The Polari Prize’s cancellation is a victory for trans intolerance

The annual Polari Prize, the UK’s largest LGBT book award, caved in to the trans-activist mob this week. Its decision earlier this month to long-list Earth by John Boyne, who has expressed gender-critical views, prompted outrage from the enforcers of queer opinion. Boycotts from other long-listed authors and a petition drove home the message – Boyne had to go. On Monday, the organisers announced that this year’s prize will no longer go ahead.

The author of The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, Boyne is a highly respected gay novelist, who brings his literary skill and imagination to bear on a wide range of topics. But to those who worship at the shrine of ‘lived experience’, literary skill and imagination are highly suspect – dark arts, even.

In My Brother’s Name is Jessica (2019), Boyne had the temerity to invent a trans character. After that, Boyne was persona non grata among the enforcers of queer orthodoxy. His heresy was confirmed by a gracious letter of apology to Graham Linehan in 2023 and praise for JK Rowling in 2025, in which Boyne described himself as a ‘fellow TERF’. How could such a renegade conceivably be admitted to the sacred halls of queerdom?

In Boyne’s own gracious statement on the affair, he explains:

‘To the writers who withdrew from the prize and those who organised petitions, I say this: You may have meant well. You may have thought you were doing an honourable thing. But you forgot one crucial fact. The novelist you are petitioning and the novel you tried to exclude is part of a sequence about sexual abuse from a gay man who experienced that very trauma at school, was denied justice because my abuser died in the months leading up to the trial and is still coping with not getting my day in court. And how do I cope? By writing books like Earth.’

Clearly Boyne’s is not the sort of gay ‘lived experience’ tolerated by the gatekeepers of queerland. For them, he is guilty of wrongspeak.

We have all become familiar with the trans-activist hissy fit that has led to the cancellation of this year’s Polari Prize. It is an ugly form of intimidation expressed in plaintive cries of victimhood, but pursued with aggressive determination.

As the organised boycott took shape, Polari issued three statements. In the first one, which appeared on 7 August, it stood firm(ish), noting grandly that ‘even within our community, we can at times hold radically different positions on substantive issues’. In the second on 11 August, released as the bullying intensified, Polari sincerely apologised for the ‘hurt and anger’ caused. Then came the third on 18 August in which it gave in to the mob, cancelled this year’s prize and promised to do better in future.

The Polari Prize was founded by the journalist Paul Burston in 2011. Named after his Polari literary salon, it is ‘specifically for books that explore LGBTQ+ experiences and perspectives’. Polari was a type of slang spoken mostly by gay men. It was a secret code not intended for others to understand. The not-so-secret code embedded in all LGBTQ+ endeavours is uniformity of opinion.

Trans orthodoxy is leading to the creeping annihilation of imagination, excellence and critical thinking. It is a monster of mediocrity that flattens and deadens all in its path. And now it has come for literature.

Bev Jackson is a co-founder and trustee of LGB Alliance. Follow her on Twitter: @BevJacksonAuth