I’ve worked in publishing for over thirty years and have never experienced anything like the toxicity and hostility that I have seen over the last few years with regard to the trans debate. I was first made aware of what has happening when my friend Gillian Philip was posting what was happening to Rachel Rooney, but I hadn’t quite grasped the full horror of it until the same friend tweeted her support for JK Rowling. This was the summer of 2020, and we were in the middle of lockdown. At the time my husband (a dentist) was unable to work so I had by default become the main breadwinner. After Gillian’s tweet, I watched in horror as she not only received a tsunami of online abuse of the vilest sort, but the people involved demanded that she be sacked. Which she was the following day, without explanation and with no recourse to appeal. I wanted to stand up for her publicly, but I was terrified. We were all working at home, and without being able to have the nuanced conversations you can have face to face with colleagues I was keeping my head down about the debate about JK Rowling’s essay that was raging at the time. I also didn’t dare put my head above the parapet and support Gillian on social media as I wanted to. I was genuinely worried that pinning my colours to the GC mast would impact my job, and I couldn’t at that time afford to lose it. So I kept quiet (though like many GC people in publishing I started an anonymous twitter account where I was free to speak). It was only when my husband retired, and I decided to leave my job to pursue a freelance career that I had the confidence to speak about these matters under my own name. As a strong believer in free speech, I find it completely abhorrent that I or anyone else should be so intimidated so as not to be able to speak openly what are self-evident truths. If publishing isn’t a place where a frank and free exchange of views can be aired, where else is? We have to change this, not just for the sake of our industry, but for the sake of society as a whole.
Julia Williams
Thank you for defending free speech.