I Was Cancelled by the Guardian

First in a series: Solid blue takes on sex, lies, and gender-woo

Hello! Jocelyn Davis here, writing for Democrats for an Informed Approach to Gender.

One morning about a month ago, idling around on the internet, I stumbled across Jenny Poyer Ackerman’s interview with DIAG founders Ellie and Eliza. The three of them had me clutching my Hillary mug and sputtering, “Yes! About time!” into my rooibos tea as they articulated, with reason and passion, a left-based critique of gender ideology.

I hurried over to the DIAG website and signed up as a member, identifying myself as a corporate consultant turned book author. A couple days later, Ellie and Eliza reached out: “You’re a writer? We need a lead writer for our Substack.” Mission accepted.

We’ve planned a series of original, personal stories based on interviews with Democrats and other left-leaners recounting what brought them to the gender-critical cause. Our interviewees come from many backgrounds and circumstances. Their concerns and perspectives differ. But they all have this in common: skepticism about gender ideology founded on a (truly) liberal worldview.

Subscribers can expect a new Solid Blue Take every two weeks. We welcome your likes and comments. In between, we’ll be posting more content from other authors. We also hope you’ll stay tuned to the Substacks of our GC friends; we’ve listed many of them here.

Please join us! Membership in DIAG is free, you can stay anonymous if you choose, and we have lots of great merch.

OK. Let’s kick things off with my own solid blue take on sex, lies, and gender-woo …

On Being Cancelled by The Guardian and Reclaiming Terfness

I’m a lifelong Dem who once held the usual set of innocently progressive views on transgender issues: Why can’t we just be kind, Bathroom laws are ridiculous, Only far-right-wingers have a problem with this stuff, Trans rights are the new gay rights, etc.

Sometime in 2018, at the prompting of a feminist friend, I googled the “cotton ceiling”—and lost my innocence. For several years thereafter, the issue stayed pretty theoretical for me: I hovered around on social media learning about concepts like autogynephilia and rapid-onset gender dysphoria, being appalled at obvious medical abuses of young people, admiring the posts and essays of J.K. Rowling et al., sometimes venturing into arguments, mostly staying out of it. After all, I was pretty busy writing and promoting my third leadership book, then a novel, then a fourth leadership book. No time for fringe political foolishness!

Then, in June 2022, I got cancelled by Britain’s premiere leftist newspaper, and the political became personal.

I wrote about the experience in a Twitter thread. Here it is, just as I posted it then:

***

/I’m a writer, former business exec, and feminist. Last month, a gentleman from The Guardian emailed to ask me if I’d like to teach one of their online masterclasses. The topic: my book The Art of Quiet Influence. 1/

/The second edition of that book is due in Sep, so I was happy to be invited. After exchanging more info, he confirmed interest. We got on a Zoom. He asked if I had anything new coming out. “Yes,” I said, “my upcoming book is Insubordinate: 12 New Archetypes for Women Who Lead.” 2/

/“Oh, that’s really interesting!” he said. “Tell me more.” “Not sure it’s your thing,” I said. “It’s about reclaiming female archetypes: Witch, Amazon, Empress, Snow Queen, etc. Bit unusual.” But he said it sounded perfect for their masterclass audience, which is 65% women. 3/

/I summarized the book’s research and themes, plus my background in leadership development and online learning. He said it sounded great: “How is w/o Sep 19?” We booked Sep 22 as the class date. “Very excited!” says he. I sent him the manuscript in confidence. A week goes by … 4/

/Yesterday I woke up to an email: “Pleasure to meet you … I am afraid to say we no longer have space for this in our programme … I was unaware of some other conversations so will need to pull back on plans. 22 Sep can be released from the diary.” In other words: CANCELLED. 5/

/Me: “If that topic isn’t suitable, might we revert to the original topic, quiet influence?” Him: “My colleague came back from leave … since discovered our programme is becoming quite full already.” (Lies. He’d said they do 300 classes/year and late Sep was wide open.) 6/  

/Now here’s the amazing thing: Insubordinate is a book about woman-power and powerful women. It is apolitical, meant for everyone. It makes no attempt to define “woman.” It is about women’s wide range, inspiring each one of us to be our best, bravest self. Nice, right? And yet 7/

/this book is (apparently) so potentially offensive, so incorrect, that The Guardian cannot be seen near it. Even though their masterclass audience is 65% women. Even though the book isn’t about trans anything. Even though THEY are the ones who invited ME to speak on it. 8/

/I can’t say I’m surprised, given that Hachette UK, publisher of my previous books, turned down Insubordinate because it “might offend.” But I am shocked at the state of publishing today, where so many female authors are being silenced – and in service of what? 9/END

***

I was amazed when the thread went mildly viral: 1600 likes, 250 retweets. But even better were the direct messages I received from writers, artists, and other creatives—a few well-known, most as obscure as I—expressing solidarity and relating their own cancellation experiences. It was heartwarming.

And I was fine, of course. I hadn’t lost a real job; if anything, the momentary notoriety helped me sell a few more books than I might have. What rankled, though, was that (as I wrote in the thread) I hadn’t asked The Guardian if I could do the class; they had asked me. Moreover, I believe the initial asker had been genuinely enthusiastic about me and my topic. It was his supervisor who had swooped in (“came back from leave”) and, having checked out my Twitter feed, nixed me.

One anime-avatar’d commenter on the thread nailed it: “They’re not worried about your book,” he wrote. “They just know you’re a nasty little terf.”

I decided then and there to embrace my terfness, nasty or not. After all, I’d written a whole book on reclaiming women’s archetypes, even the terrible-sounding ones, so why wouldn’t I reclaim this one? Yes, the acronym really should be MERF, not TERF, because the problem is male people, not trans people, invading female spaces. But we women are used to being misunderstood, used to having our range diminished, our opinions denigrated, our powers dismissed. We’re certainly used to being called nasty! And still we rise.

So, here’s my mini-manifesto—which, I realize, I am lucky to be able to put out there, under my real name, without fear of professional reprisals.

I am:

A lifelong Democrat

A proud liberal

A staunch feminist

A fan of science

A gay rights advocate

A child of the gender-bending ‘80s

An adult human female

Always open-minded

Often kind

Occasionally nasty …

… and as terfy as I wanna be.

See you in two weeks with another solid blue take on sex, lies, and gender-woo.

© 2024 by Jocelyn Davis and DIAG