More on the Polari Prize. This, from Allan Stratton at Quillete, is worth a read…Another Tiresome Trans-Activist Power Play:
The best response to all this from Polari Prize officials would have been to say nothing, and simply let their original message stand as their final word. Unfortunately, that’s not what happened. While Boyne (rightly) remains on the longlist—as of this writing, at least—organisers issued a new statement this week, along with a promise to “do better”:
The hurt and anger caused has been a matter of deep concern to everyone associated with the prize, for which we sincerely apologise… We will be undertaking a full review of the prize processes, consulting representatives from across the community ahead of next year’s awards, taking on board the learnings from this year.
This statement implicitly concedes that there are problems with the existing merit-based process, insofar as it failed to filter out a brilliant and popular writer who happens to have political opinions at variance with the in-house orthodoxy of the British literary set. Which is to say that “freedom of expression” is perhaps not quite so cherished as it seemed to have been just last week—and that it may not actually be possible “to hold radically different positions on substantive issues.” Given these “learnings,” it’s hard to see how next year’s jurors won’t be required to apply political considerations when curating their longlists. Given that, how will anyone be able to trust the integrity of future Polari Prize awards?
With this follow-up statement, the Polari organisers have also sold out gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and old-school transsexuals—constituencies whose members have begun to push back at the “forced teaming” that requires them to sign off on radicalised trans-activist demands in the name of LGBT solidarity.
The anti-Boyne petition states, “We want there to be a literary prize that recognises the vital importance of queer and trans stories.” Fair enough. But where does that leave those of us who reject the label “queer”? Once seen as a reclaimed word (much in the way the N-word became reclaimed by blacks), “queer” has been appropriated by straight fetishists, Alphabet ideologues, and publicity-seeking celebrities. As I’ve argued in Quillette, normie gays and lesbians know that our biology is at the root of our same-sex attraction, and fight for civil rights on that basis. Likewise, old school transsexuals know that biology is the basis of their bodily dysphoria. Increasingly, the word “queer” signifies a political rejection of both those positions, on the basis that acknowledging biological reality may undermine one’s right to unfettered self-identification.
Mainstream culture has rejected the illiberal left excesses of the past decade—including in the UK, where even Keir Starmer’s left-of-centre Labour government has acknowledged that trans women are not actually women. But the progressive ideological excesses that originally took root in the late 2010s remain entrenched among those who purport to represent marginalised groups such as the LGB and T communities—the very same communities that, ironically, once had to fight hardest for their own free-speech rights.
The Polari Prize is small potatoes in the grand scheme of things, of course. No doubt, many people reading this had never even heard of it before the controversy surrounding John Boyne. Nevertheless, the mob-like behaviour that the anti-Boyne faction has put on display supplies proof, for those looking for it, that the social-justice left really hasn’t learned anything from the last decade (including Donald Trump’s re-election, which many political analysts believe was won in significant part because of voter backlash on the transgender file).
The greatest threat to civil liberties in many parts of the world is now the populist right. But it’s harder to marshal resistance against illiberal conservatives when illiberal progressives keep showing the world why they alienated mainstream society so thoroughly in the first place. If your brand of politics is so extreme and uncompromising that even a celebrated gay author such as John Boyne is on your enemies list, who, pray tell, are you hoping to enlist as an ally?
They've won so many battles, these ideological progressives, that they seem to think they're untouchable. And indeed this forced adherence to the "correct" ideology – see also the National Library of Scotland – still works. But the the backlash is building…
Mick Hartley 