Dead TERFs Allegedly Furious That Torrey Peters's Book Is Good

As if it weren’t bad enough that living TERFs are ruining perfectly good books about childhood witchcraft, now they’re trying to insinuate that the writers of horny Gothic novels are posthumously bent out of shape over the fact that Detranstion, Baby, the very good novel written by trans woman Torrey Peters, is deservedly nominated for an award for women writers.

A group called the “Wild Women Writing Club” has published an open letter to the Women’s Prize committee, which offers an annual £30,000 award to a standout novel written by a woman, lamenting the selection committee’s decision to longlist Detransition, Baby, a standout novel written by a woman. I’m not going to glorify their bigotry or their inability to rub two coherent sentences together in service of building a paragraph, but it’s easily googleable should you want to waste your own time. The letter, which is, again, nonsense, also features signatures by a bunch of nobodies alongside names like Emily Dickinson, Daphne du Maurier, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman, famous-but-dead writers who either signed via Ouiji board or were included because a few of the “wild women” in the club don’t want their names associated with such hateful drivel. Curiously missing, however, was the name Ayn Rand, the lady writer I’d assume would most like her name attached to such a pointlessly cruel collection of sentences.

Anyway, actual living and successful women writers have come out to denounce the letter, per the Guardian:

“The letter was condemned by numerous authors around the world, including previous nominee Elif Shafak, who congratulated Peters on her nomination and said: “After seeing yesterday’s unacceptable, unethical open letter, we need to say, again and again, #TransWomenareWomen. Trans women writers are my sisters.” Fellow 2021 nominee Naoise Dolan called the novel ‘a masterpiece that I’m incredibly proud to be on the longlist with, and that letter is a transphobic disgrace.’”

For its part, the Women’s Prize committee issued a statement reaffirming the fact that the prize is for all women and not just the women that bigots demand it be for:

“The prize is firmly opposed to any form of discrimination on the basis of race, age, sexuality, gender identity and all other protected characteristics, and deplores any attempts to malign or bully the judges or the authors.”

I’d like to release my own statement on behalf of all the Brontë sisters based on a seance I conducted just now and that statement is: “TERFs need to stop being so salty and go the fuck away,” though Branwell says you can put his name on the letter if you want.