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Magi Gibson's avatar

Thank you for writing this piece, Susanna. I'm so sorry this has happened to you in Poland, but what better to do with such a negative experience than turn it into a Substack shining a light on what GC authors, especially female ones, know has been happening in the shadows for years now. I stayed silent for years on many negative experiences as a GC poet, as I was so concerned that by publicising them I was making myself vulnerable to more and more vicious attacks. I feared it would be like putting blood in the water, showing I was wounded, when sharks were already circling. But breaking that silence was the best thing I could have done. And more and more of us are doing it now. Proud to be counted as one of them and to stand alongside you.

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wolfstar's avatar

Astonishing really, because ordinary people in Poland are very very much not woke. But again, it's these little cliques in the white-collar world of arts and humanities, publishing, academia and the media that have a totally different set of norms, which they desperately ape from America to try and be cool. They don't even care about trans or LGBTQ people in any meaningful or practical way, it's just a question of following the latest trends. An etiquette and status game for the upper-middle classes.

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