A peep
The Society of Authors has advice for us.
A lot of authors I follow are annoyed by the condescension of “play nicely.” I read some of the thing we were told to have a peep at, and was struck by a certain omission.
The Society of Authors is committed to promoting professional behaviour throughout all its activities, and to tackling and preventing bullying, harassment and racism in all their forms.
Why racism only? Why not sexism? (There are others, too – classism, xenophobia, etc – but women are half of everyone, so we’re a particularly big item to ignore.)
Bullying, harassment and racism have no place on our premises, in our communications, or in any other environment in which we operate.
But sexism does have a place there?
Our approach
We condemn any kind of racist, hate or unprofessional speech.
Again – why specify racism and leave all the other kinds of hate speech unspecified? In particular why leave the one that targets half the population unspecified?
I asked them but I don’t suppose they’ll answer.
Just wait, they’ll edit these posts to add “transphobia” to the list.
Seems a touch shallow and vaguely passive aggressive for an organisation trying to police behaviour of its members. Also, really wordy considering how little it does say.
How twee, in light of the near deadly attack on an author last week. “Play nice,” indeed.
Rob, not only that, but the behavior of authors, a notoriously hard to control vocation.