Censorship and the AC Blog

There's been quite a lot of talk lately amongst the AC, this time, not about issues around the world but issues within our own blog. Issues about censorship. And I think it's great that these talks are happening because for this blog to be a success we constantly need to self-examine and critically analyse what's going on. Especially if only one person (me) has the privelege on here to determine what does and does not go on this very page.

So I would like to address some of these concerns.

First of all, our school website webpage. Yes, the link to our blog has been taken down. Yes, it was in response to Julia's infamous limerick about Stephen Franks. Yes, it is a shame and we have a right to be annoyed about it. But before everyone gets up in arms about it and starts hurtling abuse towards the WEGC staff, let's take a look back to consider the school's position in this. In response to Helena's blog post, Ms Judge (who helped create the school website and is one of the content administrators) made this position fairly clear.

She said,

"My stance is that I'm proud of what you say on here, but that it is obviously very left-wing and it is a fair point that certain peoples may be offended by your anti-National talk, and it may be seen as a stance of the school, rather than just you expressing your own very articulate and well-reasoned view-points. In theory 50% of the population like National and could be offended by dog-loving-limericks mocking certain politicians from their party. Though, he really brought that on himself.

So for the sake of freedom of speech, rather than ask you to censor what you write on the blog, we reluctantly agreed to take down the link when requested. I personally would much rather take down a link to your blog than request that you edit out or tone down certain things. I think that goes against the spirit of your blog. It certainly caused debate amongst us on a philosophical level. I guess there is always debate around whether a school should visibly connect itself to any kind of politics or views that may offend."

Ms Judge has been a huge supporter of our blog since the early pale-green days, and I know she was very reluctant to do this. We are very lucky to have such a great page on the website, especially one that is placed so prominently. Remember, this blog is aimed at promoting awareness of issues among youths. Our target demographic is the students of WEGC, not their parents. There are plenty of different things we can do next year to make people aware of the blog at school, (posters, business cards, whatever) with no need for consideration of the school's image.

I understand it's still frustrating. But as a left-wing, youth-based activist group with some potentially provocative issues and concerns to bring up, we may have to face instances of censorship like this often. If we didn't, we probably wouldn't be doing our job right.

Now, a response to Jessie's very eloquent blog post about censorship, which you can read just below. Jessie brought up some excellent points about publications censoring swear words. Namely, that deleting words like 'crap' is less about protecting young people than protecting that publication's image. And she is probably entirely right. If it were about protection, they would have given up a long time ago. By the time I was ten, I had heard pretty much the whole spectrum of swear words (and was using the word 'crap' by the time I was about eight.)

Yes, it is all about image, and this applies even to this blog. The policy on this blog for swearing is about the same as a show like The Simpsons. My stance is basically, on the spectrum of swear words (pretty much on a scale of from 'gosh' to 'c***'), you can do pretty much up to a-hole. I've even been pretty lax about enforcing this. I've let a sh*t and a tw*t go past. I understand that sometimes you need to use swear words. However, I have to draw the line somewhere.

The reason for this is that we want to reach the widest audience possible. Though we are an independent group and proud of it, our goal is to get as many young people as we can reading this blog and get them thinking about all sorts of issues and ideas. To do this, we need to provide a welcoming environment where people can read about ideas that may be controversial or different from our own, but presented in a way that doesn't make them offended or upset.

We need to keep in mind that the people who read or who will be reading this blog won't necessarily have the same beliefs or values as the people who write this blog, and may be a different age, gender, ethnicity or religion. While we all might think it's totally acceptable to have lots of swearing on this blog, the Active Collective is made up of pretty much exclusively 16 and 17 year old left-wing women, with fairly similar values. A year 9 girl, for example, might not feel comfortable with reading a blog post full of swearing, and neither might a youth leader interested in finding out more about our group. You never know. I give people this blog's address all the time, to a huge range of people. Last night I gave someone the address half-drunk at a karaoke party. You never know who's going to be reading this, or who we could alienate by the use of swear words.

I'm not asking you to censor your argument or the content of your post for these people, just how you present it. And I know each and every single contributor of this blog is very capable of getting her point across without using swear words. The Simpsons managed to be one of the most biting satires of the 90s (now, not so much), on pretty much the same swearing policy we have. You can do it. I have trust in you.

Onto the final issue. I have just deleted a post (with the author's sort-of permission), for the first time since starting this blog. Now, in fairness to the author and as an example of when censorship WILL be used on this blog, I'll explain why.

The post dealt with, interestingly enough, Stephen Franks, who seems to be turning into a sort of anti-patron saint of the Active Collective. And it was very similar in content to Julia's infamous limerick that led to the removal of the blog link from the school webpage (scroll down to beneath Helen Clark's face to read it). So why did I delete this particular post and not Julia's?

Well, I have to admit that Julia's post was definitely toeing the line of acceptibility. No matter how much we all hate Stephen Franks for his disgusting homophobia and simply being a member of the National Party, calling him a bigot and suggesting a bestialic (?) relationship with his dog is probably not the nicest or eloquent argument Julia could have made (I'm aware it was done very much tongue in cheek). However, it was pretty funny and Julia had obviously put time and thought into writing it so I left it up and thought no more. However, when it was clear the WEGC administration took issue with it and I had a choice whether to take it down or not, I left it up more or less as a symbol of our refusal to submit to the censorship of our content to please the masses. (Gee, I'm starting to look like a really big hypocrite now.)

As I said, the deleted blog post in question was very similar to Julia's in content and in tone. However, it went a step farther in terms of acceptibility. It's one thing to call Stephen Franks a 'bigot' and another thing to call him a 'bigoted, facist d*ckwad'. This directly relates to the swearing and perjorative policy I discussed above. This post wasn't lending at all to this blog's welcoming atmosphere and probably quite a few people would have been offended by this statement, no matter who it was directed at. It made me feel uncomfortable, I have to admit. And boy do I loathe Stephen Franks.

In other circumstances I probably would have asked the author in question to edit out this statement. However, the post was very short and once you took that out there wasn't really much else to it, apart from a reference to the censorship of the blog link and an apology for the content. I thought since both topics (Stephen Franks, blog link), with the same argument, had already been brought up in separate blog posts that there would be nothing new to add to the discussion and decided to delete it entirely. It wasn't a decision I took likely and I hope I don't have to do it again anytime soon. The author in question is an extremely talented writer so I know that she will do a brilliant post sometime soon.

If you have any questions or objections, comment! In the meantime, I'll leave you with a quote from Ms Judge (who possibly quoted it from somewhere else).

"Censorship is a backhanded compliment that acknowledges the potential danger and thus importance of the text."