![]() ![]() ![]() Hough, who said she had read “The Men,” wrote on Substack that she had told the critics “to read the book before condemning it.” The novel, “The Men,” which is set to be published in June, describes a scenario in which “all people with a Y chromosome mysteriously disappear from the face of the earth,” according to Newman’s publisher. ImageCredit.“Leaving Isn’t The Hardest Thing,” her essay collection, has won critical acclaim. A reviewer for NPR likened her skill at portraiture to that of “one of those cartoonists who can sketch out four lines and suddenly you see your face in them.”īut Hough said in an interview Monday that an editor had recently informed her that the nomination had been pulled, following a social media dust-up in which Hough had defended, at times heatedly, a forthcoming novel by the author Sandra Newman, a friend of hers, from criticism that it was transphobic. The book, described by its publisher as interrogating “our notions of ecstasy, queerness, and what it means to live freely,” drew heavily on Hough’s life experiences, including as a lesbian in the Air Force during the “don’t ask, don’t tell” era. The nomination seemed a capstone to a remarkable debut, which won critical acclaim and spent two weeks on The New York Times’s best-seller list. This decision by Lambda Literary is nothing more than the worst kind of “guilt by association.” And it is bad.Last month, Lauren Hough, a first-time author, received good news from an editor at her publishing house: Her essay collection “Leaving Isn’t The Hardest Thing,” published last year, was set to be nominated for a Lambda Literary Award in the category of lesbian memoir. Is Lambda Literary making it easier for anti-trans activists to cry “cancel culture” at every instance of public criticism? Yes. Is Sandra Newman providing artistic/intellectual cover for those who would deny basic rights to trans people, who would seek to make trans people’s very existence a subject of debate? This does not seem to be the case. Sandra Newman isn’t a TERF either, something that can be easily discovered by the same methods. All you have to do is ask me, or spend two minutes scrolling my twitter timeline. It’s actually quite easy to find out whether or not I’m a TERF. No reasonable person could think I’m a TERF. So when I saw people assuming that simple idea was the entirety of the plot, I told them to read the book before assuming the worst. ![]() Other books that started from this premise-all the men disappear-have erased the existence of trans people, and it was important to her not to do that, to be as sensitive as possible. I’m not transgender and neither is Sandra (Sandra is nonbinary), but we discussed how to make the book recognize the reality of transgender people. Sandra Newman sent it to me in an early form and I gave her a few notes, like we do for one another. The crux of this issue was whether or not Hough’s Tweets warranted Lambda’s withdrawal of the nomination. And contrary to many of Hough’s attacks, trans people did read the book and offer deeper responses as to why they found it harmful. Hough, who can be very aggressive on Twitter, repeatedly doubled-down on her defense of Newman, and was belittling and hostile to trans people on Twitter. Like virtually all of the people attacking Newman’s book, I haven’t read The Men, so I cannot say if it handles the subject of gender and sex with nuance and intelligence but based on their past public writings, I am inclined to give Newman the benefit of the doubt.īut this isn’t about Newman being denied an award (and the money that comes with it) Lambda Literary withdrew its nomination of Hough for defending Newman on Twitter. As a sociopolitical/moral thought-experiment, this is a premise that warrants a nuanced and thoughtful approach to how we think about gender and sex. Hough posted a screenshot of the second email:Īs Hough outlines in her post, the “Twitter disputes” in question refer to her defense of novelist Sandra Newman, who came under attack on Twitter-and not simply from YA Twitter, as Hough suggests-after posting about her forthcoming book, The Men, which takes place in a world absent people with a Y chromosome. In a decision that feels perfectly timed to keep last week’s cancel culture debate (part 327) going strong into this week, Lambda Literary preemptively removed the writer Lauren Hough from an awards shortlist because of recent “Twitter disputes.” According to a Substack post by Hough, after being informed a few weeks ago that her debut essay collection, Leaving Isn’t the Hardest Thing, was a finalist, she received a follow-up email last week withdrawing the honor (presumably before Lambda announced its award finalists). ![]()
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