"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.

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.

Yes, I agree, but it's equally wrong for the working classes to be co-opted wholesale by opponents of their identity politics.

Your alternative phrasing is much fairer.

Please don't assume I'm talking about this from some ivory tower.

There is a tendency on this forum for posts about 'the working class' to come across this way, and your original wording with its 'quite rightly' endorsement gave the impression of being one of them - I'm sorry if this was an inaccurate impression.

I think the treatment of the working class as a group ( ie stereotype) is in the original material, surprised they didn't add disabled to that list of people alienated.

So someone suggesting that it does not fit their experience at a class level is totally fair comment. The original authors made a sweeping generalisation that th attitude of the publisher would be particularly offensive to working class people. Others are allowed doubt that .

Have to say, straddling class boundaries myself , that my working class relatives hoot with laughter at the idea that TWAW, whereas the more middle class friends are prepared to be kind ( up to a point, generally reached around the time they discover that many haven't had any opp, or sport .)

I guess our class as well as our gender is something women are not clever enough to identify

It's the whole using the working classes as a weapon in an argument that's irritating - whatever the argument. Mentioning specific working class people is one thing, but anything that generalises 'the working class' is bogus. You (it's to be hoped) wouldn't accept an argument that said 'in my experience, women think this' or 'in my experience, black people think this' so why is it acceptable to generalise the beliefs and philosophies of the working classes?

The transborg claims to speak on behalf of women, people of colour, working class people... The list goes on. There is literally no group that won't be coopted to achieve their aims. It frustrates me hugely.

This idea that freedom of speech doesn't guarantee a publish contract is bizarre in this context. No, it doesn't, if you write crap no one will publish it for you.

The point is that JKR is someone people want to read, they have already given her a contract on the strength of what she's done before and written here. You don't withdraw that because she has social opinions you don't like that she's expressed elsewhere.

It's along the same lines as people who will say things like "you are free to say x but not free from the consequences", and that includes not only people objecting but things like losing your job. It doesn't seem to occur to them that freedom of speech isn't possible in any serious way when it means people won't be able to work.

I aways want to ask these people, how is this different than the old days when you could be gay, or a communist, or whatever, but had to keep it private or be unemployable? Is that really what they want?

I sometimes think they are being disingenuous but more and more I think they are just very dim, and over-educated for their abilities.

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

Yes. The 'no debate' line has become useless, so now certain people are feverishly trying to control what can be debated, and how.

Indeed , the whole original statement is a mess of sweeping class based generalisation

But if that is what is thrown our way, we have a right to say that those generalisations appear incorrect

Because if they were true that there was a strong class element to the acceptance of transwomen in female spaces, that would be both interesting and concerning

Otherwise you are saying feminists can not consider intersectional issues !

The whole statement is silly anyway because Hatchette didn't publish any of Rowling's statements on gender, nor were employees asked to edit her statements on gender. So "freedom of speech doesn't guarantee you a publishing contract" - for what, the children's book? The majority of her comments on gender were technically published by Twitter, so what, they want Twitter to ban her? It's just a mess, logically speaking. What they're trying to say is that if an author has "problematic" views then they shouldn't be published even if those views never make it into their published work. Maybe they realized that saying that without all the waffle would result in a simple "fuck off".

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.

The denial of the existence of biological sex causes harm to women and girls. This is what JK Rowling was speaking out about, so they appear to be supporting her right to freedom of speech.

That bit too. OK, so, you've "raised the alarm". Your manager says thanks for your input but we're not going to pull the book, and we do not agree that working on it can be considered traumatic because of something the author said on Twitter. What is it that they expect to happen then?

(I mean I know that what they'd be hoping for would be "and then everyone decided they hated Jo Rowling and her books were never published again and also everyone denounced her as a big meanie", but like, alarm raised, meeting with manager held, what then?)

And also if the thought of working on a children’s book written by someone who has a different opinion to you on a different issue affects your mental health then I would respectfully suggest that publishing is not the career for you.

I notice that none of these concerns were raised around Tyson Fury’s book or any other author who has objectionable views, and I’m sure there aware quite a few.

Picador and PanMcMillan have sent hostage notes:

Publishing is in such a sorry state at the moment. It's very depressing.

@ScrimpshawTheSecond

Picador and PanMcMillan have sent hostage notes:

That was always the really substantial conservative perspective about the idea that SSM was primarily a rights issue. But that is far too difficult an argument for most people to bother digging into, much easier to deal with the stupider ones.

The great purge of 2020.

Publishers finally notice that some politicians voted against same sex marriage 7 years ago and as a matter of urgency tweet about it.

@TehBewilderness

"Publishing a globally famous author with a controversial record is not a moral decision around freedom of speech (particularly for a billionaire well versed in self-publishing their own content), it is a commercial one driven by cold and hard P&Ls."

The problem from the off is the framing of what Jo Rowling wrote as controversial. It is not.
Jo Rowling's position on biology is mainstream scientifically supported fact.
It is those disputing her whose claims to authority are controversial.

A lot of genderists say that their version, where gender identity takes precedence over biology, is scientific fact. Is there any truth to this at all? I don't think there is, and I also think the scientific community is under pressure from genderists, but some of the people are so convinced that biological sex is old hat, is there truth to this at all?

@Pelleas

In my experience working class people quite rightly deride TWAW as the nonsense it is.

'Working class people' are not a homogenous group.

They're certainly being demonized as a group at the moment (perhaps always were, but I've read some hurtful things recently), but that's probably a story for another time.

Freedom of expression ... is applicable not only to 'information' or 'ideas' that are favourably received or regarded as inoffensive or as a matter of indifference, but also to those that offend, shock or disturb the State or any sector of the population

Has anyone broken it to them that almost all decisions about who to publish are about money?

Their definition of 'free' speech appears to be that everyone is free to agree with them but nobody is free to disagree. Funny, I'm sure there was a different adjective for that sort of thing once...

@ScrimpshawTheSecond

Publishing is in such a sorry state at the moment. It's very depressing.

Sadly, I think this is true. The Robespierre faction are a product of decades of Judith Butler et al. They are being pumped out of universities on both sides of the Atlantic and they are transforming the institutions they enter. The internal war at the NYT is just another example of this paradigm shift.

A bunch of self obsessed people hardly anyone has heard of who think people need reeducating on the one hand, the self made billionaire author turned millionaire due to her generosity, known for inspiring children around the world to get into reading on the other hand. Must have been a really tough choice to make but I think they made the right one.

These are the authoritarian abusive males who stand under the StonewallUK umbrella term for transgender in order to use the Transsexuals with GRC as shields.

Publishing is very squeezed, and has been for many years. You can't earn a living writing, these days. (Nobody counts JKR as part of publishing, she's the perfect example of a 'black swan' outlier.)

So we're left with a reduced field of opportunity. There's grant funded writing, which increasingly is required to tick certain boxes and uphold certain ethical standpoints (and not others), academic writing, which has similar pressures, mass market fiction which really does need to be churned out to formula, or hobby books by those who can afford to write them. Self publishing and tiny indie presses have their own issues.

Added to that, there are no mid-market independent presses anymore. They've all been bought up by the 'big five'. So fewer and fewer opportunities for diversity, plurality, books that break the mould or are actually meaningfully different than the rest.

It's always been an industry that follows the 'throw the spaghetti at the wall' model; I think it's badly failing, now. A shame, and we are left far culturally poorer because of it.

Er, sorry. /tangent.

the trans lobby is a gentrification of working class social and political movements

This is a really interesting point.