Speak Free, Evie B!

I am very pleased to welcome author James Christie to this site to share his thoughts following the publication of the Open Letter to the Society of Authors. Over to you, James!

Like Julie Bindel and others, I’d been feeling a bit of “deep disquiet” with the Society of Authors myself the week before the Harris/Rowling row hit the streets, so I think I’d better put my views on the table.

And more importantly, ram home the point that if all my fellow authors really believe in freedom of speech, then they should defend to the death my right to say them.

It also strikes me as faintly ludicrous that I feel like I’m risking abuse and career catastrophe because (among other things) I’m simply going to tell you all that I vote Conservative these days.

That surely shouldn’t be a hanging offence, but I’ve met a few too many self-righteous nerks who seem to think it ought to be.

I also suffered through the Scottish independence referendum and Brexit and, particularly over the past ten years, it’s begun to feel like society is stuffed full of gruesome twitterati who cannot tolerate the slightest display of dissent or any espousal of political opinion different from their own.

Frankly, it’s been like listening to a bunch of egotistical kids who can’t ever accept they’re wrong about anything.

To work out how we should best be able to coexist in a tolerant society and actually allow freedom of speech, I had to go right back to basics.

Read this carefully, and live by it.

In a biography of Voltaire written in 1903, Evelyn Beatrice Hall wrote:

“I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”

This quote is sometimes wrongly attributed to Voltaire, but as I understand it, this is the best definition of freedom of speech there is. This is the Alpha and the Omega, the primary source material, this really does do what it says on the tin. That’s it. End of. There’s nowhere else to go.

And I’ve scarcely seen it cited even once in the last decade.

So, ladies and gentlemen, if you really believe in freedom of speech, this is where you start and this is what you live by.

Regarding the Harris/Rowling row itself, I will say only this:

According to the Independent, “many people suggested that Harris’s poll and follow-up tweet were a dig at Rowling. They interpreted the ‘show me, dammit’ comment as asking for proof of the death threats. Harris has denied this, saying that she had offered support to Rowling and ‘everyone in a similar situation’.

However, in a statement shared with The Times, Rowling said that she had received no communication from Harris when she had received rape or death threats.”

I believe J. K. Rowling. I do not believe Joanne Harris.

But I refuse to get dragged into a minute examination of every claim and counter-claim. I will simply say that I demand the Society of Authors live up to its fine words on freedom of speech in the Where We Stand section of the website.

Put simply, the only thing I ever want to hear from Joanne Harris & Co. in this regard is.

“I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”

Now I’ll put my own beliefs and political opinions on the table:

I am gender-critical.

I do not believe in gender identity.

I do not believe sex is a social construct.

I do not believe that men and women can change their biological sex.

I do not believe in gender self-identification.

In the wake of the transgender “debate,” I did my research and made my decisions. I support feminists, lesbians, gays, bisexuals and people with genuine gender dysphoria.

I voted No to independence in the 2014 Scottish referendum.

I voted to leave at Brexit.

I vote Conservative.

I am a white, middle-aged, heterosexual male whose politics are middle of the road with a touch to the Right. Not the Left.

I, too, am an author.

This article is not intended to start a debate or a discourse. I’ve gone back to the basics and I have shown them to you. The only response I want to hear from anyone is along the lines of:

“We do not share your beliefs or the way in which you choose to vote, but we will defend to the death your democratic right to those beliefs and choices.”

I myself learnt to live by Hall’s principle. If the Scottish independence and Brexit votes had gone the other way, I would have accepted and defended the outcome; and although I was no fan of Jeremy Corbyn, I never disputed the fact that he was the legally elected leader of the Labour Party.

I am semi-retired and don’t much mind if this finishes off my career, although any intolerant little nerk should take careful note of the fact that I was also diagnosed with autism twenty years ago. You will be attacking someone with a disability who’s in a minority.

You will also automatically prove to me that all your fine words don’t mean squat; and that the Society of Authors has indeed been (to quote Julie Bindel) “captured by gender ideologues who brook no debate and are not prepared to support authors who fall foul of online bullies.”

It’s very, very easy to write down lots of fine words. It’s one hell of a lot harder to live up to them, but live up to them you must.

To sum it up succinctly, I will conclude by quoting Captain Kirk’s own fine words from the Star Trek episode The Corbomite Maneuver, in which he and the crew had been royally pissed about by some arrogant arsehole of an alien (or so it seemed) and then they had to save him…

“Gentlemen, what is the mission of this vessel of ours? It is to seek out and make contact with life forms wherever we find them. … Life. An opportunity to demonstrate what our high-sounding words mean. Any questions?”

So what do all your high-sounding words really mean? Do they really apply to everyone, or do you think they should be reserved only for those who hold views of which you approve?

James Christie                                                                                                                        

3rd September 2022

Born in Shropshire in 1964, James graduated from college in Cheshire with a degree in creative writing. After travelling around Australia for a year, he went to library school in 1992, catalogued the private library collection of a Scottish stately home and worked as a law librarian in Glasgow.

In 2002 James began to take an interest in Drusilla from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and wrote a quartet of fan-fiction stories (Drusilla’s Roses, Drusilla’s Redemption, Drusilla Revenant and Spike & Dru : the Graveyard of Empires). He subsequently sent them to Juliet Landau who played Drusilla in the show and they commenced an email correspondence.

The story of James’ journey across America to meet Miss Landau, Dear Miss Landau, was published by Chaplin Books in 2012 and very well-reviewed on BBC Radio 4's A Good Read.

James is also the author of The Legend of John Macnab, which publicised the iconic but obscure Book of Deer and was published in 2015.