Et tu Index?
Ruth Smeeth, CEO of Index on Censorship, complains of polarization…a complaint I always find rather dull and beside the point. “X is for torture and Y is against it; oh no the polarization!” It seems especially beside the point for an organization whose title and purpose is to oppose censorship. It’s not literal censorship to say stop being so polar, but it is a form of pressure to say different things in a different way.
Of course, the reality is this has always been part of our political discourse. There is a healthy tradition of challenge in our public space. But…my concern is it is no longer on the fringes of our national conversations, it now dominates and the damage that it is doing is untold.
Says the CEO of the anti-censorship organization.
In the last week, we have seen academics compared to the KKK, a trans writer attacked for being long-listed for a literary prize for women, and a new narrative on intersectional veganism which attacks other vegans for not considering the role of white supremacy in their eating habits.
I added an Oxford comma there, because it’s badly needed for clarity. I hate the taboo on the Oxford comma. There needs to be a pause after her second example, so that we can separate it out in order to say what shite it is.
Torrey Peters was not “attacked for being long-listed for a literary prize for women.” The people who put Torrey Peters on the list were criticized and disputed for putting him there. We are allowed to do that, no matter how “polarizing” the CEO of Index on Censorship thinks it is.
Because of the list, there has been criticism of Peters’s writing, especially of the sissy porn “forced feminization is soooo erotic” trope, but again we are allowed to do that. Maybe it is “polarizing,” but whose fault is that? What are we supposed to do about woman-hating porn and woman-displacing trans-identified men? Just shut up? Very politely say sirs we do kind of wish you wouldn’t appropriate everything that’s ours?
I am not saying that people don’t have the right to these views – of course they do. Index on Censorship exists to ensure everyone’s rights to free expression. But that doesn’t mean that our words and deeds don’t have impact or consequence.
We witnessed in America only this year where this form of populist politics can lead to, at the extreme end – the storming of the Capitol. This week we’ve riots on the streets of Northern Ireland, again. Anti-Chinese hate crime has spiked post-Covid. In Belarus, Hungary and Poland we witness daily the appalling impact of the combination of this political polarisation and authoritarian-leaning governments. Words have consequence.
And she’s comparing gender-critical feminist women to that.
Wait, who is it that is polarizing again?
Nope. Not at all. Not saying anything like that. Damn polarizers…
We just wish that some of you were a little quieter in your expression. Please.
We wished your words had no impact. They’re having way too much impact for our liking! You’re being so rude to the Emperor! Never mind that you’re responding to the words and actions of others who just want some compromises in your rights so they can just go pee!
Why do I get the impression that in this instance, she’d be good with one big, happy monolith?
You never have to apologize for an “Oxford comma”.
Seriously, one keystroke, or one little downward pen stroke.
Heh, that was no apology, it was an irritable rant. The NY Times doesn’t allow Oxford commas, because NYT style book. It’s so annoying.
Until I began reading here, way, way back in the very early days of your blog, I had never heard of an Oxford comma, and I am one who grew up in an era where the teaching of English was prevalent.
I first thought of it as an affectation, something only the hoity-toity used. Slowly, however, it began to seep into my consciousness and I began to use it more and more, and I noticed that what I was writing became clearer to the reader, and now I am inseparable from it.
When it is not used I now find I have to pause and reconsider the meaning of the sentence I just read and if there is a run-on thought or a separate thought.
Long live the Oxford comma. Down with style books.
I faintly remember being taught about that comma in school, though I don’t think it was called the Oxford. I think we were taught that it was optional…possibly with further advice that when the result seemed ambiguous, don’t be shy about using it. Or maybe that came from my mother the magazine editor. But my English teachers were hella good, so I’m betting they didn’t tell us anything dumb. But so many people seem convinced it should never be used. They’re so very wrong.
And yes, that’s exactly the issue – is this a run-on thought or a separate thought? We have a comma for that!
I edit a quarterly newsletter, and I add Oxford commas to any place it’s needed; I’ve never got any complaint. The group had a discussion via email about a year or so ago, and everyone who gave their opinion was definitely pro-Oxford comma (and professed to be grateful to me for noting what the name of it was, when I told them that if I am editor, we will be using Oxford commas). I see so many sentences without it that the only way to make sense of the sentence is to mentally add it.
Anyone else getting Tom Johnson flashbacks?
I was taught that the Oxford comma was evil, but I didn’t know it was called Oxford, either. It was the comma that dare not speak its name. My English teachers were nowhere near as good as yours were, Ophelia, and tended to weigh in with red ink and detention rather than explanations. So, being me, I saw it as just another rule and decided to ignore it like I ignored all the others.
I’m with Roj: down with style books, up with whatever makes sentences easier to parse.
On the marginally more important censorship issue: there’s a tendency for organisations to do this kind of thing. The free speech organisation begins to think it has become an arbiter rather than a defender of free speech. Anti-censorship campaigners start to believe they alone should decide what kinds of censorship are good and which are bad. Free-thinking blogging networks declare arbitrary limits on the freedom of thought.
I think such organisations tend to attract passionate people and people are passionate for a reason… One might become an advocate of free speech, for example, because one has witnessed injustice and concluded that free speech is a necessary tool for fighting it. It’s easy to speculate that such people might conflate their passion for a personal crusade with the tools they use to pursue it and that when they’re in positions of influence in an organisation, that organisation might lose its way or become unduly focused on a single issue.
I think there are two major problems with this kind of scope creep in advocacy organisations (aside from the obvious consequences of important, impartial influences being lost). The first is that criticism almost always leads to doubling-down. Usually, the organisation has brought a core audience along with it for the ride and criticising its core values amounts to criticising theirs. Calls for the organisation to get back on message tend to be dealt with using the now-traditional pile-on.
The second is that it’s often difficult for organisations to remain impartial and not take a stand. Should the ACLU defend nazis? Should the ORG oppose vaccine passports? Rightly or not, many people look to these organisations for moral guidance and criticise them if they don’t provide any. Remaining impartial can be as much of a crime as taking the wrong side. And since these groups exist to help people, who’s to say they should be impartial on these matters anyway?
Ultimately, we all secretly want organisations like these to apply judgement exactly how we would. Because we are all idiots.
Some years ago, a friend of mine was invited to become a board member of the state ACLU. The director at the time said the organization focused on principles, and often rankled even the membership. Paraphrasing: “If you agree with 25% of out cases, you’re probably a member. If you agree with 50% of our cases, you’re probably on the board.”
I very much do not think this is the situation now. The ACLU has become the “woke” advocacy organization. Not a single position rankles that contingent of liberals anymore.
Sackbut, I wonder if it’s inevitable if the organisation is around long enough?
I can see how such organisations might be inherently unstable. Once you create apparatus for killing fascists, you’re never going to run out of people to point it at…
You might be on to something. I’ve heard the Women’s Book Prize has apparently run out of women to nominate.
Maybe I should send them one of my books…oh, wait. I don’t identify as a woman, I merely is one.
God, I’m an idiot. I read that somehow as “an Oxford comma is needed there” and I just spent five minutes rereading the quoted passage (with the necessary comment already added) trying to find where it was missing.
Barkeep, another Yorkshire Gold, please. And make this one a double, I need it.
Also, too: (yay, Oxford comma)
Blessings on the Oxford comma and may all its sheep have the finest of wool.