a bit, but that's pretty blatant.
posted by CrystalDave at 7:21 PM on March 22, 2022 [18 favorites]

My impression of the concept of the gendercide is that they are a fantasy: that the ONLY way we can ever get rid of male oppression and see what life would be like without them is to 100% kill them off by targeting their Y chromosome. That concept doesn't allow any nuance or allowance for trans-ness.

I wanted to read The Power when I originally heard about it, but it sounded disappointing AF in execution. Though I would pretty much figure that if women had power over men, we'd just end up acting the same way, because power corrupts and all that.
posted by jenfullmoon at 7:31 PM on March 22, 2022

Perhaps merely that it's commensurate with your experiences with her, but it seems pretty difficult to credit on its face.

Yes, very much it is only in my experiences with her on Twitter over the last couple of years. She reacts like this a lot. It’s not rare, and it honestly does seem to be indicative of how she approaches things. She’s fiercely protective of friends, and incredibly dismissive of people she doesn’t actually know. It’s kind of a defining feature of her presence on Twitter. I don’t know her, and I am just guessing, but it’s a guess made on having seen this happen more than a couple times.
posted by Ghidorah at 7:42 PM on March 22, 2022 [1 favorite]

If one takes Hough’s blog at face value, her blog says that trans people were deliberately included. So what to make of those story lines for trans people in a world based on binary? Esp when author is said to be non binary? Is it possible that the message is binary fails even when reduced to one of them? Possibly fails harder? I imagine a lot depends on how skillfully this was done.

Maybe they thought the author was writing tragic heroes into the story and both are shocked that it is not received that way. If they had non evil intentions then this could be an editor fail.

Is it possible that the specific treatments given to trans people in the book were put there specifically to show the cracks, that the vicious acts render the utopia imperfect, logic flawed from the start, and therefore can’t be celebrated? I want to believe that this pair would have those instincts.

If the story is indeed insensitive and prone to a celebratory or ‘just deserts’ type of thing - then this team may have fucked this up. I haven’t seen any other names from the publisher etc who would be on the hook. Shouldn’t those parties be answering?

She may be toast, but I enjoyed reading about a working class ex military lesbian that wasn’t written by James Ellroy. So I hope this ends with lessons learned if necessary or reputation upheld if warranted. I’d be bummed if she goes all JKR on this but I’m hoping she won’t.
posted by drowsy at 8:36 PM on March 22, 2022 [5 favorites]

I'm going to re-link Anna Mardoll's detailed discussion. It has detailed and specific discussion of the scenes in the book involving trans characters.

If the summary of the book's plot and resolution is accurate, that gets a big ol' yikes from me, not only for its treatment of trans people, but for how it handles Black characters.
posted by joyceanmachine at 9:07 PM on March 22, 2022 [16 favorites]

It will be interesting to see how Sandra Newman approaches not only transmen

newman approaches it with sexual assault, having a character imply they're not masculine, and a dash of dismissal.

but also the possibility of problematizing how a female society will deal with intellectual and physical disabilities,

well, it uses trauma and bipolar disorder, combined with appropriating yoruba culture as the reason for the disappearances, so...

male babies

they disappear and the pregnant mothers are "overcome with bliss"

and intersexuality

one line, in a weird reference to the holocaust

as well as the contextuality of multicultural postmodernism

well, there's a dig at "cancel culture"

I am for trans rights and I look forward to this book.

I'm sure you are, ally.
posted by i used to be someone else at 9:17 PM on March 22, 2022 [20 favorites]

For her to be labeled a terf is absolutely fucking ridiculous, and anyone doing that is doing pretty much what she thinks is going on with her friend’s book: wading in to a pile on without knowing exactly why the pile on is happening. The book may well be tone deaf (at best) garbage. Hough is trying, badly, to help a friend and mentor in the only way that she knows how. It just happens that the only way she knows how is the absolute worst way to respond.

it's wild how many allies with pronouns in their bio i see rushing to defend hough's behavior and the book, dismissing trans people and explaining how just not transphobic the situation is.

is hough a "terf"? who the fuck cares? the shallowness of the discourse by cis people flattens all transphobia to "terf"-iness, even though not all people engaging in anti-trans hostility consider themselves "trans-exclusive", "radical" or "feminists".
posted by i used to be someone else at 9:24 PM on March 22, 2022 [30 favorites]

This Twitter dispute seems like it doesn't really reflect well on anyone involved.

of course not. the nytimes, lithub, her substack (a site that happily hosts a lot of transphobes), many of her friends, are all spinning the notion that it's the chattering trans mob.

why reach out to and ask trans people about something that supposedly speaks of trans people?

i mean, how else can one engender a distrust of the trans among the liberal ally without just talking over and ignoring us, or casting us as immoderate and rabid at a time when our existence is under attack?
posted by i used to be someone else at 9:39 PM on March 22, 2022 [17 favorites]

I'm also really looking forward to reading the book when it comes out. Newman's previous novel The Heavens was excellent.

on the other hand, another previous novel of hers made a few ~~interesting~~ racist choices.

but of course. allies everywhere saying that they'll still read it, and the cis-dominated publishing and criticism industry will too, so it's not like this will cancel anyone of import to that cis/white-dominated world. her sales will be fine.
posted by i used to be someone else at 9:48 PM on March 22, 2022 [9 favorites]

I’m not going to log into twitter and it stops me from reading the whole crit. It does sound like newman is full of yikes though even before we get to the book. yikes. is there a thread reader version of the crit?
posted by drowsy at 9:51 PM on March 22, 2022

threadreaders of ana mardoll's review:

thread 1
thread 2
thread 3
blog form

i'd like to point out i'm not the first one to post these in this thread.
posted by i used to be someone else at 9:56 PM on March 22, 2022 [14 favorites]

Write a gendercide novel that's like an AIDS novel, where everyone who remains is devastated, we lose generations of creative, vital people, survivors are ridden by guilt, everyone's relationships and sexuality are death-haunted in the following decades, people descend into a bleak nihilism in the face of meaningless and horrible deaths...that would be a gender plague novel I could get behind.

That's the plot of Y: The Last Man.

It's been a few years since I read it, but In the Mother's Land (aka The Maerlande Chronicles has a couple of non-binary characters, including at least one who shifts sex over their life. It isn't really a novel about gender, though, more about expectations and fears, and fighting one's supposed destiny. The sex-switching did appeal greatly to me, as a younger non-binary person.
posted by jb at 9:57 PM on March 22, 2022 [1 favorite]

a less thorough review but another one that points out the transphobia and other issues, behind a patreon paywall, from gretchen felker-martin, a trans woman writer who wrote manhunt, which, while a gendercide novel, is explicitly written from the point of view of trans characters.
posted by i used to be someone else at 9:58 PM on March 22, 2022 [1 favorite]

fixed link re: not being the first one to post
posted by i used to be someone else at 10:01 PM on March 22, 2022

I am a biased observer, as a follower of Ana Mardoll's and having long ago muted Lauren Hough. But Mardoll's threads on The Men engage with the work thoroughly and fairly, showing exactly how he came to his conclusions. I have peeked through my mute at a Hough tweet or two about this situation and have not seen anything to change my impression that she engages in a lot more shit-stirring than self-reflection.
posted by a snickering nuthatch at 10:33 PM on March 22, 2022 [12 favorites]

ok read the threads (thank you linkers ), and I’m glad my glasses will follow me through the Door. The book sounds like nothing I would enjoy, and this is a lost opportunity to examine what the fictional events would mean for lots of people. I imagine to do so should take a lot of work, and there seems to be sloppiness all over this one. The crit says that the trans people in the book felt spliced in and then, what was included was ignorant and full of fail, and that there is a lot which says the author failed to the point of pain. It seems like all cohorts suffer from the sloppiness. This thread is about Hough, and I hope that Hough will figure this out as well. I don’t have an interest in the author but I don’t hold out the same hope there.
posted by drowsy at 11:21 PM on March 22, 2022 [1 favorite]

It's baffling to me why anyone would defend either Newman or Hough. The public record of both is clear and it's not flattering.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 12:44 AM on March 23, 2022 [11 favorites]

Because anybody can have a bad day, I've got a strict 'due process' rule whereby I don't deem someone a jackass until I've had at least two different interactions with them. I met Lauren Hough once, a number of years ago, and to this day it is the closest I've ever come to throwing out my rule.
posted by ZaphodB at 12:53 AM on March 23, 2022 [14 favorites]

As far as Y: The Last Man goes: it's not a feminist gendercide story, it's sort of a nineties "men write girl power" thing, if anything. Dealing with gender and writing a one-gender-vanishes story isn't ipso facto feminist; in a weird way, it's the feminism that's the problem, because that's what takes the story from "what if this happened" into "the world would be mostly better if men vanished".

When I read the Mardoll threads, it struck me that Newman's book seemed to be doing something that a lot of feminist gendercide books do - suggesting that men's and women's interests are forever, intrinsically opposed. Not to be spoilery, but either via Mardoll or by reading you can find out the ending and I will say that the ending is about the most extreme version of this trope I've ever read. For women to be happy and safe, men have to vanish; we can't imagine a society where social change, genetic alteration, magic or technology has made life bearable. If there are men, all women categorically suffer far, far worse than they suffer from the loss of the men.

This logic is never applied to race or class in these books, only gender. No one says, "well, now the men are gone, when are the white women going?" and that's because these books are almost universally by white women.

To me, this is where the contemporary tie to TERFdom comes in* - TERFism is all about cis women as innocent victims. Cis women are weak, so they will never win anything if they have to compete with trans women or with men. Cis women are small, which is why when you see a tall woman in the bathroom you know she's trans or a predator. ("We can always tell", they cry, while pointing to a tall cis athlete.) Cis women are innocent, which is why women-only spaces are a vital haven for all women and not, for instance, sites of racism or homophobia. Cis women are naturally very, very different from men in looks and values, which is why "we can always tell". Any tactic - outing a thirteen year old on twitter, for instance - is justified because cis women are helplessly beset by an all-powerful, monolithic oppressor. And then, especially weirdly when it's straight women as it often is, they treat penises not as body parts with cultural narrative on top but as awful, dangerous independent entities - even a glimpse of one in the most innocent circumstances is the violent equivalent of being flashed by a stalker. It's just this really weird metaphysics about bodies - bodies are easy to read, bodies are not actually controlled by their owners but instead control their owners or even act independently, etc. (Also, you'd better believe that if the TERFs did vanish the men, they'd come for the lesbians next, because this is all 80s conservative-feminist anti-lesbian rhetoric.)

Anyway. When you get into "spiritual powers make all the evil Y chromosomes vanish", you're way, way into a very conservative view of the world, not just a left leaning thought experiment. Man, I wish I felt good about spoiling the ending because I think it really shows the TERFy "women are so nice and good, women can barely stand up for themselves" logic.

I think that Mary Sue piece linked above is right - gendercide stories are played out. They have some historical interest, there are a number that are more subtle than they first appear, older ones are often written in relative "innocence" by feminists when popular feminism devoted very little time to transness or gender non-conformity. I tend not to recommend even the older ones except when people specifically want to understand feminist SF because I can't in good conscience be like "well, here is a book in which people like you and/or our trans friends either don't exist or implicitly get killed and then utopia ensues", but I think they have some interest.

But at this point, everyone who reads contemporary science fiction and fantasy is aware of trans people and gender complexity and aware that it's a little bit racist to allege that women as a group are pure and innocent. It's impossible, as an adult, published writer, to just blunder in at random with a gendercide book - you're picking a side and endorsing a set of viewpoints.

And of course, if one wants to do that, sure, go ahead, pick a side - there's plenty of conservative science fiction out there! Promulgate bad ideas about gender, you won't be alone by any means! But don't expect everyone to treat you like you're Joanna Russ and it's 1975.

*Absent particular evidence, I think it more likely that older gendercide books are just totally trans-ignorant or trans-indifferent rather than transphobic per se - Russ is a complicated and flawed writer, for instance, but she wasn't a TERF; Vonarburg isn't a TERF; Nicola Griffith's swashbuckling gender plague novel Ammonite is not a TERF book. All these books have women-only or women-vast-majority societies that are portrayed as good for women, but that's not the only thing the books are about.
posted by Frowner at 5:44 AM on March 23, 2022 [43 favorites]

Abigail Nussbaum on the fundamentally transphobic bad faith of the responses to the criticisms from trans reviewers:

The thing that gets me about the Lauren Hough/Lambda Award business is: this is a dispute between Hough and the award. Yet somehow it has become a reason to attack trans critics of Sandra Newman's novel, even though everyone knows they had nothing to do with the Lambda decision.

Whether or not you believe that the Lambda decision was justified, I think it's clear to everyone that @AnaMardoll, @scumbelievable, and other trans people who criticized The Men weren't in charge of it. So why are they being called to account for it?

It just feels really telling that in a dispute between a general-purpose LGBT award and a cis author, somehow trans people have been made the bad guys even though they had no input into it. And it feels like a roundabout way of disqualifying the trans critiques of the novel.

What actually happened was, Newman announced her novel, a bunch of trans people said this was a transhpobic trope and got told to wait and read the book. So they read the book and said "no, it's still transphobic". And the reaction to that has been "lol no not like that".

Except you cannot actually say that without admitting that the only review you would have accepted was a positive one. So now the reviews are bad because - through methods that haven't been specified! - they led to another author being cancelled.

posted by Glegrinof the Pig-Man at 6:20 AM on March 23, 2022 [25 favorites]

Um. I'm deeply involved in writing a post-post-apocalyptic novel set on Mars. The "thing" is that ancient gene-drive technology during planetary engineering has created a species of humanity where simultaneous polyandry is required in order to produce viable offspring. In other words, people who wish to be mothers must seek out a number of male mates in order to make more humans. The upshot is that women basically rule the planet and competent men are in short supply.
The world-building is all cultural fall-out from this set up.
I really want to release this thing into the wild but this conversation has me seriously worried that I'm essentializing gender. Does anybody want to read a couple chapters and help me not do a bad?
posted by Baby_Balrog at 7:00 AM on March 23, 2022 [2 favorites]

Baby-Balrog, if you're not using a sensitivity reader (paid) it's a really good idea to build that into your process. I also very, very highly recommend the workshops offered at Writing The Other as a framework for exploration and realization of respectful diverse points of view in your fiction.
posted by warriorqueen at 7:28 AM on March 23, 2022 [13 favorites]

Baby-Balrog I guess it would depend on how you treat gender as opposed to reproduction...are there trans, intersex, gender fluid people in your world? How do they live within/ interact with the society you imagine? But yes a sensitivity reader would ask even better questions. You might have to do some radical rethinking of your premise/assumptions; however, that might lead your story in some really cool new directions!
posted by emjaybee at 8:00 AM on March 23, 2022 [3 favorites]

Baby_Balrog: kudos for noticing, and realizing that there might be a problem, and starting to seek out more perspectives so you can improve what you're making.
posted by brainwane at 8:14 AM on March 23, 2022 [5 favorites]

Why aren't authors who write about genocide in their fiction labeled as pro-genocide? Or authors who write about rape in their fiction are pro-rape? Or any number of other abhorrent topics in fiction? Why is this particular author assigned personal wish-fulfillment intent, and not other authors? This fundamental question is the one I'm still looking for a good answer to. I haven't found it yet.

This exact question has in fact been answered by other commenters on this thread. It has to do with not just what *happens* in the book, but what it implies / assumes / depends on in its premise, in this case, gender. This particular book's plot can only work if Y chromosome = "men," which is by definition essentialist.

To use a sloppy example, a book about rape might be problematic if its plot or discourse relied on unstated but fundamental premises. For example, a world where all women were not allowed to wear sexy clothing, and rape subsequently disappeared, would likely be seen as problematic and misogynistic.
posted by Drowsy Philosopher at 10:00 AM on March 23, 2022 [4 favorites]

Baby-Balrog: I know that people are not always at a point (financially or writing-wise) where they feel like they can hire a sensitivity reader. If that's not yet an option for you, I would suggest poking around on the internet for trans and non-binary science fiction writers, stories that have trans and non-binary characters, reviews of these stories, etc. Look for people to follow on twitter or other social media. I am just getting back into current SF since the pandemic made me totally unable to contemplate any books about the future and don't have too many up to the minute recommendations, but Strange Horizons is a good web magazine that publishes a lot of queer and trans writing and criticism. Abigail Nussbaum's blog Asking The Wrong Questions isn't a trans or queer blog (I think she's a cis straight writer) but her critical writing is really good and accessible and asks...wait for it...the right questions.

Also, there is a book which generated the Writing The Other workshops - Nisi Shawl and Cynthia Ward wrote it and it is published by feminist press Aqueduct.

The main thing, to me, is to poke around on the internet (and/or meet trans and gender non-conforming people on the internet or in life) enough to really get it in your lizard brain (I mean, "one's" lizard brain, anyone's lizard brain) that we are not an afterthought or a myth or some kind of 2020s trend and that if you are writing about humans (or human-coded people...like, if you write a really transphobic book but you're all "these aren't humans they are HuMABS and HuMABS only have cis people" that's not good either)...if you're writing about humans you need to ask yourself 'given that cis men and cis women are not the only people, what would my society look like?'.

Another good question, to me, is "if I write a book in which all trans people die or don't exist, what purpose does that part of the story serve"? I think this is a big piece of the reaction to Newman - what does it tell us about Newman's vision of the world that trans people are explicitly, specifically treated as if their gender isn't real and only some borked version of chromosomes matters? What do we learn about Newman's vision when we learn that there really are demons and there really is Hell and there really is capital-E Evil and it resides in the Y Chromosome? (Why does it reside there? Did God put it there?)

In terms of what you're writing: I'm not a writer, I'm not an expert, I'm just a rando. But if I saw a book with a plot like yours, I would think:
1. What is the rationale for women being in charge? How did that happen? (ie, not just "biology"; biology is social - why aren't the women enslaved and forced to breed, for instance?)
2. Why are the men incompetent?
3. What happens when someone is trans or gender non-conforming? Are there men who bear children? Are there women who "father" children?
4. What heppens to people who can't or don't want to have kids? If this world is totally organized around reproduction, what happens to the infertile? What happens to asexual people who don't want to have kids?

Like, basically, I would expect a world where the situation of trans and gender non-conforming people is explained and if it's "they are socially excluded or forced into the closet" I would view this as a huge indictment of the society, not just a fact. I would not expect a world where A Convenient Scientific Fact means that everyone is cis for plot purposes, and if there were some "way back at colonization they zapped everyone with the cis ray" thing in the past, I would expect that the politics which lead to the existence of the cis ray would echo, evilly, into the present day.

Does every SF book need to have trans people? No. But any book whose big conceit is Gender Is Very Different In This Future needs to talk about cisness, transness and gender non-conformity because those things are real and pervasive facts of human existence. It's a worldbuilding issue - like, if someone set a book on 3500 AD Earth and everyone was white, the worldbuilding is either genocidal or incompetent.
posted by Frowner at 10:19 AM on March 23, 2022 [24 favorites]

This exact question has in fact been answered by other commenters on this thread. It has to do with not just what *happens* in the book, but what it implies / assumes / depends on in its premise, in this case, gender. This particular book's plot can only work if Y chromosome = "men," which is by definition essentialist.

And not just that, but "what if morality resided in the chromosomes and you could get rid of evil by getting rid of people with Y chromosomes, would that be worth it". I think, personally, that this is a bad and retrograde question, on a par with saying "well, what IF all criminals really WERE [race/class] and we could get rid of crime by refusing to let anyone who wasn't [de facto rich and white] have kids, sure some innocent people would suffer but let's consider the important philosophical question of whether it would be WORTH IT". It's an intellectually bankrupt question, something that relies on us being very, very interested in "what if a literally, provably untrue thing that just happens to be a right-wing talking point were actually true, let's spend a lot of time thinking about what would happen if this lie about actually existing people were actually true".

"What if evilness were genetic and therefore justice demands that innocent/evil people are tormented forever without trial" has only one acceptable answer and that is ATTACK AND DETHRONE GOD.

Like, if the book were all "we're going to FIGHT THESE DEMONS, our war priests will never rest until we open the Door and harrow the fuck out of hell", that would be a much more attractive premise. "Is it worth it if genetically evil people suffer eternal torment so that we can establish a putatively just society or is that unfair on the genetically evil even though they are still, you know, evil" is not the question to ask.

"Morality is stored in the chromosomes" is a far right framework.
posted by Frowner at 11:37 AM on March 23, 2022 [23 favorites]

Thanks for all your comments Frowner.

Nothing useful to add because I’m coming off an exhausting day of cis nonsense but wanted to say that.
posted by brook horse at 3:12 PM on March 23, 2022 [5 favorites]

It seems like multiple issues are getting lumped together here:

* Is Newman's book transphobic? I personally would prefer to read it before making such a judgment, and it seems the only two people who have who've weighed in publicly are Mardoll and Hough. However, there have been very thoughtful and well-informed critiques of the premise and the genre in the comments here that make me think that there's a good chance it might be.

* Is Hough an unpleasant person who used (at the least) harsh language in her tweets that we've seen? Again, subjective, but, sure, fair reading of the tweets.

* Should Hough be dropped from candidacy for a literary award for a completely different book for intemperate tweets to the effect of "people criticizing the book should read it first" (which, as far as I know, is all we've seen)? This seems like a much harder issue--and, if the answer is "yes," I would like to know whether how broadly that logic can be applied. Because it seems to me we are in peril of running into the common situation where we invest way more energy in policing the behavior of marginalized creators or those working on social-justice topics than we do in policing that of mainstream creators and the sponsoring entities. Being fiery, even nasty, in defense of a fellow author in public comments somewhere is, ah, not exactly uncommon.

* Should Hough be dropped from candidacy for an award for disagreeing that a book's premise is transphobic? Another hard question, and, for me, one difficult to determine without reading the book (i.e., getting a sense of whether reasonable people could differ on the point, or whether it's the kind of book where it's really only going to be TERFs jumping in to defend it; note that you can think a work of art has a transphobic premise or transphobic aspects without necessarily thinking it's totally vile and indefensible).

There's a kind of a miasma theory of moral contagion and social stigma swirling around in some of the comments here that, coupled with the fact that none of us (as far as I know) have read the book, makes me uncomfortable.
posted by praemunire at 3:48 PM on March 23, 2022 [10 favorites]

Lambda essentially said "Lauren Hough wrote a great book & used the huge platform she has in part from writing said great book to go full public attack mode on a trans man in retaliation for him expressing concerns about her friend's book; as an organization that ostensibly supports trans people, we feel uncomfy about presenting her with an award"

if the point of Lambda is to be a dispassionate, fair arbiter of which queer-related books are Objectively The Best Ones, then sure, they're not doing that if they utilize any outside information besides the books themselves

my guess is that is *not* in fact the point of Lambda, that they *do* want to further the greater social cause of queer/trans rights, that they would prefer to champion (at least be perceived to champion) authors who *also* further this cause (or at least don't harm it)

in which case it seems reasonable to me that if someone is being shoutily dismissive of the concerns of trans people in public, Lambda might reconsider giving them an award which carries the social cred of "this person supports queer/trans rights in a way we endorse"
posted by taquito sunrise at 2:20 AM on March 24, 2022 [20 favorites]

* Should Hough be dropped from candidacy for a literary award for a completely different book for intemperate tweets to the effect of "people criticizing the book should read it first" (which, as far as I know, is all we've seen)? This seems like a much harder issue--and, if the answer is "yes," I would like to know whether how broadly that logic can be applied. Because it seems to me we are in peril of running into the common situation where we invest way more energy in policing the behavior of marginalized creators or those working on social-justice topics than we do in policing that of mainstream creators and the sponsoring entities. Being fiery, even nasty, in defense of a fellow author in public comments somewhere is, ah, not exactly uncommon.

here's a thread (threadreader) that raises some points on why lambda literary was right to drop her.

key quote:

But Lambda Literary asked itself if continuing to honor this person would harm the people the organization means to serve, realized the answer was yes, and acted accordingly, as is their prerogative.

* Should Hough be dropped from candidacy for an award for disagreeing that a book's premise is transphobic? Another hard question, and, for me, one difficult to determine without reading the book (i.e., getting a sense of whether reasonable people could differ on the point, or whether it's the kind of book where it's really only going to be TERFs jumping in to defend it; note that you can think a work of art has a transphobic premise or transphobic aspects without necessarily thinking it's totally vile and indefensible).

hough is not (publicly) trans, and to all observations and reports considers herself cis. her opinion on whether something is transphobic or not has all the merit of white people telling asians that the atlanta murders a year ago "had no racial component" and was just "a bad day" for the murderer, and all the value of straight conservatives saying the don't say gay bill isn't intensely transphobic and homophobic.

the fact that this line of thinking is even used as a defense, that someone outside of the community has standing to decide what is harmful to a community they're not a part of, is an embarrassment and underscores how people find it easy to speak over while speaking of the trans community.
posted by i used to be someone else at 4:57 AM on March 24, 2022 [20 favorites]

Also, I'd like to point out that this recent meltdown over Newman's book might have just been the straw that broke the camel's back.

This is the same Lauren Hough, who, last year when confronted with a few non-5 star reviews on her book, pulled a Dennis Reynolds type meltdown, compared it to being raped, and then let a charge against how evil Goodreads was.

Is that the kind of persona that elevates Queer voices? Maybe. Lambda might not have agreed.
posted by i used to be someone else at 5:29 AM on March 24, 2022 [2 favorites]

To also add a point of inside baseball: the book in question was written by Sandra Newman, who is non-binary. She is also transmisogyny-exempt, which may be a bit of theory unfamiliar to many commenters about a specific form of transphobia against particularly transfeminine individuals.

Julia Serrano has written about it, and it has since been developed further.
posted by i used to be someone else at 5:44 AM on March 24, 2022

I didn't finish the thought above, but:

Essentially, part of why this is engendering such a response from trans people, and transfeminine people in general, is that for us, often there is no way for us to perform womanhood properly. I say "perform" because I'm some ways, gender is performance (see Butler). In the case of trans women, our anger is viewed as masculinization, and performing it often delegitimizes our womanhood to many: "male aggression" or "male entitlement", from years of "male socialization", which of course are all wrong or flatten what actually is going on into a gender essentialist framework, casting the SRY gene an event horizon and manhood a singularity impossible to escape from. Conversely, should we perform "femininity" more acceptably, we are merely reifying gender stereotypes, in a manner fitting sexual paraphilias, like some man fetishizing the nebulous concept of "womanhood."

So you end up with tweets like this, implying that the trans women pushing back on a gendercide text aren't women--when that gendercide text lumps us in with men, and dismisses us with a character's blithe dismissal on how this is an example of how "God fucked us over again" (shades of Lauren Veiled 2021 novel Afterland's jokey reference to the death of all trans women due to aggressive prostate cancer, ignoring the fact that estrogen dramatically reduces the rate of prostate cancer in trans women and makes it behave similarly to the homologous structure in typical women, the Skene's gland: "Sorry trans sisters, peace out!")

Our womanhood is at best, provisional to many, a polite fiction, in a manner similar to the polite fiction Americans have about Asian Americans being, well, American.
posted by i used to be someone else at 6:27 AM on March 24, 2022 [12 favorites]

For your consideration:

Hysterical Activism

There's something pathetic about the way Social Justice Warriors would rather repel potential supporters

By Sandra Newman • 06/22/15 12:18pm

Here's a quote:

To justify these obsessions, it’s standard for hysterical activists to write about them in histrionic terms. Cat-calling is equated with rape; a single instance of using the words “Bruce Jenner” (instead of Caitlyn Jenner) is held to be responsible for murders of transgender women; a Taylor Swift video is said to perpetuate slavery’s white ownership of black bodies. Even for people who care about cat-calling, misgendering, and offensive representations of black people in music videos, these theatrics can be galling. After all, actual rape, hate crimes, and slavery all still exist.

Why was it, again, that we're supposed to give Newman the benefit of the doubt?
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 7:26 AM on March 24, 2022 [13 favorites]

Because oppression has a very long tradition of insisting that if the oppressed just weren't so gosh darn dangit insistent on being different, why, the oppressors just wouldn't have to do so many terrible things to us! It really hurts their feelings to have the fact that at best, they're complicit in horrible oppression, don't you know?

After all, look at how generously they let us quietly exist as long as we make no waves, stir up no unpleasant issues by existing or requesting equality, the mere reasonable request to live in peace, hurting nobody. Shocking.
posted by Jacen at 7:51 AM on March 24, 2022 [1 favorite]

the fact that this line of thinking is even used as a defense, that someone outside of the community has standing to decide what is harmful to a community they're not a part of, is an embarrassment and underscores how people find it easy to speak over while speaking of the trans community.

If you are able to treat as vile and indefensible every work that even arguably has (just e.g.) racist, misogynist, classist, or ableist aspects or premises, and every creator of such work, and every person who disagrees with that assessment, then you have impressive ideological commitment, but also presumably like no art and have no friends. Or else you're a hypocrite: because if there is work you can be confident is totally free of harmful aspects even to communities you don't belong to, I don't know where it is. To my eye, we live in a world saturated with injustice, which inevitably permeates any cultural production, and that means that one has to make a more nuanced assessment and recognize that the inevitable bad does not render everything necessarily monstrous.

There seems to be a template being snapped on this situation: "[injured] community has decided this [work] is harmful, therefore anyone who even argues that one should review the work for oneself before reaching that judgment is [-ist] and deserves professional and/or personal sanction." In this particular instance, that is based on one person of that identity publicly reviewing Newman's book. (And, I know there's good faith confusion about the timeline here, but Mardoll xirself has said that xie doesn't think that Hough was reacting to xir's review, so it's weird to see that repeated over and over.) I know that Hough's tone doesn't help. I think Frowner's critique of the gendercide premise itself is powerful and I would probably not pick up Newman's book for fun. But I don't outsource my moral judgments and I think professional sanctions should be wielded carefully and not in such a way that we end up holding some people, often of marginalized identities themselves, to higher standards than other, more powerful people and entities. So even though I might well end up completely agreeing with Mardoll's assessment of the book, I am not comfortable with the way this is playing out here right now. No one here has even read Newman's book. If you think that's embarrassing, then I disagree.
posted by praemunire at 9:12 AM on March 24, 2022 [6 favorites]

The "hysterical activism" piece is a great example of how we really, really haven't dealt with the way power works after the introduction of social media--who has the power, how is it exploited, and who does it harm. I mean, we talk about it endlessly, but also fruitlessly. I suppose now we'd focus more on cancellation and censorship than "social justice activists," but the basic thrust is the same: Here is an group of online people who wield troubling power over free expression. And that lack of analysis, that lack of common understanding, is itself harming expression, because what replaces understanding is fear. Fear of an undifferentiated angry mob, fear of a secretive cabal of powerful readers, fear of getting something wrong in public and never, ever being allowed to get past it. Newman propagates that fear in the essay, rather than really exploring its causes and suggesting possible ways to defuse it.

I mean, Goodreads is a great example of something that should be thoroughly analyzed, because it's such a mix of "useful tools for readers" and "toxic cesspit that no one should ever visit, and that should probably be shut down forever." It's really horrible, to the point that we warn writers not to visit, not to look at their reviews, to stay away because it will cause emotional harm to look at it.

But who is causing the harm? Is it individual reviewers--who of course should be allowed to say whatever they feel on a review, because what's the point of a review if it's not an honest opinion? Is it the fact that Goodreads aggregates all the poison in one convenient place, so you can stick it right into the vein?

And Goodreads isn't half as toxic as Twitter. I honestly don't understand how any writer manages to have a Twitter presence. I would live in constant fear. Hough isn't wrong in the top link of the FPP, when she talks about the impact of that fear on both writers, and publishing more generally. I can't count the conversations I've had with queer writers on this topic. Fear sets the parameters around which many of us function.

But, again, who is causing the harm? We have to be clear about that. We have to think it through. We know we have to talk about groups instead of individuals--or, rather, the particular way platforms create groups, then amplify them. But it doesn't feel like we have a good grasp on it. We think we know what Hough refers to when she says "YA twitter," but do we? We can imagine we know what group Newman refers to as "activists," except...well...what is that group? And are they the ones having a stifling effect on discourse? (Has there been a stifling effect on discourse in general? There is an awful lot of talking out there.)

I think we often take a good guys and bad guys approach to our analysis. If our side does it, it's okay. If they do it, it's a dumpster fire. But I don't think that adequately captures the harm we're doing to people with this power. Queer writers are just as afraid of dogpiling by their own community, as they are by well-intentioned but over-eager allies, as they are by open homophobes/transphobes. The costs of getting something wrong, or being misunderstood, or trying to frame a challenging analysis, are so high. It's not Newman I'm worried about, obviously--she's going to do well, she's going to make a lot of money and be very celebrated for this book, no matter how bad or toxic it turns out to be. It's the impact on the more powerless writers who watch these fights, who watch the intensity of the language and can clearly picture it happening to them, that I worry about.
posted by mittens at 9:21 AM on March 24, 2022 [12 favorites]

It's not Newman I'm worried about, obviously--she's going to do well, she's going to make a lot of money and be very celebrated for this book

I think you are vastly overestimating how much money authors like Newman make.
posted by ssg at 9:42 AM on March 24, 2022 [3 favorites]

I honestly don't understand how any writer manages to have a Twitter presence. I would live in constant fear.

I don't. I mean, I do have an account and every so often I tweet a link, but I don't use it to say much else anymore, even though I follow what the birdsite is doing. I know I don't have the resources to handle getting into trouble on social media, and I don't mean just the emotional resources. I mean the actual reputational damage that just being in the line of fire could entail. E.g., does renters' insurance cover having to stay in a hotel for a couple of days because somebody doxxed you? My career is absolutely a shadow of what it could be for this reason. (Among others, but still.)

This week I was browsing the schedule at AWP, the major writers' conference, to see if I wanted to get a virtual ticket for its many panel discussions and lectures. It occurred to me that in all the craft and career discussions, many of which are very forward-looking and up to the minute, no one had a panel entitled "How Not to Show Your Ass on Twitter." Why not, I say. It's clearly something a lot of writers need help with, at every level of the profession.
posted by Countess Elena at 10:06 AM on March 24, 2022 [9 favorites]

In this particular instance, that is based on one person of that identity publicly reviewing Newman's book.

Two. Please see link above from Gretchen Felker-Martin.

But i appreciate the rest of your comment suggesting that I view everything in black and white, rather than the thrust of my comment, which is that the vast majority of defenses of this book here, on Twitter, and elsewhere seem to be coming from cis folk who haven't read it either or have and are not qualified to truly speak to the transphobia in the same way that no white person is truly able to speak to racism faced by BIPOC individuals -- because no matter how educated they are about it, they do not live the same experience.

More often than not, it is cis voices that are prioritized in conversations like these. Cis voices that do not experience the same bigotry trans people face constantly, who do not live with the same fear in the well of their souls. One only needs to look at how the NYTimes framed it as a mere twitter spat and didn't bother to ask any trans people; or how Slate framed it as "Goodreads bad" and linked to a cis man's summary of it; or how LitHub didn't put any trans voices or context to it's reporting of it; or how cis commenters are demanding trans people subject themselves to a transphobic premise before commenting, assuming we cannot be objective.

and not in such a way that we end up holding some people, often of marginalized identities themselves, to higher standards than other, more powerful people and entities.

and yet you are, with the whole first paragraph of your reply: that i must be purely ideological, friendless, and artless, or a hypocrite, as if none of us constantly make judgment calls to the media we consume? As if i, as a trans woman, need to have a higher bar and the proper tone in order to express my frustration as to yet another example of a gendercide story essentializing me and my sisters as men pretending to give us a shred of dignity by throwing the right pronouns in there while glibly dismissing us entirely.
posted by i used to be someone else at 11:03 AM on March 24, 2022 [14 favorites]

Frowner (and everyone) thank you very, very much. You've given me some incredible advice and I'm deeply grateful.
posted by Baby_Balrog at 11:27 AM on March 24, 2022 [5 favorites]

I know I don't have the resources to handle getting into trouble on social media, and I don't mean just the emotional resources. I mean the actual reputational damage that just being in the line of fire could entail. E.g., does renters' insurance cover having to stay in a hotel for a couple of days because somebody doxxed you? My career is absolutely a shadow of what it could be for this reason. (Among others, but still.)

Hell, could be months. Or the rest of your life. And no, I don't think that's in the renters' insurance contract.

This week I was browsing the schedule at AWP, the major writers' conference, to see if I wanted to get a virtual ticket for its many panel discussions and lectures. It occurred to me that in all the craft and career discussions, many of which are very forward-looking and up to the minute, no one had a panel entitled "How Not to Show Your Ass on Twitter." Why not, I say. It's clearly something a lot of writers need help with, at every level of the profession.

I think the answer to that one is: don't post on Twitter, or if you do, say next to nothing on Twitter. Pimp your book and that's IT. For the love of god, don't SAY anything on social media where people can instantly retweet it and ruin your life.
posted by jenfullmoon at 11:44 AM on March 24, 2022 [2 favorites]

jenfullmoon - I only use twitter anonymously and it is my "safe place" to yell at liberals.
I can't imagine being on there as "me" - I like to drink booze and fight with people online before bed.
posted by Baby_Balrog at 12:45 PM on March 24, 2022

If you want to preserve anonymity long term you'll have to either rotate your anonymous or your public personas very frequently. Once enough of your words are out there stylometric analysis can link any two accounts. That's assuming your anonymous accounts never get hacked or doxxed either.
posted by BrotherCaine at 1:41 PM on March 24, 2022 [2 favorites]

More often than not, it is cis voices that are prioritized in conversations like these. Cis voices that do not experience the same bigotry trans people face constantly, who do not live with the same fear in the well of their souls. One only needs to look at how the NYTimes framed it as a mere twitter spat and didn't bother to ask any trans people; or how Slate framed it as "Goodreads bad" and linked to a cis man's summary of it; or how LitHub didn't put any trans voices or context to it's reporting of it; or how cis commenters are demanding trans people subject themselves to a transphobic premise before commenting, assuming we cannot be objective.

Precisely this is why I was kinda taken aback by Hough introducing her essay on Twitter with the comment, "I've been thinking a lot about who gets to have voice."
posted by naoko at 1:47 PM on March 24, 2022 [9 favorites]

But I don't outsource my moral judgments and I think professional sanctions should be wielded carefully and not in such a way that we end up holding some people, often of marginalized identities themselves, to higher standards than other, more powerful people and entities. So even though I might well end up completely agreeing with Mardoll's assessment of the book, I am not comfortable with the way this is playing out here right now. No one here has even read Newman's book.

but pretty much everyone outsources their moral judgments to some degree, because few of us have the time or inclination to personally locate and consider every bit of information that might be relevant to whatever it is we're judging.

i haven't read newman's book, probably won't, and it's theoretically possible that both mardoll and felker-martin separately failed at reading comprehension and came up with unjustified interpretations. but that seems unlikely, so i'm pretty comfortable making judgments about newman (and hough) without personally reading the book.

in much the same way that i'm comfortable steering clear of my trump-voting q-anon-theorising distant relative despite not having personally seen him say anything objectionable (the benefits of not being on facebook...). maybe he's a lovely guy who's just misguided and i'm missing out on a great relationship! probably not though.
posted by inire at 3:07 PM on March 24, 2022 [12 favorites]

Frowner's comments have been incredibly valuable to me.

Additionally, I feel comfortable believing the judgments of Mardoll and Felker-Martin about Newman's book and believing my own judgments of Hough from her behavior, which even her defenders admit is actively and perhaps inevitably-albeit-consistently unhelpful.

Additionally, I think the claim that Hough has suffered professional sanction is at best hyperbolic. Being informed one wil not receive an award one was on the shortlist/the leading candidate for (and being informed why in a way one reacts to with a bunch of public spleen) is not the same thing as having an award revoked.
posted by Earthtopus at 5:42 PM on March 24, 2022 [7 favorites]

For me, as a queer person, I feel I'm denied much of the richness of culture unless I engage with it and break it down for my own consumption, or have it broken down by someone else who is queer. Thus I often find myself tentatively taking on a relationship with a particular work if some aspect of it reflects me, saying: what if this man was a trans guy? What if these two characters' friendship was a hidden queer love? I see a subtext, make a connection, find something that speaks to the truth in my heart even if it's not intended for people like me. That's something a lot of queer folks do; we make a depression cake out of the little slivers of nourishment we can find. It may not taste the best, but it gives us something we need.

I don't draw some line between purity and deviltry and say that only pure works are permitted. Binary divisions really seem to better serve those who hold power, those who aren't marginalized like queer folks often are, who can find themselves easily and can divide things between what they like and what doesn't taste good to them. Whereas we are used to being hungry and don't have as many options: we eat out of trashy novels, erotica, fanfic, pulp fiction, sf/f, pop culture, children's cartoons, whatever we can find, as long as it has something of the truth I need, even if it's flawed. That's pragmatic, not hypocritical.

And that's why I think it's hard when something purports to include us, but really doesn't have the sort of truths that nourish us. And this also contains things that are hurtful, that reify a gender essential binary where trans people aren't really their gender, where nonbinary and intersex folks don't exist, where evil is found in infants, and can be largely eliminated by eliminating people with the Y chromosome, regardless of if they're women or not.

And it doesn't make the situation better when cis folks tell trans folks how we should feel about it, or what standards we should use to judge things.

But if you are in the majority, I can understand how you can see criticism as different. If you exist in a land of plenty, then perhaps it is easy to move on from something that isn't to your taste, because the next thing will be more to your liking. But that doesn't mean all criticism is about taste, or about dismissing things that are imperfect. And I think Hough thought it was that simple.

I want to find the things that nourish us, I want to engage with people who think they got something right and point out what they got wrong so they can do better. And I think that is what many of the critiques from trans folk are based on. There's no joy for us in being promised something and finding out that it's not what we hoped.

On the other hand, there is no greater joy than sharing the things that do nourish us, and if The Men was a book that actually affirmed Trans people, I think we would fiercely advocate for it.
posted by Chrysopoeia at 5:57 PM on March 24, 2022 [23 favorites]

praemunire, Ana has said he doesn’t think Lauren Hough’s initial tweet in defense of “The Men” had any relationship to his review. However, Hough continued tweeting and responding and in those tweets targeted Ana’s review specifically. Ana has requested an individual apology from Hough as recently as this morning (afternoon?) on Twitter.
posted by epj at 6:22 PM on March 24, 2022 [2 favorites]

I would love more LGBTQIA+ books I can advocate for at all, let alone fiercely and passionately
posted by Jacen at 7:38 PM on March 24, 2022

I would love more LGBTQIA+ books I can advocate for at all, let alone fiercely and passionately

Seems as good a time as any to mention Infect Your Friends and Loved Ones by Torrey Peters, which is possibly the closest thing to a cis-cide novella.
posted by BrotherCaine at 8:11 PM on March 24, 2022 [1 favorite]

For anyone still in need of a quick overview of what happened, this article from the LA Times is a much better more comprehensive recap than the NYT piece. Not least because it also makes clear that Hough may be exploiting the "cancel culture" boogeyman rather than be a poor innocent victim of cancelling. Actions (and words) have consequences and all that. The article also starts right away with a focus on her choice of aggressive language, and then correctly identifies her critics and targets of such aggressive language as trans people rather than "YA Twitter", and also cites the deleted tweets.
posted by bitteschoen at 12:10 AM on March 25, 2022 [14 favorites]

I would love more LGBTQIA+ books I can advocate for at all, let alone fiercely and passionately

Yes! Have any of you read any of the other 2022 Lammy finalists and can you recommend them? I've read a few of the past Transgender Fiction Lammy finalists, and really liked The Beatrix Gates by Rachel Pollack.

In addition to the Lambda Literary Awards going back to 1988, the Gaylactic Spectrum Awards for "recognizing outstanding works of science fiction, fantasy, horror and related genres with significant positive LGBTQIA+ content" starting in 1999 and the Otherwise (formerly Tiptree) Award for scifi/fantasy that explores and expands gender, going back to 1991 (disclaimer: I'm on its board), there's the Stonewall Book Awards, sponsored by the American Library Association's Rainbow Round Table, going back to 1971, not to mention other more specific awards.
posted by brainwane at 5:19 AM on March 25, 2022 [3 favorites]

Manhunt has come up a couple times in the thread, and although I just can't really do horror anymore, I thought I'd at least take a peek. And holy hell, people. It drew the distinctions being made in this thread into much, much sharper focus. I only read the first few chapters, so of course I don't know if it sags in the middle or wanes at the end, but I think anyone who is interested in the topics of this thread should try it, if they can stomach the gore (haha, that's a secret pun). Manhunt is interested in bodies--in how they feel, how they're shaped and reshaped, how they move. It's a very physical experience, and inspires a very physical sympathy that was unexpected; horror is good at inspiring a physical sympathy via over-the-top injuries, and Felker-Martin is clearly aiming for some of that--but the real shock is in how quickly she establishes that sympathy with how her protagonists' bodies feel to live in. You are instantly in their bodies, and you feel how they feel, and it is very effective.

A good exercise would be to grab those first few chapters, and compare them to Ana Mardoll's screenshots of Newman's book. I am not even sure how to describe the differences. One is so distant--the entire conceit of watching people suffer over a video--and the other is so immediate.

While I've followed Felker-Martin on Twitter for a little while now, it's not like I have any sense of her psychology, but in light of my comments above about the anxiety of being wrong, I would love to know her process of writing a book that just doesn't care about being problematic, that kind of glories in it, to its benefit. Here we have a book that is fundamentally uncancellable. That's a good trick.
posted by mittens at 8:08 AM on March 25, 2022 [3 favorites]

Gretchen Felker-Martin and Ana Mardoll are basically polar opposites in terms of their sensibilities and online personas, so if they reached the same conclusion that the book sucks, the book probably sucks.
posted by cakelite at 10:11 AM on March 25, 2022 [6 favorites]

If you are able to treat as vile and indefensible every work that even arguably has (just e.g.) racist, misogynist, classist, or ableist aspects or premises, and every creator of such work, and every person who disagrees with that assessment, then you have impressive ideological commitment, but also presumably like no art and have no friends.

this is a shitty way to frame things. and followed by the hypocrisy thing, fuck that. we're all hypocrites, we're not talking about all works of art ever created, it's okay to talk about one thing and people are fucking inconsistent all the time. talk about the thing, don't drag a bunch of bullshit into it.
posted by elkevelvet at 12:32 PM on March 25, 2022 [14 favorites]

So it's not that the Lambda Awards withdrew a spot that had been granted, they declined to evaluate her work at all?
posted by rewil at 4:55 PM on March 25, 2022 [5 favorites]

Just saw that, rewil. And also:

AnaMardoll (@Ana Mardoll) Tweeted: "Shut up! I honor you!" is the best summation of this entire situation being aimed at the trans community. Thank you. Your accidental eloquence is inspiring. https://twitter.com/anamardoll/status/1507258315482533888

posted by Halloween Jack at 6:16 PM on March 25, 2022 [7 favorites]

The Midnight Society weighs in.
posted by rewil at 9:11 AM on March 26, 2022 [6 favorites]

rewil, I think this is what happened:

Hough's publisher, Penguin Random House, submitted/nominated her book for a Lammy Award for Lesbian Memoir/Biography, and an independent panel of Lammy Award judges (probably volunteers) read it along with lots of other nominees. It was going to be named a finalist ("shortlisted"); Lambda Literary told her publisher in February, and the publisher told Hough on February 24th. (The screenshot of that email does indicate that the book is actually set to be named as a a finalist.)

The finalists were set to be announced on March 15th, and I believe they'll announce the winners at a gala in June.

In the intervening time, Hough made her statements on Twitter, and Lambda Literary therefore chose not to name her book as a finalist and contacted her publisher to inform her of that.

In a letter sent to her publisher, Penguin Random House, shortly before the announcement and shared this week with The Associated Press, Lambda cited a series of tweets (some deleted) from early this month that showed a “troubling hostility toward transgender critics and trans-allies” who had challenged the premise of Sandra Newman’s upcoming novel “The Men.”

....

The letter from Lambda to Penguin Random House refers to “at least a couple of documented instances” when Hough used “her substantial platform — due in part to her excellent book — to harmfully engage with readers and critics alike.”

The NYT piece quotes what "Cleopatra Acquaye and Maxwell Scales, Lambda Literary’s interim co-executive directors, said in a joint statement Monday":

Acquaye and Scales said in a joint interview that an independent judging panel and Lambda Literary had both contributed to the decision to withdraw the book from contention, and said that the organization had not taken a position on “The Men.”

As a result of Hough’s posts, Scales said in the interview, “many trans folks felt like they couldn’t, they were not allowed to be in these conversations.” Acquaye said that the posts “did not uplift other queer people and these voices.”

By the way, I'd like to take a moment to shout out the Lammy Award judges for all the 24 categories (probably several different panels of judges, maybe even 24 panels?), who took several months to read and evaluate possibly dozens of books each -- and this kind of literary award jury service is usually a volunteer gig that you squeeze into nights and weekends -- on a deadline and with the responsibility of deciding which of them are Best. Some of these books are bad! Some of them are harrowing! Some of them are excellent and then you have the collective responsibility of deciding which is Best, knowing that the decisions you make will significantly affect writers' morale and careers!

And then -- let's say it's early March, and you finished the evaluations in February so you're thinking you're done with your Lammy responsibilities that started around October or November, and you're getting back to the other things you've been putting off to serve on this panel, and then suddenly the awards org contacts you and you have to scramble and find time for a heavy email thread or a conference call so you can review some rather upsetting social media conversation and then talk about whether to retroactively change one of your decisions based on stuff outside of the books you read.

Like, that's rough!
posted by brainwane at 5:00 AM on March 28, 2022 [8 favorites]

I find this author barely relatable.
posted by firstdaffodils at 11:14 AM on March 31, 2022

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