Should Vegetarians Buy Books Written By Meat-Eating Authors?
It’s a tough one…
It’s all kicking off on Twitter this week.
For those who haven’t followed, here’s a catch up on events.
I should add, before I do, that I’m not really hanging out on Twitter much anymore even though it’s the place where I have the largest audience and that is because… well, it has a tendency to kick off. Clicking on the app is like pulling open the doors to some backstreet east-end pub (and not the trendy east end), seeing everyone scrapping and throwing barstools at each other. I just end up leaving again.
Also, forgive me for calling it Twitter and not X, that just looks weird on the page.
Anyway, what was I saying? Ah yes, it’s all kicking off. It all started when The Bookseller published a piece saying that some people in publishing, concerned about the creep of gender ideology in the industry, including the censoring of authors (oh, how ironic given what is to follow), had got together to create a group to discuss this. Here is the piece if you would like to read it:
An editor called Caroline Østergaard linked to The Bookseller piece calling the group ‘disgusting’ and saying ‘shame on all those involved.’
An author named Christina Dalcher then quote-tweeted Østergaard pointing out her own concerns about the area citing fairness (or rather unfairness) in sports, women’s only safe spaces etc etc.
A bookseller/’book influencer’ named Tilly Fitzgerald working for Waterstones then responded saying that she would enjoy ‘tearing up’ the author’s books and ‘popping them in the bin.’
Her bosses at Waterstones saw the tweet and promptly sacked Tilly and she produced a tearful video and ‘popped’ it up on Twitter.
That just about brings you up to date, except that Waterstones has been trending on Twitter for the last few days, either because of people agreeing that the woman should have been sacked for threatening to destroy this author’s books, or hating on Waterstones for sacking her and demanding why other authors who make public their own concerns aren’t seeing their books destroyed too.
Waterstones has since said the sacking of Tilly was nothing to do with trans rights and only to do with its internal policies.
I am not here to discuss with you who is wrong and who is right, I have had book bloggers say the same to me in the past, that they won’t buy my books, write about my books, read my books because of my personal views. Or rather, because I have made my personal views public, and this is what I have said to them: should a vegetarian stop reading books written by meat-eating authors? I mean, how far do want to take this? How important is it to know the author’s views on a range of topics before you pick up their book about something entirely unrelated? And how are you going to police this? Because it sounds like an enormous job unless perhaps the author could stick all their personal views up on the title page.
And the other problem is, they might choose not to, so a vegan could be left in a rather awkward position of reading and, dare I say, enjoying the work of someone who enjoys their steak extremely rare. The horror of it!
You might think I’m being flippant, and you’d be right, but there is something more serious behind all this petty squabbling on Twitter and it is this: