Messing Around and Finding Out
Free Speech and Natural Consequences for Publishing
Anyone who enjoyed the publishing industry gossip in the Bad Cat Helicopter article will enjoy this one because it contains gossip about a publishing-industry controversy or two. I’m putting this above the fold for anyone whose eyes glaze over at the first amendment stuff. Skip over this part to get to the juicy gossip if that’s what you’re here for.
Today’s Shelf Life will touch upon “the first amendment,” which I would like to caution readers is only a thing in the United States. That’s not to say that other countries don’t have “freedom of speech” (and religion, the press, peaceable assembly, and petitioning the government). That’s also not to say that other countries don’t have constitutional amendments. It’s just that only in the United States are these free speech rights enshrined as our first constitutional amendment. Do not attempt to plead your “first amendment rights” in Canada, as some of the Freedom Convoy truckers tried to do. The first amendment to Canada’s constitution was the act to create Manitoba.
This is not, however, an article about the first amendment; it’s actually an article about things that do not violate one’s first amendment rights. In order to make sure we’re all on the same page, I shall start with a brief primer on what does or does not violate those rights.
The first amendment reads thus:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
This does not say that nobody can tell you what you can or can’t say. This says the government, and specifically the US Congress in their lawmaking capacity, cannot tell you what you can or can’t say. Anybody else is free to impose whatever consequences they wish upon you if you say something they don’t like. For example, these things do not violate your first amendment rights:
Consumers boycotting your products because of something you said.
Your employer (so long as your employer is not the government) disciplining or firing you because of something you said.
Other people calling you out, publicly or privately, for something you said.
Individuals declining to associate with you, personally or professionally, based on something you said.
People “canceling” you over something you said.
Here are some things that do violate your first amendment rights:
The government making laws about what you can say.
The government punishing you for something you said.
In summary. The government controlling what you say or imposing consequences based on what you’ve said violates your first amendment rights. Anybody else imposing consequences on you based on what you’ve said is just regular old consequences and not a rights violation of any kind.
This is an important distinction because sometimes people will do things like make a social media post that violates the platform’s rules and get their account suspended, or they’ll say something inflammatory and their television or radio show will get canceled or their books will get boycotted, and then they’ll say “But what about my right to free speech?” Twitter is not the government. Nobody has a guaranteed right to say whatever they want on Twitter. Twitter has no obligation to give anyone a platform to speak from. See also: Television and radio stations and publishing companies.
Anyway all that is a preface to the situation that happened with Silver Shamrock Publishing last week. First, let me invite you to visit Silver Shamrock Publishing’s website (you won’t be there long). In the event that the domain expires later, I will immortalize the current status in a screenshot:
Generally speaking, this is not what you want your publishing company’s website to look like. Ruh roh, Scooby.
On April 1, Silver Shamrock Publishing announced a forthcoming title for late 2022, The White Plague Chronicles. The publisher’s synopsis of the book read, in part:
An unknown terrorist organization has their hands on a previously unidentified virus that is far deadlier than Ebola, and even more sinister, as this horrific disease is genetically targeted to kill only the members of the Caucasian race.
You cannot see the face I’m making, but I promise you it’s hilarious. The synopsis also says:
Two retired Black Ops specialists named Ryan O’Toole and Joey Hotsko are thrust into the unfortunate position of being humanity’s last hope.
The publisher also referred to the text as “a journey into the heart of darkness,” in case the implications of the above were not totally clear.
I will pause for a moment before continuing about The White Plague Chronicles to reference another recent publishing-industry situation. Sandra Newman’s new novel, The Men, is under fire for a similar storyline in which all the men—sorry, all the people with a Y chromosome—are mysteriously raptured off the face of the earth. I have not read The Men and I cannot personally speak to its queerphobic and specifically transphobic rhetoric but Ana Mardoll got an advance reader copy, read it, and provided a detailed analysis of the problematic parts of The Men, which you can read at Ana Mardoll’s Ramblings.
When the Silver Shamrock/White Plague Chronicles stuff broke last week my initial thought was “oh my gosh guys we just did this.”
What’s wrong with writing about a plague that wipes out all the white people? Well, first of all I have questions about how that works since race is a social construct, but I read a lot of speculative fiction so maybe I can take it on faith that there’s some kind of genetic marker for “Caucasian” or “white” (hint: there’s not). The authors then go on to describe a plague wiping out all the white people as the end of humanity; I think most people, even without applying a lot of critical thinking, could see that this is problematic.
I don’t feel like I need to continue in great detail about why a book about the White Nationalist myth of the coming white genocide bringing about the end of humanity is probably not something that any thinking person would want to read.
The announcement came out on April Fool’s Day but unfortunately was not a prank. Twitter users got hold of the announcement and synopsis (which had been made available publicly by Silver Shamrock) and the collective response was, essentially, “what the actual heck?”
The author did not take kindly to the discussion of his book on Twitter and asked his fans and social media following to report all the tweets discussing his book for harassment and even indicated that he should “probably look into suing” the people who were pointing out that the plot of his book was lifted directly from the white supremacist’s guide to conspiracy theories.
He could take a lesson from our old friend JK Rowling, that lesson being, you cannot sue people who trash your book because it espouses your reprehensible views.
At the end of the day, the author of The White Plague Chronicles was basically like “well whatever, hate it all you want, what are you going to do about it?” After all, it’s a free country and you can write whatever you want, and if a publisher chooses to publish your book, it doesn’t matter if other people think the content is deplorable, right?
Wrong! Many of Silver Shamrock Publishing’s other authors caught wind of this book and its author’s poor digital behavior and wrote to Silver Shamrock to cancel their contracts—enough authors that the publisher went out of business the next day. You can read more about the closure of Silver Shamrock in Locus.
Let me repeat this, and say it another way, to make it completely clear. About 26 hours after Roxie Voorhees (@RVTheBookSlayer), a Twitter account with only 1,000 followers, tweeted about the book’s white supremacist rhetoric, the publisher went out of business and reverted the rights to all their books to the authors.
Enough authors under contract with Silver Shamrock saw this situation and said “I refuse to be associated with this, even if it means canceling my own publishing contract” that the entire operation went under.
Personally I think there was plenty of room for damage control in those 26 hours had the author not gone off the deep end, sending his flying monkeys to harass Voorhees and threatening half of #booktwitter with litigation. Ostensibly, he felt that his right to free speech—his protected right to write whatever the heck he wants without fear of government censure—extended to protection from the judgment of his customers and peers.
Listen: No law on earth can protect you from the judgment of your customers and peers. Say what you will, when you will, how you will—but you’re the one who will be living with the consequences if you piss off the whole world.
If your closely held belief is that the presence of a Y chromosome means someone is a man and nothing will ever change that, and you believe it so hard that you write a book whose plot hinges on it, that’s your right. If you believe that white people equals humanity and that if a plague wiped out white people then humanity would cease to exist, and you believe it so hard you write a book whose plot hinges on that—that’s your right.
If your book gets trashed in the court of public opinion, that’s everyone else exercising their right to say whatever they want about your book. The same right that protects the author protects the critics.
Libel is real. But to prove libel, the claim against you must not only damage your reputation but be false. Truth is an absolute defense to a libel claim. “I’m not going to buy this book because the plot relies on rhetoric that is transphobic (or racist)”: I’m not a lawyer but I’m willing to state for the record that no author will ever win a libel suit against a critic with that.
I hope this article is illuminating for anyone who has wondered, “Can’t you write about things anymore?” The answer is, you can! You can write about whatever you want. There are very few types of media that are actually illegal to create. Other than those, go wild! You can write anything: You can write racist beliefs, misogyny, transphobia—you name it. You just have to be willing to accept the consequences of writing those things, like the censure of your peers and audience.
Ovid was banished from Rome for writing Ars Amatoria (too sexy). French police confiscated and burnt several of the Marquis de Sade’s manuscripts, including one unpublished (because they were obscene). Ulysses by James Joyce was banned from the United States from 1921 until 1933 (obscene).
This is not a new phenomenon. This is not an “everybody is so woke now they’re just canceling everything” situation. There has never been a time when writers were free from the consequences of publishing controversial writing. It’s only the nature of what we consider controversial that has changed over time. Personally, I’m pleased to be living in a time and place when “this material is racy” is no longer controversial and “this material disparages an entire group of our fellow humans” is. Your mileage may vary.
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