Back in 2018 Waterstones
were bought by Elliott Management, an investment management firm.
Paul Singer is
the CEO and founder of Elliott Management.
He is also the chairman of the
Manhattan Institute for Policy Research and has funded it significantly with his billions. It publishes City Journal as its public policy magazine.
City Journal's "health" section is predominently transphobia (
7 of the last 10 articles, at a quick count).
So, if you're wondering why they're taking a stand here, it's because their owner funds a right-wing policy group that's obsessed with trans people.
I started looking into this after reading a thread about it
here, which also points out that he owns Barnes & Noble. And that a lot of the "LGB without the T" stuff originates from people hired by the Manhattan Institute.
Oh, and if you've missed the whole fuss, an awful lot of people are unhappy about Waterstones right now, because they
fired someone for saying that they were going to drop their own copies of their books by an author in the bin after discovering that they were a transphobe.
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