This is disgraceful (the abject apology, and the abuse of the language of "harm"), on a par with the misconduct towards Rebecca Tuvel by the former Associate Editors of Hypatia or the mistreatment of Tommie Shelby by the Society for Analytic Feminism. Adults would do well to remember John Gardner's comments on an earlier thread:
That something offends you, or more generally makes you feel bad, does not show that it does you any harm. We all feel bad about something most days and come out of it unscathed, just as we come out of most physical pain unscathed. Of course there may be harms that are consequences of offence and pain. Torture harms people by the use of pain. Upset may turn to depression and may then be disabling. I have yet to see any evidence that anything Rebecca Tuvel said had any such consequences. Whereas people are certainly inflicting such consequences on her.
The Nation has now inflicted similar professional damage on the poet it has so prominently published and then rebuked. Any poet with integrity should stop submitting to The Nation until its poetry editors are replaced with competent professionals.
UPDATE: Philosopher Jerry Dworkin writes:
The amazing thing is that their initial reading was spot on. Although why it is "profane" is a puzzle. Maybe "Christian" is a bad word.
When we read the poem we took it as a profane, over-the-top attack on the ways in which members of many groups are asked, or required, to perform the work of marginalization. We can no longer read the poem in that way.
They don't give their new reading. But it seems that the mere appearance of "ableist" and "disparaging" language is sufficient to condemn a poem. So much for Huck Finn.
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