Eric Gill and the BBC

Ironically, according to the BBC Radio 4 series The Hackers, in the episode 'End User', it's actually happening the other way around...

There's a certain man who I interact with occasionally on Facebook. Every time I raise any kind of safeguarding issue relating to women or children he accuses me of being "right-wing". I assume he imagines it's an effective way of shutting me up. (It isn't.)

I would rather see good explanations of controversial statues rather than them not being seen. Discussion and debate are essential in a democracy. Gill, to my mind, is abhorrent but I want to know about him and I want to know who revers him

I really think focusing on language like the word sex is barking up the wrong tree. This idea that rape isn't sex is not helpful. Sex is a description of a biological act that happens in animals that reproduce sexually. Minimizing or an inaccurate descriptions in the article overall aren't caused by using language accurately, they are caused by an inadequate or flawed analysis. Like not questioning more the daughter's report - though as an interviewer I think you do actually have to give some thought to what people say about themselves even if it doesn't seem likely to you.

I'd really like to see people get away from basing so much of their ire on people not toeing the line on using approved language that someone demands of them. It's already backfired for women.

It’s a very valid conversation but the answers I don’t think are clear.

The world is full of beautiful creations, sculptures, ceramics, paintings, music, film, theatre, architecture - all spanning decades, centuries, millennia. An awful lot of those things will have been created by morally repugnant people - there is no connection between artistic skill and moral virtue.

Some of those creations will have pre-dated whatever actions made the creator so repugnant, some will have been created afterwards.

Some will have been created by people whose actions were considered normal at the time but are repugnant now, others will have been considered repugnant at one point, but perhaps no longer. Many will have done things considered repugnant no matter what era they happened in.

Once they are released into the world can those creations stand or fall purely on their own merits with a life of their own, or are they forever tarnished by the actions of their creator?

Should works be destroyed, or hidden? If they are hidden, then where, and who is allowed to see them?

What if they are too big to be hidden? If we are talking about a building designed by an architect who committed terrible crimes should the building be destroyed? Left empty?

What about the other people involved in bringing these creations into reality (students, assistants, craftspeople) must their work be tarnished/destroyed too?

Can we love a creation whilst we condemn its creator? Is condemning the creation not unlike blaming a child for the sins of its parents?

If this particular statue is vile, what makes it vile? Is it vile as an object viewed in isolation, or vile purely because of its creator? Would an identical statue created by an entirely different artist also be vile?

I think these are all reasonable questions for a society to ask itself, but it is also quite reasonable for people to come to different conclusions.

That was to TropicalSound on Queer Theory and link with pedophilia. It's just the beginning really.

m.youtube.com/watch?v=Cb3-tlyuhVo

1.20: queer jeapardy

And his dog, apparently.

or you might want to catch up with these threads www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4205121-Foucault
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4254817-BBC-Radio-4-programme-What-the-Foucault

Has QAnon been protesting against this statue? And no-one else?

It's vile and should be removed.

tropicalsound Queer Theory emanates from Foucault's social theories. He became the big thing in Ivy League Universities in the US and it has been shipped over here. He is French Philosopher and paedophile but the French have been very protective of him so the truth of his sexuality wasn't widely known. He argues that it is repression that causes the problem, not paedophilia. He wants the breakdown of society. Queer Theory (QT) is both theory and political action. Definition is impossible, but QT can be summarised as exploring the oppressive power of dominant norms, particularly those relating to sexuality, and the immiseration they cause to those who cannot, or do not wish to, live according to those norms. Worth looking him up if you want to know more.

On a more general point, I can't help feeling the fuss around Qanon has been very useful for these apologists and enablers. 'Feeling concerned about a potential safeguarding issue? What are you, some kind of Qanon crazy person?'.

Oh for goodness sake, they took a mallet TO the Gill statue on Broadcasting House. And for avoidance of all doubt, that’s in sense of walloping the thing, not for some reason presenting the masonry with the mallet.

Apparently someone took a mallet took the Broadcasting House statue yesterday - the coverage does make it very clear Gill was a paedophile & that he sexually abused his daughters. But they say it’s groups “like QAnon” that have been protesting about it; & that art vs artist bit is the most almighty tangle of: but the monstrous paedophile made such PRETTY things, & if we have to get rid of HIS stuff, we’re going to have to have a big bonfire of All The Pretty Things, so can’t we just keep the pretty things because the monsters are gone now?

“Just because the daughter said in interview that she hadn't been harmed doesn't mean she wasn't.”

Quite. I was abused as a child, I’m ‘fine’ day to day and don’t like thinking that I was harmed by it. I was though. Of course I was.

All the BBC stories I have read and heard on this referred to it unambiguously as abuse, and so using “they” as if there is a single voice on this which differs from that view is disingenuous.

Fiona McCarthy was Gill's biographer, and she interviewed at least one of his two adult daughters. The daughter told her that she hadn't been harmed by the abuse.

I know that, I read the article. I am aware she interviewed the daughter(s) and the son. Just because the daughter said in interview that she hadn't been harmed doesn't mean she wasn't. People have all kinds of motivations for what they say to others on the record, she may not have recognised any harm for what it is, she may have been unable to recognise it as harm for many reasons, she may have been defending her father's artistic legacy etc etc.

It's just the surface level shallow approach, to have interviewed her and then on the basis of that alone to have decided that no harm was done. And then in the same article to recognise that harm was most definitely done to the son...

All because people are in thrall to this man's art.

I was astonished to read the line from the Guardian article. How could the writer of that piece possibly know what damage was done by this man to his children??

Fiona McCarthy was Gill's biographer, and she interviewed at least one of his two adult daughters. The daughter told her that she hadn't been harmed by the abuse.

I'm not defending McCarthy, incidentally. I think it's an appalling article and Gill was a wicked man. The fact that his daughter claimed not to have suffered psychological harm is no excuse for raping children.