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Bad move, @VerityLa: first publishing a fetishistic "creative non-fiction" about a white man sexually exploiting a Filipinx woman, then posting a weak "explanation", then blocking the PoC who criticised the magazine, then disappearing the essay with no critique or apology.
There was a lot of good faith among those critics, such as @djed_press. All editors know we can stuff up, we can all make the wrong call. There's room for error, room for good faith discussion. But simply erasing critique without apology or consideration? The worst of bad faith.
I actually can't believe there is nothing on the site talking about this. Aside from a non-apology on the twitter feed, it's as if this whole thing never happened. https://verityla.com/
Announcing a new commissioning effort focusing on Filipinx writing without consulting the Filipinx artists who demanded action also seems a million miles from best practice
Removing Stuart Cooke's "controversial" essay from the site and pretending it never happened is almost worse than publishing it in the first place. Aust lit doesn't just have a problem with white supremacy, it has a problem with critique. Maybe these things go together.
And yes, Aust lit *does* have a problem with white supremacy. It goes hand in hand with its misogyny problem. And yes, white women can totally be part of those problems because we live and breathe as part of a horrifying colonialist structure.
We will never even begin to deal with these things if we don't listen to those "uncomfortable" questions we *say* we want to elicit, but which are literally blocked as soon as they are articulated. It's somehow emblematic of our whole culture. And it's not good enough.
