Only a handful of my poems have been published outside of this blog, and most of those were published by an online literary journal called The Christendom Review. The editors there welcomed my submissions with consideration and kindness, even sharing helpful encouragement and critique with me. However, as I have visited TCR's facebook page in the years since my last publication with the journal, what I have seen has troubled me. Whereas I understood the journal to be concerned with publishing quality literature, the facebook page appears to serve as something of an advocacy page for certain issues held dear by many social conservatives.
I disagree with the approach and some of the beliefs exhibited on TCR's social media platform, particularly a 2015 link to an article which I see as feeding fears concerning transgender individuals. The encouragement of fear and suspicion toward an already marginalized group of people can lead to real harm, and I regret being affiliated in any way with such a message. Though I thank the editors of TCR for their personal kindness, and though I greatly respect several TCR authors whom I know personally, I am sorry that I caused my work to be affiliated with an organization whose approach on at least one public platform I now see as harmful.
For an alternative view on gender and sexuality see http://fiddlrts.blogspot.com/
Elena, hello again!
ReplyDeleteI believe that TCR may have stopped publishing, but as you note, there is still the Facebook page. I have seen things both on the Facebook page and in TCR itself that don't exactly inspire me to concurrence. I consider Mr Luse and Mr Barnett to be friends and very generous spirits when it comes to the promotion of poetry (to be candid, they've been kind, and perhaps too kind on occasion, to my own shaky product --- running a poem or two that I should have worked on more! --- but I am immensely grateful).
But there is the ideological strain, and while most days I'm closer to being a conservative than I am to being a progressive, I've seen some articles and essays that strike me as, for lack of a better word, sour. And on the issue you cite, transgenderism, I confess I've never quite understood it, and I don't by and large view it as a salutary phenomenon. Still, I concur with your view that the marginalized should not be scapegoated.
I applaud you, Elena, for your candour and for your courage in speaking your mind with such beautiful forthrightness.