No one cares that the apology is fake
Nick Cohen on the ongoing passion for bullying people into silence:
The current issue of the literary journal The Dark Horse contains a grim and resonant essay by the poet Jenny Lindsay, which shows how Scottish poetry allowed the extremes to define it. In Anatomy of a Hounding she describes the process of humiliation and denunciation she has recently experienced.
…In June 2019 she objected to a writer for the Skinny, who said they believed in ‘violent action’ against Terfs (in this instance lesbian feminists at a Pride March). Lindsay contacted the magazine on Twitter and said:
Hello! One of your commentators here advocates violence against lesbian activists at Pride. I find it extraordinary that such views are given an airing in The Skinny.
It’s The New Progressivism – women are Karens, therefore lesbians are (obviously) Karens. Violence is appropriate for Karens. Why? Because they’re Karens.
You should be able to offer support to transwomen, as Lindsay has done during her career, while deploring incitement to violence against lesbians. Although the magazine privately admitted to her it had made a mistake, Lindsay was publicly accused of transphobia.
And you know what that means. It’s all-out war; no surrender is possible; the defeat must be total.
She was told about private forums where colleagues were denigrating her. Collaborators were warned to steer clear. A young poet she did not know was praised for saying she shouldn’t appear on stage with her at a conference. Other writers agreed, and said they would not share a platform with her. When Lindsay protested, they told her she was ‘punching down’: using her position of power to intimidate a weak, young man.
Because Karen. It’s really very simple.
The anonymous smears, the denigration, the false accusations became so much that the Scottish Poetry Library rather nobly spoke out. It issued a statement saying it supported freedom of expression, inclusivity, collaboration and a respect for pluralism. ‘What we do not support, and will no longer ignore, is bullying and calls for no-platforming of writers in events programmes and in publishing.’
Far from welcoming the library’s stand, Scottish PEN, which once stood for free expression and would come to the aid of writers in trouble, cut Lindsay off at the knees. It said it was ‘disappointed’ by the library’s statement and offered Lindsay no support. As JK Rowling has found, when the pile-ons pile up, Scottish PEN and other free speech organisations duck for cover.
Don’t do it to us, do it to her. Always do it to her.
Witch hunters will tolerate only two possible outcomes to their chase. Either they destroy the heretic by driving her out of work and making her name a by-word for ignominy. Or they force her into a total capitulation. The artist, politician, journalist or left-wing activist must engage in public self-flagellation. They must make an obsequious apology. They must accept that their critics were wholly right and beg forgiveness for the offence they caused.
I am always struck by how no one cares that the apology is fake and has been forced from the target. Sincerity is not required. Rather the accusers demand that their victims bend the knee and acknowledge their mastery. If rape is about power not sex, then witch-hunts are about power not truth.
Exactly. That’s how it was when they tried to do it to me, too. That’s why I was so disgusted by that post of PZ’s (that we were talking about a couple of days ago): it said I had to “own my mistakes” when I didn’t and couldn’t agree that they were mistakes, and I’m sure he knew that perfectly well. He was saying I had to agree with the frothing bullies who comment on his blog, or at least I had to say I agreed with them. But I didn’t agree with them, and he knew that. This means he was saying I had to obey their orders. Why? Why did I have to? And what would it even be worth if I did? What could he possibly think was the point of trying to force me to pretend to think what I didn’t think? Especially when it’s something so batshit crazy and silly and the reverse of what we all know?
But that’s where we are. We are all under orders to say we agree with the trans ideology, and to echo it on all occasions.
But more and more of us are saying “Shan’t” and slamming the door behind us.
It’s performance art. The apology, the forcing to capitulate, is all about other people, not the target. Would Daniel Radcliffe have taken the stance he did if he wasn’t a cowering coward who had seen pile-ons? We’ll never know. But the alternative for a lot of people is too awful…to tolerate hours, days, months, years of hounding and hatred. I don’t think I could do it.
For someone hated so much, you have a lot of followers over there
Well, hate-reading is a thing.
And it seems that Ophelia lives rent-free in the heads of PZ and a lot of his followers still, LOL!
The whole gang is frothing at the mouth again about the topic. PZ has decided that using intersex people as human shields for the men who want to LARP as women is a good look. Yeah, dude, we know there are intersex people but what PZ and his dogma chanters still can’t do is explain HOW a bog standard XY male (no intersex conditions, fathered kids, etc.) is the same as an adult human female and/or how that XY is able to change into or has always been an XX female.
The intersex scam is getting pretty threadbare but I guess it is all they got because the dogma chanting is starting to be seen as just that by too many rational people.
Such thoroughly backwards logic. She was chiding a magazine for publishing threats of violence against a lesbian march for their views, that is, she was the one opposing intimidation and the “weak, young man” was the one being intimidating. So, people famous within a field opposing intimidation is the real intimidation… which implies that threatening violence against a lesbian march is justified speech.
I used to be involved a bit in the slam poetry scene in Edinburgh and Jenny Lindsay was a leading light. She was a compere, and also an organiser when she was in her early 20s. I imagine her work gave quite a few local poet performers a leg up. I am very upset about this. It is appalling treatment and has taken a great toll on her. I have been disgusted with Scottish PEN before for being censorious wokes.
And all that in defense of…advocating violence against lesbians.
How very progressive.
And that she was in a position of power “punching down”. There seems to be so much resentment from less successful writers against one of their number who has a reputation, a couple of books published, and gigs at the various festivals as organiser and/or performer that means she has a less hand-to-mouth existence than other aspiring poets. It’s a meagre success in worldly terms, and has come to her through work and ability. I can’t say anything about her talent – most modern poetry leaves me bored and indifferent – but the “success” is very much comparative.
Of course they don’t care that the apology is false, it’s enough that the person giving the scripted apology has been ‘reached and educated’ so that the ‘educators’ can then point to this person (the higher their profile the better) and say to those yet to comply, look, this person understands it, why don’t you?
I’m reminded of being at school, where every morning assembly began by reciting the Lord’s Prayer. I can honestly say that I was never a believer; even as a child the stories seemed just too far-fetched, and by the time I hit my teens I was a fully-fledged atheist. Despite the teachers knowing this I was still expected to conform and join in with the recitation*, and I am proud to say that I never did fulfil their expectations.
The one teacher sympathetic to my position – though not enough to defend me to the rest – took me aside one day and told me, after a I haven’t told you this, OK? qualifier, that nobody cared whether I believed it or not, all that mattered was that I conformed because otherwise my bad example might make others begin to reject it, too, and besides, it would be so much easier to just say those few words than to get all the flack that came my way.
And that is the whole point of the forced apology. One must be seen to believe regardless of personal belief in order to encourage and maintain compliance among the masses.
*not even my offer of a compromise, miming the thing, was acceptable. Reciting my own version was blasphemy, apparently.