We have received tweets and emails
Drawn & Quarterly posts an apology:
This past spring, our editorial department accepted a submission from the cartoonist Berliac. The graphic novel was Sadbøi, which was seen as a statement on the treatment of immigrants—the challenge of being expected to conform to a society’s ideals in a world that prematurely condemns outsiders.
We neglected to research the author beyond the submitted book, which we now realize to be a disservice to both the public and the author. We were not familiar with Berliac’s body of work, both written and drawn, including a previously published essay comparing cultural appropriation and transgender people and the consequent public discussion about it in 2015. We do not agree with the essay, its defense, nor the tone and aggression he displayed in this and subsequent debates.
In the past 48 hours, we have received tweets and emails, and read posts telling us we are wrong to publish this book. Not everyone discussing Berliac and his work had the same opinions, but each of them made us reflect, and conduct the research we should have conducted when considering the submission. We asked ourselves if we would have acquired this book knowing what we know now, and we would not have. An author deserves the full support of their publisher. We can no longer provide that full support. Therefore, we have decided that D+Q will not be publishing Sadbøi.
We do not expect everyone to like or agree with everything we publish—this is an important part of a vibrant publishing landscape—but we are revising our acquisition practices so that we can ensure we better support our public, our authors, and our staff going forward.
We apologize for not doing our due diligence and for our mistakes. We are sorry. Thank you to everyone who has reached out to us: we value your input.
Peggy Burns on Friday, June 2, 2017 – 3:55pm.
They received all those tweets and emails, you see.
‘Publish and be damned, be damned’, said Ms. (too presumptuous of me?) Burns.
I’m honestly not following why this aspect of the story was singled out (in title and doubly so as the sole commentary offered).
The implication I get is that you’re of the opinion that
1) tweets & emails do not bear a 1:1 relationship with individual opinions
or
2) opinions of those who communicate via Twitter and email are of lesser value than of those who communicate by other means.
Would your opinion of their statement be different, had Drawn & Quarterly been inundated with post cards and phone calls?
To clarify – your underlying message seems to be that D&Q screwed up. Specifically, that they screwed up in how they reacted to certain people’s voiced opinions. Indeed, maybe they did screw up. But there’s nothing here that gives any indication of what mistake you feel they’ve made.
@4:
I thought it was rather obvious. She’s criticizing the knee jerk SHUN that the overly influential regressive left engages in the moment anything is found out that could be construed as negative to transwomen. More specifically that pretty much any and all publications cave at the slightest whiff of transphobia.
What’s unusual is that a man is the target, but he’ll be fine…
@Blood Knight in Sour Armor
That seems to dodge my question.
I mean, okay, twitter – with a 140 character limit – implies a lack of nuanced crafting of one’s opinion. I was more attuned to “email”. Maybe this is a perspective disconnect. In my world, any direct email from the boss is, potentially, one “who cares, it’s only an email” decision away from a follow up communication from HR.
It seems absurd to claim that among all emails received, probably none contain anything worthy of D&Q’s consideration because, “hey, it’s just email.”
If that form of communication is so easily discounted, I’d have to wonder about how seriously anything I (or you, Blood Knight in Sour Armor) write here is taken. After all “hey, it’s just a blog comment”.
(obviously, I in no way think comments to blog posts are treated with anything like that level of disdain).
And shunning, in it’s own right, is equally problematic as a *basis* of critique. I’ve been *strongly* inclined to shun the living fuck out of Bill Maher as of late.
Brace yourself: I’m even considering sending an email.
What’s the take on that?
Kevin, it isn’t about the tweets and e-mails, it’s about the substance of what the article was talking about. You should know better than to take things so concretely with Ophelia. She isn’t referring to the fact that it was tweets and e-mails. She was questioning their decision, and was doing it in a snarky manner. That is not unusual with Ophelia, and you’ve been around here long enough to understand that. This is simply a continuation of a long discussion being held in this site, and perhaps for someone who has not read her stuff before, who is just checking in for the first time, it would be reasonable for them to draw the conclusions you are drawing. But you have been part of this discussion, and I think you know better, you are just playing a game to make fun of Ophelia because you do not care for her position on this topic.
Go ahead, send e-mails to Bill Maher or the television station. I’m sure no one here would mock you for that at all…many of us might even join you.
@iknklast
Perhaps I ought to weigh in more often. I saw much merit in Ophelia’s criticism of the treatment of the Transracial/Transgender author. Her commentary and insights on the matter inclined me to pay the download fee to read the PDF in full… and walk away with the feeling that yeah – absolutely nothing within or about the article merited the backlash to which the author was subjected. So too (significantly moreso, really) was my reaction to her coverage of the library-vandalism debacle (in Vancouver, IIRC).
Shame on me for not voicing a “hear, hear” opinion in those cases.
But in some cases, as with this article, I am forced to question: just how broad is this brush with which she is painting? Can *nothing* written be sufficiently transphobic as to merit shunning? To be truthful, I can’t shun Maher over his racist remarks as I’ve long since shunned him over other viewpoints he’s expressed. I would actively avoid attending (and let organizers know) a conference he was invited to speak, even if his speech was on a subject as obscure as dog grooming.
I’d like to believe that Ophelia would be sympathetic to those who speak out against such spectacles as the ‘Free Speech Bus’… but in truth, I can’t think of any article she’s written that allows for any such balance of opinion. From what basis of criticism she offers here, it seems she’d think it out-of-line for someone to refuse to have their car serviced at North Ridgeville auto shop. Or, heaven forbid, tweet to the owner their reasons for refusal.
Must all accusations of “transphobia” reduce the accusers to the level of “overly influential regressive left”?
Correction: I can’t think of any recent article. On one occasion, after I’d brought it to her attention, she did voice disgust at the treatment of a transgender student at a local (to me) high school (though even there, as I recall.. it was more the god-bothering preaching she took issue with than the manner in which that high schooler was treated).
I don’t mean this accusationally… but I do wonder how much a role confirmation bias and selective reading plays. Ophelia’s blog is always the first, and in some cases, the only information source I encounter that documents many [admittedly] anti-feminist flareups of transgender activism. She picks up on these stories early and trumpets them loudly. Is it possible that so much focus on “anti-feminist-transactivism” could be impeding awareness of the multitude of “real” rancid transphobia that does run rampant in society? Had she even heard of the “Free Speech Bus”, of national media notoriety?
Kevin #9:
No, that is not possible. No one listens to gender critical feminists. They are not “impeding” anything, I guarantee it.
We might as well turn the question on it’s head:
Is it possible that so much focus on “trans-exclusionary-feminism” could be impeding awareness of the multitude of “real” rancid misogyny that does run rampant in society?
Quite possible indeed.
@Kevin
The multitude of real rancid transphobia?
I remember the 1-in-12 will be murdered statistic. Debunked. I remember the allegation that, OK, that number was inflated, but trans people are still being disproportionately murdered. A comparison of murder statistics (trans people compared to non-trans people) shows that’s not true. I know the touted suicide statistics are estimated to be inflated to approximately double the real figure.
I know about the Tuvel ruckus; I know what happened to Michael Bailey, Ken Zucker, Alice Dreger, Kate Smurthwaite, Julie Bindel, Chimamanda Adichie, et. al.
I see a great deal of evidence that the trans movement does its best to silence anyone who criticizes it.
Of course homophobia means that gender nonconforming people of all kinds face bigotry and sometimes violence, but if there’s evidence that trans people face any more of that than, say, gays or lesbians–I’m sorry, but if it comes from the trans movement, I’ll be double checking for myself before I accept it.
I have! It’s a bus, commissioned by a few religious groups, to drive around with slogans about how boys are boys and girls are girls and you can’t change sex, written on its sides. Of course a protest organizer was quoted by the Washington Post saying “words, in this setting, are violence,” and the free speech bus has been vandalized.
@Kevin Kirkpatrick
What bothers me about this is that we seem to be setting a “purity standard” that an author must adhere to in order to get published.
In this case, a work was considered of a suitable quality for publication. Evidently, there was nothing in the text that worried the publisher. However a bunch of keyboard warriors have contacted them to say, “we do not approve of this man’s work” and the publisher suddenly does not consider the work publishable. What has changed? The work is still the same. It has the history it always had. The publisher clearly didn’t think it worth researching the history beforehand – which says to me that this is nothing to do with “standing by their author”, if they were that concerned about being able to do that they would have done the research as a matter of course.
What we have is a publisher backing down because the author does not fit some mythical standard of political purity. Actually, I’m translating this as, “did not want to deal with the bullying and dogpiling inherent in transactivist discourse relating to this work.” And that’s a very, very worrying thing. Once we have things that are unsayable, however unpleasant we personally find it, it limits discourse to the detriment of all.
One of my biggest issues with current left politics, particularly those with a trans involvement, is the fetish for everyone having to use the right words, the right terminology, the right head nods or be ostracised. And the same for the banning of certain other words, phrases and terminology. I’ve been uncomfortable with that for a very long time. Then when transactivists come along and tell me I can’t talk about my physical experiences related to being a woman – menstruation, vaginal sex, childbirth and breastfeeding, etc – because it upsets them, when women have been fighting for decades to gain a public language for these things, then I’m going to say, “No, there is nothing so unpleasant it should not be published.”
I’m remined of when Dworkin and McKinnon pushed, and got, a law restricting pornography. Hurrah? Well, no. One of the first prosecutions was a magazine of lesbian erotica, while straight male porn continued to be ignored. Well, what a surprise. And that’s why I don’t support any kind of censorship – which this is – because the first thing anti-censorship tools do in the hands of the dominant culture, is support that dominant culture and punish those who transgress.
Kevin @ 9 –
What on earth does that mean? What is “loudly”? I’m hardly the New York Times.
It’s familiar, that kind of thing. It’s what erupted out of a lot of people at Freethought Blogs a couple of years ago – all of a sudden it was revealed that I talked way too much for their liking.
If I talk too loudly for you you can always just walk away. This isn’t Dinner With Donnie.
And another thing.
Plays in what? My failure to talk about exactly the things you think I should talk about?
Of course my reading is selective. What the fuck else would it be? Again, I’m not the Times – I make no pretense of covering everything, or of trying to cover everything. I blog about what interests me. One is allowed to do that with a blog.
Best answer on the internet…..ever.
You mean to say you haven’t read every one of the millions of books, articles, blog posts, and tweets that have been written throughout the course of human history? Then how dare you have an opinion on anything. Shame, shame.
I get the same sort of thing. Because I don’t usually read anti-global warming or anti-evolution works (because after reading a few, they all said the same thing, so no point), I am considered to be “selective” in my reading, and read only what I like or agree with. That’s not true, and failure of other works to convince me using anecdotal evidence and new age spirituality does not indict my reading but their writing and/or thinking.
‘I see a great deal of evidence that the trans movement does its best to silence anyone who criticizes it.’
If there is such a thing as THE trans movement. The problem with twitter and social media trolling is that tiny factions can hold an entire subject hostage to their concocted outrage. What sane trans activists might feel or say is buried under the pile.
It would be nice to think that truly progressive transfolk could magically create a social atmosphere that would withdraw support from abusive creeps. Just the way ‘moderate’ Muslims are supposed to undo centuries of Salafi poison. Or normal men are supposed to control sexual sociopaths…
Yeah – that’s the thing, isn’t it? There are sane trans folk. In fact the majority of them are, in my experience, just ordinary people, dealing with life in the best way they can. Mostly, their understanding of gender is pretty varied and personal. In other words, most trans people are just like everyone else. Well, whodathunkit?
The problem is that when a movement as broadly (un)defined as the trans one is attracts a minority of exceptionally loud, exceptionally agressive spokespeople the moderate voices get lost. And it’s no more fair to blame all trans people for the bullies than it is to blame all Muslims for suicide bombers, or all Christians for the murder of doctors who perform abortions.
And a real problem is when the rest of the left movement adopt the extreme position as the norm and bow to it. That creates the almost McCarthy-esque situation we have now where only the ideologically pure are allowed to have an opinion on anything at all.
^ That. I think what’s happened is that “allies” take the wildest claims to be the most radical and hence the best, only on this particular subject “radical” simply means denial of reality and insistence that everyone else deny reality too…and the result is the train wreck we see now.
The most obvious problem might be the loudmouths but if there are ‘moderates’ among the trans believers where are they, and why are so few speaking up? And also, maybe there are some nice as pie moderates about, but that doesn’t mean that trans as an ideology is therefore benign and to be welcomed or supported, any more than any other faith based belief system. I respect other people’s rights to identify themselves as Christians but the idea that I or my children would be forced to pretend
..the idea that I or my children *should* be forced to pretend to believe in someone else’s belief system is appalling. The belief that a woman is whatever a man says it is, or that a vagina (and a woman!) can be surgically created from a piece of colon or an inverted penis, or that women cannot be allowed to self organise or set their own boundaries or self identify what being a woman is all about without being told to pipe down because a male born human knows it all better than we do – these are all misogynist ideas regardless of how nicely they might be presented!
@John the Drunkard, Steamshovelmama, Ophelia, et. al. —
John the Drunkard:
Let’s be clear: I spoke of the trans movement, not trans people. The movement, I think, must be defined by what it does and the ideas it promotes–how else can it be defined? And what it’s doing and the ideas it’s promoting are…what they are. People on and offline are promoting laws that define away sex and define “gender identity” as “anyone who says they are X, is X.” Two scientists have been targeted and one lost his job. Meanwhile, I’m doing a detailed critique of a popular book written by a popular trans activist on this very blog, that shows the reasoning–so called–behind it all.
I don’t assume that the average trans person participates in or supports all the awfulness, and I didn’t imply that they do. I do believe that the trans movement and its ideology is a hot mess, and I believe the evidence supports my belief.