Around the traps II

My writing elsewhere, and related tit-bits

After a very busy June and July, I took August and most of September off. I’d planned to write nothing for a full two months, but the attempt on Salman Rushdie’s life intervened.

Thanks to the involvement of two US-based organisations, the Foundation Against Intolerance & Racism and PEN America, I participated (along with a number of other writers) in a recorded reading of passages from The Satanic Verses, which were then skilfully edited together so all the authors involved spoke a line each. Both are available here.

Subsequent to that, I wrote a piece for Law & Liberty on Rushdie’s persecution. In it, I point out that he represents the extreme end of something that’s become the norm for writers who stray from approved scripts. I’ve had it happen to me, and — as I say in the piece — while my worst experience was public spitting and a stalker, deranged responses to words should not be normalised.

Sir Salman Rushdie

Then — for something completely different — I went on the Ideas Sleep Furiously podcast with Cambridge psychologist Matthew Archer, to discuss (of all things) my IQ (and a lot of other odd/interesting things, too). This no doubt seems completely bonkers and left field for someone who normally writes about law, politics, and literature, but Matthew has a genuine professional interest in high-IQ individuals. He even prevailed upon me to take one of the full IQ tests I’ve had done in the past with me to the interview, so he could read it.

Among other things, I learned that IQ tests you do on the internet are about as accurate as every other thing of that type on the internet. You do actually have to have a proper test, under test conditions, administered by a psychologist. Fortunately, I have several. The reason I have several is explained in another piece for Law & Liberty, published some time ago.

Finally (and most recently), it’s fair to say Louise Perry has set multiple cats among the pigeons with her first book, The Case Against the Sexual Revolution. Although a feminist, her experience working at a rape crisis centre convinced her that feminism has got it all wrong when it comes to human sexuality. She draws extensively on evolutionary psychology and evolutionary anthropology — plus human and animal biology more widely — to make her claims.

I knew of her slightly before the book came out, but was really struck by her interview on Konstantin Kisin & Francis Foster’s high-brow chat show, Triggernometry. To that end, I did something I seldom do: asked for a review copy without having had one commissioned or sent to me “on spec”.

The book is indeed a revelation, an astonishing piece of writing and the first work by a feminist I’ve encountered that’s properly numerate. My review thus turned into a feature, also for Law & Liberty.

I suspect I may disagree with Perry’s policy proposals, but I can only suspect at this point. The book is not about policy. It is wholly focussed on teaching feminism to get its facts straight.

Now, back to the writer’s desk to finish a piece to be filed by COB Friday!