This article is from the August-September 2024 issue of The Critic. Why not subscribe to the full magazine? We’re currently offering five issues for just £10.
SThe horn is sounding too: Another woman has lost her job due to the gender war. But this time the victim was not a woman from the gender critical camp. Tilly Fitzgerald, an influencer and senior bookseller at Waterstones, was fired from the bookstore for sending a vicious tweet to bestselling author Christina Dalcher.
Dalcher had been politely defending SEEN In Publishing (a new network for those in the publishing world who “recognize the material reality of sex and support freedom of expression”) against one of the many hostile responses from other publishing representatives. Fitzgerald chimed in, assuring Dalcher, “Oh, I’ll happily tear up your books today and throw them in the trash. Thanks for the heads up.”
In response, Dalcher quoted Fitzgerald’s tweet to highlight the Fahrenheit 451 attitude that such bookselling bloggers take towards publishers who refuse to succumb to the gender hype. Fitzgerald’s account was both her professional and personal, and Waterstones parted ways with her.
This came as a welcome surprise to many women (and men) who have suffered abuse and exclusion from gender identity in their professional lives – especially in the arts, where relationships and reputation are everything.
At the same time, it was a terrible shock to radical progressives and their #BeKind allies who had never before had to grapple with the idea that their political views could have consequences that damage the reputation of their workplace.
There is a certain forgivable glee among gender ideology dissidents, but also disgust at the hypocrisy of those among Fitzgerald’s defenders who have suddenly developed an interest in freedom of expression in publishing.
More than 500 authors and publishing staff have signed an open letter calling on Waterstones to reinstate Fitzgerald. One of the better-known signatories is Chocolate Author Joanne Harris, who as president of the Society of Authors made the crickets chirp while women in her industry were hounded, vilified and discriminated against.
Still, my instinctive reaction to “Tillygate” was unease at the idea of someone being fired for a tweet, regardless of their malice or unprofessionalism. The problem with Fitzgerald’s phrasing is that it’s unclear whether she was trying to destroy her obvious personal collection of Dalcher’s books or whether she was threatening to shred the company’s stock.
She took to social media with a hoarse, whimpering video
Either way, it was a bad image for a Waterstones employee, but the ambiguity could set an unpleasant precedent for dismissal.
However, never interrupt your opponent when they make a mistake, and in Fitzgerald’s case, there wasn’t even time to take a breath. She shared a video on social media in a hoarse, whining voice that made the viral video of the Starbucks employee who filmed himself whining about having too many customers look like a picture of dignity.
In it, Fitzgerald made unsubstantiated allegations against Dalcher and denounced Waterstones as having “no morals,” an odd move if you want to be rehired by the company. In a later Instagram video, she openly implored listeners not to buy any of Dalcher’s books. On that basis, and given that Waterstones has issued a statement acknowledging that its social media policies were breached, scepticism may turn to ambivalence.
The attitude and sense of entitlement that Fitzgerald displays is typical of the world of print media and the arts. As someone with ambitions to be a novelist who graduated as a writer in 2020—the year that progressive hysteria took hold—I could have replaced the students who intimidated me into deleting my old social media profiles with Tilly Fitzgerald.
My crime? I was “caught” agreeing that the abuse JK Rowling received was reprehensible. The pronouns and hair color may be different, but the self-righteousness, narcissism, and sense of entitlement (Fitzgerald sobbed about how great she was at her job) were the same – pure crybaby meanness.
Publishing is one of the sectors where political conformism and related harassment are at their worst. This cannot be separated from the fact that it is one of the most feminized industries, dominated by women at all levels, including at the executive level. Glass ceiling successes aside, there is something about the faux egalitarianism of female competition that translates depressingly well to modern publishing culture.
The key to successful sabotage and status gain, as any smart girl knows, is stealth. Agents and publishers are inundated with proposals and pitches. It’s a ruthless, jealous, and business-driven world that operates behind a facade of hope, creativity, and rewards for perseverance. That’s why publishing was fated to become enmeshed in the DEI paradox, where diversity, equity, and inclusion are pursued through conformity, discrimination, and exclusion.
Bookstagram, the unofficial Instagram network of influential book reviewers and home to the likes of Tilly Fitzgerald, is the epitome of this duplicity. The promotional images of beautifully arranged paperbacks have something of Dolores Umbridge’s cuteness. But the titles featured often look quite similar, and certain names, including bestsellers, are oddly omitted.
I recently expressed my support for SEEN In Publishing online, only to receive a candid response minutes later from a well-followed bookstagrammer: “We will make sure no one reads your novel. Have fun supporting SEEN.” For some shocked amusement, I glanced at their Instagram: “Hello lovelies!” tweeted post after post, accompanied by pastel-colored depictions of books and hot drinks.
In the wake of the Tillygate scandal, I saw a number of gender-critical people in the arts industry demanding that publishers and other institutions train their staff in the basics of Equality Act and explain to them why it is illegal to discriminate against people who believe that biological sex is unchangeable.
While this is a good starting point to prevent further ugly dismissals, no amount of training can stop booksellers from hiding works they don’t approve of, or literary agents from turning down requests from authors who have “problematic” social media followers, or stop reviewers from receiving messages telling them to avoid those who have raved about Robert Galbraith’s latest novel.
The tide will not turn if people like Tilly Fitzgerald are sporadically fired, which only feeds the martyrdom of progressive authoritarians. A more effective solution would be to change hiring practices. Instead of touting their DEI credentials, booksellers and publishers should make it clear in job descriptions that their company is committed to artistic freedom of expression and the right to insult. Anyone who would feel “unsafe” in such an environment need not apply.
But this is very difficult in an industry infected by an ideological system that isolates dissent, weeds out heretics, and effectively prevents people who could implement such change from ever coming to power.
To that end, free-thinking people who aspire to a literary career could do what I did and step away from the captive mainstream industry. If enough of us do that, we can build our own networks and connections and define a new creative ethos.
In fact, the existence of SEEN In Publishing shows that many of us are already getting involved in the project and our community will literally grow and become more diverse. Hopefully, in the next few years we will see the emergence of a literary industry that has courage.
