Free Speech Union Sets Up New Writers’ Advisory Council
The Free Speech Union has set up a new Writers’ Advisory Council and has created an offer for beleaguered authors concerned that their speech rights aren’t being adequately defended. Craig Simpson in the Sunday Telegraph has more.
Writers critical of the Society of Authors after the union was engulfed in a trans row are defecting to a group which has pledged to defend their freedom of speech.
The UK’s largest writers’ union has faced an internal revolt over claims it has not properly defended gender-critical authors from being “cancelled” for not agreeing with prevailing opinions, or supporting figures like JK Rowling who have been accused of “transphobia”.
Authors critical of gender ideology who felt exiled from the organisation, which was feared to be “lost to cancel culture”, have now been offered protection at a rival union which has promised to “come to defence of beleaguered authors”.
The Free Speech Union has established a new provision specifically for authors, particularly those under pressure for rejecting the belief that self-identified gender takes precedence over biological sex, and writers are already understood to be defecting from the Society of Authors to the rival union.
The Free Speech Union, founded by Toby Young, announced: “It has become increasingly clear to us that freedom of expression is under severe pressure within the literary world, with publishers and literary agents often failing to defend their authors when their speech rights come under attack.”
“The freedom of authors to express themselves and of people to read their work without interference or mediation by self-appointed censors is a fundamental human right.”
Worth reading in full.
You can read more about this new FSU offer on the home page of its website. The new Writers’ Advisory Council includes the authors Julie Bindel, Alex Marwood, Helen Joyce, Mary Harrington, Bel Mooney, Anna Pasternack, Gillian Philips, Nina Power, Rachel Rooney, Lionel Shriver, Andrew Roberts and Gareth Roberts, literary agents Matthew Hamilton and Caroline Hardman and publisher George Owers.
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Excellent. Well done Toby. This is just the sort of fight back that is required. Hopefully more writers will get on board.
Good luck and thank you.
Love free speech, so that is all good.
With that said, I found Rod Liddle’s expose on how woke culture has come to establish itself to be extremely compelling. He lays much of the responsibility on the feminist movement.
In a nutshell, they’re the originals who pushed an ideology full of contradictions aggressively and in a self victimising fashion. And the chickens have come home to roost, as it were.
In the feminist world view, women are equal, but better, strong, yet victims, on a par with men but not encumbered with the toxic aspects of masculinity while endowed with highly beneficial feminine traits.
Let’s hope this new organisation isn’t just used by these beleaguered female authors to advance their superior victimhood.
I would need to look at the history more closely which I don’t have time to do but isn’t it also possible that today’s unhelpful identity politics also grew out of the anti-racism movement, which may have had noble goals but may have been hijacked by people wishing to create, not heal, division.
Anyway, hasn’t identity politics in one form or another always been with us?
Not in this feminist’s world view, as it happens. Yes to equality but no to everything else in your misguided statement. Loving how you talk about “superior victimhood” but have the gall to presume you know what a “feminist world view” is…whilst inferring you are somehow a victim?
Is this the part where all the chauvinists feel emboldened to pile on?🤔😆
Stewart’s statement comes across as petty. Why undermine a wonderful announcement with such a churlish comment?
Exactly. The likes of out-spoken JK Rowling have done more for free speech and women’s rights than that disgusting wretch Sturgeon would ever do in her lifetime. Feminism is being methodically eroded by these bloody trans/woke extremists so that soon school kids won’t be able to adequately describe what a woman is. They will inherit a society that’s made up of non-binary, gender-fluid other-worldly beings and a few bitter misogynists with inferiority complexes at this rate. Choose your battles, that’s what I say.
I agree.
I think it’s a complex business. I think the idea of equality of opportunity is probably helpful and morally right, in so far as I don’t like the idea of explicit barriers to people based on some arbitrary and usually irrelevant characteristic like sex, race etc. But the idea of equality of outcome seems to lead to huge problems and seems wrong and unachievable and unnatural. So how does one judge is there is “discrimination” and whether that “discrimination” is “wrong”. The whole thing is a minefield and has been hijacked by hustlers, extremists etc. I don’t know what the answer is. I suggest maybe just stop talking about all of it – stop putting people in boxes or keeping stats on this stuff, and limit ourselves to prohibiting arbitrary discrimination like “no women, no blacks” or whatever. It seems hard not to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Well put tof.
It is very complex. Men and women are different. Races are different. Nationalities are different. Gay and straight are different. In trying to deal with discrimination we’ve tied ourselves in knots, claiming on the one hand that we are equal, when we are demonstrably different. On the issue of race for example, it has been unequivocably established that black people have lower IQs than white people who in turn have lower IQs than Asians. On average, adjusting for background, culture etc. But we just can’t talk about it. It’s taboo. As a society we seem incapable of acknowledging that fact because we are terrified of what it will lead to. The same with the differences between men and women. For example, women, on average, are not as committed to their success as men are, not prepared to risk as much. But you can’t say that without being beaten over the head. Instead we force ourselves to discriminate in favour of women and make up some fantasy that if they don’t do as well as men, it’s nothing to do with the differences between men and women and everything to do with cultural norms. And yes, we’ve done this under pressure… Read more »
In general I agree. There are general differences which apply in different measures to different people. But I think it best to forget about all that and just treat people as individuals. But the race hustlers and their ilk don’t want that to happen because they are then out of a job. I don’t think things will end well in this regard.
As far as “feminists” go, I think one would need to define terms and be a lot more specific. Do I think that males and females have, on average, the same capabilities? Of course not. Would I expect them to have the same outcomes? Of course not. Do I think there were wrong and unhelpful barriers put in the way of females in the past, and that females were in the past underestimated in a somewhat bone-headed way? Yes. Do I think things have improved in that regard? Yes. Probably some people think that makes me a feminist and others that I am a misogynist.
In 2022, if a woman in the UK declares herself to be a feminist, I seriously don’t know what it is she wants that she doesn’t already have.
I see what you mean. One would have to ask. I’m not sure if the women in my life would class themselves as such. It’s not something we’ve discussed. Perhaps just to preserve those changes in women’s place in society that have already taken place – in contrast to for example Saudi Arabia. I know that my wife and daughters would not want to live there (neither would I) and may class themselves as feminists in so far as they think how women are treated there is wrong and should change.
Btw I think equality of opportunity is just as misguided and harmful as the idea of equality of outcome.
It’s a ridiculous idea. Intelligent people are going to have more and better opportunities. So are the well off. So are the good looking. And the tall. And those that have good physiques too..
There is no public policy that can correct for any of that and any attempt to do so will only lead to misery and tyranny.
The most we can aspire to is to be as fair and decent to each other as possible and accept that life deals some people better cards than others.
I guess by equality of opportunity I was talking about avoiding explicit, blanket discrimination on grounds of sex, race etc. But I think we’ve moved past that point, and that is as far as we can move without making a nonsense of everything. So yes, I would agree.
While ‘trans rights’ and statements like ‘All lives matter’ make the headlines in free-speech debates, what about more general criticism of governmental policies?
At what point does criticism become libel? It seems to me that it doesn’t actually have to be libel but the individual writer may well be confronted with governmental firepower, claiming libel, against which they are unable to defend themselves.
I’m writing something at the moment that is heavily critical of a ‘non-departmental government body’ for actions circa 2014 which, in hindsight it is clear, were a form of ‘woke’. But in the current climate of bullying and censorship would any publisher risk touching it?