Lambda Literary extends its apologies for any inconvenience
Jesse Singal on Twitter yesterday, with four tweets run together. (I still think it’s absurd that people use Twitter this way.)
@LambdaLiterary has withdrawn @AliceDreger’s book from consideration for its nonfiction literary award. The (very strongly) implied message here is that you can’t simultaneously be an advocate for social justice and care about the principles of truth, accuracy, and fairness in argument. It was a message I heard loud and clear after my Zucker/GIC article, and one that will, in the long run, harm all of us greatly. @LambdaLiterary @AliceDreger
He’s right you know. It is absolutely not permitted to try to get at the truth on certain subjects – trans issues in particular, right now – by thinking and inquiring and reading and talking about them in your own way. The guardians of purity make that very explicit.
Singal included this email in his first tweet:
Dear Dr. Dreger,
Lambda Literary, a nonprofit corporation, was founded in 1989 with the express objective of promoting literature and art that increase knowledge, understanding, and acceptance of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people. Fundamental to that objective is the belief that LGBTQ lives are affirmed when our stories are written, published, and read.
After reviewing Galileo’s Middle Finger: Heretics, Activists, and the Search for Justice in Science, the organization has concluded the book is inconsistent with its mission of affirming LGBTQ lives. As a result, the decision was made to rescind the nomination for a 2016 Lambda Literary Award in the LGBT Nonfiction category.
Lambda Literary extends its apologies for any inconvenience caused by withdrawal of the nomination and wishes you well in your career endeavors.
Sincerely,
Tony Valenzuela
Executive Director
The ugliness of that email is breathtaking.
Social justice? Don’t make me laugh.
You see, it maybe sounds extrem but apparently Hitler and Mussolini were true social justice advocates … no? You say they weren’t? Well lets see:
“There is no such thing as truth. Science is a social phenomenon and like every other social phenomenon is limited by the benefit or injury it confers on the community.” Adolf Hitler
and Mussolini knew what a bunch of “lefties” today also know – just replace ideology with narrative … you see sounds pretty buttlerish:
“Everything I have ever said and done in these last years is relativism by intuition … From the fact that all ideologies are of equal value, that all ideologies are mere fictions, the modern relativist infers that everybody has the right to create for himself his own ideology and attempt to enforce it with all the energy of which he is capable.” Benitto Mussolino
(Source for both quotes: Andrew Sayer: Realism and Social Science, London 2000, S. 47)
Look, i dont think that people who spout such nonsense today are “exactly like Hitler and Mussolini” … that would be ridiculous. I also have given it up shocking people with this quotes in the hope they will start thinking for them self.
But what this quotes show is something different, actually i think they show two things:
First, Hitler and Mussolini were no idiots, they perfectly knew that their “constructed” histories and mythologies of the German and Italian “Volk” had no basis in reality. All that mattered to them was whether their myths and narratives would help constitute and protect the “Volksgemeinschaft”. You see the parallels? The only important thing about a narrative is whether it helps to further the goals of some community … POCs, Trans, White supremacist, Gay, Misogynists …. it really doesn’t matter. And thats what makes this bullshit so dangerous. I am a antifascist before anything else and an “old” lefti …. and it truly frightens me to see in what short period of time we went from “pretty sensible” to “batshit insane”.
Second, while such relativistic ideologies basically give you immunity from any kind of outside criticism you now face the same problem Hitler and Mussolini faced. When you claim that everybody can construct its own narrative and you can not distinguish by any objective fact what is right or wrong, your biggest problem becomes internal dissent … and thats exactly what we see today in the NUS-style left.
Its all pretty sad …
best wishes to all of you from a long time lurker and now first time poster :)
Gad. Note how the ‘affirming’ term is cycled through sentence after sentence. It sounds like a note from a hostage.
Let’s all ‘affirm LGBTQ lives’ but only as commanded by whoever is banging on the tallest highchair.