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With her book Outragesdescribed as"a long-overdue literary investigation into censorship and the life of a tormented trailblazer" by Oprah MagazineWolf chronicles the struggles and eventual triumph of John Addington Symonds, a Victorian-era poet, biographer, and critic who penned what became a foundational text on our modern understanding of human sexual orientation and LGBTQ+ legal rights.

Symonds, as Wolf highlights, was writing at a time when anything interpreted as homoerotic could be used as evidence in trials leading to harsh sentences under British law. Wolf sees a connective thread from those draconian laws of Victorian England to this moment, when marginalized people and groups are being targeted, silenced, and often jailed.

"Naomi Wolf'sOutragesis a vitally important book to discuss right now, not just because of its literary scholarship, which is superb, but because it speaks so clearly to the present societal moment. It's a moment that is incredibly dangerous, a potential turning point," according to Wolf's publisher, Margo Baldwin, of Chelsea Green Publishing.

Naomi Wolf 's most recent books include theNew York TimesbestsellersVagina,The End of America, andGive Me Liberty, in addition to the landmark bestsellerThe Beauty Myth. She lives in the Hudson River Valley.

This free event takes place Thursday, November 5th at 6:30pm through Zoom where registrants will have the opportunity to engage in conversation with the author.

SOURCE Chelsea Green Publishing

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Censorship and the Dangers of Being Silenced - PRNewswire

First celebrated for his abstract art, Philip Guston bucked convention, moving into figurative painting that included a repeating motif of hooded Ku Klux Klan members. Now these images have caused the postponement of a major retrospective to honour him and a heated row within the art world.

Four institutions the National Gallery of Art in Washington, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Tate in London have said their Philip Guston Now exhibition wont open before 2024 because it needs to be framed by additional perspectives and voices. They want to wait until the message of social and racial justice at the centre of his work can be more clearly interpreted.

The decision to postpone the touring show, which was supposed to begin in the summer, has caused a sharp backlash from within the artistic community, including from Mark Godfrey , the Tates senior curator for international art, and the artists daughter, Musa Mayer.

At issue, it appears, are depictions of white-hooded figures, an image that the social justice-attuned artist, who was Jewish and involved with leftwing politics, repeated from the early 1930s to his death in 1980.

There is a risk that they may be misinterpreted and the resulting response overshadow the totality of his work and legacy, a National Gallery of Art spokesperson told Artnews, adding that the museum wanted to avoid painful experiences the imagery could cause for viewers.

But Mayer said she was deeply saddened by the decision. She said: Half a century ago, my father made a body of work that shocked the art world. Not only had he violated the canon of what a noted abstract artist should be painting at a time of particularly doctrinaire art criticism, but he dared to hold up a mirror to white America, exposing the banality of evil and the systemic racism we are still struggling to confront today.

In these paintings, cartoonish hooded figures evoke the Ku Klux Klan. They plan, they plot, they ride around in cars smoking cigars. We never see their acts of hatred. We never know what is in their minds. But it is clear that they are us. Our denial, our concealment.

Guston frequently created work about racism, antisemitism and fascism. The show was set to include 25 drawings and paintings featuring Klan characters, a theme he returned to after a period of abstraction, in which he dealt with themes of American identity.

Godfrey, who organised the Tate Moderns runaway hit Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power, posted on Instagram that the decision is actually extremely patronising to viewers, who are assumed not to be able to appreciate the nuance and politics of Gustons works.

The art scholar and Guston biographer Robert Storr told The Art Newspaper that the pushback was from museum staff at the National Gallery of Art over the use of a 1930s anti-lynching image that was, in effect, the predicate for Gustons Klan imagery.

Guston himself said of his Klan images: They are self-portraits I perceive myself as being behind the hood The idea of evil fascinated me I almost tried to imagine that I was living with the Klan.

The dispute comes as arts institutions are grappling with multiple, converging crises: the loss of revenue from the Covid-19 shutdown; the loss of private benefactors, including the Sackler Trust; collectors who now establish private museums instead of making bequests to national art bodies; and the ramifications of the social justice movement.

In 2017, a protest erupted over white artist Dana Schutzs expressionist painting Open Casket (2016), a gruesome depiction of Emmett Till, murdered in Mississippi in 1955. The work was exhibited as part of the Whitney Biennial exhibition. Schutz, and the museum, were accused of taking advantage of a defining moment in African-American history.

Two years later, seven artists asked to have their work removed from the 2019 Biennial, citing the Whitneys lack of response to calls for the resignation of a board member with ties to trade in law enforcement supplies.

But the latest dispute goes to the heart of institutional responsibility and what critics describe as a surfeit of fear, caution, complacency and timidity.

Collector and critic Kenny Schachter told the Observer that instead of explaining art, public institutions are running scared. No matter where this is coming from, the lefts fear of the right, the rights fear of the left, the whole thing is a cesspool of bad behaviour on every side, Schachter said. Theyre kow-towing to any point of view thats safe and normative, but the real danger is in the act of censorship.

Gustons work, Schachter says, is exactly the kind of art that needs to be seen and spoken about. Gustons work was prescient and profound, and doing the reverse of the canonised way of thinking in art at the time. He had the foresight to see things as they were happening and his vision is as poignant now as they were then.

Art is not supposed to be a pretty picture. Its a reflection economically, politically, racially of our times. The art world trades its own brand of hypocrisy and thats the reason this show needs support because art is not always supposed to be easy.

A trustee of the National Gallery of Art, Darren Walker, said: An exhibition organised several years ago, no matter how intelligent, must be reconsidered in light of what has changed to contextualise in real time... by not taking a step back to address these issues, the four museums would have appeared tone-deaf to what is happening in public discourse about art.

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Sense or censorship? Row over Klan images in Tates postponed show - The Guardian

Looking at Haneen Hossam's TikTok account, one might wonder why her content landed the Egyptian social media user in jail. In one post, she explains for her followers the Greek mythological story of Venus and Adonis, which is also a Shakespeare poem.

Mawada al-Adham does similarly anodyne things that are familiar to anyone who observes such social influencers, like giving away iPhones and driving a fancy car.

They are just two of the nine women arrested in Egypt this year for what they posted on TikTok. Mostly, their videos are full of dancing to Arabic songs, usually a genre of electro-pop, Egyptian sha'abi folk music called mahraganat, or festival tunes. The clips feature a typically TikTok style with feet planted, hands gesticulating and eyebrows emoting.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration has put TikTok and its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, in its sights with another escalation against Beijing. The U.S. Commerce Department announced in September that TikTok, and another Chinese-owned app, WeChat, would be blocked from U.S. app stores.

In Egypt, the arrests are about dictating morality rather than any kind of geopolitical struggle or international tech rivalry. But what exactly the government finds legally objectionable about these women's online content is ambiguous.

"They themselves would have never imagined that they would go to jail and be sentenced for what they were doing because what they're doing is basically what everyone else does on social media," said Salma El Hosseiny of the International Service for Human Rights, a nongovernmental organization based in Geneva. "Singing and dancing as if you would at an Egyptian wedding, for example."

Hosseiny said that these women were likely targeted because they're from middle- or working-class backgrounds and dance to a style of music shunned by the bourgeoisie for scandalous lyrics that touch on taboo topics.

"You have social media influencers who come from elite backgrounds, or upper-middle class, or rich classes in Egypt, who would post the same type of content. These women are working-class women," she added. "They have stepped out of what is permitted for them."

Criminalizing the internet

They were charged under a cybercrime law passed in 2018, as well as existing laws in the Egyptian Penal Code that have been employed against women in the past.

Yasmin Omar, a researcher at The Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy in Washington, said the cybercrime law is vague when it comes to defining what's legal and what isn't.

"It was written using very broad terms that could be very widely interpreted and criminalizing a lot of acts that are originally considered as personal freedom," she said. "Looking at it, you would see that anything you might post on social media, anything that you may use [on] the internet could be criminalized under this very wide umbrella."

Egypt's cybercrime law is part of a larger effort by the government to increase surveillance of online activities. As TikTok became much more popular during the pandemic, prosecutors started looking there too, Omar said.

"When I write anything on my social media accounts, I know that it could be seen by an official whose job it is to watch the internet and media platforms," said Omar, who added that that surveillance often leads to widespread repression.

"The state is simply arresting whoever says anything that criticizes its policy, its laws, its practices ... even if it's just joking. It's not even allowed."

The arrests of TikTokers shows that this law isn't just about monitoring and controlling political dissent, but is used to police conservative social norms.

Menna Abdel Aziz, 17, made a live video on Facebook. Her face was bruised and she told viewers that she had been raped and was asking for help.

The police asked her to come in, and when she did, Omar said, they looked at her TikTok account and decided she was inciting debauchery and harming family values in Egypt essentially blaming the victim for what had occurred.

This past summer, there were a number of particularly shocking allegations involving rape and sexual assault in Egypt. First, dozens of women accused a young man at the American University in Cairo (AUC) of sexual violence ranging from blackmail to rape. And in another case, a group of well-connected men were accused of gang-raping a young woman in Cairo's Fairmont Hotel in 2014 and circulating a video of the act.

The cases garnered a lot of attention within Egypt. Many Egyptian women were shocked by the horrible details of the cases but not surprised about the allegations or that the details had been kept under wraps for so long.

"In Egypt, sexual violence and violence against women is systematic," Hosseiny said. "It's part of the daily life of women to be sexually harassed."

'To go after women'

A UN Women report in 2014 said that 99.3 percent of Egyptian women reported being victims of sexual harassment. Yet, women are often culturally discouraged from reporting sexual harassment in the traditional society.

"They are investing state resources to go after women who are singing and dancing on social media, and trying to control their bodies, and thinking that this is what's going to make society better and a safer place," Hosseiny said, "by locking up women, rather than by changing and investing in making Egypt a safe place for women and girls."

When prosecutors started investigating the accused in that high-profile Fairmont case, it looked like real progress and a victory for online campaigning by women. The state-run National Council for Women even encouraged the victim and witnesses to come forward, promising the women protection. But that pledge by the state did not materialize.

"Somehow, the prosecution decided to charge the witnesses," said Omar, the researcher. "Witnesses who made themselves available, made their information about their lives, about what they know about the case all this information was used against them."

Once again, Egyptian authorities looked at the women's social media accounts, and then investigated the women for promoting homosexuality, drug use, debauchery, and publication of false news. One of the witnesses arrested is an American citizen.

When pro-state media outlets weighed in on the TikTok cases, they also had a message about blame, Hosseiny said. The coverage used sensational headlines and showed photos of the women framed in a sexual way. This contrasted with the depictions in rape cases in which the accused men's photos were blurred and only their initials printed.

Social media has played an important role in Egyptian politics during the last decade. In 2011, crowds toppled the regime of military dictator Hosni Mubarak. That uprising was in part organized online with Twitter and Facebook. In 2018, the former army general, and current president, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, said he would maintain stability in Egypt.

"Beware! What happened seven years ago is never going to happen again in Egypt," he swore to a large auditorium full of officials.

Samer Shehata, a professor at the University of Oklahoma, said Egypt's military-backed regime is wary of the implications of anything posted online, even if it's just dancing.

"I think there has been a heightened paranoia as a result of hysteria ... about the possible political consequences of social media," he said. "I think that they certainly have those kinds of concerns in the back of their minds as well."

Of the nine women charged with TikTok crimes, four have been convicted and three have appeals set for October.

Menna Abdel Aziz, the young woman who called for help online, was recently released from detainment and is being dismissed with no charges.

This article originally appeared at PRI's The World.

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Social media censorship in Egypt targets women on TikTok - The Week Magazine

Whether it is the Records Department spitting out fiction in Oceania, the Afsana Department in Yoknapotawaha creating stories in less than three minutes, or Guy Montag burning piles of books every single night, dystopia had had a connection with words, books, and literature.

Why does Ingsoc keep shrinking the Newspeak dictionary? Why does Alex rip the copy of A Clockwork Orange apart without even caring to give its contents a malenky glance? Why does the mere possession of a book become the cause of a death sentence in Bradburys world?It wont be wrong to say that the political and social atmosphere had a deep impact on the thoughts of many creative geniuses, resulting in the enrichment of the twentieth-century dystopian literature.

Fascist regimes and two great wars, followed by the cold-war period and the power politics in every region, left a significant mark on fiction. However, the worlds most of the writers created were even more dangerous than the one they were living in. Ironically, a majority of the books criticizing the status quo themselves got banned.

Authorities always found one way or the other, from the use of offensive language to lack of patriotism and from blasphemy to obscenity, to restrict the distribution of books. The causes could always be twisted to meet the needs of those in power. Whatever the reason for the bans, one thing is for sure that even the mighty emperors with invincible armies were afraid of mere words.

Read More: 75% of Pakistanis dont read books: Gallup survey

The (unhealthy) relationship between censorship and literature goes way back in time. When Hitler burned over 25,000 books for being unGerman, he was, by no means, the first to wage war on words.

Under the Qin dynasty (3rd Century BC), hundreds of Confucian scholars were buried alive, and numerous historical records were destroyed, so as to wipe the slate of history clean only the wipes were soaked in the blood of ideas. Looking back at such instances, one is bound to think that Darwin, Voltaire, Hugo, and Twain were among the lucky ones: they got to live and their books survived.

The strategy to attain and exercise power by silencing disagreeable voices was not just restricted to fascist regimes. The practice has been used, and abused, by democracies, monarchies, and autocracies alike.

The US-South acted quickly to ban Uncle Toms Cabin; Zamyatins We was published in its original language (Russian) half a century after the authors death; Manto was persecuted both under the British rule and in the independent state of Pakistan; and Orwells Animal Farm got banned in the UAE in the twenty-first century.

This book-banning ritual has little to do with the form of the government as compared to the stakes and narratives of those in power.

Read More: Islam is not threatened by TikTok and books, Fawad Chaudhry

When a government bans a book, it is not just banning words, it is banning an idea an idea that can engender change, massive change. More importantly, it is a collection of such ideas which then forces the people to think and to ask questions. The very fear of the truth being ugly or not favorable for the ones calling the shots, leads to censorship.

In the words of Zahid Hussain (writing for Dawn), these bans are a manifestation of a culture that is afraid to face the truth.

The answer is evident from the current book-banning spree in Pakistan, where fiction, nonfiction, and even textbooks have borne the brunt alike. When Maktaba-e-Danyal was raided and the Urdu translations of A Case of Exploding Mangoes were confiscated by some Intelligence Personnel, that was just the beginning. Next came the ban on Hazletons two bestsellers for allegedly containing blasphemous content, followed by dozens of textbooks banned for a variety of reasons.

And quite recently, a collection of columns by Sohail Warraich vanished from the shelves because the authorities were offended by the cover the cover that was a mere cartoon.

Read More: No more Nazi propaganda books on Amazon

In the current state of affairs with muffled voices and chained ideas, how can there be any discord in thoughts? The very same discord that, according to Harari, compels us to think, re-evaluate, and criticize. The absence of this freedom, the freedom to be able to disagree, leads to consistency, and consistency is the playground of dull minds. It is this rigged game with no concept of a level playing field that the people in power love to exploit.

When words are restrained and pens are allowed to scribble only in praise of Big Brother, how long can ideas survive? Sometimes, I fail to draw a line between reality and dystopias.

Khawar Latif Khan is a Fulbright Scholar and a Communications Specialist with a graduate degree in Technical and Professional Communication. He has previously worked as a Sub-Editor at Global Village Space. He tweets at @khawarlatifkhan.The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Global Village Space.

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Banned books: The unhealthy relationship between censorship and literature - Global Village space

CRITICS have been panned over the years as experts on skills they do not possess. For the arts, theyre doubtless a necessary evil, while still arousing a vague sense of distaste. Theyre the fatties on the football terraces who shout at the players; the weirdos who get a bigger thrill from watching other people have sex.

But constructive criticism is doubtless valid, and many authors prefer it to being ignored. There are authors who eke out their earnings by criticising other authors (but not usually as harshly as non-authors do).

Most critics are responsible and helpful. Additionally, they are the voice of the consumer, as it were, rather than the producer. Some criticism, such as of television and radio programmes, also allows for fine writing and observations about wider society and culture.

This is all well and good. These critics are professionals, bought and paid for, so to say, and proven in their field.

The advent of the internet changed all this, widening the franchise to encompass the barely sentient. This is an excellent development if you are a fan of democracy, not so much if you abhor the mob. On balance, I guess it must be a good thing, even if a bit smelly.

The new enfranchisement of critics by and large involves products, but also newspaper journalism and books. Of the former, Ive little to say, as Ive never understood it.

We timorous hellboys of hackdom go where the mob goes. Sometimes, we lead them. Sometimes, we follow them. We stir them up. We stamp them down. The mob is our milieu. So, we must expect to hear their voices, below the line and elsewhere.

For those of us who labour in the muddy fields of opinion, in particular, this is all right and proper. Its more problematic where genuinely professional news reporters are slammed for a lack of objectivity just because a truth theyre reporting harms the complainers cause.

In some ways, we opinion mongers and light essayists are exposed to the same jaundice: something is a good piece of writing if it contains opinions the critic agrees with, and bad where its the opposite. The quality of the prose has nothing to do with it.

For proper writers, who who write books and that, Amazon is where they get it in the neck or, alternatively, whatever part of the anatomy is associated with praise.

Here, critics have a wide sphere of expertise, coming fresh from praising a food blender to assessing your ten-part history of the Peloponnesian War. Its a weird world where the more product reviews one reads the more lost one becomes. It cuts grass really well. It cant cut long grass. Its heavy. Its light. Easy to construct. Impossible to assemble.

Then there are the fake reviews, notoriously Chinese, where the language often gives them away: This clock is the best I ever eaten.

Fake reviews have been less prevalent, but are an increasing problem, particularly for weel kent authors who attract malicious reviews from trolls.

As with newspaper comment, this is nothing to do with the writing or story, but scabrous sabotage occasioned by the work containing an opposing opinion or by the authors wider views.

Now, campaigners are reportedly proposing to Amazon that authors and product-makers have the right to delete up to 10 per cent of online reviews. This runs the risk of genuine one-star reviews being deleted, but gives authors and others a chance to fight back against maliciously motivated trolls.

Its censorship, Jim, but not as we know it. Its censorship of the fake. You want to know where I stand on this. However, as a professional journalist of many years standing, I will wait to see what the ignorant mob thinks. Then Ill follow along after them.

Joker in the package

THE modern area may be defined as one that makes the formerly simple far more difficult. Adjusting the brightness on your television, once achieved by turning a knob, is now more or less impossible.

Rather than try to adjust the brightness, many people just go out and buy a new television.

Another problem area is packaging. It would be interesting to see the number of strokes suffered by people trying to open a packet of biscuits.

Then theres the amount of unnecessary packaging: wee wrappers on every item or sweetie; daft bags; a wee box for your toothpaste tube. Its worse where this cant be recycled, and now consumer group Which? has identified Pringles, the notoriously moreish crisps, as a prime offender here.

To be fair, its not so much the amount of packaging they dont individually wrap each crisp but the type. All the same, many manufacturers are learning that, for environmentally aware customers today, less is moreish.

Five things weve learned this week

Now theyre talking of jellyfish and chips. The ghastly gelatinous invertebrates are the latest weird creatures touted as a substitute for species that traditionally make up our suppers. These ideas never come to pass. Its haddock or nothing, Im afraid.

Spiders are a thundering nuisance that should be banned. In the absence of legislation, experts advise that we leave oranges aboot the place, as the wee satanic swine dislike fruit. Its their unbalanced, meat-only diet that makes them so horrible.

More awfulness from the dreadful world of nature: British gin is under threat from a bug which attacks juniper trees. The fungus-like pathogen invades the roots, starving them of nutrients. One worried mid-market paper branded the news grim and chronic.

NASA is plugging commercial brands to fund the International Space Station. First up will be Este Lauders Advanced Night Repair serum, which astronauts will pose with as they bob aboot. Probably not the job they envisaged when signing up for space.

Soon, folk will be wearing tiny wind turbines on their wrists. The nanogenerators will charge our mobiles as we swing our arms while walking. Not much use, however, to those who slouch along with their hands in their pockets.

Our columns are a platform for writers to express their opinions. They do not necessarily represent the views of The Herald.

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Opinion: Robert McNeil: Benign censorship on the horizon as reviews reach critical condition - HeraldScotland