To the directors and trustees,
We write to you as concerned readers and authors.
Originally, the Women’s Prize was established to recognise the contribution of female writers who were overlooked by other major literary awards. The founder launched it in response to the all-male shortlist for the 1991 Booker Prize. Over the years, the Women’s Prize has been criticised as “sexist” because it is for women. This derives from a misunderstanding of women’s history. We still need our own cultural resources. Women are oppressed on the basis of sex. We are a political and biological class, and we are living in a time of unprecedented backlash against the gains made by women’s rights campaigners of the First Wave. Just ask JK Rowling, or any of the lower-profile cancelled female authors whose voices have been silenced by gender identity extremists.
In its time, the Women’s Prize has championed many great books by women. This year, however, you have longlisted Detransition Baby by transgender writer Torrey Peters. Making male writers eligible for the sole major women’s literary prize does not “break through centuries of patriarchal conditioning”, neither does it “honour, celebrate and champion” fiction written by women. On the contrary, it communicates powerfully that women authors are unworthy of our own prize, and that it is fine to allow male people to appropriate our honours.
It is now orthodox—if counterfactual, and pseudoscientific—that people can change sex by changing their appearance. If a man could become a woman simply by wearing lipstick, and fantasising about occupying our bodies, what would that make women?
There are several major UK literary prizes open to both sexes. We object to being asked to accept that Detransition Baby belongs in the category of fiction by women. The moment you decided that a male author was eligible, the award ceased to be the Women’s Prize and became simply the Fiction Prize.
We invite those responsible to play this through to its logical conclusion: if male authors can become eligible for the prize by changing their appearance, where will it end? This year, there is one male author on the longlist. A few years down the line, might half of the longlisted authors be male? Would it still be the Women’s Prize if all of the longlisted authors were males who identify with feminine gender stereotypes?
Where would that leave women? Are we really so well-represented in the literary sphere, and so valued by society, that we no longer have a legitimate need for one prize exclusively for our sex? What are the implications for women whose historic under-representation in literature is exacerbated by class and race hierarchies? Women are now being shunted back towards the condition of marginalisation which led the founder to establish a single-sex prize to begin with. Is that really progress?
We are also intrigued that you are promoting a novel which revolves around the male paraphilia of autogynephilia (AGP). We champion free expression, and we have no objection whatsoever to the authoring of a fictional account of this disorder of male sexual psychology. As an imaginative exploration of that disorder, the novel might even demonstrate why women need single-sex domestic violence refuges and intimate spaces. As the book unflinchingly depicts, males who claim to have undergone ‘gender transition’ can pose a risk to women. However, we strongly object to your statement that AGP is an “experience of being a woman in all its varied forms.” Women are the wrong sex to experience AGP.
There is also the question of what impact it may have on women to present ‘sissy porn’ as a lens through which to perceive ourselves. To us, that feels like an insult—especially since the longlist appeared in Women’s History Month. We think about the impact of this book on teenage girls who lack a cultural and historic context for such a work. We find it demoralising that a panel of literary women has invited us to read ourselves as male fantasies. We are not male fantasies. We are human beings—flesh, blood and bone—and we do not benefit from being represented as sex objects innately suited to violent victimisation.
Peters’ book is an extended male sexual fantasy in which women, and babies, are reduced to one- dimensional props. The eponymous detransitioner is a bisexual man—Ames—who impregnates his boss Katrina, having lied to her that he is infertile. Katrina is a competent professional woman, shallowly portrayed, depicted only to give Ames access to the baby he craves. He schemes to take the baby from its mother to raise it with his male partner, Reese, a trans-identifying male who fetishises motherhood. Reese fantasises about sexually role-playing one of “those nice white Wisconsin moms,” whom he considers the “pinnacle of womanhood.”
Two men collude to break the bond between a woman and her baby, exposing mother and child to harm, for the sake of indulging their fetish. Can you see the misogyny?
Reese believes that to be a woman means to be abused by men, hence he actively seeks out male abusers—like Ames. He “spent a lifetime observing cis women confirm their genders through male violence.” He equates femaleness with submission to male violence—to be “vulnerable” & “delicate” is what makes a woman. For Reese, “woman” is no more than a gender identity detached from any real female body. This is a repellent, retrograde idea; an idea only confirmed by the decision to longlist Peters for the prize. Can you see the misogyny?
Another trans-identifying male character, Iris, voices the same idea: “I want a man to love me so much he murders me.” Iris “only had time for abusive men” and “presented vacant ambitions in which she could remain an object.” In reality, in the UK, men are currently murdering women at the rate of three per week, and hunting us like prey in the streets. Women don’t experience this as a sexual thrill. We neither want nor choose to live in fear of male violence. Yet narratives like Peters’ feed this cultural atmosphere. Can you not see the misogyny?
Had a female author submitted a culturally regressive, sadomasochistic, misogynistic “surrendered wife” narrative to the Women’s Prize, it would rightly have been ignored by the judges. And yet, you’ve chosen to include a work of sissy porn suffused with hatred of women.
You may consider that your decision was sound, because “inclusivity” trumps all other values—even to the extent of including a trans-identifying male in a resource which was, until now, dedicated to the female sex. You may believe that the law demands this of you, in which case you may have been misled. You could readily argue that excluding male authors is necessary to achieve the legitimate aim which the founder started out with: to encourage women to transcend the constraints of biology and culture, by writing fiction which enriches readers’ inner lives, and the culture at large.
As readers and writers, we are disappointed that you have succumbed to pressure to redefine ‘woman’ as a gender stereotype. In embracing gender identity ideology, you have alienated those who see how that belief system is inimical to feminism, to women’s rights and to our best interests.
Women’s fiction has, historically, been a wellspring of rebellion. At its best, it has provoked women to enquire into society, and self; to overcome what is petty in us, and to strive for greatness. We believe that women’s fiction must continue to carry this light into an uncertain future.
We would warmly welcome the Women’s Prize renewing its commitment to celebrating the best in women’s fiction—“women” holding its ordinary meaning.
Women deserve our own literary prizes. The readers and writers who sign this letter—some of whom are obliged to use pseudonyms because of the threat of harassment by trans extremists and/or cancellation by the book industry—wish that you agreed.
Signed,
Aphra Behn
Mary Ann Evans
FOVAS (Female Only Violence and Abuse Survivors)
Women’s Equality Party Sex-Based Rights Caucus
Stephanie Davies-Arai
Anne Sinnott
Helen Saxby
Ophelia Benson
Dianne Vine
Jo Campbell
Lynn Thomason
Emily Dickinson
Pippa Lane
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Alice Bondi
Emma MacLeod
Sarah Cummings
Siobhan Kierans
Willa Cather
Sue Quinn Aziz
Elle Burns
Jane Loe
Ali Timpson
Helen May-Peters
Rachel Corry
Daphne du Maurier
Debbie Callaghan
Clarissa Wilmot
Rebecca Lush
Felicity Ann
Kay Grey
Andrea Cable
Mathilda Walker
Currer Bell
Janey Hutton
Suzy Ireson
Alice Moss
Doris Harradine
Diane Jones
Shernaz Dinshaw
Csilla Florian
Mary Fitt
Toni Cocozza
Damian Bartlett
Jojo Amos
Grace O’Keefe
Ashley Burnet
Sharon Muench
Stephen Madill
Sarah Mujer
MaryJane Smyth
Josephine Grace Plumb
Eufemia Torres
Becca Siân
Katja Morris
Inji Duducu
Kitty McCarthy
Maggie Mellon
Delyth Rennie
Paul Clark
Hugh Meechan
Marcia Matthews
Sarah Honeychurch
Carol Fraser
J Gourley
Kate Clarke
Rachel King
Laura Marcus
Stewart Gibblodge
Ali Ceesay
Jennifer Kimmel
Maria MacLachlan
Fran Parkus
Cath Janes
Jennifer Waite
AM Havinden
Alison Wren
Isabelle Tracy
Iris Robertson
Vicky Miller
David Smith
Carole Leslie
Janice Edgar
Rhona McGrath
Heather Jenkinson
Debbie Hayton
SJ Atherton
Meg Edgoose-Clubley
Liz Pitt
Gill Parke
Kathryn Congdon
Vicky Drew
Rachael Dartnell
Juliet Pleming
Annie Gwilym Walker
Heather Welford
Kat Busby Hicks
Lynn Wilson
Sue Thorne
Anne Macfarlane
Sarah Lucy
Anne Reid
Emma Hopkins
Marjorie Caw
Kath Hodson
Helen Jackson
Deborah Rushton
Pilgrim Tucker
Monika Neall
Jo Lawrence
Alix Goldring
Joyce Agnew
Jenny Wilkes
Sarah Bingham
Lucy Prout
D Gourley
Amanda Snowe
Andrew Squires
Clare Joyce
Suzanne Kimm
A Tevendale
Nicola Kerry
Helen Soutar
Lusy Rain
Jo Brew
Alex Morgan
Louise Somerville
Eleanor Hill
Bernadette O’Malley
Anna Boyle
Sinead Connolly
Sarah Bartlett
Selina Wallis
Rhonda Thompson
Katherine Brierly
Maria Rowe
Louise Hersee
Louise Leonard
Jane Galloway
Gillian Crawley
Kim Harding
Hayley Reid
Susi Elmer
Claire Darling
Amanda Hurst
Philippa Molloy
Julie Foster
Catherine Drury
Pam Smith
Barbara Lapthorn
Diane Healey
Ali Bee
Barbara Hughes
Lisa Bell
Claire Malone
Amanda Bickerton
Fiona Tresidder
Clare Joyce
Lynn Alderson
C. Williams
Wendy Orton
Sarah Westbury
Maria Moseley
Rebecca Harrison (reader, not author)
Heather Finlay
Louise Paine
Katherine Rosen
Chantel Mathias
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Fantastic words. Please add my name Laetitia Lionheart
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Pease add my authors name too: Jo Alexander
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Please add my name, too. Elena S. Martinez
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Add my name. Cas Heron
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Mine as well, Delia Morris.
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I’d like my name added also
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I’m signing this too.
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Jacqui Hurst
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I fully support the writers of this letter.
T.S.R. Gallagher
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Please add my name, thank you.
June Pallas
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I agree.
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Jean Hatchet
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Please add my name. Avril Peppard
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Please add my name to this letter Diana Toynbee
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My name is Sarah Nield. I’d like you to add my name.
Thank you.
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D Blakely. Please add my name.
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Bigots.
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We are not entitled to see the world according to the sex of the people in it? Why not? Isn’t that rather…bigoted of you?
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This is sick. Transphobic. Bigoted. Y’all should be ashamed of yourselves. How do you feel after writing this? Defiant? Like you’ve made a difference? Because all you have done is exclude people from womanhood. And in the name of what? So you can relish in your victomhood? You’re causing so much harm. Do yourselves a favor and open your eyes. Trans people are everywhere and they always have been. And the reason you didn’t know about them is because it wasn’t ever safe for them to exist among terfs like you. Who are you to uphold a misogynist system that you have also fought against? Trans women of color are more likely to be killed for being women than you are for being a woman. Hope you sleep well at night knowing you’ve contributed to the very system that oppressed you as well.
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What nonsense from start to finish. Men are not oppressed on the basis of sex. Neither can they identify into sex-based oppression. Womanhood is not a costume for men to put on for sexual kicks. I can assure you that autogynephiles imposing their disordered selves on women & children has done inestimably more harm than women standing up to those men and saying a very clear, unmoving ‘no.’
Get psychiatric help. You will receive no comfort here.
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