Caveat Poeta

 Until today I hadn't heard of Valiant Scribe. I might never have heard about it at all, if a poet acquaintance of mine hadn't publicly boasted about them publishing a rather underwhelming piece of verse he'd scribbled in response to the murder of Sarah Everard. Like most of my poetry friends on Facebook, my initial concern was that this kind of self-promotion, on the back of a murdered woman, would have been distasteful if the poem had been a brilliant piece of writing - which it decidedly wasn't. It didn't occur to me to look into who Valiant Scribe were until I'd spent most of the day going back and forth with this guy and his sycophants over whether one ought to adopt the idiom of William Topaz McGonnagal in writing about a woman's murder. 

When I did finally look, something seemed a little, well, off about the enterprise. It was a little too slick, a little too bland, a little too obviously something with money behind it. So I did what I used to do back when I called myself a journalist: I started digging. 

The obvious place to start was the magazine's editor, Debra Eyis. The information about her on the Valiant Scribe website described her as the co-leader of a group called the Redeemed Writer's Group, and a contributor to a Christian site called Our Daily Bread (abbreviated to ODB - Big Baby Jesus in the muthafuckin house, yo). This made sense in terms of the Scribe's emphasis on 'faith' (helpfully parenthesised as 'Christian'), but what kind of (Christian) faith was this? I know a few Christian poets who combine their faith in God with social liberalism, but something about the Scribe's website made me suspicious. There was something they weren't quite being open about. 

There was a pattern here I was familiar with: a main organisation throwing up groupuscules like chaff, which all, when examined, seemed to consist of the same people. This was the modus operandi of the group which formed about the always suspiciously well-funded 'communist' periodical Living Marxism, which would go on to form the Institute of Ideas and Spiked magazine. And it's a pattern you also see cropping up in the ranks of organised anti-trans bigotry, where the same dozen middle class former Guardian columnists endlessly proliferate astroturf 'LGB' and 'feminist' groups to further their agenda of marginalising trans people. And sure enough, transphobia would rear its ugly head in connection with Valiant Scribe, but we'll get to that in a moment. 

Investigating the Redeemed Writers Group threw up yet another religious outfit, the Center for Faith and Work. The CFW had 'founded' the RWG, according to the 'who we are and what we do' page on the latter's website, but I was assured that the writers' group was 'now operating independently'. Not that independently though: the Resources page of the RWG website makes it clear the CFW were actively seeking pieces from group members on topics such as 'Cultural Renewal'. 

I don't know about you, but when religious types start talking about 'renewing culture' I get a little antsy. It tends to be the case that the first step in these plans for renewal usually involves at the very least curtailing the liberty of folks like me. And that unease was confirmed when I learned the parent organisation of the Redeemed Writers Group was Redeemer Presbyterian Church, a house of worship criticised by the New York Times in 1998 as 'being full of fundamentalists and zealous, newly-converted Christians pushing hard-line views'. The church pastor, Tim Keller, objected to this hardline label, though - and anyway, this was 1998. Perhaps things had changed since then?

They haven't. In keeping with the now-familiar pattern of obfuscation on the part of Redeemer and its literary satellites, it takes a bit of digging to find out their current position on The Gays. Fortunately, the website Church Clarity had done that digging for me, establishing that while no open, public statement of an LGBTQ inclusion policy can be found on the site, a 2015 'Redeemer Report' from Keller establishes their position: 'that homosexuality was not God’s original creative intention for humanity ... and therefore that homosexual practice goes against God’s express will for all human beings, especially those who trust in Christ.'. 

And ditto for trans folks. Remember I mentioned the other group Eyis is affiliated with, Our Daily Bread Ministries? Their publishing arm produced a book in 2017 called God and the Transgender Debate, by a rat-faced little fuck called Andrew T. Walker, which was described by ThinkProgress as a tract in which, despite 'the way he sugarcoats his condemnation in love and compassion', Walker, relying on the discredited research of psychologist Paul McHugh (who reckons trans people are mentally ill) produces a manual 'to help evangelical Christians reject transgender people in exactly the same way' their church has rejected gay people for decades. 

So that's the Valiant Scribe, then: a magazine associated with a homophobic church, whose editor also produces content for an evangelical ministry whose publishing arm demonizes trans people. One to avoid, I think, and a reminder to do your research before submitting your work. Caveat Poeta, one might say.

The facts

 The facts are these.

In 2015 I brought my first ever full spoken word show to Edinburgh. That show was about misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, racism and the kind of people who try to excuse it as just a joke, as for the lulz, as banter. 

In 2016, I watched as the representatives of that school of thought took over the world. Brexit. Trump. The victory of everything I'd set myself in opposition to. 

It made me get a little...intense. A little odd. A little unhinged even, maybe. I'm on antidepressants these days. I'm in therapy. I've been through some personal shit, physical and mentally. I'm not the same person I was in 2016.

I don't think many of us are.

But that was four years ago. And the man who represented the victory of everything I hated just lost, in the USA.

Maybe it's time to bring it home. 

I HAVE MOVED

Find me now at The Reenchauntment of AJ McKenna

Tyrant

What's
that

coming
over

the
Hill?

Is
it
a monster?

Is it?

Is
it
a monster?

Penny dropped yet?

'I watched as Russia funded far-right and far-left political parties in Western and Eastern Europe (most notably in France and Hungary), as well as NGOs and used its economic influence (especially in oil and gas) to pressure European politicians to support Kremlin objectives. This fall, we saw Moscow continue to intervene in other nations' politics, funding pro-Russian political parties in Moldova, and sponsoring demonstrations against that country's pro-Western government.'

Still think Brexit was about us 'taking back control'?

The Russian and the President

He is a projection. But is he ours or theirs? What he is to them: themselves as they would wish themselves to be. Rich. Uncowed by the phantasm taste. A hit with women: and if that's just because of the money, so what? We can't all look like Tom Cruise or the rest of those Hollywood faggots. If a guy makes money, why shouldn't he be allowed to grab a little pussy, huh? And these girls, they're not angels. They know what the score is, right?

Not angels. If anything, the opposite. These men are scared of women: you can smell it on them. As weak nerds devour martial arts manuals, dreaming of the perfect move that stops them feeling threatened, these sad cases immerse themselves in PUA 'culture': negging and peacocking occupy the space, for them, that flying kicks and judo suplexes do for the feebler dweebs.
Not that one can't get intersectional. A lot of these dorks are as lacking in puissance in the streets as in the sheets. He is the projection of their fantasies of power. Unafraid of other men and unafraid of women. At least on the surface. Anyone who's ever been within sniffing distance of a pussy knows that men who boast about 'just grabbing' it are tragic, try-hard little twerps, more concerned with impressing other men than sexual pleasure.

Perhaps we don't see this so clearly because the image of him doing it is so disgusting. The image of those tiny, stubby fingers wriggling into a cunt. And doing nothing once inside. A pussy isn't like a pair of balls, chump. Nothing really happens when you grab it. But then, do we really imagine those chipalatas have ever learned anything about the clit and how to flick it?

Of course they don't. One look at his suits, his alleged coiffure,  his scotch-taped tie, is enough to work out what sex with him must be like. Perfunctory, unpleasant; nasty, probably brutish, and certainly short. He heaves himself onto the bed, onto her, makes his thirty seconds' regulation squelching, twists his orange face into a coital rictus,  then dismounts. He grabs her boobs in front of dignitaries, and giggles. This is his sex life, such as it is. And it's enough for him: because for him the sex is not the action. The boast is the action: telling the guys about it later, laughing that he doesn't care if he comes first because that's 'winning'. Or silently: his trophy wife strapped to his arm like a falcon, paraded, displayed: this is mine. Mine. Only I get to have this.

Does he believe that? Do any of them think a piece of ass like her is happy with a thirty second fuck?  Of course not. There's a reason every second word out of their mouths is 'cuck'. They fear women. They distrust us. Because they're afraid we'll see them as they really are. The truth of them. The contemptible fact. That we see how much they do not measure up, and use them while we seek our joy elsewhere. She's only with him for his money. And he knows that. And it hurts.

Fearful of women, these men instead surround themselves with other men. The supposedly strong and virile men they fear that they are not. It's no surprise that he has filled his cabinet with Generals. Cowards fetishize the puissance of the military man. And he is not just a coward but a draft-dodger too. Never having served, he never had the chance to see first hand how little respect most grunts have for the top brass, never had good cause to doubt the vertu of the men he seats himself among. He'll come to doubt it, of course, and do so publicly: whatever he might say, they aren't really there to advise him. They're his personal audience: employed to laugh and slap him on the back when he regales them with tales of his pussy-grabbing exploits. They're the hard nuts he pays to crowd behind him as he tries to look tough at the podium. His gunsels need to know their place.

It's no wonder the Russian appealed to him. The Russian has spent years cultivating a butch mystique guaranteed to get him moist.  To get him on side, the Russian didn't have to convince him of their shared strategic interests. He simply had to seduce him. A dirty job, perhaps, but the Russian is an ex-KGB man, and tradecraft is tradecraft. What does it matter if the bond he will exploit was formed in a mutual jack-off session in the Kremlin? Such shared secrets bond and bind. And shared fluids are adhesive, for the body and the soul.

Of course the Russian kept some. Every warlock needs insurance, after all.  

Ninety Grand: a poem about Jennifer Boyle

Racist Trump supporter (is there any other kind?) identified and shamed on social media

She says that she makes ninety grand a year
as if this makes her something more than flesh,
as if the woman serving her is less
by virtue of her lower hourly rate;
as if the ones who wait are willed to serve
by something more than just dumb fucking luck;
as if the force that wills the gap she claims
to shout across were anything like just.

She says that she makes ninety grand a year.
She claims to be the victim, claims to be
the target of some fantasy campaign.
She says the man she voted for has won,
so there. She says we should look at who won.
So there, she says. We should look at who won.

She says that she makes ninety grand a year.
She says the man she voted for has won,
attacks as traitors those who intervene,
rants tinnily from my computer screen,
while in another open tab I read
her previous employer say it's been
six months since she was sacked. Her social sites
name no employer currently. She says
the man she voted for has won; she claims
that she makes ninety grand a year.

By nine that night her LinkedIn site is down.