One strike and you’re out
Another one of these Shut Up, Bitch items:
The news outlet Stuff reported on August 19 that “A company has pulled posters commemorating women’s suffrage after pressure from LBTGI youth groups who say the feminist blogger behind the poster campaign holds transgender exclusionary beliefs.” The feminist artist and writer concerned is Renée Gerlich.
The feminist blogger “holds beliefs” that some trans activists don’t like and therefore she must be entirely silenced in every medium and venue.
A non-political small business was engaged by Gerlich to put up some posters she had produced. In New Zealand cities, a large proportion of public and private billboard space available for publicity posters is owned or used by this company, called Phantom Billstickers. According to a promotional article in Ponsonby News, the company was founded in 1982 “mainly to give musicians, the arts and creative people in New Zealand a voice.”
When the posters appeared, Phantom Billstickers was inundated with ‘complaints’…
…so no more posters for her.
Some of the censored posters are reproduced here. They consist of portraits of leaders of the worldwide fight for women’s suffrage in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, including Emmeline Pankhurst in the United Kingdom, Sojourner Truth, Sarah Grimké and Susan B Anthony in the United States, and Mary Ann Müller in New Zealand, together with handwritten quotes from their speeches and writings. Across the bottom of each poster is a statement from the artist: “Suffragists fought for the female sex. Stop re-writing history.” A related series of posters does a similar thing with contemporary feminists.
Here’s one:
The post goes on:
The Phantom Billstickers’ director also appeared to acknowledge that there was absolutely nothing in the content of these posters that could possibly be considered objectionable, or that could justify the censorship in any way, when he said, “The core issue was not the posters themselves, but Gerlich’s blog.”
It’s worth taking a minute to consider the implications of that statement (which evidently reflects the attitude of the censors.) Artwork is to be censored, not because of the content of the artwork itself, but because of something the artist has said in another forum, at another time. In other words, it is not just the artwork that is being banned, but the artist herself.
That is indeed how this works. Feminists labeled “transphobic” are to be banished entirely, regardless of how distant their subject matter may be from trans issues. Women who want to talk in public have two choices: agree with and repeat every claim made by trans activists, no matter how batshit crazy, or be banished from every outlet the activists can bully into complying. There’s no middle ground where you can decide to bracket trans issues and talk about other things; you are a Forbidden Person.
To find a historical precedent for this sweep of censorial powers it is necessary to go back to the personal ‘banning orders’ imposed on individuals in Apartheid-era South Africa, or the Soviet Union in the depths of the Stalinist counter-revolution. Or, perhaps more appropriately given its deeply misogynist character, to the witch-trials of dead centuries. Today’s self-appointed liberal censors, who use the slur TERF against women in much the same way that the accusation of ‘witch’ was used in the past, will be satisfied with nothing less than a confession of witchcraft.
And in fact, Gerlich has been targeted by continuous pile-on campaigns to silence her for the past two years. She was hounded out of her job, banned from the 2016 Wellington Zinefest, and had a petition signed by 120 people calling for her to be barred from access to the media and academic research. Comments threatening violence have been left on her blog, such as “I hope you get hit by a truck, bitch.”
Very left wing, much progressive.
A guy called Don Franks did a radio interview with Gerlich.
When Franks started promoting the upcoming interview, he received a strong warning from the station’s Community Liaison and programme development officer, Esther Taylor. “Renée Gerlich has a history of publishing transphobic and anti-sex worker comments on public forums, and targeting people in these communities,” Taylor said. “Freedom of speech, the ability to express different views, and the facilitation of discussion are fundamental cornerstones of Access Radio. However, we are wary that some of Renée Gerlich’s views could be seen as an attack on minority groups or as hate speech… We will not broadcast parts of the interview which are deemed transphobic or anti-sex worker.”
I’m betting the “anti-sex worker” claim is a complete lie, even accepting the premises about what constitutes “anti” and “phobic.” It’s customary to treat the two as inextricably linked, with no need to show examples of both.
H/t Lady Mondegreen in Miscellany Room.
I read that this morning. JFC.
What does this mean?:
Who was rewriting history and saying suffragists fought for someone else?
These illiberal trans-rights campaigners tip their hand as to their priorities: a commemoration of women’s suffrage is less important to them than punishment of a ‘terf.’ Women’s suffrage is mere collateral damage to their desire to ruin employment prospects of a feminist.
They are misogynists.
#2
Dude. Where have you been? That line is clearly in reference to the desire of these trans-rights misogynists to do awawy with the concept of women as a sex and replace it with women as a performance.
“I think ‘sex work’ is dangerous and is bound up with violence and sex trafficking.”
Shut up, you SWERF! Whorephobe!
——-
The meme I’ve seen floating around lately: “Just because I’m against child labor doesn’t mean I hate children.”
If Holmes is right, then putting that message on the bottom was unnecessarily divisive. That changes the situation to one of picking a fight and losing.
Suffragists could have been celebrated without making an anti-trans statement. Additionally, from an aesthetics point of view, it’s ugly, ruining the look of the signs (where everything is hand-drawn but the name). It also detracts from the suffragists’ quotes, because they’re now competing with the “stop rewriting history” quote.
And, come on, are transgender people really saying suffragists fought for them? I mean, in a meaningful “rewriting history” way, so something more than “they fought for women and we’re women too”?
That quote at the bottom was a bad idea in so many ways. It’s too bad, because the signs were otherwise very well done.
Sigh. Skeletor, people have been celebrated without making any reference to trans issues, and that’s the problem: the suffragists did not make reference to trans rights, but rather worked towards giving the vote to the female sex. In the eyes of the shouty shunny misogynistic wing of the trans population, this makes the suffragists bad people, because all feminism (according to them) must revolve around males that want to be women. According to them, the female ‘sex’ is an outdated concept that ought to be dropped post haste, because now it’s all identity.
Or in other words, people would love to follow your suggestion and celebrate the suffragists for their work as suffragists… it’s the shouty brigade that is preventing such.
Skeletor. Holms is right.
“Woman” no longer refers to those people with a certain one of the two kinds of reproductive systems, it must either refer to people who embrace certain gender signifiers–we feminists have a little problem with that–or to people who opt into the category for subjective reasons that nobody is allowed to interrogate.
In fact many trans activists explicitly say that the word “woman” refers to anybody who claims to be one. The class “woman” is thus rendered an incoherent category.
What’s “divisive” is semantically erasing a class of people who have been oppressed for centuries on the basis of our sex.
And in case you haven’t been paying attention, the word “female” is increasingly going the same way.
https://genderanalysis.net/2017/10/medical-professionals-increasingly-agree-trans-women-are-female-trans-men-are-male/
I know we hear that sentiment a lot, but I’m never quite sure how statements like the one on the posters (propositions about “the female sex”) are “anti-trans.” Yes, they contradict the trans-centric narrative, but they aren’t anti trans, as in anti trans people. They don’t disparage trans people. They don’t endanger trans people. It’s women talking about women, and the current trans moment can’t tolerate that.
So… we should separate the art from the artist? I should go and see that new Kevin Spacey flick, and whatever Roman Polanski has done recently, and judge the art on its own merits?
Do you think raping people is comparable to Renée Gerlich’s “crime”?
I’m sure you don’t, so why did you use those examples?
@Ben #10 – assuming you were responding to me – because the severity of someone’s crime is orthogonal to the point of whether we should separate the art from the artist. There has been a lot of (digital) ink spilled over the last year in the service of #metoo that says we should not. That says if an artist has done something which means we would not want to be associated with that artist, then we should not want to be associated with their art either. The details of what the artist has done is not the point, just that if it’s bad enough that you don’t want to be associated with them, you should carry that over to their art.
Given the sheer volume of bytes that have been used in the service of this argument recently, the suggestion that someone would seem aghast at the very idea of boycotting art due to the actions of an artist seems totally out of place. Given the original emphasis on that particular passage, it really stood out as something very strange to see written in August 2018.
(Do I think Gerlich deserves this treatment? No. But for those that do, the idea that they wouldn’t also want to disassociate themselves from her art does not seem at all surprising.)
From the perspective of virtually everyone here, what she has said alsewhere is reasonable, and so shunning her work for what she has said is not. The flip side, and Karellen’s point being, those that despise what she has said elsewhere will see shunning her work as entirely justified. We’d agree, if she had said anything that was actually vile.
But this standard cannot be met in real life. Since ‘trans activists’ make floods of mutually exclusive, incoherent claims. When the NKVD knock on your door at 3:00 AM, it really doesn’t matter what you’ve actually said.
Okay, I do have an issue with art and the artist, and rejecting art by people who are distasteful to us personally is a thing, and a legitimate thing that we each have to decide (I have trouble with quite a number of artists, and avoid their work for reasons).
The problem is that when you cannot ever separate people from their art, what about their other work? Should we reject evolution because Darwin had racist and sexist ideas that were repulsive? Or only accept evolution because others have followed it up? But many of those had eugenics ideas, or other repulsive ideas…
At some point, we have to come to a decision on when ad hominem choices work, and when they don’t. The dividing line will likely be quite arbitrary, depending on what we personally value and are not willing to give up.
Mind you, I’m not saying we should go out and support Kevin Spacey or Harvey Weinstein; I think we’re just, I don’t know, risking the abandonment of so much of the good stuff that humanity was accomplished because it was done by people who were not themselves good. I’ve been struggling with this particular ethical dilemma for quite some time, and I am not particularly closer to resolving it then when I started. Thorny issues are thorny.
@Iknklast #14 – the difference there is that art is not science. Art is created by artists. Scientific truths are discovered. Those truths existed before they were discovered, and remain true no matter who discovered them. A 10kg rock fell at the same speed as a 1kg rock for billions of years before Galileo actually noticed that they did. Although Watson and Crick appear to have been assholes who filed Rosalind Franklin’s name off of her contributions to their work, that doesn’t change or invalidate the structure of DNA.
Yes, Karellen, I realize that. But…a lot of people don’t. I hear it all the time. We don’t have to accept [fill in unpopular scientific knowledge here] because [fill in asshole scientist here] is…
I’m not totally sure about art, either. I can see the argument, and I can feel the argument, for boycotting their work. I do that often. But…how much bad does there have to be? Obviously, Weinstein is a lot of bad. Polanski is a lot of bad. The problem is, the line often becomes arbitrary, and we might find ourselves accepting an artist because we feel unable to give them up, even though they are as bad, and rationalizing the bad away in that case. And then, there are the people who feel that Gerlich meets this level of bad, and many here (including me) disagree with them.
In short, it is a very difficult question. Do we give up all art because art is made by flawed humans? Or do we set people along a spectrum, and boycott all art that falls on one side of an arbitrary line drawn by ourselves or someone else, and say that is bad, and we must avoid it? Do we make the call on a case-by-case basis? This is the dilemma one must struggle with, not whether it is true or not true, because while I might feel fine piling any books I have by Lawrence Krauss into a pile and shoving them in my basement out of sight, I don’t feel the same way about Darwin (who was, I admit, much more benign than Krauss, but why? And what is benign enough to be acceptable?) I can accept the information in Krauss’s books, but not the behavior of the man, and still pile his books in the basement.
And artists also claim that “Art is Truth”. To some extent, they are right. Artists are also in the business of discovering “truth”, but it is a much less measurable, nebulous truth, and sometimes not true at all (hear me, Gwyneth?), so we feel entitled to dismiss the work of an artist who misbehaves while accepting the work of a scientist who misbehaves.
In short, I think “truth discovered” vs “art created” is still too simplistic for the level of moral dilemma that comes out of this question. And I think if we are going to take the stance that those we think are bad should be ostracized, we have to be able to deal with the reality that other people are going to demand the same thing for themselves, but disagree about what is bad. So I will continue to struggle with this dilemma, while fighting for things to get better.
Until I have an equation to tell me how much bad is too bad, I will continue to struggle with this, and make my own decisions on a case-by-case basis, based on the arbitrary lines I have drawn between good, sort of not good, sort of bad, and bad. And that line will not just be drawn between “discovered” and “created”, because that is also a falsely arbitrary line.
Well, I do separate art from artist. I’m going to continue enjoying Rosemary’s Baby and Kill Bill, thank you very much.
I certainly do want to see Polanski and Weinstein brought to justice for their crimes. But Renée Gerlich does not stand accused of a crime, and I’m not interested in boycotting artists for thoughtcrimes.