When I first posted my last blogpost on Jack of Kent, it included a link to and some text about pornography.
The pornography happened to be fictional written gay incest pornography involving a minor.
My inclusion of the link and the text prompted little initial controversy (you can see by the many comments on that blogpost, where hardly anyone mentions it).
However, it was picked up and emphasised by some right-wing bloggers.
Their use in turn prompted some people with decent and sensible views to say I was "disgusting" and a "homophobe".
It was also, rightly, pointed out that my description of the content on the site I linked to was irrelevant to the substantive point I wanted to make: the point being that it could be shown that the email address central to my story was in use. In response to this observation about relevance, I decided to edit my post so as to remove the link and accompanying text.
However, I would like to now provide my account as to why it was in the initial post to begin with.
First, there was the point about it showing use of the email address. And as the "David Rose" openly admits to the email address being associated with porn in another passage I was to quote in my post, I did not think of it being controversial and so I included it so as to show the completeness of the research exercise. I was just showing where the evidence took me on an evidence-based approach.
Second, as I was going to have to set out the relevant email address in full, it was perfectly likely it was going to be found by those who were going to research into the use of that email address. On reflection, perhaps I should have not published the email address, knowing that would lead to people discovering the pornography in question.
But the the third reason is the most telling of all.
There is a distinction between criminal acts and their fictional representation. A murder novel is not an endorsement of murder in real life. It is entirely right that sexual acts with minors are criminalized and harshly punished. But that does not mean, say, the novel Lolita should also be criminalized.
So my response to the content was to simply note that it was an extraordinary and unexpected stage in the story I was telling, and move on.
I do not have a worldview which condemns fictional representations of criminal or otherwise unlawful behaviour. I instead believe that the behaviour itself should be criminalized. I am happy to have this worldview, but it did lead me to use the link (and the content at the link) in the way I did.
But.
It was a mistake. I did not foresee how right-wing bloggers were going to use it.
For what it is worth, I particularly condemn the use to which it was put by Damian Thompson and Cristina Odone, and I would ask them that if they value the work of this blog and its commenters, to please stop using it in the nasty way they have done.
I was wrongly expecting people to treat in the civilized and liberal way I and the commenters on my blog treated it: as a bizarre piece of information which was part of an interesting story; but certainly nothing to moralise or really think-twice about.
If I was writing my post again, I would treat it differently. I certainly would not make it so easy for right-wing bloggers to piggy-back off the my post to launch misconceived and illiberal attacks.
That said, given that the moment one started pulling together information on "David Rose" that email address and the references to porn by him elsewhere would have easily led others to find that site, I now think it may even have been a mistake to write my last blogpost in the first place.
I have not enjoyed what that link has since been used for, and I apologise to anyone hurt or offended by my inclusion of it. I apologise to one person in particular. The battle against bigotry and homophobia is hard enough without careless slips like that.
One day it would be good to have a society where fiction is not used as if it was fact in moral and political debates.
But I made a mistake, and I am sorry.
COMMENTS MODERATION
ANY COMMENTS ON THIS POST AS TO THE IDENTITY OF "DAVID ROSE" WILL NOT BE PUBLISHED.
No purely anonymous comments will be published; always use a name for ease of reference by other commenters.
Wednesday, 13 July 2011
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39 comments:
Its a shame that people will take an honest blog & try to make more of it, just to score petty points in some imagined game.
I read it, understood why it was there & left it at that. The problem is a lot of left and right wing writers often see the constant need to justify themselves to their readers as being either left or right wing.
I enjoy reading your blog and read it as just that, a blog.
Just to say while I'm on the right I never really saw the point of the porn thing, dilutes the real case against Hari
At least you got to say ' misconceived and illiberal' in your apology. Every cloud eh?
Well said David. Generally I think of myself as being somewhat to the right, but you have again distinguished yourself with your original piece and with your subsequent self-criticism in a way that I can't remember any egoistic, unapologetic partisan of the left or right doing. What a shame the blogosphere is dominated by the likes of them rather than the likes of you. Keep up the good work anyway.
I had no idea how certain right-wing columnists had used it. That's horrific. No wonder you felt bad. From my own standpoint, I was able to take a judgement that wasn't value-led on your inclusion of the "pornography" element - but I realise that certain of my friends (from both the left and right of the political spectrum) are often not able to treat such sexual references without reacting with a strong emotion, normally negative.
That's not a good/bad thing. It appears to be a part of human nature.
Please carry on blogging though!
David, I don't think you did anything wrong. If you painted a wonderful landscape painting and then a horrid person used one of the sharp corners of its frame to poke an innocent person's eye out...well, you can see where this analogy is going! Homophobia is depressing and entirely reprehensible, but you are not a homophobe, and you were exploring a possible connection between a journalist and D Rose - I took your mention of the gay porn thing to be simply a piece of evidence suggesting a connection, in the way that heterosexual porn by D Rose might have indicated that Rose was not said journalist. I agree with you that anyone who has been homophobic towards Rose and/or this journalist is totally out of order, but I do think that's different from people being disgusted by incest porn. I am not at all homophobic, and yet if I read on the internet anything about someone sexually assaulting a younger sibling (of either sex) I would find it a bit grim. Not a criminal offence, but grim - also evidence of need to gratify self/own needs even if something a bit dodgy is involved, which, in turn, is something this journalist is accused of doing in the professional arena - so, again, it's evidence, and you were putting together a case. Should members of minorities never be called to account simply because bigots might then attack them for the wrong reasons? Victims of incest, I think, might well disapprove of people posting incest porn on the web for gratification purposes. If David Rose had written 'Lolita', to use your example, fewer people would object, because that's a work of art. But a badly written porn story involving incest isn't art - so I suppose I'm saying, it's possible to disapprove of someone of any sexual proclivity who posts incest porn on the web, and not be homophobic - one might simply be against anything that 'promotes' incest against a younger sibling, just as one might also disapprove of a journalist who publishes the opinion that boys are not as badly affected as girls by having their bodies used for the gratification of others.
Agree with Andie99uk.
It was an interesting and informative blogpost. It was obvious that a lot of time and effort had gone into background fact checking. As you mentioned in this post, the inclusion of the porn text was there to show the depth of research. I certainly thought nothing of it other than: "that's an odd turn of events".
Although by my tendencies I am probably more on the right of the political spectrum than the centre I thoroughly enjoy both of your blogs as they provided a nuanced and balanced view of many topics. The quality of writing and research means I enjoy reading them even if I don't fully agree with them.
Please don't take to heart how your hard work has been abused; non illegitmi carborundum .
From Christina Odone's point of view- considering how she was smeared as an antisemite by David Rose I can understand why she would want to use the most embarrassing information possible when attacking him.
I'm not saying it's justified but I'd be pretty vengeful in her shoes.
Well, I'm gay, and I think it was relevant. If Hari is writing creepy porn about underage family members, using the same pseudonym he uses to smear fellow journalists, that's noteworthy. Imagine if Littlejohn had been writing the same kind of thing about an underage sister. Would people have ignored it? It's hardly homophobic, unless your critics imagine all gays to be incestuous paedophiles. (We're not, I promise.) Also, the material that was linked to was clearly written for the purposes of sexual gratification. To compare it to Nabokov is ridiculous.
Hari has form on this, as the excellent blogger here - http://bit.ly/rcegQt - has noted. He's downplayed the abuse of male minors by using extremely suspect research. I don't think you should apologise at all. I think his bunker-dwelling supporters should apologise for continuing to defend a man who has shown himself to be an unprofessional creep.
Sorry if that's harsh, but it makes me angry to see utterly unfounded accusations of homophobia being used to shield someone who deserves the criticism he's getting. It makes me even angrier to see disgusting fantasies about sex with child relatives associated with the gay population.
I thought the furore is bizarre, and I think you were wrong to remove the reference. The particular nature of the pornographic material lent more credence to the theory of who the journalist was, as it's a minority interest. That doesn't mean it's morally inferior but it's evidence pointing towards who the individual may be.
I didn't infer anything derogatory and there was nothing that demonstrated the merest suggestion of homophobia. And no-one who's followed you on twitter or new statesmen etc could possibly think that you meant to write it to imply anything negative.
To offer a difference of opinion from the outpouring of support seen above.
It is good that you removed the bit about the pornography and it is good that you have apologised for it.
But really there was no real justification for including it in the first place beyond adding a little salacious flourish.
What I would like to see you do is perhaps admit that is the reason it was there. Because a bit of tawdry scandal is interesting and makes things more likely to be read.
Ah, I missed the bolded warning before launching into a spittle-flecked rant. So instead, let me offer these three separate points. I hope they are OK:
1. The comparison with Nabokov is unfounded. Lolita is not pornography (i.e. written for the purposes of sexual gratification). The story written by "David Rose" was.
2. It is not homophobic to criticise someone for writing about sex with same-sex underage siblings. Personally, I think anyone claiming otherwise should be regarded with maximum suspicion. I write as a gay man who finds it infuriating when paedophilia, ephebophilia, and homosexuality are conflated.
3. Hari (and here I am not making any claims as to the identity of "David Rose") has made extremely ill-founded claims as to the supposedly limited damage done by sex with underage males to those same males:
http://thesumpplug.blogspot.com/2011/07/seven-pillars-of-bullshit.html
When Littlejohn wrote ill-founded rubbish about asylum seekers, Hari accused him of drumming up support for the BNP. By that standard, I wonder what we can say about the effect of Hari's flavour of bullshit?
You should not be apologising.
@Endless Psyche
I would happily admit that if I believed it were true.
But against you are two facts. First, I have long had liberal views on pornography (and, indeed, "extreme pornography").
Second, you will find it difficult to find any "similar fact" evidence for such an sensationalist approach in my other blogging.
So all we have is your accusation. I cannot take it away from you, but you actually cannot substantiate it in any other way than to merely assert it. Nothing supports your position.
And, again, if it were true I would see no barrier to me admitting it. Can you?
Edward, I do apologise, but I do not want any mention of who may be David Rose on this page. I realise you have typed that comment twice.
'I now think it may even have been a mistake to write my last blogpost in the first place.'
Yes, it was a mistake to write it. There is plenty of scum material available to attack in this sad and sorry world. I see very little point in attacking Johann Hari when so many of the scum are ready and willing to do it.
What a sorry state of affairs.
No one can be expected to fully appreciate all of the potential uses or misuses of their words. The fact that you have tried to make it right speaks loudest of all to me, at least.
David,
No problem. This is my third and last attempt at a regulation-compliant post. It's a good memory test if nothing else!
1. I think there's a qualitative difference between a book featuring a paedophile, and even describing paedophilic lust - as in the case of Nabokov's novel - and a piece of writing whose purpose is sexual gratification. While I don't like Lolita, I don't think one could really describe it as pornography in the strict sense. The text to which you linked, on the other hand, was written as such.
2. There is nothing homophobic about drawing attention to, or indeed condemning, a piece of writing in which the author fantasises about sex with an underage relative of the same sex. I am gay, but the conflation of homosexuality with paedophilic/ephebophilic incest implied by accusations of homophobia in this case infuriates me. Finding members of the same sex attractive does not mean that one wants to have sex with underage siblings of the same sex, any more than finding members of the opposite sex attractive means that one wants to have sex with underage siblings of the opposite sex. If a man with a public profile were to have written a lurid sexual fantasy in which he described penetrating his underage sister, would you feel vulnerable to accusations of heterophobia for drawing attention to, or condemning, this writing?
You can apologise if you want, but I don't think you need to. Nor, for that matter, do I think that Thompson or Odone have much about which to be ashamed. Your accusers, who imply by their accusation that desiring sex with underage siblings is somehow normative for homosexual men, are the ones who should be apologising.
Thank you for this :-)
It did come across as a tawdry morsel on top - "and look at his tastes in porn too!" - and I'd thought it fairly obvious how it would be used. And then, was used. So we can see people trying to flame Hari on PZ Myers' blog by citing Rose's tastes in porn. Again, I'd say that sort of thing was an obvious consequence of the original post.
But, hindsight, and obviously it wasn't obvious to you, nor your intention.
I feel it would be a mistake for you to start self-censoring yourself for fear of how other blogs may decide to distort your posts for their own ends.
Hi David.
On the one hand, I agree with the posters who have said that what Odone, Thompson, or anyone else does with this information is entirely their responsibility, and not yours. I also can't really see what homophobia has to do with anything.
On the other hand, I'm glad you see it as a mistake to have included the information, and I agree. It added nothing worthwhile to the discussion and, whatever your intentions, I did read your "extraordinary" comment as a little gleeful. Surely the substantive accusation here is that somebody has been waging a petty and reprehensible propaganda war and, depending on the identity of that somebody, it may or may not be a matter of significant public interest. Either way, the authorship of a piece of pornographic writing should be of no concern to any liberal reader: the text presents no danger to anybody in itself, and nor is there any suggestion that it reflects a desire that the author would wish to act out; any more than the many women who harbour rape fantasies would wish to experience the reality. Fantasies are just that.
I accept that you didn't include this information in order to attract prurient censure, but the sensitive nature of the subject matter might have given you cause to take a step back and weigh the benefits and potential consequences of its inclusion - and without wanting to be unkind, the consequences were fairly predictable. So while obviously it isn't for me to accept or reject an apology, I'm glad that you've offered one.
Oh fer Zeus’ sake David, have you been dahn sarf too long? Cease and desist with the self-flagellation stance please, it is unnecessary. Your piece was perfectly balanced, rational and supportable.
Just because some Right Wing homophobes who also happen to have the prurient sexual mores of Victorian patricians used some of the information to further their bigoted aims does not mean you should refrain from your work. Good grief, every car manufacturer and cutlery maker in the world is shaking their head at your silliness as we speak. I’m sure you learned the principle in the first year of your legal education; you are not responsible for the uses to which someone else puts your product.
If your exculpatory post was an attempt to distance yourself from the obnoxious pollution of their homophobia then I understand but it was not required; most people with a functioning brain not irredeemably distorted by ideology can see that you do not share that views.
I made my song a coat
Covered with embroideries
Out of old mythologies
From heel to throat;
But the fools caught it,
Wore it in the world’s eyes
As though they’d wrought it.
Song, let them take it
For there’s more enterprise
In walking naked.
It might have been out of place in that post, but there's a bit more to this than has been mentioned here so far. I can't link, however, out of respect for your wish expressed above.
Using someone's words for purposes they deplore isn't limited to the right wing, though, as the great poet quoted above testified.
I don't think you've got that much to apologise for David. Odone is always a bit louche when it comes to representing reality. For example, on her latest blog post she says,
'Hari was big on Facebook and Twitter before anyone else I know. He took to the social media in an obsessive way: he was a constant presence on the blogosphere, adding to his growing on-line oeuvre late at night, tweeting away with his virtual friends 24/7.'
Leaving aside the lack of self-awareness of criticising 'obsessive' bloggers on a blog, unlike her, Hari doesn't have a blog; only a website where he posts his articles. As for tweeting constantly from the earliest days of social media, he only joined twitter in October 2009.
http://www.johannhari.com/2009/10/01/i-m-on-twitter-at-last-
She's launching another hatchet job herself, on grounds as tenuous as David Rose's.
There is the possibility that the piece of writing attributed to David Rose was posted by a third party in an attempt to smear him. It'd be trivially easy for anyone to post something equally controversial and sign it with your, mine or anyone else's email address.
As it was not material to your original piece, I think it was justifiable as it was an aside. If however others have taken this as the central point of your critique then they may be missing the point...
Paul.
"But that does not mean, say, the novel Lolita should also be criminalized."
Particularly since that novel makes it absolutely clear, even told from Humbert's self-justifying point of view, that his obsession begins badly in his youth and ends in disaster, and is destructive to everyone involved, especially Dolores.
David, it should have been obvious to you from 9th July (when Damian Thompson published his blog in the Daily Telegraph headlining the pr0n) that the homophobic right were going to jump gleefully all over this.
Five days later, you finally admit that it was a mistake?
Well, better late than never, I suppose.
David
I think the original piece was necessary, rather than simply 'justified', from the angle of exposing Wikipedia-manipulation (not sure what the correct word is) in addition to the 'Who is D Rose?' question.
That is a longstanding problem which gets little attention. How much else is there on WP that is personal PR?
On your thought about writing the article at all, IMO you shouldn't even consider that it wasn't necessary, and that you shouldn't take too much responsibility for the uses others make of your research. Argue with them, yes, but is that a reason for not publishing awkward material?
I'd condemn Thompson for putting the pron claim into his headline, and perhaps for recycling (a little ironic, even though it was attributed :-) so much of your post. Has he overemphasized it? Yes, but it's worth noting that it is one of 6 posts he's done on Hari.
I thought Odone was restrained almost to a fault, unless there's something I've missed.
There's at least one other item which has not had play yet - what about the potential for defamation cases over malicious editing of Wikipedia, whether against Wikipedia itself or the author? If there are that many people who have been impugned, then the possibility at least exists.
There are enough precedents around for that to make an interesting area for your comment.
Rgds
Gah. Need to clarify. Where's the edit button :-).
"I thought Odone was restrained almost to a fault, unless there's something I've missed."
should be:
"I thought Odone was restrained almost to a fault, bearing in mind her history with Hari, unless there's something I've missed."
@steffan
Hari's site was a blog while Odone was at the New Statesman.
Checking back, it looks like he turned off the comments in 2005. Odone left the New Statesman in late 2004.
See:
http://www.johannhari.com/2005/06/06/closing-comments-
Twitter? I'm not sure about the dates general columnists (as opposed to tech journos) went on, so I won't comment.
You were surprised that right-wing bloggers would distort sensible stuff to serve their silly personal agendas?
That seems pretty naive, it's kind of what they do.
Sadly there are right-wingers who will use any information to deceive in support of their case. In the same way as far left-wingers have done for a hundred years or more.
David, you produce an excellent and thought-provoking blog. Please do not self-censor to prevent giving ammunition to left or right, because to do so would harm the power of your arguments, or could do. Better to accept that occasionally some berk will try to make cynical use of it, and if necessary apologise or at least comment on their theft later.
David,
You’ve become many people’s hero. I met you several years ago when you weren’t “famous”, and you went out of your way for us that evening, with great good manners, something I reckoned was typical of you.
It’s a good thing to show the more tremulous of us that it’s possible to take on public battles without having to be the kind of person who never regrets and never lies awake at night beating themselves up.
You may have done him a favour; the information would have come out anyway. There’s a good chance he has been sitting miserably these last couple of weeks wondering when the inevitable would happen. If so, that suffering is going to continue until all the secrets come out.
If it had been the obnoxious Rod Liddle who was the subject of all this, few of us here, I think, would have withheld the porn detail on the ground that an insight into his character was irrelevant, particularly given that to keep that hidden would have required hiding a lot of other evidence important to your case.
He’s just the first. Brilliant but unstable people have always done these things, but the starkness and permanency of online text is much more damning than second-hand stories. It’s the stable ones who manage now to cover up their iniquities. So we get the unpleasant spectacle of major figures still defending Roman Polanski, and they can get away with it because Polanski did those things at a time when there were no websites on which to write his diaries, or videos to upload, so no-one can challenge his odious defenders with glaring proof of what he did.
Your man really is a brilliant writer – one of the best - and I hope his career isn’t over. But it was right to expose what you found. It isn’t fair that it will encourage more homophobia. And the worst victim may be himself - though I hope he doesn’t have a brother or nephews, and I most certainly do not feel inclined to play down the import of paedophilic porn.
If he was stupidly and unthinkingly sharing his fantasies in what he thought was a self-contained world (though please let’s not just assume this was so benign) then I am uncomfortably reminded of something much lesser but similar. That is, the stupid, malicious or hormone-driven things I did when I was younger. They’re gone. I wish I had been a better person, but that’s for my conscience: there was no web. I bet that’s true of many of the people now exulting in their columns about this.
But now there are records. That’s just how it is. There will be a lot more cases like this, and it’s not your fault.
RSS
Agree with all Jack has said. I have few moral concerns with the creation and enjoyment of written pornography. In exceptional cases the content of some pornography will always- rightly or wrongly- provoke questions about the author's moral universe. I have read the story in question and I (for one) have no moral problem with it's content. Much more interesting to me is that I doubt- strongly- that it was written by someone with British English as his/her first language. The entire piece is shot through with Americanisms both in it's vocabulary (eg: "mom" not "mum") and grammatical constructions. I am only raising this observation as no one else seems to have made it and I am not making a statement of fact, merely a (fairly well) educated guess. Apologies if this breaks the rule of no "who is David Rose?" points but, as I say, no one else has made this point.
Whilst I can understand your concern regarding the subsequent use of your investigations, I do think you may be being a tad harsh on yourself. Surely there is a justification for including details of the story attributed to DR?
As the writers who have subsequently blogged about the story, and some of the above comments, have made clear there is, for many, a distinction between a merely same sex scenario and one that also involves incestuous activities. Given that there is a general taboo regarding such ‘extreme’ activities, any figure in the public eye would be wary of being associated with writing such material as it is likely there would be a ‘moral’ outcry from both the left and the right.
Given your original blog entry put forward the suggestion that DR might be a pseudonym surely the apparent use of DR’s email address to publish such material serves to strengthen this proposition.
There is a distinction between criminal acts and their fictional representation.
There certainly can be, but there's nothing logically impossible about criminalising the latter. Indeed, the fictional representation of certain acts - including representations of sexual activities with children - are now strongly criminalised in many jurisdictions, including the UK. I understand that there are live debates about whether creating and sharing even purely textual representations of such acts constitute an offence.
There's been a small liberal outcry at this, but for some unfathomable reason it's hardly a popular cause.
I'm all for going where the evidence leads you but how sure can you be that the "David Rose" in question was the David Rose that wrote the article or is indeed the owner of the email address.
I'm all for bloggers investigating and using the internet to dish the dirt but making tenuous links can almost ruin your credibility if you're not careful.
In my opinion I think you probably strayed over the line slightly but that's the beauty of opinion. I'd rather you stick to your principles and take action rather than pander to what someone else might think (especially right wing bloggers).
I think Hari might be a UK-styled Ellsworth Toohey. Really.
Your inclusion of the porn bit came off just like this:
"And then you wouldn't believe what I found...."
And nothing more.
I am glad I was following this story on your blog to see it as it went.
@jack
You clearly have sensationalised my username with the addition of the letter 'e'.
Clearly as a reference to drugs culture in order to make my comment appear more salacious.
Fair enough I accept your rebuttal of my allegation.
Perhaps take it as a cautionary tale of how easy it is to have such perceptions and accusations thrust open oneself when one sticks ones head above the proverbial parapet.
The content of the pron would also be significant if a David Rose, say, had taken a particular public view on sex with minors, or, say, a high-handed approach to another person's view on the subject or a particularly unremitting approach to the Catholic Church's attempts to deal with its crisis about this topic. If this were the case David Rose would be open to strong charges of hypocrisy. In this light, while regretting the typically bilious contributions of Damian Thompson I think the inclusion of that detail about the 'gay incest fantasy' was particularly relevant.
I have today removed the various edits and replaced it with a single edit and link to this page.
This is just to make the original post easier to read.
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