"Let’s clarify what free speech is and is not": An open letter to the industry from Pride in Publishing

[newrubylane]

www.thebookseller.com/blogs/let-s-clarify-what-free-speech-and-not-open-letter-industry-pride-publishing-1207568

Unsurprisingly Pride in Publishing stands with Hachette staff.

Let’s clarify what free speech is and is not.

I could be wrong, but did they actually do that? Certainly not clearly.

Oh yes, they clarified!

Free speech does not entitle an author to a publishing contract. But it does protect the right of a worker to raise the alarm when they’re asked to participate in something that can cause them or someone else harm or trauma.

There you go. What more do you need to know? 😆😆

Of course free speech allows a worker to “raise the alarm” but there’s nothing about free speech that means anyone has to do what they say.

No lobby group should be dictating what freedom of speech is to the rest of society. Not one of them, not even the ones whose general aims I agree with.

What is it going to take for everyone else to just tell them to fuck off?

They have literally inverted the definition of free speech with that nonsense.

No lobby group should be dictating what freedom of speech is to the rest of society. Not one of them, not even the ones whose general aims I agree with.

This.

It's the old, old confusion suffered by the entitled between being listened to and having their will enacted.

"We're listening and we understand what you're saying perfectly, but we don't agree with you and won't be meeting your demands."

"Nobody's liiiiiistening to me!"

Freedom of speech is not defined or decided by a publishing house. If it was then I'll take Hachette over anything associated with the T in LGBT/Pride any day.

Hachette stood up for freedom of speech. Pride in Publishing just want to suppress it.

Are these people basically arguing that libraries should only contain Juno Dawson and a telephone book, Because going by the purity spirals, there would be hardly a single author that would meet their ever-changing woke criteria (particularly if their privately held views outside their writing is taken into account)?

You’d particularly struggle to find any authors pre 1950.

Interestingly my first awareness of the Twaw thing was with regards to Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche and how she couldn’t articulate the specific struggles growing up as a biological woman in Nigeria without white western trans women claiming it. I remember being struck by the unfairness, racism and misogyny of everyone parroting Twaw in her face.

The current purity shit is frankly insane. Folx, be careful what you wish for. Pumbaas has nailed it, there is nobody woke enough to be allowed to publish or create anything, if you dig deep enough.

I'd challenge these idiots to come up with a single piece of art/film/literature created by a morally pure person. At this point absolutely everybody is open to cancellation and by god, they don't like it up them.

There's only one comment on that piece on The Bookseller site at the moment, and it's When are you going to start the book burning?

At the moment there's an adaptation of Emma on Radio 4. It's very good and highly entertaining. Every episode (15 minutes) there are a few attitudes on display that are unacceptable according to the current orthodoxy. Without the name Jane Austen, there's no way the BBC would be touching this.

I wonder whether we'll reach the point when this is forbidden to be broadcast.

@sourdoughismyreligion

''or something fundamentally against their religious beliefs.''

Nice to see them finally admitting this is a religion.

Considering that religious people tend to be more socially conservative, it’s a peculiar inclusion. Obviously too busy being woke to consider the conflict of interest, there...

What a pompous piece of mansplaining.

I think we are supposed to say “transplaining”?
Radio 4 is playing episode 3 of Helen Lewis’s “difficult women” right now.
I think it’s her reading it, but I will listen from the beginning on BBC Sounds if she isn’t cancelled.

Our network now consists of over 150 people, including agents, booksellers and publishers from across the the big five publishing houses as well as independent presses and freelancers.

Which means there are about a dozen of them who meet for a drink to complain among themselves once a month but between them they know around 150 people who've just smiled and nodded when they've mentioned LGB and TQ+ issues in the office.

Maisie Lawrence works for Boucouture, which as far as I can see is a digital publisher — not a proper publisher. One of those outfits who you pay and they'll 'produce' your book online and do a bit of marketing for you. That's the opposite way round to normal publishing.

They are very young. Listen to Arlie Arlington at around 17 minutes in on here to get an idea of what's may be going on in their heads:

www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000k9bc

This letter is incoherent drivel. It doesn't define free speech at all. It just says don't offend people. But the whole point of free speech is that it is a right to offend. "I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."

The only generally accepted limits to free speech are those examples that are given when they cause an imminent and immediate harm- shouting "fire" in a crowded theatre for example, or the more problematic, inciting crowds to violence.

Now it could be argued that JK Rowling was inciting to violence those vast crowds of transphobic violent mobs baying for the encouragement to hunt down the local queer with a pitchfork. Or possibly she wasn't doing that. Given that she wasn't speaking to vast baying mobs. As far as I can see there were no dog whistles in what she had to say, just that she insisted that the rights of women are distinct from the rights of trans people and need to be defended distinctly without being conflated.

At the end of the day, no free and democratic society can exist without freedom of speech, because criticism of political power is all too quickly suppressed as 'offensive'. Therefore the greater good of holding political power to account is defended and the damage of offensive speech is accepted as the price of living in a society with free speech. It is as Locke pointed out, the easiest way for nonsense speech to be exposed as nonsense is by having open discourse. Well done hatchette for standing by classical freedoms and rights.

In fact see the article today about the Chinese Communist party arresting the journalist who exposed the Coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan. That's the cost of no freedom of speech: Government commissioned terror. You would have thought that as an historically persecuted group trans groups would fear government control...

And poor old Salman Rushdi (that all kicked off when I was a child and I remember being convinced that he was going to come and hide out at our house by some inexplicable child-logic)

A lobby group thinks they have the right to redefine freedom of speech?

The lobby groups pushing these extremist politics have an infinite belief in their own moral superiority and authority.

The pathology is there. This pov is not one generally seen in mentally well people who have capacity of understanding and respecting other people's differing needs, perspectives, boundaries and autonomy. As with many parts of this agenda, there is only so long that you can be polite in pretending not to see it, and only so far things can be allowed to go before it becomes necessary to point it out.

@BovaryX

Being a book publisher comes with a set of tough moral responsibilities... your hiring decisions can greatly influence how UK culture is shaped

That's interesting. This book publisher believes it is at the forefront of shaping UK culture. A grandiose sense of its cultural relevance. And its ability to influence.

the reflexive instinct is to retreat behind the defence of free speech

Au contraire. That is not the reflexive instinct. Not for the legions on Twitter and beyond who believe free speech is something 'problematic' which needs to be controlled. By those shaping UK culture.

Let’s clarify what free speech is and is not. Free speech does not entitle an author to a publishing contract. But it does protect the right of a worker to raise the alarm when they’re asked to participate in something that can cause them or someone else harm or trauma

So freedom of speech is redefined as anything which does not offend anyone. As soon as someone is offended, freedom of speech is 'problematic.' This from a book publisher. I wonder how much 20th century literature would pass the 21st century redefinition of freedom of speech?

Echo's of the barrister leading the prosecution in the Lady Chatterley's lover obscenity case.

''Is this a book you would even wish your wife or your servants to read?''

So they’ve tried redefining what a woman is, that didn’t work so now they’re trying to redefine what freedom of speech is.

Freedom of speech is that right to say whatever you want as long as it doesn’t incite violence, even if someone may find what you say offensive. Freedom of speech also means that you have the freedom to disagree with what someone has said or to not buy their books or give them an audience.

For people working in publishing they don’t seem to understand that George Orwell wasn’t writing instruction manuals.

Bookouture is a ‘proper’ publisher not a vanity publisher, and is highly regarded in the industry. It’s owned by Hachette incidentally.

As far as I can see Hachette has done nothing whatsoever that could in law be construed as a breach of their employment contracts with their staff, who therefore have two choices: work or walk.

Which is why I said 'in my experience'.

My point is that your anecdotal experience shouldn't be presented as an answer to a point someone else has, equally tiresomely, made on behalf of the entirety of 'working class people'. I'm tired of 'working class people' being lumped together and patronised like this on Mumsnet.

@Pelleas

Which is why I said 'in my experience'.

My point is that your anecdotal experience shouldn't be presented as an answer to a point someone else has, equally tiresomely, made on behalf of the entirety of 'working class people'. I'm tired of 'working class people' being lumped together and patronised like this on Mumsnet.

These idiots are dragging the entirety of working class people into their very middle-class row with a publishing company. There is no group of people who transactivists won't coopt to support their nonsensical identity politics.

Working class people who I know think the whole argument is utter bollocks. Is that acceptable?

I consider myself working class because of my background, but I'm in a very middle class job these days so others may consider otherwise. Please don't assume I'm talking about this from some ivory tower.