A damning report on the sorry state of publishing – governed by trans orthodoxy and viciously dismissive of gender-critical viewpoints – from Matilda Gosling, for Sex Matters and SEEN in Publishing. Some highlights:
Publishers have made poor commercial decisions guided by ideology, not markets. There is a vast gulf between books commissioned on gender-identity beliefs and what actually sells: the analysis done for this report on trade non-fiction books shows that the average book about women sells seven times more copies than the average book based on gender-identity beliefs. Gender-critical books sell, on average, nine times more. Commissioning editors have run scared of bold, brave, interesting books that reflect a diversity of ideas and that readers want, and instead commissioned books that fit the beliefs of their junior staff.
Helen Joyce received a £20,000 advance for her book Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality, which went on to sell over 23,000 physical copies in the UK and over 100,000 internationally. Munroe Bergdorf, by contrast, received a six-figure sum for Transitional, which sold fewer than 3,000 copies in the UK.
Abuse of those with gender-critical views in publishing has been relentless. People – usually women – have received death and rape threats. Others in the industry have threatened them with reputational damage and loss of work, have used slurs and insults against them, and conflated their views with transphobia, homophobia, racism and other forms of bigotry. Gender-critical individuals working in publishing have been accused of wanting the deaths of trans-identifying teenagers and working towards genocide. There have been industry calls for those with gender-critical beliefs to be demonised, and they have been labelled as fascists for thinking that there are two sexes.
In 2020, the former children’s author Gillian Philip added the hashtag #IStandWithJKRowling to her Twitter (now X) profile. She was then subjected to an extreme 24-hour social-media pile-on that included death threats. Philip’s contract was immediately terminated by her publisher with the tacit support of her agent.
Mainstream media outlets have compounded the problem. Coverage of published books was perceived by our interviewees to be biased towards those based on gender-identity beliefs. It is notable that gender-critical books have sold so well despite this apparent bias – analysis conducted for this research shows that in non-fiction, the average gender-critical book sells 10,000 more copies than the average book based on gender-identity beliefs.
Journalists on BBC Radio 4’s flagship women’s-affairs programme Woman’s Hour have not interviewed best-selling gender-critical authors about their books, despite the issues they cover being so relevant to women. By contrast male gender-studies academic Grace Lavery has been interviewed, despite selling only 1,723 copies of Please Miss – A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Penis. So has Juno Dawson, a male transactivist who also identifies as a woman. Dawson has depicted womanhood as a submissive sexual identity: “I knew I wanted to be ‘the woman’ when it came to sex… It was a conscious urge to get fucked, be penetrated as a woman would be.” It is surprising that somebody with such a perspective, which arguably undermines the position of women in society, has been platformed on a programme about women instead of authors who argue for women’s rights.
Unfortunately, knowing the BBC's record, it's not in the least surprising.
The trans emphasis in children's books is particularly alarming:
The promotion of gender-identity beliefs in children’s publishing is widespread and its ramifications are serious. Children who identify as trans are more likely than other children to have underlying vulnerabilities such as autism, poor mental health, a history of abuse or having grown up in care. They are several times more likely to grow up to be lesbian, gay or bisexual. They need support to feel comfortable in their bodies. Children’s books, on the other hand, paint a shiny, sparkly world of trans identities that supposedly fix deep-seated underlying challenges, resolve bodily hatred and create enduring joy in the form of “trans euphoria”.
These publications are steeped in stereotypes. The blurb for the book I Am Jazz, for example, reads:
“From the time she was two years old, Jazz knew that she had a girl’s brain in a boy’s body. She loved pink and dressing up as a mermaid and didn’t feel like herself in boy’s clothing. This confused her family, until they took her to a doctor who said that Jazz was transgender and that she was born that way.”
Jazz Jennings is now an adult who has had several transition-related surgeries and experienced post-surgical complications, as well as many other health issues.
Plenty of powerful endorsements. Anne Fine, for instance:
“An astonishing report that lays bare how a once open-minded publishing world has allowed a minority of activists to bully it into so far abandoning its core principles that it has begun to work, not only against its own ethos, but also against its own interests.”
Richard Dawkins:
“When history looks back on the epidemic of collective lunacy that was the trans cult, special odium will attach to psychiatrists, counsellors and teachers who warped the minds, and surgeons who mutilated the bodies, of vulnerable people in their care, especially children. But lesser culprits will not escape blame, and high on the list will be publishers who, contrary to their normal editorial judgment, censored or even cancelled brave authors critical of the cult. Authors who asserted scientific truth in the teeth of fashionable ideology. Authors who stood up for real women, or stood up to the bullies who sought to intimidate them. I know many publishers, and I hear multiple stories of relentless pressure from junior colleagues, and of abject capitulation to it. But anecdotes demand proper substantiation, and this splendid document provides it in spades…."
Added:
“It’s the presentation of contested ideas, which are not shared by the majority of the population, as if they’re mandatory… it’s a systemic problem in the literary culture.”@msjlindsay speaks to @iancollinsuk on @TalkTV about @matildagosling’s report for @SEENPublishing ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/gPzqNUPAv7
— Sex Matters (@SexMattersOrg) June 25, 2025
Mick Hartley 
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