Spotlight on Jane Austen

It is still Women's History Month (though not for much longer) and I have been reading a lot about my dear Jane lately.

There has been a recent increase in online chatter about her due to The Other Bennett Sister, a current BBC series based on a book by Janice Hadlow.

A lot of that conversation is a mix of how they are getting Mary wrong and how they are there for it anyway. It sounds like they are getting Mary wrong, and I think they would have been better off starting after the events of Pride and Prejudice (though it does seem that more happens after) but I do not anticipate watching or reading anytime soon.

It is still fun to see people being passionate about it.

This increase is recent, but there had been an earlier extended conversation as well, starting with one very ignorant post:

https://x.com/vocalcry/status/1998790778001494425 

My university had a Great Books curriculum and one of the last books on the syllabus was ‘Pride and Prejudice’ and I told my professor that we were only reading it because they wanted to add a woman author to the list and he fidgeted uncomfortably because it was obviously true 

Don't worry; the replies are full of people telling her how wrong she is and there were many other threads started.

This is the grace I will give vocalcry: there are many different potential syllabi.  

Pride and Prejudice would be a good fit for many. If you are learning about the development of the novel, Austen was a key figure in building on realism, the use of dialogue, and social observation. Most of the other authors I can think of who did second- or third-person narration well did it several years later. 

Yesterday I wrote about how sometimes we are hurrying to try and approach equality and don't do a great job. If someone whose previous view only included old white men as great authors of great books started to realize that was a problem, adding Pride and Prejudice would be a reasonable start, though it wouldn't eliminate attitudes like this one.

If you were writing about the Romantic era, you would probably not read Austen unless you read Northanger Abbey to get an idea of the sentiment and reception. If the class was about examining social issues through literature, I'd lean toward Elizabeth Gaskell's Mary Barton.

There would also be people would would argue that if you are going to add something written by a woman for a "Great Books" class that it should be George Eliot's Middlemarch, though that really runs up the page count.  

I suppose one additional argument -- beyond mere sexism, but related -- is that a book that deals with ordinary people and ordinary problems does not count as "great" when that could be something that deals with existential crises and life and death, like Moby Dick 

I think that understanding human nature is worth something, and you are going to spend more time with other humans in settings like parties and visiting at home than you will in the doomed pursuit of a white whale.

Maybe Pride and Prejudice is more useful.

I enjoy reading Austen's books. I admire that she had characters that could be so different from each other and yet so interesting and relatable, going on two centuries later.  

There is also a lot that you can learn from them, about people and about prose.

Also important nowadays, her work can withstand some questionable adaptations. 

Death, life, and legacy

In Tuesday's post I referenced hyperbole and United Farm Workers. 

They were separate thoughts, but there was a connecting thread that relates to how we remember the dead.

That will be another multi-post issue, but I want to tackle something a little to the side today, encouraging us to not react too quickly.

(Also yesterday's post mentioned learning from discomfort -- which I have written about before, but not recently -- so it all connects.)

Labor rights activist Dolores Huerta recently revealed that she was among the women and girls sexually abused by César Chávez. There is now a rush to cancel celebrations, rename things, and take away the honor that has accrued to this man. 

https://apnews.com/article/latino-leaders-speak-out-about-chavez-allegations-f1b24d3c6bdf71b326b63d51f80ea957 

There are the usual points being brought up: why did they wait so long to come forward and are they lying on the side of misogyny, as well as some people a little too eager to tear down the work he did, probably mostly because of racism but maybe also because of worker rights and unpopular things like that.

There are questions about whether you still give credit for the work he did; does this ruin it all?

I am writing this post because the apparent rush by some to rename the days and streets and things after either Dolores Huerta or United Farm Workers feels like a rush to get over this bad news. 

We might grow more if we don't rush. 

How much we want to honor an imperfect person is worth considering in this time of cult-like partisanship. It is not the only thing worth considering.

Chavez died in 1993; most of the honors came significantly later. Portland's own  César E. Chávez Blvd was not named that until 2009. There would be a lot of things to rename and change because historically we have not been great at honoring people who were not rich white men. Attempts to fix that may have also been a little rushed, so 

Chávez got used a lot, even though he was not the only prominent person checking his specific boxes. For some more context, Portland got Rosa Parks Boulevard in 2006, Harvey Milk Street in 2017, and Martin Luther King Blvd all the way back in 1989.

(See also https://erdavis.com/2022/04/14/only-6-streets-in-portland-are-named-after-people-of-color/.) 

I'm not saying that's not a reason to rename, but there is a pattern to the way we have done things. Changing the names will not automatically change the patterns.

Here are some other areas to ponder.

Regarding Dolores Huerta (who has done great work for decades, so honoring her is perfectly reasonable), there were two things that stuck out to me.

First, she did not know there were other victims back then. I believe her, but one sad thing I have learned by now is that as much as sexual abuse makes people feel isolated, they aren't. I hope there is enough understanding now that if he is doing it to you, he is doing it to others. That doesn't make coming forward easy, but we should know enough to make it easier; have we?  

You know we haven't. 

Secondly, one reason she did not speak up until now was her fear that it would damage the movement. Would the public back then have used it to discredit the movement? Yeah, seems likely. 

Have we progressed beyond that, where we want good things for people and progress so that we will not let the failures of one person get in the way?

For another train of thought, a few years back there was a movement to remove more Confederate memorials and memorials to people who profited from slavery. If we were to go through and remove and rename anything related to a rapist, how much would that change things? Would maps become useless? Because it's been pretty common.

Our country has twice elected a confessed sexual assaulter found liable for rape and is allowing him to delay investigation of likely evidence that he is a pedophile while wreaking havoc internationally and domestically. Maybe we should sit with that for a while.

Maybe we should abolish the tendency to look for a "great man." One individual may be very inspirational or organized or have a lot to offer, but there are always others planning and carrying out and carrying on. Focusing too much on that one minimizes the work of others and allows him a latitude that can easily cause harm.

Let's not get over this quickly. 

Related posts: 

https://preparedspork.blogspot.com/2022/10/three-reasons-to-embrace-discomfort.html  

https://preparedspork.blogspot.com/2019/02/sitting-with-uncomfortable.html 

 

Apologies

When going over Davidson's original apology, I mentioned some issues with it, but there was one I did not address: his mortification was if people thought the outburst was intentional, rather than the problems caused by the outburst itself.

That continues with the issue of him not de-centering, but also focuses on intent, which is not particularly helpful. 

If you are following "I am sorry" with "if" or "but," you are doing it wrong.

Now on to the second apology. Notice this headline: 

https://www.msn.com/en-us/entertainment/news/tourette-s-campaigner-john-davidson-refuses-to-apologize-following-bafta-racial-slur-incident/ar-AA1XwAll?

That's a bit sensationalized, given the actual statement:

"Whilst I will never apologies for having Tourette syndrome, I will apologise for any pain, upset and misunderstanding that it may create.”

The press continues failing across multiple fronts. 

We should also note that no one has asked him to apologize for having Tourette's.

One bold assertion I saw in the defense of John Davidson was that if a blind guy had spilled someone's drink in a bar, no one would have been upset.

I'm not sure that's true. Maybe it depends on whose drink it was, and how many they'd already had, but I think there could be some complaining and maybe even some fighting.

Another question asked multiple times in posts defending Davidson was whether you would expect an apology from someone in a wheelchair who ran over your foot.

Yes. Absolutely. That's the bare minimum of human decency.

These were hypotheticals posted as if the answers were obvious; people with disabilities have no responsibility for the ways in which said disability affects their interactions with others.

That is simply not true. Nor should it be. 

Two examples were given (multiple times) from the film I Swear, which I have not seen.

One claim was that when Davidson was made an MBE, he said several inappropriate things on the way in and to the queen herself. 

The posters using this example said that he apologized and then the queen said he didn't need to.

I have seen articles about what he said and that the queen was gracious, but none confirming that he apologized first:

https://www.digitalspy.com/movies/a70693855/i-swear-true-story-john-davidson/ 

(Two other articles gave the exact same level of detail.)

It might be easier to be gracious when the other person makes the first step.

The other part referenced was that a young Davidson was constantly apologizing, making him depressed and suicidal. Because of that, a mentor told him to never apologize. 

I know many people (and have been one) -- usually women -- who apologize for everything, taking responsibility for things that are not their fault. I think this is more of symptom of low self-esteem than a cause, but it's not helpful. It can be something to work on.

It is also important to note that you can cause harm without having bad intentions. Being able to recognize that and acknowledge it is a good thing. 

It's hard to imagine that anyone other than a white man -- even one with a disability -- could think that never apologizing is a good path forward. 

There is a wide range between what is within your control, and outside of it, and the differences between ignorance and flagrant disregard. It is nonetheless a good and human thing to understand when you have had a negative impact on someone and to try and rectify that. 

Maybe one concern about apologizing is that it accepts responsibility. If you have caused harm but your intentions were pure, a continuation of that purity seems like it would require trying to fix the unintended harm. 

Maybe you did not cause harm, but you were benefited by harm caused by others. For example, I am in a better position socially and economically because of the oppression of other groups. I should work for equality.

That gets into dangerous territory, because then there might be an acknowledgement that our lives (especially the good parts) are not simple matters of merit. 

There is a humility that can come with acknowledging harm, whether it was intentional or careless or completely accidental. It allows healing and growth, but yeah, there can be discomfort with it.

That tends to be how healing and growth work. 

One more little complaint about Davidson; in the second apology he mentioned reaching out to Jordan and Lindo privately... the outburst was public, and I think he could have done better publicly. 

Some of his defenders mentioned that if he had tried apologizing right then there would have been more outbursts. That is probably true, but a prompt, better statement could have really been helpful. It could have been a blow against both racism and ableism.  

There was a lost opportunity here, but there is always the opportunity to do better next time. 

Related posts:

https://preparedspork.blogspot.com/2026/03/learning-from-mistakes.html 

Black reaction to the BAFTAs

I don't love that title, but I couldn't think of a better one.

For all of the white people newly deputized to care about ableism, much of their defensiveness was based on a fear that Davidson would be persecuted for his outburst; so unfair!

Let's note that abuse of Davidson was happening mainly in their imaginations.

I haven't seen every reaction; I can't swear that no one was threatening him or saying that he should be beaten or excluded from all events forever, as his defenders implied. However, this is what I saw...

Michael B. Jordan and Delroy Lindo said they wished it had been handled better by the awards show staff. 

Hannah Beachler felt that Davidson was "exploited."

Now that is a potentially fraught issue. One possible outcome of ableism is that people with disabilities are often infantilized and seen as lacking in agency. 

I don't think Beachler implied that. If Davidson did in fact express concern about being placed near mics, was reassured that would not be a problem, and then someone deliberately violated that for humor or edge or whatever, "exploitation" would be a reasonable description. 

You could argue that the people coming so hard to his defense are infantilizing Davidson, but that's a separate issue.

Overall, the worst thing I have seen directed at Davidson has been the opinion he should apologize. That has been greatly offensive to some. I'll get to that tomorrow.

There were three things that could be perceived as worse, and potentially as attacking Davidson individually or people with coprolalia in general.

I have addressed the SNL sketch and Jamie Foxx's Instagram post, so obviously this is about Deon Cole:

https://uk.news.yahoo.com/comedian-addresses-backlash-making-joke-110651780.html 

“If there are any white men in the room with Tourette's, I advise you to tell them to read the room, lord,” Cole said in a mock prayer, adding: “It might not go the way they thinketh. Whatever medicine they on, they better double up on it, lord." 

That was interpreted being a threat. Perhaps.

The people defending Davidson were mostly assuming that this would involve that violent beating.

That does not have to follow. First of all, someone can be ejected peacefully. 

The way it was delivered (which I acknowledge was not particularly reverent), it can also be seen as a warning: "In this gathering, we are honoring people of color and we are not going to let them be insulted. If you can't honor that, you should leave."

Well, if that offends you... 

That brings us back to the other fantasy threat: should Davidson never be allowed to go anywhere again?

No one is saying that, but there might be some places where it is better not to go. 

I had referenced intersectionality in one of the earlier posts. Sometimes it's hard.

I was recently reminded of backlash against The Color Purple for perpetuating harmful stereotypes of Black men.

If I recall correctly, at this point Hollywood was moving somewhat away from having Black men be primarily thugs and criminals to where there were also roles where a Black man would be the beloved supporting character whose death motivated the white leads to their ultimate victory. So, yes, I can see where there were some concerns. 

If there was a truth in that for Black women -- who have dealt with patriarchy and misogyny from multiple sides -- should the image needs of Black men override the women's voices?

(If this seems like it might also be relevant to recent revelations about United Farm Workers... yes, I also noticed that.) 

That goes back to us needing many stories, so that every race and gender and orientation can have lots of representation. 

The journey can be rough, but if we want good things for people, we can work with it.

If we want to perpetuate the harmful hierarchies, it is easy to jump on the bandwagon that has your preferred side, but at least pay attention to if the problem you think you are fighting is real. Sometimes it is a bunch of straw men dressed in hyperbole. (That was almost going to be another tangent, but I am going to move that to next week, I think.)  

Again, without claiming to have seen every single response -- and having addressed the exceptions I did see -- the primary criticism that I saw directed at Davidson was that he should apologize.

The horror! 

Men versus Women: Literary Edition

These are some thoughts that had been floating around for a while; maybe Women's History Month is a good time to express them. 

I would say it all started back in 2012 when I read The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl by Timothy Egan, published in 2005.

It was a really good book anyway, but one thing that stuck out was a book he mentioned that has just been published the previous year: 

Whose Names Are Unknown by Sanora Babb was originally slated for publication in 1939.

Babb worked for the Farm Security Administration, part of the New Deal. She had published some short pieces and as she interviewed the farmers and took notes, she began to have a book in mind. She wrote it and Random House agreed to publish it, then backed out due to the appearance of a new, very similar book, The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck. 

Her book did not get published until 2004. 

Babb's boss, Tom Collins, gave Steinbeck Babb's notes.

I am not saying that either Collins or Steinbeck knew that Babb was writing a book and were trying to undercut her that way. I am saying that they took no thought of letting her know or giving her credit. Steinbeck dedicated his book to his wife and to Collins, but made no mention of Babb.

That incident alone is one story. It's a common and frustrating story, and it relates to a lot of things, but that's not exactly what this blog post is about.

For reference, I read The Grapes of Wrath in 2010 and Whose Names Are Unknown in 2018. 

(Two points I will make from that is that it taking me six years to get to a book I want to read is not at all surprising and that I truly appreciate Goodreads for letting me check these dates.)

Shortly after the first inauguration of the worst president ever, I started catching up with books that seemed like they might be relevant. The spreadsheet column where I track the ones I have read is now at line 105 (I swear when I started it was only about 20 books). There have also been offshoots for specific areas... I don't know when that will be done.  

I can say that one of the original books was The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, which I read that April (right between Catch-22 and The Handmaid's Tale.). How capitalism can corrupt and require government regulation seemed pertinent.

Jurgis reminded me a lot of Tom Joad. Part of their "heroism" involves casting off others. In Tom's case it is that he needs to flee criminal prosecution, whereas Jurgis -- previously so sure that his strength would be enough for anything -- loses his wife and children to death and other family to vice, though the level of attachment can seem questionable. 

The similarities weren't overpowering until I read another work by Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men, in 2024.

I know having to kill Lenny hurt George, but there were still people willing to work for the dream. He didn't have to give up on it all. 

The big difference in Whose Names Are Unknown is that no one goes off on their own. Yes, they have faced persecution in their attempts to build a better life, but they are committed to working together, forming new bonds and strengthening them. They are a team.

They may not be able to solve capitalism on their own, but they have better odds of surviving it by working together.

If more people would band together, we could see real progress. 

Foolish pride and competition gets in the way, then machismo allows the fools to think they're heroic as they set themselves and others up for failure.

Babb did meet Steinbeck once. He did not thank her for her notes. It is possible that he didn't want to tip her off that he was using them for a book, but it is completely plausible that he just didn't see the need. The dedication was to Collins, "who lived it." Collins didn't live it; he supervised people observing it. 

Babb was even from Oklahoma! 

There is a long history of men using the work of women and taking the credit, often while abusing the women.

In another Steinbeck work, East of Eden, there is one incredibly evil woman and one delightful girl whose father was disappointed that she wasn't a boy. There is a horrific rape, but those men then become very caring fathers to Lee. 

Curley's wife doesn't even get a name. 

I don't think Steinbeck was a bad man, but much like structural racism there is a structure that supports misogyny. Women are expected to serve and be at men's disposal. As much as we should have progressed past it by now, there remain deep problems.

Unsurprisingly, those problems hold back men, too. Racism has a negative impact on white people. 

Are we ready to deal with it?

The racism

I wrote a whole draft yesterday, then realized I'd opened up another can of worms. I guess that one will go up next week.

I was making the point that in general people were being very understanding of Davidson. One notable exception was Jamie Foxx. 

https://parade.com/news/jamie-foxx-questions-john-davidsons-tourettes-defense-bafta-awards  

In a series of three brief Instagram posts, Foxx indicated his belief that Davidson meant the slur and that it was intentional.

There were replies that argued and tried to correct Foxx, but also some that agreed. 

I thought I would make a brief point about how coprolalia can't be controlled so you can't say it was intentional, but there was this nagging inability to dismiss that it was meant.

Getting back to that SNL sketch, celebrities only saying terrible things on record when they are drunk does not mean that they don't really mean it or think it; they simply know that there is a penalty for saying it that allows their sober versions to keep it in check.

One of the interesting things that came up in the initial discussion is that the UK has a much smaller Black population than the US, meaning they are not used to getting so much flack on the racism. The rollout of improved (but still lacking) apologies may have been due to push back that they were not prepared for.

Black people make up about 15% of the population in the United States versus less than 4% in the UK. The caveat I have to put with that is that I have also seen -- but do not really know -- that mixed race is generally counted as a separate category there, whereas the US had our one drop rule. It's not that we don't have issues with colorism, but there may be greater solidarity in the United States, beyond just bigger numbers.

(Though the reaction of many English people to Megan Markle could make you question whether mixed race really gets any preference.)  

Something else I have seen people say is that other countries are more racist than the US but they don't talk about it so it works differently. As we are already way too racist here, that is not an encouraging thought.

Remember, with structural racism there is so much supporting the racism that it can act on an unconscious level. That's why you have to actively talk and think about and pay attention to it to actually overcome racism. 

A lot of people fail to even try.

When some people are forced to think about it by circumstances there is angry reaction instead of introspection. 

This results in things like mentioning racism being called the real racism, or people saying how Obama divided us because once he was elected they were making monkey and watermelon jokes before he was even in office, and then were criticized for that.

That is my very roundabout way of saying that while I truly believe that Davidson's outbursts were not intentional -- which matters -- that does not guarantee that he did not mean those outbursts, even if not consciously.

That's not about blaming him either, but there is a context to everything. 

If we really want to care about each other and make things better, we need to pay attention to those contexts.  

De-centering

"I am and always have been deeply mortified if anyone considers my involuntary tics to be intentional or to carry any meaning... I have spent my life trying to support and empower the Tourette’s community and to teach empathy, kindness and understanding from others and I will continue to do so. I chose to leave the auditorium early into the ceremony as I was aware of the distress my tics were causing.” 

This is the most common iteration of posted of John Davidson's initial statement on his outburst at the BAFTAs. There is a later one that we will get to. As the ellipses indicate, it was longer, but I what I read did not add a lot, and that one is harder to find.

There are two things I notice in this statement, but they are part of the same issue.

The first is that it is focused on his mortification, not the mortification caused to others. Therefore, it makes sense that he talks about teaching "empathy, kindness and understanding FROM others" (emphasis mine) rather than teaching empathy for others.

He is centering himself. It's a common failing, and it's easy to do when you think of your problems as unique to yourself. There are other people who have their own issues. That is true on a general level -- everyone has things that are hard for them; everyone has bad days -- but also, there are other marginalized groups.

That's why it is so important to have an intersectional understanding of the world. There are things about you, but not everything is about you.

That leads us to one of the bits of humor I am going to go into. 

https://www.the-independent.com/arts-entertainment/tv/news/snl-tourette-sketch-connor-bafta-b2930312.html 

Tourette's Action has condemned the Saturday Night Live sketch as misrepresenting tics and setting them back. 

I watched the sketch; it was not making fun of Tourette Syndrome. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkKb3K8cxss 

It's making fun of celebrities and the excuses they make for their bad behavior. Previous excuses have been alcohol or depression or misunderstanding, but the sketch implies they have something new to try.

This is reasonable based on all of the white people who were just so happy to see a legitimate use for saying the N-word, but the humor is also predicated on the fact that none of those excuses fly. If racism comes out when you're drunk, it's there when you're sober too -- you are just able to pretend better.

Crucially, most of the issues the sketch portrayed celebrities trying to excuse were based on marginalization: racism, misogyny, antisemitism, transphobia. (There might be some misogyny in Arnie Hammer's cannibalism deal, but he just might be the outlier there.)

If you remember that your problems are not the only problems, you can react differently to that. You might even notice how your defenders are acting and take a moment to condemn both racism and the resurgence in use of the R-word. 

But that takes thinking of other people.

It should be amazing and appalling how far so many people went to avoid thinking about and empathizing with the Black people who were verbally assaulted.  

Instead it has been appallingly normal.