Last winter, the Brooklyn-based literary magazine n+1 published a thoughtful essay on the subject of white male-resentment and the idea that free speech is in crisis. The essay was probing and nuanced and it travelled widely. “None of the men I had in mind were Nazis,” wrote the author, Dayna Tortorici, but many of the men in her circles – left-wing, literary – were also telling her they felt as if they were living in Soviet Russia. They told her they could no longer speak. In the end, the piece called the situation for what it was: a hostility from those who were being asked – not always politely or eloquently – to re-examine their manner of existing in the world, in order to make room for others. “Must history have losers?” asked Tortorici. “The record suggests yes. Redistribution is a tricky business.”
The pushback against the tricky business of redistribution is also the theme of Nesrine Malik’s first book, which examines the issue through the lens of the stories constructed by those who feel their authority ebbing in society, and who have reached for powerful, even dangerous, narratives to guard the status quo. Malik’s tone is less musing than Tortorici’s – she is a Guardian columnist accustomed to direct and forceful argument – but she presents her case persuasively, with admirable clarity, and in doing so cuts through a lot of the messy, often befuddling noise.
Malik interrogates six “myths”, all of which were fomenting long before Trump, Brexit, Black Lives Matter or MeToo. In the first chapter, “The Myth of Gender Equality” she considers the myth – “or rather the con” – that in the West, “we are on our way to building a society in which women have secured all the rights . . . that means any inequality beyond that is just biology”.
Biology and behaviour
Malik is forensic in pulling apart the myths thrown at women who would attempt to shed light on this con. They are told they are not unequal, it is simply that biology dictates social roles and behaviour. They are told they are not subjugated, they are ungrateful – just look at how far you have come! They are told they are not excluded, they are entitled – if you are not getting on as you expect, it is your fault. These are similar assertions to those launched against others who exist outside of the default status of male, straight and white, although in her chapter “The Myth of Damaging Identity Politics”, Malik analyses the stories that have recently shaped this group as the new victims.
According to this potent myth, it is white people – especially white men – who are now the left-behind in an era of genuflection before asylum seekers, immigrants and other minority groups trying to thieve more than their fair share of the pie. Malik quotes Sir Simon Jenkins, who wrote in the Guardian that “pale, male, stales” such as him were the only group left that it was “Okay to vilify”, which brought to mind the recent howls of grievance in this country from certain pale, male, media commentators whose careers were “left in tatters” because they expressed an opinion. (That their opinion had consequence, and that the consequence was not to their liking, does not appear to have entered their consideration.)
Free speech warriors
As with Katha Politt’s recent book, Pro, written as a bid to reclaim abortion as a moral right and social good rather than apologise for it as a necessary evil, I welcomed Malik’s frank refusal to engage in debate with the myths she considers. Instead, she deconstructs them for the fictions they are, writing in the chapter, “The Myth of a Free Speech Crisis” that ‘free speech warriors’ such as Milo Yiannopoulous – famous for the “truth-tellings” that “feminism is a cancer” and “rape culture is a myth” – are indulged by media (including social media) and publishing because “trolling has become an industry”, a lucrative one. (Milo lost a $250,000 book contract with Simon and Schuster when he told one “truth” too many: that “we get hung up on this child abuse stuff”.)
Still, debate – or a willingness to respectfully communicate – is one of the ways society moves forward, and Malik is aware of this. She is regretful that her opinion pieces in the Guardian are now closed for comments, so personal and abusive did those comments become; regretful that she can no longer engage in a “rolling conversation” that discusses “sensitive, complicated ideas about politics, race, gender and sexuality”; regretful that she – a British Sudanese writer who grew up in Kenya, Egypt and Saudi Arabia – is one of a small number of journalists from diverse backgrounds in a media industry that remains “overwhelmingly white, male” and, in Britain, “almost exclusively Oxbridge-educated”. This is the opinion-forming class that supported the Iraq war, that was shocked by Brexit and Trump, and in this country, the class that largely failed to predict the economic crash. It is also the opinion-forming class that remains in situ today, continuing to tell the stories it always has.
Malik is a clear, accessible writer, and her book is well-researched and thorough; her tone neither ironic nor sneering. To an extent, this work is also a call to arms: in the afterword she offers “new tools for new stories” that include advice to “not pick a side” and “argue better, or not at all”. Hardly radical counsel, except that in our current era, it reads as wisdom. Finally – and thankfully – she remains optimistic. Power, she says, is indeed shifting, new stories are slowly finding their way through. “It will not be easy,” she writes, “and it will not happen overnight. But one thing is certain as far as the keepers of the status quo are concerned; it is too late. They will be hearing from us.”
