Angela Smith's Blog: Don't Mess With The Butterfly

I'm generally not in favour of censorship, except where the production of material involves harm to someone who is not a consenting adult.
However, this does not mean that I think I am obliged to give a platform to people whose views I find offensive. I am not. They are free to air those views elsewhere. I am free to walk away, to ignore them, or to argue with them - which I do will depend on how much energy I have at the time and how likely they are to take any notice.
There are things I do not want to read or watch or listen to, because I know they will upset me or make me uncomfortable (or angry). If I find them sufficiently offensive, I will make my feelings known to the organisers of an event or the publishers/distributors of a book or film, because I believe that is legitimate comment. I am not asking them to censor material, but I am making it clear that if they continue to provide a platform for (e.g.) sexism, racism or homophobia then I will take my custom elsewhere.
I have just deleted several comments from my earlier post, because they contained nothing but personal attacks and contributed nothing to the discussion. My blog, my privilege. The commenters are free to post in their own blogs. I have not deleted other comments because they made at least some pretence of contributing to the discussion. This is not censorship, just housecleaning.
(I note several of the sock-puppets have already deleted their own comments, so I saved a screen cap of the remaining comments before I cleaned up.)

...aren't worth wasting my time, energy and patience on. Same goes for some people.
So I'm drawing a line under that discussion.

I'm not a prude. Anyone who has read or heard more than a few of my poems will know that I'm not a prude. I'll use 'strong language and scenes of a sexual nature' where they seem appropriate, and some of my favourite performers do likewise. So why did I walk out half way through a show tonight?

I'd gone along to cheer on the lovely Cathy Bryant, and also because the gig was in a pub being run by Paul Heaton, of The Beautiful South fame, so I thought it would be a good night.

It started off well - the chap who was introducing the acts was friendly and funny, and Cathy gave a superb performance, despite not having been in the best of health lately. The poet who followed her was, in my view, rather more of a page poet than a performer, but interesting enough. Two down and four to go.

I suppose I should have been given some warning by the jokey remark our compere made about the next performer sharing a name with the beer in the Simpsons and having been on the beer all day. If the guy was drunk then it would perhaps explain some of his behaviour, though without excusing it in the least.

He began with a 'poem' (I use the word loosely) which combined all the worst qualities of sexism and sizeism. Because, of course, it's acceptable to attack women for their weight. The fat lass is good for a joke among the lads, when it's no longer OK to attack someone because of their race or their sexuality.

He didn't improve through the rest of his set. Words full of hate, every other word an unnecessary four-letter one, and a quite vile description of an unfaithful girfriend being anally gang-banged in a toilet.

All this might have been bearable if the audience had greeted this outpouring of vileness with the stony silence it merited. Some did. But a substantial part of the crowd laughed and clapped, some perhaps out of embarrasment but most with what seemed to be genuine enjoyment.

His turn finally, after what felt like forever, came to an end and a twenty minute break was announced. Cathy and her partner and I had planned to stay for the whole evening, but at this point we came to the decision that we could not spend another hour or more sitting in a crowd which could find pleasure in an act like the one we had just witnessed. It was too upsetting.

So, to the acts that followed the interval: I'm sorry we missed you, I hope you perform in better company next time.

I've been neglecting my writing over the last couple of months. I blame Christmas. That, and I'm intended by nature to be a hibernating creature, I swear. I do the 'eating to build up a store of body fat' bit well, but I can't seem to persuade work that I should have leave of absence to sleep till spring...

However, Cathy Bryant has been sending me links for poetry competitions, and I really ought to do something about that. Time to get the notebook out and set myself some writing exercises.