Julie Burchill's book deal cancelled for hate speech *title edited by MNHQ at OP's request*

[Malahaha]

It's called Welcome to the Woke Trials and was due to be published in 2021.
I'm not sure who the publisher is; I'll update.
She says: "Reason was 'hate speech' to Ash Sarkar and 'crossing a line' - 'There was also a concern that the line might be crossed again during the promotion of the book.' I'LL SAY!"

@CatsCantCatchCriminals2

Would Satanic Verses have been published today?

Well, that's a great question - I haven't a clue.

Anyone?

I doubt it very much.

‘The following year Hitoshi Igarashi, Rushdie's Japanese translator, was stabbed to death and Ettore Capriolo, the Italian translator, seriously injured in another knife attack. In 1993 William Nygaard, the publisher in Norway, was shot and injured, and Aziz Nesin, the Turkish translator, was the target of the Silvas massacre in Turkey that left 37 dead in an arson attack on a hotel’

Also bookshops in uk were firebombed and riots around the world resulted in deaths.

Such a book nowadays would only be published anonymously online - it’s too risky otherwise.

@RoyalCorgi

DidoLamenting: you keep saying that Liddle's article is 12 years old. It's not - it's eight years old. I think if you're going to berate other people for misinterpreting what he said, at least get the basics right!

And my getting 2008 and 2012 mixed up excuses the nonsense that has been posted about the article?

DidoLamenting: you keep saying that Liddle's article is 12 years old. It's not - it's eight years old. I think if you're going to berate other people for misinterpreting what he said, at least get the basics right!

Not really sure Liddles comments were acceptable in any age, really.

And my getting 2008 and 2012 mixed up excuses the nonsense that has been posted about the article?

Are you this belligerent in real life, Dido? Because it must get pretty wearing to maintain that level of hostility towards people who have a different opinion from you.

Anyway: the Liddle article. This is what he wrote:

"I never found out because the one thing stopping me from being a teacher was that I could not remotely conceive of not trying to shag the kids. It seemed to me virtually impossible not to, and I was convinced that I’d be right in there, on day one. We’re talking secondary school level here, by the way — and even then I don’t think I’d have dabbled much below year ten, as it is now called. I just thought we ought to clear that up early on."

Your argument, as I understand it, is that people who read the words "I could not remotely conceive of not trying to shag the kids" as meaning "I could not remotely conceive of not trying to shag the kids" are egregiously misrepresenting Liddle's intention. What fools they are to imagine that he means what he says! Obviously Liddle is portraying himself as some comic character who can't control his sexual urges towards young girls, and therefore we're not to take him literally. Because comic characters who have sexual urges towards young girls are absolutely hilarious, aren't they?

You see, I don't know if Liddle really couldn't stop himself having sex with underage teenage girls, or whether he just thinks it's funny to pretend that he couldn't. Whichever it is, he still comes across as an utterly shitty individual.

Jimmy Carr jokes about rape. (What's worse than finding a maggot in your apple?)

I have seen male comedians joking about an interest in underage boys.

Can't say I think anyone should be cancelled over this stuff.

Some people seem to take a very literal approach to language, echoes of Gradgrind. There's no room for hyperbole, satire, gallows humour, playfulness, sarcasm, diatribe, irony, lampoon, ridicule.
You can think someone is a total insensitive idiot without wanting them punished or held to account.

There's no room for hyperbole, satire, gallows humour, playfulness, sarcasm, diatribe, irony, lampoon, ridicule.

Certainly not! Those are not permitted! clutches pearls, falls over and dies of outrage

No, Burchill was out of line. Applying today's sexual standards to a 1500-year-old context, in which the concept of childhood (always shifting to an extent) was vastly at variance with that of today, was in the circumstances a cheap shot. Also, what she said here undermines some of the many valid points she does make as it will be taken as evidence of her general 'bigotry' and disregarded accordingly. For a woman of her intelligence it wasn't a very smart move.

As for Liddle, he tries way too hard to be controversial and only seems to be hedging around how wrong the teacher in the child abduction case was. The number of people excusing his actions on the basis that 'it was lurrrrrve', rather than the sinister reality of a 14-year-old kid groomed by her 30-something teacher, shocked me at the time. So it wasn't all that surprising when in the wake of #MeToo the responses frequently amounted to at worst a conviction that women were lying and at best (!?) victim-blaming.

Note that Mr Misogyny himself O.J. was top tweet for lining up to give J.B. a good virtual kicking, though. But of course.

I don't think JB should have said that to AS, but I am not okay with this framing that it was a different time and children were different then, and anyway, everyone was dead by 25/33/40.

The physical reality of humanity has not changed that much. Humans need to go through puberty to have mature brains. Physical injury hurts.

Rape physically injures adult women with full-size genitalia and it definitely injures little girls. I can give you disgusting links on this if you want.

The idea that it wasn't abuse because historical figures didn't have the same cultural concept of childhood is exactly the same as saying child rape and forced marriage of children going on right now aren't abuse because their cultures haven't got the same concept of childhood. Brown and black girls aren't some alien species- that is why feminists from those countries are fighting to end child marriage.

The statistically average lifespan was brought down by terrible rates of infant mortality and child mortality, and death in childbirth. If a girl had made it through early childhood, the best reproductive strategy for her, was to delay having her first child until she was full-grown, with an adult pelvis, and full-size organs that could meet the demands of supporting a foetus. An early pregnancy came with increased risks that she, the baby or both would die, and that she would sustain birth injuries.

Men have not been raping little girls throughout history because it's the only way to pass on their genes. They have been doing it because they enjoyed it.

Reading that back, I apologise.

It's come off a lot more sharp than I intended, and I've let ten years of suppressed anger at Male Cultural Relativists I Have Known out here.

OK, I am usually a fan of JB, but this sounds like behaviour that should be beneath her.

But if the book is good, on its own merits, why on earth should Hachette refuse to publish? This is the problem that lies at the heart of cancel culture. Cancelled because of one aspect of someone’s behaviour or views, sweeping generalisations.

Should JB be beyond criticism? Of course not.
Should any religion be beyond criticism? Of course not.

But it’s funny how many women get cancelled, in academia, in publishing, while men seem to escape the witch hunt.

The behaviour of both sounds OTT. I am concerned that people tiptoe round religions especially Islam now that "hate crime" is a thing and saying they are all made up stories may be considered bad and worthy of the plod paying a visit. She's giving Twitter a rest but a comment made today by her on Facebook made me laugh
"Apparently many of my friends have been getting death threats. From the look of the punctuation the person in question probably couldn't find Their cock with both hands, let alone, a gun, so DON'T BE SCARED! No need to report anything to the police on my behalf (I've been getting death threats since I was 17 and am mildly sexually excited by it) but I understand that a few of you have already, and I'll totally support you. But DON'T do it for ME!"

@2Rebecca

The behaviour of both sounds OTT. I am concerned that people tiptoe round religions especially Islam now that "hate crime" is a thing and saying they are all made up stories may be considered bad and worthy of the plod paying a visit. She's giving Twitter a rest but a comment made today by her on Facebook made me laugh "Apparently many of my friends have been getting death threats. From the look of the punctuation the person in question probably couldn't find Their cock with both hands, let alone, a gun, so DON'T BE SCARED! No need to report anything to the police on my behalf (I've been getting death threats since I was 17 and am mildly sexually excited by it) but I understand that a few of you have already, and I'll totally support you. But DON'T do it for ME!"

I saw that! And many of her fans coming out with guns blazing, saying, why haven't I got my death threat yet? Me, I stay silent. I admit that I had not known the backstory when I posted this thread, and I definitely think she overstepped a line. She and I have opposing views on many topics. And yet I somehow like her. She does it with such humour, and is such a good writer. And yes, I think this particular brouhaha is rooted in racism.

She isn’t ‘criticising Islam’, she is attacking a Muslim because she is a Muslim. Can people really not see the difference? Of course people should be allowed to hold whatever views they want about religion. That doesn’t extend to laying into someone and calling them a pedophilia-apologist because they are Muslim. Hundreds of people said how wrong they thought the Rod Liddle article was but Julie decides to pick on Ash because she is a Muslim.

As for whether her book should be dropped, it’s not terribly surprising that it has. Had she written an article criticising Islam, I would say that it was wrong of the publisher to drop her. Attacking a Muslim woman directly over her religion is a very different kettle of fish though.

@RoyalCorgi

And my getting 2008 and 2012 mixed up excuses the nonsense that has been posted about the article?

Are you this belligerent in real life, Dido? Because it must get pretty wearing to maintain that level of hostility towards people who have a different opinion from you.

Anyway: the Liddle article. This is what he wrote:

"I never found out because the one thing stopping me from being a teacher was that I could not remotely conceive of not trying to shag the kids. It seemed to me virtually impossible not to, and I was convinced that I’d be right in there, on day one. We’re talking secondary school level here, by the way — and even then I don’t think I’d have dabbled much below year ten, as it is now called. I just thought we ought to clear that up early on."

Your argument, as I understand it, is that people who read the words "I could not remotely conceive of not trying to shag the kids" as meaning "I could not remotely conceive of not trying to shag the kids" are egregiously misrepresenting Liddle's intention. What fools they are to imagine that he means what he says! Obviously Liddle is portraying himself as some comic character who can't control his sexual urges towards young girls, and therefore we're not to take him literally. Because comic characters who have sexual urges towards young girls are absolutely hilarious, aren't they?

You see, I don't know if Liddle really couldn't stop himself having sex with underage teenage girls, or whether he just thinks it's funny to pretend that he couldn't. Whichever it is, he still comes across as an utterly shitty individual.

You have cherry picked from the article. Did you bother reading it to the end?

She didn't 'attack' anyone though, did she? It was twitter and Ash Sarkar loves a twitter spat as much as anyone. JB attempted to call out AS's hypocrisy - it was a crappy comment but it's not an 'attack'.

I would still like to read her book, or at least have the choice to do so or not, and I'm pissed off that it's being cancelled because of this stupid childish bullshit.

Well all I can say is I'm glad publishers in bygone days didn't base their decisions on a writer's moral rectitude, otherwise we might never have heard from - off the top of my head - Charles Dickens, Ernest Hemingway, Daniel Defoe, Brendan Behan, and I'm sure many more.

@PotholeParadies don’t apologise it was a good post

@queenofknives

She didn't 'attack' anyone though, did she? It was twitter and Ash Sarkar loves a twitter spat as much as anyone. JB attempted to call out AS's hypocrisy - it was a crappy comment but it's not an 'attack'.

I would still like to read her book, or at least have the choice to do so or not, and I'm pissed off that it's being cancelled because of this stupid childish bullshit.

I don’t see why Twitter can’t be seen as an attack and just because AS ‘likes a spat’ doesn’t mean it’s open season to critique her specifically for her religious faith. Would you feel similarly non-plussed about an anti-semitic post to undermine someone?

I cringed more when she defended Liddle, who I often agree with on other things, but his comment was pretty grim.

Sophocles basically summed up my position.

They’ve all made bananas of themselves over this, haven’t they? Ash is a nob, Julie could start a fight in a phone box and Rod is a dick (Julie and Rod both make me laugh though, and they’re both good writers, while Ash is utterly humourless and not so great with the writing).

May I just remind people that Julie Burchill once nearly got prosecuted for incitement to racial hatred for her remarks about Ireland?

<a class="break-all" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20050513034322/archives.tcm.ie/businesspost/2002/08/25/story526110628.asp" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">web.archive.org/web/20050513034322/archives.tcm.ie/businesspost/2002/08/25/story526110628.asp

[quote PotholeParadies]May I just remind people that Julie Burchill once nearly got prosecuted for incitement to racial hatred for her remarks about Ireland?

<a class="break-all" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20050513034322/archives.tcm.ie/businesspost/2002/08/25/story526110628.asp" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">web.archive.org/web/20050513034322/archives.tcm.ie/businesspost/2002/08/25/story526110628.asp[/quote]
Well that seals it - nearly got prosecuted - open and shut. You've really been trailing through the archives?

No, I vaguely remembered it and googled. I think my point was unclear.

There is no point saying, well, what if JB had said something like that about x group to make a point. Because she probably has!

Julie Burchill does not ever second-guess herself or think, ooh, little bit too far. Earlier in the thread, someone referred to the time Julie Burchill managed to have a row with her own Rabbi about Islam.

Did she actually defend Liddle?

Pointing out that anyone marrying a 9 year old is also dodgy is not defending him.

Pointing out that there is a difference between making a bad taste joke about NOT shagging teens and marring a child is not the same as defending him.

Defending Free Speech is not the same as defending the content of that speech: that’s the whole point.

I don’t agree that what JB is reported to have said is good behaviour. But I defend her right to say it, and deplore the decision to cancel her book unless what she says invalidates the content if her book. Like a Ratner moment, for example.

You have cherry picked from the article. Did you bother reading it to the end?

Yes, I did. Including the lovely bit where he refers to "semi-savage Asian men". Perhaps that's a debate for a whole other time.

In his final paragraph, he says: "I suspect — and it is only a guess — that thousands of teachers up and down the land conduct sexual relationships with their older charges and that in most cases no harm comes of it. But it is still wrong, and no matter how imbecilic the teacher involved might be, it is still exploitative, even if it is not consciously so."

So, while it's wonderful that he admits that under-age relationships are wrong (hurrah! there is a sense of human decency in there somewhere), he also says that he thinks in most cases no harm comes of them. I know quite a few women who had affairs with their teachers while at school and they have most certainly been scarred by the experience.