Go Ask Joanne

Last month a San Francisco bookstore announced that it would no longer carry Joanne Rowling's books because of her anti-transgender campaigning.  This caused some concern, some of it disingenuous, as I argued at the time.  I didn't mention this bit, but it's an excellent example of the way people distort things, deliberately or not:

On Monday, Booksmith provided a list on its website of fantasy books similar to the “Harry Potter” series for readers who are interested in alternatives, sparking some backlash and a debate about whether bookstores should make decisions about which books their customers can access.

“So you’re going to curate your selections to only sell books by authors that you agree with politically,” one commenter wrote on social media. “Good to know. I’ll be shopping elsewhere.”

Recommending some books rather than others doesn't deny "access", nor does suggesting alternatives; bookstores and libraries do both, and uninterested customers can ignore them in favor of what they do like.  Ask a clerk or a librarian if you don't know where to look.

Which reminds me of a recent thread from Twitter/X, intended to explain why guys aren't reading books anymore. "Exhibit A", a display of current fantasy fiction:

You see, if there are any books in the store or library that don't interest them, men and boys just have to flee the place before they are swamped in girl cooties.  When called out, the poster replied "I think we need more diversity in traditional publishing today."

There has been a lot of fussing over the alleged shortage of "literary fiction" by straight white males nowadays, and I've been meaning to write something about that.  As numerous writers have pointed out, it's not even certain that there is such a shortage; the alarmists have not cited any actual data in support of their claim, and have been openly impressionistic about it, it's just how it seems / feels to them.  But I'll try to return to that issue some other time.

I'm not very interested in the kind of fantasy fiction on display in the photo above, and I've read a fair sample.  It's not because it's girly, but because I'm put off by the preachiness and New-Agey spirituality common to the subgenre, and the formulaic though professional storytelling.  I'll keep on sampling, though, because some of it made a powerful impression on me: Katherine Addison's The Goblin Emperor (2014) for example, and Victoria A. Goddard's The Hands of the Emperor (2018).  Both authors have published more work set in their respective universes, which I've enjoyed, but The Goblin Emperor keeps drawing me back; I've already read it three or four times.  The trouble is that there is so much being published, and fantasy isn't the only area important to me.

I've given up any reservations I might have had about the ethics of boycotting Rowling's work, though, now that she has urged a boycott herself, of the British retailer Marks and Spencer for having a transgender employee in the lingerie department.  I'm not going to try to disentangle the facts from Rowling's agenda in the case.  The point is that what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the ... goose.

And when I began writing this post I remembered something else about Rowling: she adopted the initials J. K. instead of her actual name when the first Harry Potter book was published, at her publisher's urging.  The idea was that a girl's name as author might alienate potential boy readers. Not unreasonably for an unknown debut writer, she went along with the ploy.  (Playboy magazine pressured Ursula K. Le Guin into using her initials when they published a story by her in 1968, thirty years before Harry Potter.)  Her treacherous chromosomes were never really a secret, and the series became a worldwide phenomenon.  It's significant, though, that when it came time to publish her first non-Potter novel, she chose not only another pseudonym but an unambiguously masculine one.  The first Robert Galbraith book didn't sell well until she, uh, came out as its author. Not to make too big a thing of it, but Rowling seems to have a penchant for gender disguise to mislead potential readers. Shouldn't she stop pretending that she can be a man for paraliterary purposes?  One could probably make a case that Harry Potter was the wedge that led to the invasion of commercial fantasy by women, and terrifying, emasculating book displays that cause men to give up on reading altogether.

All I Really Want to Do...

There was a flurry of concern online last week about a San Francisco bookstore that declared it would no longer sell books by J. K. Rowling. The store made the decision after Rowling, a billionaire and anti-trans troll, announced that "she would use her personal wealth to fund the J.K. Rowling Women’s Fund, which describes itself as a legal fund to support 'individuals and organisations fighting to retain women’s sex-based rights in the workplace, in public life, and in protected female spaces.'"

There are valid concerns about such a move, but most of the discussion I saw exhibited the usual confusion about freedom of expression, censorship, and gender. People seem to be overlooking the fact that booksellers are also book buyers, and they're no more obligated to buy a given book than their customers are. It would be worrisome if Amazon or Barnes & Noble were to decide not to carry books by a certain author, but that's not likely to happen, and I'm not sure I'd object if they did.  Every case has to be evaluated on its own merits.  In this case, Rowling has made her personal brand inseparable from her politics, rather as Elon Musk has done, or Orson Scott Card before them. Uncomfortable as they are, boycotts are a valid tactic, even when I oppose specific cases.

I wrote about this at length a decade ago, 

when a new GMO-free grocery was targeted for boycott, because the owners had posted on their Facebook page that they opposed same-sex marriage and "one of the store’s co-owners linked to a libertarian article arguing that stores should have the legal right to refuse to serve gay customers."  It seems to me that since the owners took pains to state their beliefs publicly, it's acceptable for gay and pro-gay potential customers to react to those beliefs.  In particular, if the owners of a business declare publicly that they want the "right" not to serve me, I have the right to take them at their word, and not give them my business.  If they don't want my money, far be it from me to give it to them!...

[Comics artist and blogger Barry Deutsch] drew a distinction between choosing not to patronize a business whose owners have views one abhors (which is okay) and making others aware of the owners' abhorrent views and presenting a more or less united front of people who choose not to patronize that business (which is not okay); I'm having trouble grasping where the difference lies.  It's not as if we're talking about someone's personal, privately-held political beliefs; we're talking about someone's beliefs that they publicized on their business's Facebook page, thus advertising their politics along with their business. It's they who chose to connect their business and their politics. [Barry] argued that a boycott is not a good way to persuade the owners that they're wrong; well, an antigay declaration on Facebook is not a good way to persuade potential customers to patronize one's business. One commenter complained that a boycott isn't meant to persuade but to coerce and punish; I think he's right, but I'm not sure that's necessarily a bad thing.  Again, [Barry] doesn't mind my taking my money elsewhere, and I wouldn't be doing that to persuade them either.

It seemed to me that the people who called the bookstore's action a "ban" were the same kind of people who would deny that getting books removed from public libraries or public school libraries is a ban. After all, they say reasonably, if you want your kids to read filth you can always buy it for them on Amazon; it's not censorship to remove books from a library, since no library can stock all books.  They conveniently forget that the pressure groups want laws passed that will force librarians to remove books they dislike.  That's government action, and by their own definition it's censorship.

I've been wondering how younger kids feel about Rowling's stance and actions.  After all, the Harry Potter books are getting long in the tooth now; the first was published in 1997, the last in the series in 2007.  Will a new generation of kids be swayed by the batty opinions of their parents' favorite author, or will they be turned off by them?  One independent bookstore's boycott won't affect Rowling's net worth, but a generation's antipathy might. 

Circling the Wagons; or, All These People Who Aren't My Boss

I've been meaning to write about freedom of expression here for some time.  Several recent events pushed me - Trump claiming that Twitter or Facebook had censored him; my Twitter account locked for a few weeks; etc.  I'll try to return to these matters later, but today the Twitterverse is aflame over an open letter published by Harper's Magazine and signed by numerous celebrities, among them Noam Chomsky.

I probably shouldn't write about it, because I agree with those people who've declared the letter a distraction, like the Gravel Teens: "pretty incredible that amid mass joblessness and a deadly pandemic all our 'leading intellectuals' can talk about is the deadly threat of 'cancel culture'".  But one: this isn't entirely fair: many of the signatories, including Chomsky, are talking about joblessness, a deadly pandemic, climate change, war, and other important issues.  Many of us can multitask.  Two: it's clear that many of our random non-intellectuals are all too ready to be distracted by it.  Include me in that company if you wish.

Among the many issues raised by the responses I'm seeing to this rather vacuous and dishonest document is the anger, even fury, over it.  There's a lot of babble about "thought control" and "manufacturing consent" on the Internet, and whatever else you can say, this open letter doesn't do either.  The signatories are a motley bunch, with a variety of complaints and motives, but the letter represents an Establishment that is crumbling under the weight of its own incompetence, so it's lashing out at its critics.  I can point and giggle and make rude noises at them, or I can ignore them; I don't think they will make anything happen by attaching their names to this complaint.  I think that many of their left critics have been echoing their position: these people are trying to silence me!  Perhaps they are, but I don't think they will succeed.

In particular many left-identified persons are attacking Chomsky for setting himself up as some kind of shining example of the Left, or anarchism, whatever, and this old guy who doesn't know anything about the Internet is telling them what to think!!!  Before this particular kerfluffle, Chomsky was getting heat for arguing that people should vote strategically, as if anyone had to do what he said.  I've written about this before, about people who say that Chomsky treats his opponents with contempt (oh noes!), or that he demands unquestioning obedience to his authoritarian declarations (false), that you can't disagree with him (also false).  Interestingly, these claims come from individuals on the right, the center, and the left. Whatever influence Chomsky has, he can't make you do anything: you don't have to listen to him, you don't have to read him, you certainly don't have to agree with him.  Yes, if you're on the left, you'll probably encounter people who will cite him as Scripture. which is probably annoying, but that just gives you an opportunity to refute him -- if you can; rational debate is hard work.  But I don't see how it could be more annoying than encountering people who attack him inaccurately and irrationally, and I run into a lot of people like that, in person or online.

I respect Chomsky, I honor his dedication and persistence, but he's not my boss and I don't always agree with him.  If I feel strongly enough, I write a critique of him. Therefore I don't feel threatened when he says something I disagree with.  Funny that so many bold free-thinkers have such a different reaction.