Picking up where I left off on yesterday’s post and comments.
Rachelle asks about the notion of “safe space,” and how it is proliferated in creative writing workshop. She asks how I conduct workshop, whether I use the term, which I do not. I do use the term, “professionalism,” in which criticism is not leveled as personal attack, or with mean-spirited intentions, regardless of differing belief systems, life experience, political values, and aesthetic preferences. When I say “professionalism,” on the first day of workshop, I see a lot of assenting nods, nods of recognition. Yes, in practicing becoming professional writers, we acknowledge there are proper codes of conduct.
Out of curiosity, I googled “safe space,” and the results are as follows — shelters for survivors of abuse, or community organizations serving and advocating for LGBT youth, especially those who have suffered and endured bullying. I absolutely agree that these safe spaces, social services, political and public health advocacy are necessary for survival. I understand the value of encouraging writing here, its importance in empowering communities so silenced, folks who must tell their own stories so that they do not disappear, cease to exist, continue to be buried, bullied, ravaged.
It’s true. Everybody can write. Everybody has a voice.
But I am talking about professional writers, and those who aspire to become professional writers — this is a different community, where certainly there are overlaps in its population and value systems. The difference is that in professional writers’ communities, pushing and hard criticism are necessary in order to complete and polish the work in preparation for publication. I believe pushing and asking hard questions do not equal personal attack or mean-spirited negativity.
Of course, personal attack and mean-spirited negativity have always been rampant in e-world. When so many more of us used to blog regularly, “Anonymous,” and other people not using their real names/identities would drop the meanest, most hate-filled, even violent comments in our comment sections. “Anonymous” was really brave, and would fill up our e-spaces with rant, most of which was unfocused nonsense. On my own blog, I deleted these comments. There was no good reason to keep them. This is not censorship. This is my space; no one is preventing anyone from ranting in their own spaces.
But the violence, racism, and misogyny in those comments were truly so alarming that a lot of bloggers retreated, blogged only about benign non-issues, became reticent to state any of their own opinions, changed their settings to “private,” or stopped blogging altogether. Bloggers migrated to Facebook and posted personal content for friends only. Safe space. Any of us who continued being outspoken were policed, not by “Anonymous,” but by our own. Safe space.
The hate-mongering, violence-mongering, racist, misogynist “Anonymous” won.
I think it’s fair to ask, what do we do about this? What is important here?
For me, it’s not to give in to external and internal intimidation and bullying.
My writing would be compromised.
My soul would hate it and hate me.
And it would be a total disrespect to all of our literary forefathers and foremothers (see Audre Lorde, above) who really, truly suffered and fought so that we could go to school, write our own stories and see them published, read, and taught to the next generations, to have a voice.
I’ve never had a very great sense of the degree to which the kind of “Anonymous” comment harassment has been the reason, or a large reason, why anyone has stopped blogging, or how many people may have done so. Though it for sure has happened, and I have no doubt about the things you say here.
I do know of instances where poet bloggers were at least on the verge of no longer blogging, precisely because of hate comments, anonymous or otherwise. And there’s the (relatively, in blog world terms anyway) famous example of Ron Silliman turning off the comments in his blog a while back, after someone told him that she had decided to stop writing poetry after an ugly exchange in Silliman’s comment box. One specific instance, though a significant one I think.
In my own blog, from the time I first set up the blog and started blogging (seven years ago now), I’ve never allowed anonymous comments. Initially that meant that only people with Blogger blogs could comment in mine, and that considerably limited who could comment, though eventually as Google/Blogger expanded the range of possible settings (including an option to allow comments with “open ID,” basically anybody with a website address), that made it possible for a wider range of people to comment. But I still don’t allow anonymous comments.
And the reason I haven’t allowed anonymous comments is because I’ve guessed it would at least cut down on the potential number of hate comments. And it hasn’t been an issue in my blog in the time I’ve been blogging, though that may be because the quantity of comments I get is pretty small, that as much as anything.
It clearly is possible to talk about very sensitive topics, and to comment on each other’s poetry and writing and opinions, without making personal attacks. What’s so difficult about saying (for instance) “I disagree,” or “I feel differently”?
In talking with someone else about something they’ve written, I tend to put it in terms such as, “If it were my poem, I might do this [change a couple of words, reverse the order of a couple of lines, make a description of something a little more explicit, etc. -- whatever the case may be]. If there’s something in a poem that seems unclear to me, I might say something like “This is how I’m reading these three lines, this is what I’m understanding the poem to be saying here — is that what you intended?” All of this assuming that the person has asked for my comments, or that we understand that’s the kind of conversation we’re having. (It’s been a long time since I’ve been in an actual writing group.)
I’ve personally known writers (Thomas McGrath and Meridel LeSueur come to mind offhand) who were banned from employment (“blacklisted,” though I’ve long felt that’s a problematic word because North American culture demonizes the color black so reflexively) in the United States because of their politics, and with each of them their writing was at least one reason the government targeted them. I myself have, a couple of times in my life, received telephone threats either because of my politics or, in one case, racists (i.e white supremacist) threats because I went to a racially integrated high school.
I would not in any way suggest that threats and harassment because of one’s politics are in themselves identical to harassment that is specifically racist or mysogynist, however much they may be related. I certainly make no special case for myself in any regard.
I’m also, as I write this, thinking of the widespread issue of censorship and suppression by means of neglect or indifference — I’m not sure if it will ever be possible to gauge the number of writers and artists whose work has been silenced, or whose voice has been shrunken in scope, because of editors and publishers and reading curators choosing not to publish them or provide venues for them for similar reasons of racism or mysogyny or politics.
I do feel that it’s essential for me, as you said here, not to give in to external and internal indimidation and bullying. And similarly, not to give in to external and internal silence and neglect. Likewise, to give in would be (as you say) a total disrespect of our literary forefathers and foremothers, for all of the reasons you give here.
I really appreciate what you’ve said here.
Lyle, I owe you some responses! Apologies, and promise to do so soon!