November 10, 2022 - 7:00am
There was a time when writers’ organisations unequivocally opposed censorship. Now authors are told they shouldn’t hurt other people’s feelings, no matter how unreasonable those feelings happen to be. Scotland is at the forefront of this unwelcome shift, in the shape of a “code of conduct” for writers that limits free speech on an exhaustive range of issues.
No doubt the Scottish Book Trust, a charity that promotes literature and reading in schools and libraries, will say that writers have a choice: if they don’t agree with its new code, they don’t have to sign up. But fees for taking part in events are an important source of income for the 600 authors on its Live Literature Register. And what the trust is demanding goes far beyond controlling what a writer might say at one of its events.
It admits that an author’s behaviour in the wider world normally falls outside its scope. “However, when presented with clear and unambiguous evidence of serious public misconduct,” its website announces, “we reserve the right to address that misconduct, even if not committed on Scottish Book Trust time.”
Serious public misconduct? Who on earth is the trust proposing to send into schools? Its chief executive, Marc Lambert, told the Times that “we have a responsibility to all of our audiences and it is therefore incumbent upon us to have an up-to-date code of conduct.”
Most authors manage to do readings without committing criminal offences or causing members of the audience to run screaming from the room. But this isn’t about that, as the trust’s website makes clear. “We oppose all forms of bigotry, including (but not limited to) ableism, sexism, racism, transphobia, homophobia, ageism, classism, xenophobia, language discrimination and intolerance to people of any religion or faith,” it declares. No vegans? What about dog owners?
As an old hand in the free expression business — I chaired the English PEN Writers in Prison Committee from 2000 to 2004 — I can see all sorts of problems here. People of faith are not always fans of free speech, as I discovered in 2005 when an Islamist threatened to kill me because he didn’t like something I wrote in the Independent. But it is transphobia that currently sits at the top of the outrage scale, and that’s what critics of the Scottish Book Trust believe this is about.
The poet Magi Gibson is “deeply troubled” by the code, fearing it is “an infringement on the free speech of authors and poets in Scotland”. She also believes it could be used by “bad-faith actors” to harass writers who don’t believe in gender identity theory. Gibson is spot-on: accusations of “transphobia” are so common, and used so lazily, that they have become little more than smears. J.K. Rowling has been targeted with false accusations of transphobia for two-and-half years, though she’s not financially vulnerable, unlike most of the writers working with the trust.
One should not be surprised to learn that the trust gets most of its income from the Scottish government, whose capture by gender extremism could hardly be more complete. But the trust’s behaviour reflects a wider trend, in which writers’ organisations have been slow to condemn the abuse of Rowling. International PEN took a month to respond when she was viciously attacked in September 2020, finally cranking out a statement about online harassment that didn’t even mention her.
Defending authors’ rights to say unpopular things is so last century, of course. War is peace, freedom is slavery, and “being kind” is the new free expression.
Joan Smith is a novelist and columnist. She was previously Chair of the Mayor of London’s Violence Against Women and Girls Board, and is on the advisory group for Sex Matters. Her book Unfortunately, She Was A Nymphomaniac: A New History of Rome’s Imperial Women was published in November 2024.
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SubscribeGeorge Santos as an allegory for the woke mind. Nice.
Thinking the same. How far is fantasising your new gender removed from this?
Not far at all. Just another iteration. Does anybody here remember Pippi Longstocking by Swedish author Astrid Lindgren? As a child in the 80s, I recall watching a TV series about Pippi’s fantastic adventures in her make-believe world. It was charming then, especially because Pippi had an innate sense of morality, but when done by an adult holding a position of authority and responsibility, it is in very poor taste, but oddly fitting for today’s society where facts are not always facts.
A relativistic conception of truth is at the heart of wokeness.
Mythomane
Thanks KS, another fine word you’ve got me into.
On the scale of 1-7 lies per day, what’s my/your average?
Unleashing us from the confines within which most of us have hitherto lived our lives, the internet provides a kind of rocket fuel for those inclined towards the “liar, liar, pants on fire” end of the spectrum.
Unless we’re very careful, mythomania may become the norm, and where would that leave the concept of the self?
Just like Joe Biden, but on the opposite side of the fence. But Biden possesses some more self discipline and awareness, but not by much. The reason why Biden gets away with it and doesn’t suffer any consequences is because he’s useful to the powers that be, they see a vein Petty insecure little man who can be controlled and manipulated, is very much a coward and willing to sell himself to the highest bitter to desperately climb the social ladder. Santos doesn’t have any powerful backers to protect him or clean up his messes when he screws up. Like this guy, Joe Biden is a third rate person trying to look like first-rate one, but never doing it very convincingly, but never suffers for it because no one ever calls him out on it.
Precisely. Biden’s lying is like Tourette’s Syndrome, but he’s their creature, so everyone just clears their throats and ignores it. But Hillary Clinton is also pathological in this. I think it was Christopher Hitchens who said, in his book “No One Left to Lie To”, that she lied when it was utterly unnecessary: it had simply become a habit she didn’t want to kick. She is like the girl in the fairy tale “Diamonds and Toads”, spewing frogs, snakes, and spiders whenever she speaks.
How to spot a pathological liar? Very easy. They run for and unfortunately win public office.
Rubbish.
One lie per day. That’s quite sobering; it’s 08.48 and I definitely haven’t lied to anybody yet. Or have I already lied to myself in some way? Perhaps a commitment to a task I won’t complete. This will be an interesting experiment, except I’ll probably forget I’m running it.
It’s still early; think i’ll have a lie-in.
Good one!
I’m involved in deception by reading this while pretending to work.
Best to get it out of the way early.
This chap sounds a lot like a rather obscure US politician, name of Joseph Robinette Biden.
Hell yeah
I am amused by the revelation that Biden’s middle name is basically “lady bath tap”.
According to some research, one out of 25 people is a sociopath ( not a serial killer just no empathy) which allows them to lie for gain with abandon. Once I read this research, the world started making a lot more sense to me. What’s interesting not is why they do it, but why we are so unwilling to call them out
It’s because of the woke mind virus (invented in Bill Gates’s lab), the Clintons and Biden.
The Clinton’s and the Biden’s are not genuinely woke, they’re opportunistic conformist adhering to the dominant dogma out of self-interest and ambition. I don’t know what they actually believe in, they probably don’t believe anything cuz they spend much of their lives trying to please everybody around them in order to manipulate them, the Clinton’s being far more successful. If they do have genuine beliefs, they basically mean nothing cuz they’ll sell them out to the highest bidder. In some ways they’re worse than the woke fanatics because they know it’s a irrational and untrue but go along with it anyways because they have something to gain from it.
The Clinton’s and the Biden’s [sic] are not genuinely woke
They got the beta version of the virus – the latest strain has been perfected. Although the effects on Republicans are still unpredictable – hence Santos’ antics.
Excellent.
Completely unrelated to the excellence factor is the striking description of a certain holder of high US office – “There is sometimes a short distance between bold self-reinvention and starting to look slightly bonkers as the deep-seated fantasies take charge”.
Of course George Santos “is no” Gatsby! For one, George Santos is a flesh and blood man, whereas Jay Gatsby (and Nick Carraway and Daisy Buchanan) character from a novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald. It’s because of stuff like this that the philosopher Plato was so critical of the imitative arts. Imitative art, which includes novels like The Great Gatsby or Pride and Prejudice are nothing but shadows of shadows, mere imitations of imitations of what is real and true, and it is incredibly foolish to let oneself lose perspective to such a degree that these literary or artistic confections are confused, equated, or substituted for reality, for the truth.
.
Just another SNAFU from Biden and the Democrats.
;. . . a dog called Patch.’
I am – officially – destroyed. LOL!!!!
I dont think there is anything wrong with making up tall stories to regale your friends. For instance, Id rather have a drink with a mytomane then a pedant.
Well, that was a bit of an anti-climax, I must say. I was expecting something a bit more juicy from Stock. I’m feeling distinctly unsatisfied!
George Santos got kicked out of Congress because politicians know Santos is the extreme if you take the mindset of politicians to its logical conclusion: they say anything to win elections and to maintain their offices. They set the stage for him.
Walter Mitty minus the charm.
Love this work, thank you.
Has anyone else had the experience of meeting such people? I have, including when I had to investigate a Tier 1 assurance staffer whose cv should have shouted warnings to her employer all over, as well as various crooks, and a couple of associates who were slightly ‘schizophrenic’. Sometimes they will charm you with even the most absurd stories for a few moments when you’re engaged in their well-told stories, so convinced are they of ‘their truth’, and only when the cold air hits you moments afterward, or they stray over the edge into something quite obviously silly, are you shaken out of their fascinating confabulations. It’s the darndest thing. We’re such suckers for stories at large, and so used to films and novels, let’s not even start on the allegories in our religious texts, and not really expecting to be lied to, are we not preconditioned by all of that?
The perfect Republikkklan.