{"id":312830,"date":"2025-08-02T20:53:12","date_gmt":"2025-08-02T20:53:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/312830\/"},"modified":"2025-08-02T20:53:12","modified_gmt":"2025-08-02T20:53:12","slug":"jenny-lindsay-the-out-of-touch-literary-world-has-long-been-ludicrously-one-sided-in-the-gender-debate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/312830\/","title":{"rendered":"JENNY LINDSAY:\u00a0The out-of-touch literary world has long been ludicrously one-sided in the gender debate"},"content":{"rendered":"

By JENNY LINDSAY POET AND AUTHOR OF HOUNDED: WOMEN, HARMS AND THE GENDER WARS <\/p>\n

Published: 15:29 EDT, 2 August 2025 | Updated: 15:33 EDT, 2 August 2025 <\/p>\n

It\u2019s not often you receive direct proof of discrimination in the gender<\/a> wars.<\/p>\n

Unlike the many women who\u2019ve done subject access requests to employers, or women like Sandie Peggie who\u2019ve had their private lives trawled over in employment tribunals, freelance writers like me haven\u2019t had any way to get justice after being targeted by trans activists.<\/p>\n

Alas, you can\u2019t sue a cultural atmosphere.<\/p>\n

So, when I was forwarded an email from a reader who\u2019d written to the Edinburgh<\/a> International Book Festival about their failure to programme any gender-critical writers, despite featuring a number of their hounders, it was an odd experience. When I say \u2018odd\u2019, I mean utterly enraging.<\/p>\n

In the email, CEO and director of the festival, Jenny Niven, who, in full disclosure I have both met and rather admired in the past, explains the decision to essentially blacklist both myself and the editors of The Women Who Wouldn\u2019t Wheesht, an anthology that was a Sunday Times bestseller three times.<\/p>\n

Part of this explanation is the familiar claim that this subject is so ‘extremely divisive’ that it risks creating ‘events for spectacle or sport, or raising specific people\u2019s identity as a subject of debate’.<\/p>\n

But whether or not \u2018woman\u2019 is an identity or a biological fact is at the root of this entire sorry mess. It is to exact an impossible double-standard on women to insist they just pretend that isn\u2019t the case.<\/p>\n

My own book is an account of the psychological, social, democratic and economic harms enacted against non-compliant women who, even if they were wrong in their views, do not deserve their treatment.<\/p>\n

\"Jenny <\/p>\n

Jenny Lindsay is a poet and author of Hounded: Women, Harms and the Gender Wars<\/p>\n

Niven acknowledges that \u2018repair\u2019 (her festival\u2019s theme) is needed on this issue, adding \u2013 offensively, \u201cIf there are books in the future published which themselves help move the conversation towards a more reparatory perspective\u201d she\u2019d consider programming their authors.<\/p>\n

But both the anthology and my book Hounded were written precisely for that reason. Instead of viewing them as toxic-waste material, perhaps Ms Niven might read them to acknowledge their hugely positive reviews praising their courage and balance.<\/p>\n

The out-of-touch literary world has long been ludicrously one-sided in the gender debate.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That we all knew. But this confirms it.<\/p>\n

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