Speaking of The Letter, from this interview (hold that thought), I learn of The Other Letter, written in response. It does not begin slowly.
On Tuesday, 153 of the most prominent journalists, authors, and writers, including J. K. Rowling, Malcolm Gladwell, and David Brooks, published an open call for civility in Harper’s Magazine. They write, in the pages of a prominent magazine that’s infamous for being anti-union, not paying its interns, and firing editors over editorial disagreements with the publisher: “The free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted.”
(This is like that satisfying line about Warren Ellis in The Daily Beast the other day.)
The Other Letter takes to task The Letter’s refusal to acknowledge “how marginalized voices have been silenced for generations in journalism, academia, and publishing” or engage “with the problem of power: who has it and who does not”. It then proceeds to take each of The Letter’s “six nonspecific examples” in turn, arguing that they do not, in fact, amount to a “trend”.
But back to the interview which alerted me to The Other Letter, primarily this bit from its summary.
On the criticism that some of the signers have been accused of transphobia and that their presence on the letter is seen as excusing their bigotry
These are principles that anyone could sign and that everybody should actually be able to uphold. And I think that part of what the letter is trying to do is trying to argue against the idea that you have to look around and Google every statement that anybody on the list has ever said to know if you feel comfortable signing it. The point is that that’s irrelevant.
At one point in the interview Williams suggests that the issue is as simple as being able to say the sun is shining when it’s true, despite the fact that a bigot also might be saying that the sun is shining. This is revealing of exactly why The Letter is troubling and problematic.
What’s really happening with The Letter is that by making it “anodyne”, people who use their voices to punch up (or at least to speak up for people getting punched from above) would feel comfortable signing on, whereas the many, many signers who either often use their voice to punch down (e.g. Pinker, Rowling, Singal, Sullivan) or use their voices to preach moderation and civility to people getting punched from above (e.g. Brooks, Frum) would be able to use the former group’s presence as a kind of shield for their behavior.
The Other Letter is exactly correct: “[The Letter] is actively informed by the actions of its writers, many of whom have championed the free market of ideas, but actively ensured that it is free only for them.”