Ethical publishing, and the bleach-blond elephant in the room

Roxane Gay, the author of “Bad Feminist,” is someone I greatly admire—both as a writer and as a person. She was recently set to have a book published by Simon & Schuster. She decided to cancel the deal upon learning that TED Books, a Simon & Schuster imprint, is going to also publish a project by Milo Yiannopoulos. In her words, “I can’t in good conscious let them publish it while they also publish Milo.” (While her book wasn’t going to be published by the same specific group that published Milo, there is a company link. TED is a Simon & Schuster offshoot that publishes works by conservative authors.)

I have heard of other authors making similar decisions. There are Thought Catalog writers who have pulled their work from the site because it provided a platform for some sexist, homophobic, and otherwise bigoted perspectives.

This is a decision I respect, and I understand the reasoning. This is a self-sacrificing choice for an author. They’re losing exposure and sometimes money for the sake of their principles. Roxane Gay acknowledged that she is financially comfortable enough to do this. She said she is “in a fortunate enough position to make this decision, so I’m putting my money where my mouth is.” Her ideals, combined with her understanding that not everybody can afford to make monetary decisions based on ideals, is one of the many reasons I respect her.

And if I were in that position, I am not sure I would make the same choice.

Part of this is because I am financially dependent and have nearly no income. I’m also an unknown writer with very few platforms. However, there’s a second reason I might make a different choice.

Milo Yiannopoulos is a thoroughly repugnant person who is not just an irritation, but a danger. He is a spokesman for the neo Nazi movement. If every author who stands against his beliefs were to pull their books from a publication, one of two things would happen.

Scenario one: The publishing company will stop selling his writings, and the writings of any of his peers. They will cease to give him a platform, and he will receive no more money from them.

Scenario two: With all progressive (or at least not regressive) voices gone, what will remain of that company’s clientele will be hateful, bigoted perspectives. They will become the voice of the company. In order to keep their business afloat, they will cater solely to that crowd and seek out more far-right extremists. Far-right fanatics who were previously obscure will then gain more publicity and a bigger following. It will become an expanding alt-right echo chamber.

Hopefully Scenario One would be the result, but I would be too afraid of the second scenario to risk that. If Scenario Two were to happen, I don’t believe in any way that the authors who pulled their books would be at fault. It is not their fault that there are scary hateful extremists in the world, and it is understandable they would want no affiliation. This is more than understandable; it’s ethical.

We would be hard pressed to find a company that has never published anything offensive, no matter how many forward-thinking authors they also include. Regardless, there’s a difference between publishing a garden variety “family values” crank, and publishing a Nazi sympathizer. Unfortunately, a company could point to their progressive authors whenever they want to evade responsibility for Milo. They could say, “We’re not sexist or racist or anti-Semitic; we published Roxane Gay!” Roxane Gay was most likely aware of that, and chose to circumvent the possibility.

It is also possible that a far-right author could refuse to publish with Simon & Schuster because they publish liberals. They could just as easily say, “I won’t work with them, because I want no affiliation with leftists.” The more outnumbered they are, the less comfortable they feel in that space.

I commend Gay for that value judgment, as well as anyone else who would share that conviction. Notwithstanding, I wouldn't fault a person who said, “I’m not going to take my voice away from this company. It contains a regressive voice, but it can also contain mine. Mine will counter the ignorance. And hopefully more voices will join my own, so my peers within this company will outnumber the bigots.”

Either decision can be based on honorable principles. I just hope the people with those principles win out, wherever they choose to publish their work.

The ethics of size

When someone looks at a massive work of human effort, like architecture or a giant mural, they feel a sense of awe because it reminds them of their own smallness in proportion to the world. But what they’re looking at isn’t natural expanse; it’s human bigness. Maybe it’s not a reminder of our insignificance, but the opposite. We wonder if we also contain multitudes, or if we’ll always be microscopic compared to the neighboring giants.

I voiced this to Mike and he sees it differently. He thinks that when we look at human creations, we’re affected more by physical scale than by thoughts of psychological size/effort. He then showed me a game he’s been playing called Katamari Forever, in which the player starts out tiny and steadily grows bigger as they roll up their surroundings into a giant ball that eventually becomes a sacrifice to a god and is made into a star. When they’re smaller, they’re dominated by their surroundings and are easy prey. But then as they grow and start to absorb people, and then trees and buildings and eventually sea monsters and floating islands and planets, everything starts to look more abstract to the point where individuals don’t even register anymore. And then you’re reminded of your smallness again when you present the ball of everything to the deity, and he accepts or rejects it seemingly on a whim.

I’d like to believe that people, and living beings in general, interact on a more profound level than predator vs. prey, and that we can resist the urge to crush or absorb others once we reach enormity. And that it takes something other than intimidation to remind us of compassion. I like that game, but it seems to reduce consciousness to those binary terms, and I’m not sure I identify with that.

I'm intrigued by the common and immediate assumption that if a grown adult behaves badly, they must have had bad parents. I can understand why someone might believe that about a child--even though all children sometimes misbehave. But while our upbringings do affect us a great deal in adult life, we can consciously choose to be better or worse than how we were raised. The assumption that shitty behavior is always an outgrowth of shitty parents offers a sense of control. It placates us into believing that as long as we are good, we'll raise good people. That line of thinking is interesting if you follow it into a family timeline. According to its internal logic, a person is bad or good because of their parents--and their parents would have learned those habits from their own parents in turn. So nobody is fully accountable for their actions, but they are fully accountable for the actions of others.

The Iconoclast Effect, or how Lisa Simpson teaches us to kill our heroes

            We've all become disillusioned with a personal hero at some point, whether it was someone we knew or someone idolized by many. When I hear a news story exposing a beloved figure for corruption, I'm often hesitant to share it. Not because the truth is secondary to the ideals a person may represent—it's not—but because it's painful to see their admirers' respect shattered. I've never wanted to be a killjoy. There are times when I wonder if it's really worth posting about the less positive aspects of Pope Francis, seeing as he (or at least his public image) brings hope to so many LGBT Catholics. Or if linking to articles about Mother Theresa's exploitation of the poor is too demoralizing to people who are currently living in poverty and hold her dear as an icon. Or if talking about the fact that John Lennon beat his wife is discouraging to people who find solace in his beautiful, although hypocritical, pleas for peace. I wonder if the end justifies the means, when those who admire these public heroes don't actually promote corruption or bigotry. They admire those figures because they believe them to stand for compassion. But if a person supports someone who commits harmful acts or holds toxic beliefs, then are they inadvertently promoting that same negativity? That may be the case, especially if victims of their behavior are still alive and continue to be affected. This doesn't mean it's wrong to enjoy a person's work, as the work itself may transcend its creator. But it does mean it's best not to see the creator as noble or to excuse their behavior because of what they've made.
          This always makes me think of a Simpsons episode from 1996 called "Lisa the Iconoclast." In the storyline, Lisa discovers that a historical town hero named Jebediah Springfield was actually a fraud. The whole town has revered him for a century, to the point of having a local holiday and parade in his name. Lisa tries to expose the truth about Jebediah with limited success. She writes an essay which is met with dismay from her teacher. She makes flyers to hang up on the Kwik-E-Mart windows, but Apu panics and forbids her to display them. At the end, she's standing in front of the parade and prepared to make a public statement. She's about to announce to the town that Jebediah was a murderous pirate operating under a false identity. But at the last minute, Lisa changes her statement and tells them he was great. Afterwards, the head of the Springfield historical society asks her why she did it. Lisa answers that it was more important to keep the townspeople happy than to expose Jebediah for who he was, because his legend inspires them and provides a sense of community.
           This ending bothered me a great deal as a child. I didn't see it as upholding a loftier goal, but as backing down on her principles. Springfield hero-worshipped a mass murderer and lived in ignorance. What could be more important than the truth?
           In hindsight, I see this episode as a lot more ethically complex. None of the people who had been robbed or otherwise wronged by Jebediah Springfield were still alive, and neither was anyone who would have been aware of his crimes. Placing the flyers on display in the Kwik-E-Mart would have likely jeopardized Apu's safety—not only because of the message, but because he was an Indian immigrant living in Springfield. Their region was insular and strongly focused on town pride. He was already seen as an outlier, so granting a platform for criticism of Springfield's beloved founder would have further reinforced that status. He would have gone from an outcast to a pariah. Lisa herself would have caused outrage, but most of it would have been directed at her parents. After all, her character is only eight years old. Everyone sees a young child's opinions as a direct reflection of their parents'.
            So, in Lisa's situation, I understand why she reached the conclusion she did and decided it was not a cause worth pursuing. The ending still leaves me unsatisfied, though. It feels like an injustice, both to Lisa's diligent efforts and to Jebediah's victims, to see her bury that fiery righteousness in order to appease the majority.
           In my imagination, there's an alternate world in which the Simpsons universe is real and the characters aren't suspended in time. Lisa grows up and publishes her research, which has not gone to waste. She doesn't have to announce it in front of an idealistic crowd, but it's there for those who want to find it. That's the ending I want to believe.
           And, in the end, that leads me to my conclusion about exposing flawed cultural icons. I think it's generally the ethical thing to do, but with caution and sensitivity and respect for the faith their admirers hold in their ideals. It may be difficult to find that balance, but it's worth striving for. It means knocking over a house of cards, but leaving the deck stacked for a more stable foundation.

Passivity vs. Kindness

         Alongside the avenue of "women only date jerks," there's a common complaint that "She said she's not into him because he's 'too nice.'" I have heard people describe others as "too nice," although I've never heard a woman say she was disinterested in a man for that reason. Because it's such a commonly quoted basis for rejection, though, it's worth examining.

        Every time I have ever heard anybody described as "too nice," the person making the criticism was not saying the other was overly good-hearted, too considerate, or had too much integrity. An excess of those traits is impossible. What they were expressing was that the person was overly passive. And, while many use the word "nice" when they really mean "passive," saying someone is too passive is not just another way of saying "nice." While the traits can overlap, there is a distinction between kindness and passivity. And, for that reason, "Don't be too passive" doesn't mean "Be an asshole." It's not a spectrum; it's a whole different thing.

        "Too nice" is meant to convey that someone echoes everything you say without ever voicing a differing point of view, even when they disagree. It means they constantly apologize for things that are not their fault and they don't speak up for themselves or for others who are being mistreated, out of fear of confrontation. It means they might welcome harmful people into their own lives, or into the lives of those close to them, because they think it's "mean" to establish boundaries—which can end up causing others' boundaries to be violated as well. It means they follow another person around without seeming to have any interests, beliefs, or passions of their own. Being bland, overly meek, or clingy isn't the same as being "nice." Sometimes those qualities are actually motivated by self-interest, rather than a pure desire to please others.

         It's similar to the way that self-abasement is sometimes a defense mechanism, rather than a lack of ego (and a complete absence of ego is not something I would recommend trying to achieve, anyway). If you castigate yourself first, it can insulate you from being criticized by others. If you preemptively decide you're going to fail, it can exempt you from having to try. This is not true for everyone who has low self-esteem, but I have seen self-chastisement used defensively many times, and have caught myself doing it for those same reasons.

         You can be a good person who also happens to be passive, but passivity doesn't equate to goodness. And most people who call someone "too nice" are referring to the former quality, not the latter. Additionally, I've noticed that excessive passivity tends to be discouraged in men but praised in women, when every person should be encouraged to stand up for themselves and to have their own identity.

Can you believe terrible things without being a terrible person?

I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to definitively answer that, since illustrative examples are include too much gray area for any person of any ideology to feel fully comfortable with.

Hating already-marginalized groups is certainly more likely to lead somebody to do terrible things. As I’ve said before, beliefs don’t exist independently of consequences. They profoundly affect the way you treat everyone around you. People of all belief structures will often say their worldview has brought them peace, but inner peace counts for nothing if it doesn’t also entail bringing that peace to the outside. By “peace,” I don’t mean complacency or avoidance of conflict if those conflicts are needed to bring about positive change. I mean making an active effort to comfort people, to encourage them, to expose abuse and to do our best to end injustice. I mean motivating others toward goals that will instill social peace in the long run and right the wrongs in society.

If someone claims to have “inner peace” on account of their political or religious perspective but then only uses that perspective to make people feel hopeless or bring agitation for no reason, then their “peace” is not productive. I’m thinking of Christians who tell non-Christians they’re going to hell. I’m thinking of atheists who troll internet prayer groups and tell someone whose mother has cancer that there’s no use praying for her because heaven is a fairy tale and she’ll only end up as worm food. I’m thinking of conservatives who proudly embrace bigotry because they think it makes them brave and unique, free from the “politically correct” masses. I’m thinking of far-leftists who tell more mainstream liberals that all of their views and causes are worthless unless they become radicalized and embrace Leninism. I have met people who fit every single one of those descriptions.

I used to say you can tell you’ve become an extremist if you think it’s impossible to go too far within your own belief structure, and if you think anyone who disagrees with you is extreme. I still maintain that for the most part, although I don’t think it’s possible to go “too far” with the belief in equality, because equality by definition is fair. Most people will say they champion equality, but will differ in their ideas on how to achieve it—as well as in their perspective of who is actually being persecuted. We all believe we root for the underdog, but we’re largely defined by who we believe the underdog to be.

Even white supremacists think they are defenders of equality. They’re convinced that the way to achieve it is to restrict the rights and freedoms of non-white people, because they are genuinely certain that racial minorities are privileged and that whites are being oppressed by said minorities, as well as by self-hating white liberals. You see it in their propaganda all the time. “Anti-racist is really code for anti-white.” “Diversity=white genocide.” Of course their beliefs are not deserving of equal consideration or respect. They’re wrong, plain and simple. Wrong in a way that’s empirically and statistically provable, as well as morally bankrupt. They have a long-standing history of doing horrendous things in defense of their beliefs.

But I think it’s important for everyone to remind ourselves that even if we believe the right thing, we’re also capable of taking it in negative directions.

In recent years, I have been called an extreme ultraliberal. Maybe I am—although I have only been called that by people who are far-right conservatives, rather than those I would consider mainstream. Maybe the fact that I see them as radical means I am radical, or maybe they really are extreme. But I do know there are people who are further left than myself, and further left than I’d strive to be. For example, I’m not a socialist. I have socialist friends whom I highly respect, but it’s not a camp I fall into. I was raised intensely conservative. My father used to say that most Democrats are closet socialists, and that socialism will lead to communism in the same way that HIV often leads to AIDS. He said that communism is socialism perfected. I grew up fully believing that, but then I met plenty of liberals who don’t identify as socialists or communists. I met socialists who say that communism goes too far. Eventually I became liberal, and I recognize the difference. Liberalism is by no means a monolith.

To my dad’s credit, he never discouraged me from making friends with leftists. Some of his closest friends are liberal, and he once told me that sometimes it’s not worth it to argue with people you like. The lessons I’ve chosen to retain from my upbringing are scarce, but that’s one I still carry.

One of the problems with believing liberalism=socialism is the assumption that all socialists are socially progressive. The Nazis are solid proof that it’s not true. Many conservatives like to hold up Nazi Germany as a socialist boogeyman, but their beliefs and practices were heavily socially conservative. They restricted abortions and birth control for the Aryan women they encouraged to reproduce, while forcing eugenics on those they deemed “undesirable”—the non-white, non-Christian, mentally ill, LGBT, poor, and disabled populations, all of whom are still popular scapegoats for social conservatives today. They used fundamentalist Christianity and an entirely literal interpretation of the Bible to drum up hatred of Jews and other non-Christians, which is still a common tactic among the religious right. I am not going to make the same sweeping assumptions about All Conservatives that I used to make about All Liberals. There are conservatives who don’t espouse bigotry, but most of these types of bigotry do seem to be espoused by those of a conservative bend.

At the same time, it’s definitely possible for a left-leaning person to behave terribly and think it’s excusable because they hold progressive beliefs. I’ve known my share of liberal activists who treated others with complete inconsideration and rudeness on an individual level, but thought that was justifiable because they cared about humanity in an abstract sense and because they were fighting for the correct political causes. I had one former friend who stands out particularly in that sense. She thought she’d become a better person because she had honed her Marxist philosophy, but she was still just as narcissistic and manipulative as ever. She didn’t become a better person, just a better communist. Some might say that meant she wasn’t a “true” communist; that real communism would have resulted in the improvement of her character. But whether or not that’s true, it falls too close to the No True Scotsman territory.

Some beliefs may justify or excuse someone’s preexisting negative traits, but it’s hard for me to believe those views are entirely responsible for creating them. Unkind people tend to be drawn to unkind ideologies. A good person may be brainwashed into a terrible worldview, and they may say and do awful things as a result, but I have faith that their natural drive toward decency will save them in the end. And a cruel, vindictive person can adopt a benevolent belief system but refuse to practice it properly, using it to rationalize their abusive tendencies instead.

It’s hard to tell for certain where beliefs start and identities end. I just think they form circles which often overlap one another and sometimes even eclipse.