2013 in the UK was the year social media became a “how” rather than a “why” issue. We’re no longer explaining what people do on the web, now we’re discussing how we behave. And we talked most about the abuse and threats received by many women on Twitter. When writer Caitlin Moran proposed a one-day Twitter boycott in August, Index’s Padraig Reidy responded. Read here
Communal censorship reared its ugly head in the UK when Madras Cafe, a Bollywood action film, was withdrawn from cinemas after protesters claimed it was anti-Tamil. Salil Tripathi likened the incident to the rows over Gurpreet Khaur Bhatti’s Bezhti and Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses
When Guardian columnist Suzanne Moore found herself at the centre of a storm after an article in which she described the idealised body shape of a “Brazilian transexual”, the Observer took the entirely sensible decision to commission Moore’s old friend Julie Burchill to defend her. The effect was described neatly by tweeter Stuart Houghton: “Julie Burchill has poured oil to calm troubled waters. Then drowned some seabirds in the oil. Then set fire to the oil.”
As the trans/Moore/Burchill spat draws to a close, and an article that gave much offence to trans folk is taken down from the Observer’s site — it is time, perhaps to reflect how this episode encapsulates, in one seamless narrative, the two or three most serious issues facing free speech in the UK today.
Over all lies the question of censorship.
I do not believe Julie Burchill’s article should have been published: doubt it would find space in a respectable publication were it written about any other minority; and have little time for the many in the press who defend it on grounds of free speech.
Once up, though it should not have come down as it did.
The damage was done, in terms of hate speech published and serious traumatic stuff distributed where it could do most harm, in the original publication. 48 hours on, copied, commented, archived its dread power was mostly spent. (And meanwhile, the fatuousness of the Observer decision to remove the piece was instantly exposed by the Telegraph’s mischievous counter-decision — to put it back up! Will they, one wonders, be paying a repeat fee to the Guardian for the privilege? Have they even, one wonders, sought permission not just from the author — but the article’s original publisher, the Observer?)
It leaves an awkward hole on the Observer website, filled by an apology that most in the trans community feel is mere token: too little too late, and the suspicion that it only finally went when Observer lawyers pointed out the paper could run the risk of prosecution. From whom is not entirely clear.
One person who took the matter to the police did not get very far. They told him, he claims, that they could not act because no identifiable group of individuals had been targeted. Huh?
They suggested, instead, he try the Press Complaints Commission. But the PCC won’t intervene because no named individual is targeted (which is why some groups would like to see a right of class complaints under whatever new regulations are put in place post-Leveson).
Still, the legal dimension does drain, somewhat, the worth of the apology — as does recent press conduct in respect of their sacred cow of freedom!
The Observer, happy to host the initial carefully confected abuse, stuck doggedly to its rules of moderation. Why, though, bother to moderate at all, I inquired, not altogether facetiously — as another commenter, reproducing an extract from Burchill’s piece with “women” substituted for “trans women” found their post blocked.
There is much lack of consistency here. The same press that squeals “censorship” at the least attempt to regulate, is other times busy taking out libel writs when people say nasty things about them (Daily Mail take heed!). Meanwhile, if you live by a creed of happily dishing up offence to all and sundry, Moore and Burchill, don’t be surprised when someone trumpets that offense back at you.
If questions of censorship topped the bill in this case, lesser issues also played a part: the question of online etiquette, for instance.
As Brooke Magnanti writes eloquently in the Telegraph, today’s world is more interconnected than ever before. Any and every faux pas regarding a minority community is magnified: so politeness is more than its own reward. It is the price one pays for not being continually distracted from what one wants to say by the need to apologise for every least deviation from the currently acceptable mode of expression.
Barrier to free speech? Yes: sort of. But also common courtesy: for why would you go out of your way — as Suzanne Moore clearly did at the start of this episode — to insult the subject of one’s writing?
Then there’s the “cabal” thing: the suggestion by Julie Bindel that online nastiness might be being orchestrated — in this case by a bunch of trans activists. Well, hardly. It makes as much sense to detect caballerous behaviour in informal links on the journalistic side of the kerfuffle: from the saccharine tributes paid by Burchill to her friend, Moore — or the pre-tweeting of a line from what Burchill eventually filed by colleague and co-author, Nick Cohen, approximately 24 hours before it went live. Nothing wrong with this, especially as it appears to reflect behaviour exhibited by most journalists, myself included.
However, the online “monstering” of Moore that Burchill objected to was probably the least organised behaviour around. Elsewhere, I’ve likened it to the murmuration of a flock of starlings, wheeling this way and that in instant response to external stimuli: “mobbing” any predator, actual or potential, that puts their nose above the parapet.
But that’s not right, either. We live, all of us, nowadays, with the reality of social networks. If Moore writes something offensive about trans folks, then, she must get that her views will percolate at light speed across the web. The angry and the obsessed and the merely voyeuristic will turn up, in a trice, to deliver a good drubbing and the net effect (no pun intended) is likely to be horrid.
I’ve been on the receiving end of net monsterings twice. They are awful and not for the faint-hearted: a sort of bullying lite, with most individuals making reasonable if sharp comment, but the whole being much worse than the sum of the parts, and the total effect being one of intimidation. I sympathise with those on the receiving end. I sympathised with Moore.
But I am not sure where to go from there. Bullying is bad. But how, short of implementing online some exceedingly illiberal “common purpose” laws do you stop it? I’m stumped.
Moore temporarily rejoined Twitter to address the issue, and while she may not exactly have agreed to kiss and make up with the trans community, she has agreed to talk about kissing and making up.
Meanwhile, the speech issues of our age, the responsibility of press and public alike for online offence rumble on unresolved — albeit with a growing sense, in the trans community and elsewhere, that they are already returning to their bad old ways.
Jane Fae is a feminist and writer on issues of political and sexual liberty
There has been a hell of a lot written in the past week or so since the New Statesman published feminist writer Suzanne Moore’s article Seeing red: the power of female anger, and I really do not want to go over the details again. There’s more to be written on transgender issues by people with far better knowledge than I. Suffice to say, people got angry over a phrase in Moore’s piece, she was rather forcefully criticised, responded in kind, and gave up her Twitter account as the weight of group anger became too much. Then Julie Burchill further fanned the flames with a massively controversial article in the Observer.
What I want to briefly focus on here is the frankly disastrous response to the furore over Julie Burchill’s Observer article by International Development minister Lynne Featherstone. Weighing in to the twitter discussion on Sunday evening, Featherstone tweeted that Burchill should be sacked by the Observer, and subsequently implied agreement with another tweet suggesting that Observer editor John Mulholland should also be sacked.
Let’s leave aside for a moment the fact that Julie Burchill is not actually on staff at the Observer, and can’t be sacked, and examine just what’s happened here: a government minister in a modern democratic state has demanded that a journalist be punished for writing a contentious article. And then nodded along with the notion that a national newspaper editor be sacked for publishing a contentious article. An article that has not, as yet, been deemed illegal, or even in breach of the Press Complaints Commission code.
Featherstone has made a mockery of Britain and the EU’s declared commitment to promote free speech. Cast your mind back to the 2011 riots, when it was suggested that social networks be shut down to prevent people co-ordinating movements. The state media of regimes such as Iran and China gleefully reported this suggestion, using it both to mock the UK’s hypocrisy and to justify the censorship of their own people.
Now imagine the next time a newspaper such as China’s Southern Weekly steps out of line, and a senior Communist Party member calls for the head of a reporter or editor. Should a Foreign Office official even attempt to condemn such censorship, be in no doubt that the authorities in China will point to Featherstone’s intemperate tweet and say the UK is in no position to lecture.
There’s the international aspect. Now look at the domestic. Independent editor Chris Blackhurst has said he fears that politicians will use post-Leveson statute to “wreak their revenge” on the press. Speaking on Sky News, Blackhurst commented:
“Once a draft Bill goes into the Commons and the Lords and once they get their teeth into it they can add all sorts of amendments.
“That’s where the revenge will happen. That’s one reason why some of us are very keen that there should not be statute.
“It’s not just expenses, let’s not forget there are a lot of MPs, all sorts of shenanigans down the years, many of which we all know about and have been highlighted, and they can’t wait. They are sort of ‘bring it on’.”
Pro-statute campaigners such as Hugh Grant tell us that we should not be alarmed by the prospect of a new press law. But when, even before such a law is debated, a government minister thinks it’s OK to interfere with the press in this manner, why should we trust politicians with free speech?
Max Mosley, Hugh Tomlinson QC, Suzanne Moore and David Price QC debated privacy, free speech and a feral press at Index on Censorship’s event at the London School of Economics on Tuesday evening, chaired by Index editor Jo Glanville. Reports of the event can be found at:
If you missed it or want to listen again, the video and audio are embedded below:
The debate was held to mark the launch of the latest issue of the Index on Censorship magazine Privacy is dead! Long live privacy, which includes an interview with Sir David Eady, the High Court judge by legal commentator and writer Joshua Rozenberg. The new issue is available now.
