John Boyne properly nails his colours to the madt

[PretzelKnot]

It’s taken a while but well done John.

”A really smart piece by Brendan O'Neill for
@spikedonline.
The people who are currently trying to destroy @roisinmurphy's life & career for defending vulnerable children are mirror images of those who tried to destroy Sinéad's life & career 30 years ago.

Self-appointed moral arbiters and men's right activists who cannot bear the idea of a woman's voice being heard.

For me, this story is the straw that broke the camel's back.

I am no longer going to stay silent on the way that women are treated.

I will defend women's rights, children's rights, gay rights, and lesbian rights to my dying day. I will also defend trans rights.

But I will not defend the online activists who are neither gay, lesbian or trans but who exploit the lives of LGBT people simply to earn followers in the hope of giving themselves a voice in the world and, in time, monetising that.

If that costs me readers or my career, so be it.

On June 9th 1954, at a Congressional hearing, Joseph Welch said to Senator Joe McCarthy: "You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency?"

I would ask the same question of the people who are trying to destroy the life of a woman who has done nothing - NOTHING - but suggest that vulnerable children should be protected.

You have done enough, all of you. Have you no sense of decency?”

https://twitter.com/johnboynebooks/status/1698793743761969267?s=46&t=f8U9xaap9RM6pcBCdpsFIA

Thanks for posting this OP!

Here’s a link to the Brendan O’Neill article that Boyne references.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/09/04/from-sinead-to-roisin-why-blasphemous-women-get-cancelled/

He has also just apologized unreservedly to Glinner.

He's right. The parallels with McCarthyism are disarmingly close.

Who is John Boyne?

Author. 'boy in the striped pyjamas'

Good for him.

That's a solid, brave stance to take.

Just saw this too! That is a great apology.

Great author, great words on this subject.

Hoping to see more of this stuff

And The Heart’s Invisible Furies which is brilliant.

Will be interesting to see whether he gets the same headlines as JKR. I’m willing to bet not.

This is great stuff. Straight from the heart. He's furious, and probably very aware how he'd let himself be fooled previously, or maybe never paid enough attention.

It's telling, isn't it, how he's not being abused or ripped to shreds. There's not a mass pile-on, he isn't being cancelled. Could be a sign that times are changing, but also, it's definitely easier for a bloke to say these things.

Mind you, he got into trouble with 'My Brother's Name is Jessica'. He wanted to write a trans-friendly novel and found himself fully under attack. That's probably what really changed his views.

That book is wonderful! Amazing writer.

I haven’t read it but I wonder if he’d approach the subject in the same way now, knowing what he knows.

Can I just say I love the typo in the title - the ‘mad t’ indeed.

Freudian slip maybe! I tried to edit it but failed.

The strength of that apology!

Rare and remarkable.

Makes Owen Jones' petty, transparent insults look so pathetic.

The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas is actually hugely problematic: clearly well-meant, but so devastatingly under-researched (which is a polite & generous description) it contributes to popular/population-level misunderstanding of the Camps, Nazism & the Holocaust; with people understanding & then presenting its contacts as factual. Probably because it’s generally understood to be a topic you don’t drift far from the facts on when writing fiction. (The tortured use of language alone should have seen it sent straight to the cylindrical filing cabinet IMHO. A Nazi child who not only doesn’t recognise Hitler but also somehow Leader sounds like fury/Führer like Wut?) Somehow it got made into a film though 🤦‍♀️

Holocaust Centre North have a post on their website about some of the issues with it from 2019; the Jewish Chronicle wrote about the issues with it & with the sequel All The Broken Places when it was published in 2022; & the Auschwitz Museum recommends it not be used in teaching about the Holocaust.

It wasn’t these very serious issues that saw him attacked though. JK Rowling is accused of being a rabid antisemite because the main/named Jewish character is a Ravenclaw prefect whose name includes the word “gold”; & she includes in her work, amongst hundreds of other beasts & beings, goblins of a kind common to hundreds of years of British [& European] folk & fairy tales. Boyne disregards all criticism of his work by Jewish people, including those institutions responsible for trying to see that the history of the Holocaust is taught as well as is possible; but the mainstream media coverage has been limited to a couple of Guardian pieces & I think one in the Independent. No suggestion by anyone of “cancellation”; nobody’s been making threats - & funnily enough, nobody’s been bandying about the term genocide despite the fact that’s literally the subject at hand & actual antisemitic hate crime (not just non-crime hate, though that’s also up) has not only shot up but remains elevated. None of the people who obsessively attack Rowling & try to find secret antisemitic symbolism (like the game that used her IP but no input from her putting the Goblin Rebellion in the same year as the start of the Fettmilch Uprising [ignoring the politics of it, obviously] & the even wilder claim that the gorgonzola-stuffed battle horn found under the Hog’s Head resembled a shofar 🙄) in her work have attacked Boyne either for his work or for refusing to engage with criticism of it by the Auschwitz Museum.

Anti-Jewish Hatred Tackling Antisemitism in the UK 2023 – Renewing the Commitment (Lord Mann of Holbeck Moor, Office of HM Government’s Independent Advisor on Antisemitism) is very instructive. As well as giving the horrendous statistics on crime (& the fact those crimes are woefully under-prosecuted - I suppose if your Officers are all traumatising disabled teenagers for making innocent comments to their mothers or harassing retired social workers for taking photos you won’t have any to spare on actual crimes, including antisemitic hate crimes. Of course, there’s the complicating factor that Some Forces are so worried about being perceived as Islamophobic they essentially give a certain demographic a free pass; & a lot of the 2022 rise in antisemitism was related to the Israel-Palestine conflict: would be very interesting to see what overlap there was 🤨 One of the other things the report identifies is the importance of good Holocaust education in preventing & combatting antisemitism. So while I absolutely do not think Boyne is antisemitic - indeed, I think he’d be horrified by the idea - his book (& the film version of it) is a contributing factor to the kind of “background noise” antisemitism. Boyne’s absolute unwillingness to listen, to reflect, to take on board the criticisms made by even those most qualified to criticise - instead essentially doubling down by producing a sequel: it says so much about his relative power, privilege & his awareness of which other groups currently hold it.

It is good Boyne has apologised to Glinner after lobbing him at the TRAs like a Quokka yeeting its offspring at a predator; & it’s good he’s waking up to the realities of male privilege. He was born in April 1971 so he certainly won’t have had an easy time of things growing up as a gay man; & he was abused at Terenure College (article also available at archive.ph if you’ve had all your Irish Times articles for the week & haven’t a subscription) but not by John McClean; which has of course had a lasting impact.

With My Brother’s Name Is Jessica Boyne was again coming from that place of utmost sincerity - but once again his good intentions needed better research. This time around though, instant calls for cancellation. Denounced for “doing harm” - no explanation as to what this alleged harm was/might be & certainly no demonstration of it; just enough to say “this is harmful!!!” & that’s it. The “most vulnerable” once again demonstrating their vulnerability & powerlessness by abusing an author to the point he left Twitter for a while; getting libraries to remove the book they objected to; causing cancellation of publicity events for the book… Far fewer public violent threats than were made to Rowling though (I obviously am not privy to the count of the personal/private ones they’ve received & while I assume Rowling has received more & indeed more when adjusted for follower count etc); & none of them threats of sexual violence.

It is of course a side issue, but it’s notable that TRAs were demanding even fictional characters instantly accept & affirm the gender identities of others. Family members - especially so-called “cis” people - are not permitted to have complex inner lives of their own; they are there to support the Main Character. The idea that these changes impact others & those other people are worthy of consideration, support & grace is utterly intolerable; & any suggestion of sympathy for the mere NPCs who clutter up the lives of the sparkly special few must be crushed.

I remember this. It was very trans friendly but he was vilified for the main character being the sibling, and not the trans identifying child

Very interesting @NitroNine

and I love the username too

Good for him. Most people start out with 'be kind' and then have a process of successive unease until they realise just how badly untethered from reality that the trans movement has become. It seems John Boyne has finally crested that hill.
Good on him for his apology to Glinner.

That is a lovely apology to @glinner a very rare thing to see

and yes he isn’t getting monstered (not yet anyway)

I couldn't find the apology, and I'm quite nosy like that. Also, he has the same name as my late dad, which always makes me pay attention when he's mentioned.

It's worth remembering that he's making his statements on Elon Musk's Twitter. Which will be accounting for some of the difference in reaction. It's a very different platform than it was 10 months ago.