What would you risk for the sake of your writing?

[sweetnpetite]

Re: Hear hear Og

Having read briefly all the above, and having formerly been a soldier myself, who studied certain aspects of the soviet war machine, saw East Germany before the wall fell, served in the first Gulf War, and patrolled the streets of Northern Ireland,
I would like to completely concur with Og's last comments on the subject.

I won't comment more, as my thoughts on the subject are deep and very lengthy, except to say this:


It Is The Soldier


It is the soldier,
not the reporter,
who has given us freedom of the press.

It is the soldier,
not the poet,
who has given us freedom of speech.

It is the soldier,
not the student activist,
who has given us the freedom to demonstrate

It is the soldier,
not the lawyer,
who has given us the right to a fair trial

It is the soldier,
who salutes the flag,
who serves under the flag,
and whose coffin is draped by the flag,
who permits the protester to burn the flag!


Anonymous

But without the poet, the reporter, the activist, and the lawyer, none of those rights would matter.

Maybe you need to defend and protect your rights, but you also need to excersise them.

Everybody plays a part. Weather you are a lawyer or a soldier or a writer, you can't soley depend on someone else to defend your rights. what good is the right to a fair trial without adequate and knowlegable representation? what good is a lawyer if the laws and judges are corrupt or do not protect our rights? Lawyer and Soldier, niether is above the other or more crucial to our freedom than the other. Threats come from the inside as well as from without. Not all can be fought off with a sword.

As the question askes, what would you risk for the sake of your writing? Is a writer who is willing to die for his freedom of speach any less noble, is his sacrifice and contribution any less than a soldier willing to do the same?

No disrespect is intented, and I hope that none is taken.

 

[lewdandlicentious]

You are of course correct

(Writing on behalf of Greene14, he is otherwise indisposed.(He has gone, I am here))

No offence taken, nor should there be.

You make some good points, and in fact you re-enforce my own point which is that without the soldier in the first place, there would not be the freedoms to excercise.

Take Iraq as the most recent example. Yes, there were reporters and writers, but were they free to report and write as they wished? No they were not!

Were there any activists? Were there any lawyers? Were there any of a number of other types of people that thrive on the ability to speak freely?

The answer of course is no.

Who has done the work, paid the price and the sacrifice, to begin the emplacement of those freedoms in Iraq, that we take so easily for granted?

Soldiers!

Who did the work, paid the price and the sacrifice for us to have those freedoms that we now take for granted?

Soldiers!

The soldiers come first. It is they that win us the freedoms, so that the lawyers, the writers, the poets and all the rest of us, even the activists, can go about our own business, as we wish, and even burn a damn flag or two if that is what we want to do.

In certain other cultures, still in existance today, and in Iraq only one year ago, you would have been risking your life, and those of your entire family, by simply writing what you did above, questioning the point before, if that was the point of view of the dictatorship under which you lived.

Who has wonYOU the freedom to express your view?

And question even the people who govern you?

That's right, before all others, came the soldier.

 

[shereads]

Can you be anti-war without being anti-soldier?

Nothing against soldiers, but I don't get the logic here. Soldiers also kept Saddam Hussein in power.

I earlier made the point, as Og did more gracefully, that I honor the courage of soldiers even when I disagree with what my government is sending them to do. It's unfortunate - and dangerous - that in recent years anyone who objects to a war is said to be failing to support our troops.

Must the citizens of a democracy keep their anti-war opinions to themselves and simply trust their government to do what's best for them, or risk being labeled anti-soldier? Anti-war and anti-solider are not the same thing. It might seem so to someone whose life is on the line, and who understandably wishes that the entire country thought that the cause was a righteous one. But it's necessary to question the use of our military, and to protest when we think it's being used wrongly.

That's one of the differences between our country and Iraq under Hussein. We have the legal right and the moral responsibility to speak our mind about what our government does in our name.

If there had been hundreds of thousands of Iraqi voices raised in protest against Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait, so many that not all could be killed or quieted, would any of us have accused those people of failing to support their soldiers? No. We'd have been applauding their courage, and no doubt some of the soldiers would have secretly been cheering the protest as well.

It's the civilian population of every nation that determines the role of its soldiers. We are the ones, each of us, who determine by our activism or our silence, whether our men at arms will be used to preserve freedom or silence dissent.

How best to protest a war without harming the morale of those who are sent to fight it - that's something I'd like to hear a soldier's views on.

 

[lewdandlicentious]

Yes

Yes you can be anti war without being anti soldier, of course you can.

But I don't see the point you are trying to make.

My point is simply this:

It is the soldier, who risks all, and often loses, to win the freedom of the rest of us.

Once that freedom from oppression, tyranny or whatever you want to call it has been achieved, then democracy can take place.

But not before.

And yes, even oppressive cultures use soldiers, but there's the difference. They use them to enforce their laws, their ways, their beliefs, keeping the people down in such a way that is better for them, the leaders.

We use soldiers to uphold our freedoms where necessary, and to win them for those who don't have them, as in Iraq.

Yes of course, our governments use our soldiers to win freedom for others when it is in our own interests, but in doing so, they maintain our own freedom, allowing us to live as we wish.

 

[Quasimodem]

These are all interesting and affecting sidelights, but the question was: "What would you risk for your writing?"

Since I am not in that situation, I can only judge by extrapolation.

I am a "commercial writer," which means I have already sold out my ‘ART' to make a living. Instead, I practise a craft.

Alternately, I hold several fundamental beliefs which, several decades ago, I backed by putting both my body and – potentially – my career on the line, in protest.

If some authority were persecuting creative writers for not following regulations, I doubt that I would jeopardize myself in any ‘all for art' gesture.

Were that same authority to impinge upon certain political freedoms, I would almost certainly object. If I discovered some way to put my craft into service to that cause, then I would employ it.

At least, that is what I anticipate I would do.

Until something of the like actually happens, my supposed reactions can be only speculation.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

If our soldiers were ordered to repress free speech, would they refuse? Would they throw down their arms and mutiny?

I remember Kent State, and I say that the soldiers would do as they're told. Because that’s what good soldiers do. They follow orders.

I have nothing but respect for the men and women who fought to preserve our country and defend our freedoms. I'm even more proud of the troops who went into Bosnia, Liberia, and Somalia to try and defend an innocent population that was being slaughtered or starved on purely humanitarian grounds, even though it had nothing to do with defending our way of life. But I'm also aware that our troops have been used for many purposes less noble than that, and, being soldiers, they have no choice but to do what they're told, and make the best of it.

I’m know that the troops in Iraq see their mission as defense of freedom and of our way of life,.but to a lot of people it’s not at all clear if that’s what their presence will accomplish. But if they’re not there for that—if they’re not working and dying to make the world a safer and better place—than what are they dying for? That’s what’s so terrible to think about.

---dr.M.

 

[Gary Chambers]

If our soldiers were ordered to repress free speech, would they refuse? Would they throw down their arms and mutiny?

I remember Kent State, and I say that the soldiers would do as they're told. Because that’s what good soldiers do. They follow orders.

I have nothing but respect for the men and women who fought to preserve our country and defend our freedoms...But I'm also aware that our troops have been used for many purposes less noble than that, and, being soldiers, they have no choice but to do what they're told, and make the best of it.

...the troops in Iraq see their mission as defense of freedom and of our way of life,.but to a lot of people it’s not at all clear if that’s what their presence will accomplish. But if they’re not there for that—if they’re not working and dying to make the world a safer and better place—than what are they dying for? That’s what’s so terrible to think about.

---dr.M.

I could answer that Doc, and I believe I will, but I'll do it on another thread so as not to hijack this one too far off topic. In this space I offer something less specific to Iraq. First of all one of my favourite quotes about subversive, revolutionary or dissenting activism and opinion: "It is the first duty of a revolutionary not to get caught."

I don't know who coined that one, but I love it and have often used it myself to help guide my decisions on what action to take in support of my beliefs.

Secondly, I think you can be surprised at what lurks in the mind of a modern soldier. The militarists and their political masters needed soldiers who could think for themselves, to run the highly technical and rapidly deployed machines of war. So soliders began to become more professional and independently minded.

I had a friend who died last year, who was in the Canadian army during the F.L.Q. crisis in the 1960's. I don't know if you are familiar with that event, but it involved a band of Quebecois revolutionaries kidnapping a British diplomat and a Quebec cabinet minister. The former was released unharmed, but the latter was killed. For some time the country was governed under the War Measures Act, a law that basically imposes martial law upon everyone. My friend was shipped into Montreal during that uprising, and along with others was issued live ammo and told if ordered to they must fire on crowds to disperse them and put down any insurgence. This had happened before in Canada with deadly results.

My friend happened to be an aboriginal, who had little respect for what he considered to be white man's politics, yet he was a soldier accustomed to following orders. Faced with this quandary he told me that he and another native soldier in his platoon had a quiet word, and agreed they would not fire on fellow citizens but would shoot over their heads. If singled out to be forced to kill civilians, they would fire on the person giving the orders---but it never came to that. The War Measures Act was a gross overreaction by a government afraid of its own people, but stop and think about the mindset of the soldiers. That was the 1960's, and today's soldiers are even more able to think for themselves. Yes, there would be those who would repeat the tragedy of Kent State, but there would also be those who would not. No politician today could feel safe turning troops loose against their own people, because the chances the politician would become the soldiers' first target increase daily.

 

[shereads]

We saw in Tiennemen Square that soldiers hesitated to fire on their own people, but ultimately none of them rebelled against their commanders and took the side of the civilians, either.

 

[Belegon]

Responsibilities

Lots of wonderful points here but the words that strike closest to my heart here belong to Ogg.

Ten years ago I would have said with conviction that I would not only continue to pursue my writing but also actively worked to undermine those who opposed it, in the open and, although not without fear, with a feeling that the things I feared were worth risking.

Now I am a father. My responsibilities are not so simple. I have the need and desire to nurture and provide for my childrens present. However, there is also the long term desire to have my children grow up in a world that is better than the one I grew up in myself.

I think that I would do what I could to be mindful of the latter goal while doing all I could to protect the present.

Of course, that is perhaps a bit of avoidance. I will say that there is nothing I would not do in the short term to insure the safety of my kids and that my focus would be very selfish and personal.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

I apologize for steering the discussion off topic. I never did answer the original question, but that’s partly because I think that the original question as presented is kind of misleading. It asks how much we would be willing to risk for the sake of our writing in the face of a repressive government censorship, and this is just so foreign to our experience that it’s really hard to imagine, hard to put ourselves in that position.

We deal with a different kind of repression in the west when we deal with repression at all, and that’s a kind of peer-pressure and political apathy. We really don’t have to worry much about our thoughts being repressed, but I think we do worry about being hated or disliked for what we say, and so we just “choose” to avoid writing anything that might stir up those kinds of feelings. If you’re writing to entertain, popularity is everything, and so it’s self-defeating to try and insert polemics into your work.

More relevent for us in the western democracies is the case where you see something wrong in the world, something other people don’t seem to notice, and you wonder whether you should say something about it or just let it slide. There’s no government breathing down your neck, no threat of censorship, just a more subtle pressure of being a trouble maker and bucking the crowd. This is the kind of self-censorship we face, and it’s more insidious, because it’s just so easy to ignore these issues and find something else to spend our time on.

I came across an obviously anti-semitic post the other day, in a proposal for a story where Jews were raped and humiliated by a WASP overlord. I don’t like political correctness, but this seemed to be a paricularly nasty little piece of crap, hiding it's nastiness in the form of a sexual fantasy. I could have just ignored the post under the excuse of this being Literotica, and we don’t judge others’ sexual fantasies, or I could have said something. I said something. It seemed wrong not to.

My point is, we probably all face things like this every day. Should we stand up and say something is wrong when we know we’ll catch shit for it? Or should we just keep quiet and write our porn?

So don't look for the Mullahs coming to your house and kicking in your door. Look for the things you just shy away from for fear of rocking the boat. That's the kind of censorship that'll finally do us in: the kind we don't even recognize.

---dr.M.

 

[SlaveMasterUK]

Dr. M,

an extremely valid point you have raised.

From personal experience, in the past (as a teenager struggling to fit in), I have avoided certain topics for discussion or for literature because I was well aware at the time that stating an opinion on a subject was a way to stand out from the crowd.

Now, however, I am aware that I will never 'fit in' with the crowd. So I write what I like. I have stated opinions here and on other forums that have differed from the trends (and for the most part have been ignored). This has led to arguments and difficult situations on other forums (where members are perhaps not as open-minded as we tend to be here), but it is not going to deter me from speaking my mind on anything I feel strongly about.

But I agree with your previous post. This is a case of self-censorship from peer pressure, not enforced sensorship from a governing body.

ax

 

[SummerMorning]

Dr. Mabeuse - thank you for mentioning that insidious side of censorship. The censorship we accept and legitimate without question.

Repression is no less reppressive if done through ideology or through forces. It is when ideology fails that governments usually resort to force in order to stay in power.

As long as most people support and thus legitimate one line of thought, that is already repression. The worst kind, the kind exercised by peers, the kind designed to keep people from standing out and being different.

Democracy is fine, but it is not perfect. In America following 11.09 the Red Hot Chili Peppers song aeroplane was one of a number of songs more or less voluntarily taken off the air - that is repression.

Academics who did not support the militant hawkish line of the White House, who did not believe that it was anybody's patriotic duty to spend in order to help the economy, who did not believe that war was the answer to terrorism found their funding cut.

And...to be somewhat pessimistic - I feel, from what I've observed of people, that there are many people who would be far more willing to sacrifice their freedom of speech for a new mercedes than is healthy. Freedom of speech is only relevant when you do not want for things like food, water, housing and the like.

 

[Gary Chambers]

The porn pen is mightier than the sword.

...Should we stand up and say something is wrong when we know we’ll catch shit for it? Or should we just keep quiet and write our porn?

So don't look for the Mullahs coming to your house and kicking in your door. Look for the things you just shy away from for fear of rocking the boat. That's the kind of censorship that'll finally do us in: the kind we don't even recognize.

---dr.M.

Agreed Doc. It may be hard for a tyrant to quickly raise an army willing to turn on its own people to silence their freedom of expression, but it isn't so hard for that tyrant to dupe people into believing conformity is freedom. The obedient army can then be raised with less problem. I also believe you were right to react to the anti-Semitic story proposal as you did. The freedom of expression found on this site is the freedom of the libertine, just a few steps shy of anarchistic freedom. The closer we move to anarchistic freedom, the more individual responsibility we must all be willing to shoulder. You took that responsibility on board when it appeared necessary, thereby helping to protect the freedom we all cherish. We truly can't afford to have our freedom to create hedonistic smut contaminated with repressive discrimination of that sort. It would weaken us considerably. So well spotted and thanks for speaking out.

...Democracy is fine, but it is not perfect. In America following 11.09 the Red Hot Chili Peppers song aeroplane was one of a number of songs more or less voluntarily taken off the air - that is repression.

Academics who did not support the militant hawkish line of the White House, who did not believe that it was anybody's patriotic duty to spend in order to help the economy, who did not believe that war was the answer to terrorism found their funding cut.

And...to be somewhat pessimistic - I feel, from what I've observed of people, that there are many people who would be far more willing to sacrifice their freedom of speech for a new mercedes than is healthy. Freedom of speech is only relevant when you do not want for things like food, water, housing and the like.

Tonight SM, I learned of a musical phenomenon happening in Mexico. Narcodistas (not sure of that spelling) are Mexican drug smugglers who pay pop groups thousands to write and record ballads about them. The ballads don't get any airplay, but they are marketed on CD's with other songs that do get onto radio station playlists. In this way the smugglers build a romanticised mystique around their business and their personalities. These ballads are being compared to the music of people like Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger and Paul Robeson. I'm no great fan of the illicit drug industry, but I'm happy that it's gained this kind of underground voice. Underground but available is probably exactly where this voice belongs, and I'll be watching with some interest to see how far the authorities will go to silence it.

I hadn't heard about the funding cuts directed at militant academics, but I'm certainly not surprised. This kind of heavy handed manipulation of thoughts and activities has increased steadily since the Berlin Wall came down. With no ideological enemy to point a finger at our leaders' excesses, they've been having a great time trying out their jackboots. There are many signs that we are drifting too far into authoritarianism, and suppression of intellectual freedom at an academic level is a major milestone in that drift.

Your thinking on the relationship between freedom of expression and freedom from poverty is in line with one of the world's most important writer's institutions, the I.F.J. (International Federation of Journalists). Their motto in a nutshell is that there can be no freedom of the press if journalists cannot free themselves from poverty. What most people don't realise, is that freedom of the press isn't exercised primarily by large media corporations as one might expect, but rather by individual freelancers working under contract. Competition between media owners is what drives those owners to hire the most outspoken and controversial freelancers. Convergence of mass media companies into a few huge corporations reduces the number of media owners, canceling competition in the market and throwing those freelancers out of work, impoverishing and thereby silencing them, and destroying press freedom in the bargain.

I believe many countries desperately need a more dynamic underground press, responsive to the most pressing shortages of information. We need a press that isn't afraid to publicise the narcodista balladeers in Mexico; will champion the causes of radical academics whose funds are being choked off and will provide a paid forum for those controversial freelancers whose messages are not reaching the public. Websites like Literotica.com play an important role because this is a spearhead of freedom. If Literotica.com can't remain free, that dynamic underground press cannot establish and grow. Our smut runs the gamut from sensitive and poetic erotic romance to pure filth with no pretense of redeeming social importance, and it all needs and deserves its public forum. I hope Laurel's freedom to run this site as she sees fit remains intact, and I hope the day she is even remotely threatened every pen on this site turns itself into a bolt of lightening, aimed squarely between her enemy's ears. The pen really is mightier the sword. I hope we never have to prove it to that extent, because it would mean we would all be facing some danger. Nevertheless, I also hope we remain ready, willing and able to risk that much for our craft if necessary. I guess that answers Shereads original question, for my part anyway.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

Geez, Gary, you make me almost proud to be a pornster!

But I understand what you’re saying. I wouldn’t be willing to sacrifice much for the sake of the porn I write, but I would be willing to sacrifice for the freedom to write it.

---dr.M.

 

[Guest]

I haven't heard Jones in a long time but I used to like her voice and music. It does make an impression on me that more popular artists are not protesting publically. Obvious it's a matter of income (vs. life or death) and loss of fame. Brava to Jones. - Perdita
-------------
from BBC on-line: Singer Lee Jones attacks Bush - American singer Rickie Lee Jones has attacked the policies of the Bush administration on her latest record - despite the potential risk to her career.

Lee Jones took the music world by storm in the late 1970s when her self-titled debut album won best newcomer award at the Grammys.

But despite having vowed to stay away from politics, her latest album, The Evening Of My Best Day, features many political protest songs that directly criticise current US policy.

"To address George Bush and his presidency is a departure from my usual point of view," Lee Jones told BBC World Service's Everywoman programme.

"I usually reflect things totally internally. But I think what is happening in America is so disturbing to me, it becomes internal.

"You can't not address it."

Ominous law

Lee Jones is not the first singer to attack the Bush administration.

In March last year, Natalie Maines, a singer with country group Dixie Chicks, said she felt "ashamed" President Bush came from her home state of Texas.

The group subsequently suffered a backlash, with many radio stations in the US refusing to play their records.

But Lee Jones defended her right to speak out in her music about how she felt.


"I think a musician has no less of a right to speak out than anybody else," she said.
"If any American has a right to speak out - which surely they do - then why not a musician or an actor?

"Everybody has a right. As long as you're informed, courteous - relatively - you have a right to say what you think about it, with great passion."

The most overtly political record on the album is Tell Somebody (Repeal The Patriot Acts Now) - a reference to the controversial new anti-terrorist powers put in place after 11 September 2001.

Lee Jones said that she found the act "disturbing"

"The Patriot Act basically says, "Under the guise of protection against terrorism, we consider you a threat. We can arrest you, you Americans... wherever you are in the world, and you no longer have a right to counsel.

"'We don't have to tell you exactly what it is we think you did, and we can keep you as long as we want'.

"This is ominous - an ominous law - and I think it must be repealed. I don't think we can be so reactionary that we take the rights away from people in order to protect them. What's that about? I disagree totally."

Vilified' Chicks

Lee Jones added that she was well aware of the reaction the Dixie Chicks had received.

However, she said that she was hopeful that it would make Americans more aware of their "right to say these things."

"They [the Dixie Chicks] were vilified actually," she stated.

"I think that that's what's most exciting, because I think the more they vilify people who dissent, the more Americans are going to rise up and say, 'hey, everybody has a right to their own point of view - you can't condemn somebody for their point of view'.

"In the long run, the Dixie Chicks got some credibility that they didn't have before.

"They might have lost some sales, but they gained a lot of friends."

BBC

 

[CharleyH]

So much to think about on this topic. My mind steams. It's hard to get every thought I have from fascist politics to freedom of expression, from left to right, and every facade of our illusions in between - straight.

Many great artists/writers/poets/philosophers/scientists/comedians and others, throughout history have laid everything on the line to be heard. Thank god to us! The point is change. People lay their lives on the line so that others may speak and live. I could say much about this.

But, I need to get back to art and science here. Quite frankily, I admire and respect many of our predeccessors (don't always agree) and yet without many of those individuals, none of us would be on the paths we are today in life, and yes, in literature.

Even today - as much as we are 'free' we are bound. In Western civilization we are not confronted by torture or death. YET - we are confronted by censorship, by harassment, especially when it comes to sex.

Shread brings up a good point about Tiennemen, but not about sex. There was also a 20th century experiment in a history class . . . too long ago that I heard for me to recall . . . similar to Nazi Germany. The result, however, is that most people will go with the flow to save their own skin.

But getting off topic.

Even in Western culture today, there IS repressive government censorship because government always looks after their own needs first, and so do people, and the people in government often look to their own interests, or concede to the pressure of lobby groups etc. (Sorry to blow bubbles, but worked in and cleaned, and heard, and know too much).

No not torture, but definately JAIL time, luckily, in Western culture. . . I need to generalize to make it easier . . .we are discussing the lewd and pornographic afterall.

Is it art and does it speak. Does it push boundries of the world we live in? If it does, and you are the writer, are you willing to give up certain things?

I can think of a few muscians in this last century willing to do jail time rather than not do/ say what they want. I can think of hundreds of historical others who had, and did do the same.

Would I?

If I had something important enough to say. If I had something that I believed in that would better the world . . . . that would change the world, and everyone in it? Yet, if I had a family? Alone, I would stand by my conviction - with a family? I doubt I could stand the thought of torture or death at least, and yet, what is the conviction that I have? To write? Or to change the world for the better? I cannot answer this portion. It's too hard a choice when not confronted.

Yet, to be contradictory I do believe in this paraphrase Andre Breton in the Surrealist Manifesto:

True ART, cannot help but be revolutionary.

Homage to their incarceration:

Galileao
de Sade
Lenny Bruce
Mandella
and many, many others . . .