“I am going to dissect every word of this toxic TERF-y trash fire and call out the sheer irresponsible cruelty of platforming a notorious bigot with a release like this. @Docstockk is a [sic] infamous Transphobic [sic] bully of the highest order. Shame on you.”
This was posted on Twitter on 4 February 2021 by someone working in publishing about the forthcoming release of Material Girls by Kathleen Stock, a book which examines why reality matters for feminism. The publisher was Fleet, the imprint I ran at Hachette, a major global corporate publisher. I didn’t take it very seriously at first.
In September, I will appear as the claimant at an employment tribunal, in which Hachette is the respondent. I resigned in April 2024 because I had found it impossible, for various reasons, to do my job.
Over the next few years, this kind of abuse became routine. I was called a terf, a transphobe, a bigot, a far-right conspiracist, a vicious bully, a racist; accused of having been radicalised online as though I were an 18-year-old incel, not a fiftysomething female book publisher; and told I was widely despised by my colleagues and everyone in the industry. These posts would copy in my employers and various staff networks at Hachette. They came from all sorts of people in and around publishing, some anonymous, some not, some who had themselves complained about being bullied online, and some with tens of thousands of followers. One of my most persistent critics was a self-styled publishing commentator who continued to be platformed by the industry at the London Book Fair and was appointed as a judge for the British Book Awards. She was in addition an enthusiastic advocate for a group of young people in publishing who set up a social media account, The Young Refuseniks, which they used to advertise their curation of a “blocklist” — crucially different from a blacklist, you see — which identified all the “transphobes” in the industry, so that people could be kept “safe” from us (because of course, I was on the list). After they realised that blacklists, sorry, blocklists, are considered somewhat problematic, the whole thing disappeared, but not before it had garnered a great deal of support from many in the business.
In May 2021, three days before the publication of Material Girls, the Bookseller published an “open letter” from a group of anonymous people in the industry who claimed that “transphobia” was rife in publishing. The three-page document was titled “The Paradox of Tolerance”: “If we are tolerant but ill-informed, tolerant with no limit and no moral compass, then the intolerant destroy inclusivity and persecute minorities. To maintain a tolerant society that moves with new understanding and broadens its language to include rather than exclude, we must be intolerant of prejudice.” It went on:
At this moment what needs to be expressed most urgently is the distinction between a petty anxiety and the horror that rises when you become aware that you are witnessing a persecution.
Nobody seemed to be experiencing any rising “horror” at witnessing the persecution of feminists who believe in the salience of natal sex. We were considered the problem, and were to be shunned.
On 6 May 2021, one day before the publication of Material Girls, the HR director at Hachette circulated the new “Trans Inclusion and Transitioning at Work” policy.
Those consulted on the drafting of this policy included the Hachette Trans and Non-Binary Working Group; the co-chairs of the staff Pride network; and the charity All About Trans, described on its website as “a passionate team of professionals, advocates, and allies who are committed to promoting the well-being and empowerment of transgender individuals”. Those not consulted included the staff women’s network, because there isn’t one; the various faith networks; nor any external charity which advocates for women’s rights, such as Sex Matters. The further resources recommended at the end of the document included Stonewall, GIRES and Gendered Intelligence; the list did not include the Equality Act 2010. The policy ran to more than three thousand words and was pretty much as one would expect, but buried within it was an assertion that leapt out at me: “All our staff are entitled to use the toilets and facilities that align to their gender identity.”
I emailed our HR director, copying in the CEO and my MD, requesting clarification: “Is it Hachette policy that men who identify, either temporarily or permanently, as women . . . will have access to the women’s facilities?” To which the answer was, “Yes. Hypothetically [such men] will have access to the women’s facilities . . . I understand the concern behind the question, but this is our workplace, which is a safe space, and these people are our colleagues. In my experience of supporting trans people at work, they are more anxious about which facilities they use than anyone else, and are more vulnerable.” After more back-and-forth, I was told that anyone who was unhappy with the women’s toilets becoming mixed sex could use the accessible toilet on each floor, or one of the six lockable rooms containing a toilet and a basin on the sixth storey, next to the cafeteria. I was additionally informed, for a reason that still escapes me, that the multi-faith prayer room had always been mixed gender, and no one had ever raised an issue. I was told by my MD and the deputy MD that the policy would not be changed, and by HR that at Hachette “diversity and inclusion sits at the top of the agenda”, and that “a careful balance had been struck” between the rights of women and those of trans people. The guidance I had from Sex Matters and shared with several board members, the CEO and the HR director, explaining that self-ID is not UK law, was waved away:
We note your strength of feeling on this issue and . . . understand that you disagree with the company’s adoption of self-ID as a matter of policy. We respect your views . . . We have listened to your concerns in this regard. However, for the reasons previously outlined, we consider that the policy (as currently drafted) is the only way to achieve true inclusion in our workplace, and is in line with our legal obligations.
The issue became one of my “strength of feeling” rather than the company’s compliance with the EA2010. I was not treated as a member of staff concerned that the company was ignoring women’s rights, but rather as an emotional basket case making a fuss about nothing.
Material Girls was published, was warmly reviewed and sold well. But from that point on, I felt as though I was persona non grata in my workplace and in publishing, the industry I had worked in for more than thirty years. The visible online abuse, while unpleasant and unsettling, was at least out there. It was the abuse I couldn’t see, happening in WhatsApp groups, in DMs, real-life conversations, conversations on social media accounts that had blocked or soft-blocked me, that haunted my imagination. I was becoming anxious, depressed, paranoid. My workplace no longer felt like a place where I could be creative and happy and productive.
A year later, a novelist published on the Fleet list got in touch with my MD to say that despite Fleet having done a brilliant job with her work, she wanted the soon-to-be-published paperback edition of her current book to be moved off the imprint because of the transphobic writers we published (I had by this point acquired two books by women who, while they were not writing about the subject, held gender-critical views). She also objected to my posts on my personal social media account expressing my views on self-ID, gender identity and other related issues. The first I heard of this was when my line manager called me when I was sitting at my desk to tell me not only that the request had been made, but that the MD had agreed to it.
I was taken aback. I had thought that before agreeing to such a request, my MD and/or my line manager would have talked to me about it. It took me a while to process what had happened – I still thought there might be a way through. I was wrong about that, although to be fair there was an effort to reverse-engineer some kind of consultation, even though the decision had been made.
I couldn’t work in a place which now felt hostile and in which I had been patronised and gaslit for years
As far as I was concerned, in acquiescing to this author’s demand, the company had tacitly agreed that I could legitimately be described as transphobic. My managers told me repeatedly that authors move imprints all the time, that it was no big deal, and that their decision wasn’t indicative of any lack of support from the company for me or Fleet. This made no sense. I started Fleet as a new imprint in 2016, and in a lovely speech at the launch, my MD said, “An imprint is a mark of quality and taste, and a platform for brilliant authors and editors, and Ursula will be buying books without any criteria except that they are books Ursula is passionate about; that’s what Fleet stands for, the freedom to acquire.” I was at the time really moved and exhilarated by this expression of confidence. But now, all that was gone. I asked, repeatedly, for examples of authors moving off an imprint between the hardback and paperback editions of their books because they disagreed with the publisher’s lawful and protected beliefs, and those of other writers on the list; I was never given one, because, I think, there aren’t any. The company’s actions demonstrated that they were unwilling to stand up for plurality and freedom of expression — in this case, at least.
In November last year, the same thing happened again with a different author. This time, I was at least told that the request had been made before the company agreed to it, but it was clear that it was a done deal. I had explicitly told my MD that if this happened, I would be unable to continue in my job, so my resignation can’t have come as a surprise. I had reached the end; I couldn’t work in a place which now felt hostile and in which I had been patronised and gaslit for years. It was having a terrible effect on both my physical and mental health. In his email responding to my resignation, my MD emphasised that I had always been treated with “compassion”. This was final confirmation if I needed it that my views were never taken seriously; they were seen as some kind of unfortunate condition, rather than a considered opinion based in fact, which had the backing of the law.
As far as I could see, the only course of action left to me was to take Hachette to an employment tribunal, both to challenge their treatment of me and my views, and to challenge the policy of self-ID. The second component of the case is arguably the more important; if the tribunal finds that the trans inclusion policy is in breach of the EA2010, it will have ramifications for every workplace in the UK. I’m sorry it came to this. I’m even more sorry that more people in book publishing don’t feel able to speak freely on this subject, possibly because they don’t want to end up like me. I didn’t want to end up like me either, but here we are.
