[Gay] Gay News from Around the Gay World That is Gay

[Sophie Scholl]

TERFs seem to really, really like traditional gender roles. Which is... weird for feminists. A lot of their views have seemingly become more and more tied to rightwing views and gender norms. Joanne has a host of issues to work out when it comes to gender, including her own I think. Between one very masculine (Robert) and one leaning masculine (J.K.) pen names and having stated in the past that she would have transitioned to a man if she thought she could have decades ago it makes one wonder. Also, if you consider the massive number of Graham Lineham style TERFs, the misogyny angle is more obvious and apparent.

[HVC]

You obviously have way more knowledge of the TERF movement and how it both views and effects the trans community, but I don't think you can really use pen names as a deep dive into the psyche of the author. Male authors outsell female authors and thus pen names have a vaunted tradition amongst female authors.

[Sheilbh]

You obviously have way more knowledge of the TERF movement and how it both views and effects the trans community, but I don't think you can really use pen names as a deep dive into the psyche of the author.

Yeah I'd be cautious on pen-names.

There was recently a publisher in the UK that ran a campaign of them going to print classics under the authors "real" name launching with George Eliot which face immediate brickbats so they've cancelled the whole idea.

But Eliot is a really interesting example. She chose George Eliot as her pen-name in fiction in part because she wanted her fiction to be perceived as "serious" and had previously basically written a "against chick-lit" article about how she thought contemporary women authors were writing frivolous, melodramatic romances. But what's really interesting about that is that it was specific to fiction - which was another part of her pen-name. She was already an established author, under her own name, of heavyweigh philosophical and theological papers and in particular hugely significant and controversial translations of the latest German thinking and biblical scholarship. So there's interesting layers to seriousness at play there. But also she was revealed as George Eliot more or less as soon as her first novel came out - but she continued to use that name for her fiction.

Male authors outsell female authors and thus pen names have a vaunted tradition amongst female authors.

Maybe. Book sales data is difficult to get and it's an area riddled with fraud (Fox News famously have entire rooms filled with books by their hosts - having bought enough to make them "best-selling" authors).

I think there are more men in the best-seller list in general - but I think what that means is often a few legacy authors in a few specific genres. In general women buy more fiction (something like two thirds of fiction is bought by women) and more women are being published at the minute. Outside of certain areas of genre fiction this is really clear - so particularly literary fiction. I think, say Lee Child or John Grisham outsell female authors. But then JK Rowling (under whatever name) outsells most too.

So much so that there's been a lot of navel-gazing about where the male readers have gone and if perhaps its a function of the decline of male authors, or simply that women are more likely to work in publishing and commission work. David Szalay's Booker-winnning Flesh (which is excellent) has been read in part as a novel about masculinity. There's recently been a small press launched which is focusing on male authors - and the response was really interesting because it was actually quite positive and supportive. In part that's probably because they didn't frame it as just a culture war front but also there is an awareness of maybe a gap in the market there.

I'd add I always find there's a different gender perception around writing and the canon from the US especially and the UK. From a British English literature perspective, women absolutely are the canon - Jane Austen, the Brontes, Gaskell, Eliot, Woolf. And that's not just reading back or "re-discovering" those writers. They were big and perceived as important more or less from the start. In the 19th century I think only Thomas Hardy and Henry James come close to, say, Austen and Eliot. So see the recent weird spat online of some American student saying Austen was on his "great books" course as DEI which is insane - but I think the culture around American writing and the American canon is more male and more performing a certain butchness. Although worth saying that drama and poetry in the British English canon are absolutely pale and male - but not with prose fiction.

(Would slightly caveat that by saying it's not necessarily about enjoyment - I love Wilkie Collins but in the nicest possible way he's trash but enjoyable.)

[Sophie Scholl]

...some American student saying Austen was on his "great books" course as DEI which is insane...

What the...?! I'm embarrassed on said student's behalf as a fellow American. Ugh. 

[Josquius]

You obviously have way more knowledge of the TERF movement and how it both views and effects the trans community, but I don't think you can really use pen names as a deep dive into the psyche of the author. Male authors outsell female authors and thus pen names have a vaunted tradition amongst female authors.

In isolation it means nothing.
Oh, the pen name I chose happens to be very similar to a serial rapist who operated in Oklahoma in the 1960s?
Woops.

But when combined with being particularly outspoken around related issues.... The interesting thing with Rowlings pen name isn't that it's Robert. That's meaningless.
It's that it's Robert Galbraith. Exactly the same name as a prominent person in the development of modern gay conversion therapy.

It's also pretty well known the K in JK stands for nothing. She just invented it as she wanted to cover up she was a woman author.
She has huge issues which really shine a huge light on her insanity