Female thriller writer who won €1m literary prize revealed to be three men | Hacker News Reader

Female thriller writer who won €1m literary prize revealed to be three men

theguardian.com

66 pointslogronoide25 comments

What I find interesting is that this author was listed among the top ten "feminist" writers.

... and that now feminists on twitter are advocating "her" removal. ... which is odd because technically a feminist doesn't need to be a woman.

It really just exposes their hypocrisy, and that's why they hate these three guys.

I would agree - only that I don’t find many people on Twitter criticizing the trio. The article mentions one tweet (30 retweets, under 300 favs as of now - even after being mentioned in the guardian). Searching to the name doesn’t reveal much - some newspapers and mainly people laughing about the affair.

That’s one thing I don’t like about Twitter: I think single Tweets get blown out of portion quick, mainly because the media report on them as if „Twitter“ wanted something instead of single people.

Based on the linked Spanish ABC article [0], it seems like it was well known that Carmen Mola was a pseudonym and they were even widely suspected to be a man.

[0]https://www.abc.es/cultura/libros/abci-carmen-mola-elena-fer...

Worth mentioning it is 2018 article.

>Their lead character in the Carmen Mola novels is detective Elena Blanco, a “peculiar and solitary woman, who loves grappa, karaoke, classic cars and sex in SUVs”

How is anyone surprised that this series was written by three middle aged men, and not a woman?

When a woman does it, it's to expose the patriarchy. When men do it it's a scandal.

Pen names have existed for centuries. Who cares?

The question would be whether or not they did it to exploit the advantages that culture and media now afford to women. But then again, that’s the same reason women have historically used male pen names.

It's not about using a pen name. They are free to write under a feminine pseudonym (reverse George Elliot style).

I am not sure if the prize is intentionally limited to women --it sounds like it isn't--but I dont think we want people claiming prizes this way. Consider that there are competitions for eg. high school students, first time authors, etc.

If the prize is not restricted to female authors, what's the problem?

Your argument would hold if the article actually mentioned anything like that, but all that's being discussed is if it was a marketing strategy or not.

This is peak hypocrisy when we're supposed to believe that women are constantly held back, but accuse men of using a woman pen name to sell more.

The first rule of high school student contest will be that you need to be in high school. For feminists, they have shot themselves in foot in this regard. They want that everyone to be treated equal(and in many case not even define females) but at the same time they don't.

IANAP (...Not A Psychiatrist), but a great many people who are enthusiastic readers (especially of novels) seem to imagine close relationships between themselves and their favorite authors, extensively fabricate details of the authors and relationships, and become very emotionally invested in those imagined relationships.

Hence the anger and feelings of betrayal when an actual author's identity, behavior, etc. fail to match those of the reader's close and trusted (but quite imaginary) friend.

Marketing has lied, the whole country is shocked. More news at 11.

I really don't see the issue, how can this be seen as a scam? Even if the persona is used as a marketing tool it might not be great but also...so what?

> Beatriz Gimeno, a feminist, writer, activist – and former head of one of Spain’s national equality bodies, the Women’s Institute – attacked the men for creating a female persona in their publicity for Carmen Mola books, over several years

Cross-gender pen names are an common tradition. Have they also condemned the Bronte sisters or George Elliot or George Sand for creating a different gender persona for their writing? Or JK Rowling and Andre Norton literally changing their name for marketing purposes so that their gender would not be apparent on the books cover while they were still unknown as authors?

Men outrank women on the privilege stack. A woman adopting a male persona is "punching up"; a man adopting a female persona is "punching down".

I was born with membership in the less popular protected classes, woe is me.

Then we should encourage that even more. That they are sacrificing sales/money for experiencing being a female.

I would argue that adopting a persona has literally nothing to do with the concepts of "punching up" or "punching down", which refer to cases of e.g. "verbal violence" of aggressive jokes and such; where the "up"/"down" determines the extent of how much "verbal violence" would be considered appropriate in that company.

However, the women I mentioned (like Bronte sisters) were not "punching up", they were not "punching" anyone in any way whatsoever, the choice of persona has no relation to some kind of aggression, they're simply choosing an arbitrary identity and that's it, there's not the slightest moral concern about this act, it's a well-established (and frequently used) writer's right to choose a pen name or persona and there's not the slightest thing wrong about that, no matter which group is adopting which persona - and the same applies for those three writers choosing their pen name. "Punching up" is considered less aggressive than "punching down", but adopting a persona is not even on the same scale, there's zero aggression about that.

On the other hand, attacking writers for their choice of pen name is punching. In this case it is the less-bad version because it is "punching up", but it is a form of bullying; a much more aggressive act than what those three writers have done.

1. Explain why it is bad to give up ‘privilege’.

2. Explain why it is good to take ‘privilege’.

Who were armed by these guys' choice of pen name? Who got punch? What "privilege" was taken from whom?

Either their writing was great and would have been successful regardless, so it doesn't matter. Or they were successful only because their pen name was a woman's name, and then women have more privilege when it comes to publishing.

This line of criticism frames it as if the Carmen Mola public persona is unacceptably dishonest compared to the acceptably dishonest fake public persona called Beatriz Gimeno.

I don't mean to throw shade, it's simply the inescapable nature of cultivating a public image. Mola may be fiction, Gimeno is "based on a true story" fiction. (And interestingly enough, pen names are a time honored literary tradition.)

So when I see statements like the one you quote, my brain immediately interprets it as deflection. After a bit of turning it over in my head, I expect it's not a purposeful deflection but still find it worthwhile to make explicit. It leads us to the question: to whom and for what reason(s) is it important I see the distinction as meaningful?

In a trenchcoat?

Like me, you watched way too much Scooby Doo as a kid.

Google for "Danny Santiago".

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