Scene from BBC 4s 2007 adaptation of Fanny Hill, a text allegedly dropped from Royal Holloways course. Photograph: BBC/Sally Head Productions

On Monday, Vogues website, unusually straying into academia, reported: Eyebrows were raised when the first erotic novel in the English language, Fanny Hill, was dropped from an 18th-century literature course for fear of offending students. This followed a headline in the Mail on Sunday: Erotic novel first banned 270 years ago for describing a young girls sexual exploits is censored AGAIN in case it upsets students. Both assertions were incorrect, neatly illustrating how freedom of speech so easily slides into the murky realms of Trumpian post-truth.

John Clelands Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, popularly known as Fanny Hill (a play on mons veneris the mount of Venus) was published in 1748. He began it as a young man working in the East India Company in Bombay in response to a challenge to write what became the first English pornographic novel without using coarse language. He completed it in his 30s, in debtors prison, writing to pay for his freedom. He returned to jail soon after, convicted on obscenity charges.

Fanny Hill became an underground hit for more than 200 years. Unlike previous continental pornography written in Latin or Greek, accessible only to the educated, the book was written in English at its most flowery and, frequently, comical best. Or, according to the moralists and critics, at its worst. They were not amused, for instance, by Fannys enthusiasm when confronted by a maypole and an engine of love assaults, or her evident enjoyment of both: What floods of bliss! What melting transports!

The alleged dropping of Fanny Hill from a university course, taught at Royal Holloway, University of London, appeared to hint at yet another example of the snowflake generation of students in action. They shy away from what displeases them; dictate content of courses; no-platform speakers (Germaine Greer and Peter Tatchell on grounds of transphobia) and establish safe spaces on campus so that unsettling debates that might trigger concern can be avoided. It results in what Judith Shapiro, the former president of New York Citys Barnard College, calls self-infantilism, ill-equipping students to see the world as others see it.

So has Fanny Hill been snowflaked? Professor Judith Hawley teaches the course but, as she explained in a Guardian article, Fanny Hill hadnt been dropped because it had never been included. What she had said as a participant in a fascinating Radio 4 investigation into the history of freedom of speech, broadcast during the previous week, had been misrepresented.

What she said is this: In the 1980s I protested against the opening of a sex shop in Cambridge and taught Fanny Hill. Nowadays, I am afraid of causing offence to my students, in that I can understand why a senior academic imposing a pornographic text on students would come across as objectionable but also that the students would slap me with a trigger warning, in a way that I now self-censor

Trigger warnings flag up references that might disturb. In the 1980s the issues raised by Fanny Hill, including desire, pornography and power, were important to discuss. Now, she explained, the student body is larger, more diverse, less privileged and more uncertain about the future, and the ubiquity of pornography has changed the terms of the debate.

Her words reveal the tricky area we have rightly entered, in which the long-held power of establishments which are affluent, academic, political, white and male are under challenge. The market too has played a role. Students are now not only learners but customers, paying up to 9,000 a year and, therefore, expecting to define what value for money means to them, the consumer. The ability to identify triggers, signalling material that might damage, may be a customer perk but it infects education with caution and self-censorship that undermines its very purpose. Students, ironically, as a result, are being short-changed.

In the 1980s, when Hawley was campaigning to stop the opening of a sex shop, sexism was rife, reflected in language that today is policed by a consensus on what is acceptable, backed by legislation. Political correctness helped to put the foot on the brakes but how far down should the foot go? In a poll by the National Union of Students last year, over 60% were in favour of no-platforming. But silencing voices has a price. How does society decide when the cost becomes unacceptable?

In the US, the right to freedom of speech is enshrined in the first amendment. As long ago as the 1990s, the law professor and anti-pornography campaigner Catharine MacKinnon warned, in Only Words, The law of equality and the law of freedom of speech are on a collision course ... Or, as she put it more succinctly, some people get a lot more speech than others.

In the 80s I protested against a sex shop in Cambridge and taught Fanny Hill. Now, Im afraid of offending my students.

How to decide who gets to talk about what and where and why is part of any dynamic democracy. But a guiding instinct should surely be that we learn from open and unafraid debate? A couple of years ago, students at New Yorks Columbia University supplied a flyer against homophobia for student rooms . It read: I want this space to be a safer space. One student. Adam Shapiro, objected. He told the New York Times If the point of a safe space is therapy for people who feel victimised by traumatisation, that sounds like a great mission. But he explained that both professors and students are increasingly loath to say anything that might hurt feelings: I dont see how you can have a therapeutic space thats also an intellectual space. The question is one of balance. So, back to Fanny Hill and Hawleys implied argument that, 30 years on, to teach it need no longer be a requirement. Fanny is a woman who admires other women. She has a sexual appetite that includes lesbianism (but, of course, as the book is a fantasy written by a man, the encounter is nothing in comparison to a store bag of natures pure sweets). At the end of the book, Fanny is neither fallen and destroyed, nor an outcast, but is married to the man who deflowered her, whom she loves and who is very rich. Fanny has it all.

She is thus, in some ways, a female pioneer. Arguably, far from being an oppressive text which might make students feel coerced, as Hawley asserts, it is surprisingly subversive of patriarchal politics. Smutty books have often become milestones in society. In 1960, for instance, the Obscene Publications Act saw Penguin Books in the dock. Mervyn Griffiths QC famously asked the jury about Lady Chatterleys Lover, Is it a book that you would even wish your wife or your servants to read? The answer was yes, and two million copies were sold in a year. They were bought, like Fanny Hill, by hoi polloi. The acquittal marked an important step for freedom of the written word and the end of what George Orwell called the striped-trousered ones who rule.

Other notable books Radclyffe Halls The Well of Loneliness, Erica Jongs Fear of Flying, Henry Millers Tropic of Cancer, Nabokovs Lolita might also run the risk of censorship by one group or another in todays delicate academic ecosystem. Whats unclear is who gets to have the louder voice and why. Out of university, in the real world, triggers arent available, nor is it possible to duck issues that hurt.

In the 60s, 70s and 80s, students were taught too often from curriculums that covered only half the story, omitting women, ethnic minorities and the working class. The clamour for change grew. But Orwells intellectual cowardice is an ongoing issueas we struggle to forge a different, more just balance of power and a new model of freedom of expression. Of course it isnt easy, but its worth the doing.

Link:

Row over teaching Fanny Hill highlights threat to freedom of expression - The Guardian

Produced by Gail Abbott Zimmerman and Doug Longhini

[This story first aired on May 30, 2015. It was updated on Aug. 19, 2017]

For more than 18 years, "48 Hours" has investigated what many say is a case of injustice. That case began in the early morning hours of April 4, 1989, when a young woman called 911 saying she thought her boyfriend had been shot. The problem was she was three miles away from the crime scene and she had trouble telling police how to get there.

"Something was not right," said Mark Rixey, who at the time was a road patrol deputy for the Brevard County Sheriff's Office. "Why would somebody say there's something happening here and nothing's there?"

"All we had was that he had been shot and that he was in the orange groves. I sent a deputy to pick her up because we absolutely, would never have found her ... we'd have been there all night looking," Diane Clarke, who was a patrol sergeant in Brevard County, told "48 Hours" correspondent Erin Moriarty.

"She remained in the vehicle out here and refused to walk down there," said Rixey.

"'You don't wanna see him? You don't wanna know his condition?' ...there was something wrong with this," said Clarke.

The victim was 22-year-old Chip Flynn.

"It was a young white male ... laying on his side with his hands bound behind his back," said Rixey.

"He had a bullet wound, there was blood on the right side of his chest," Clarke explained. "We have a gun on the ground that we don't know who it belongs to."

Flynn was conscious when the deputies arrived. "Speaking very clearly ... he just said, "Get me outta here,'" said Rixey.

"'Who shot you?'" Clarke said of asking Flynn. "'Just take me home, God, get me out of here.'"

"'Could you at least tell us which way he went,'" Rixey asked Flynn.

"'Who did this to you?' He wouldn't tell us," Clarke continued.

"This is so not typical. It defies explanation," said Rixey.

Play Video

Mark Rixey, who was a deputy sheriff with the Brevard County Sheriff's Office, recalls the crime scene at a remote grove where shooting victim C...

Flynn died before the ambulance arrived.

The woman who called 911 was Flynn's former girlfriend, Kim Hallock. She said she and Flynn had been in his truck when a black man with a gun hijacked and drove them to that remote grove. She alone managed to get back into the truck and escape -- driving those three miles to Chip's friend's home.

"They needed someone to put that murder on and Crosley Green fit the bill," said private investigator Joe Moura.

"It's an example of race being a substitute for evidence," said attorney Keith Harrison.

"I didn't kill that young man," Crosley Green told Moriarty.

Today, 26 years after Green was sentenced to death for the murder of Flynn, there is new compelling evidence that the wrong person may have been sent to prison and the killer is still free.

"The first rule of homicide investigation is ... everybody who was at that scene is treated as a suspect until they're eliminated," said Rixey. "That's not the way this happened."

Washington D.C. attorneys Keith Harrison, Bob Rhoad and Jeane Thomas typically counsel an elite corporate clientele. But they are working for no pay at all to win freedom for 59-year old Crosley Green, incarcerated in Florida for almost 28 years.

"Crosley's case is special. Because it cries out for justice," Harrison told Erin Moriarty.

"You can't stop thinking about what happened to this individual, the injustice that occurred," said Rhoad.

"For me, I was offended. I was angry," said Thomas.

"The main focus of the case was that there was a black guy who had done something, the old, 'the black guy did it,'" said Harrison.

They accuse prosecutors of a rush to judgment in the murder of the young white man, Chip Flynn, found shot and dying in a remote Florida citrus grove in 1989. At the time, Chip had been living with his parents. They spoke with "48 Hours" in 1999.

"Rarely did you see him without a smile on his face, just rarely," his mother, Peggy Flynn" told "48 Hours."

The Flynns, now both deceased, told us they were shocked to learn that Chip had been with Kim Hallock that night. Kim was an ex-girlfriend and Chip was happily seeing someone else.

"That was all he talked about. He didn't mention Kim anymore or anything," Charles Flynn said of his son.

And Hallock's story -- that a man had robbed and hijacked them -- seemed strange. Police recorded her statement just hours after the shooting:

Detective: When was the first time you saw Chip yesterday?

Kim Hallock: About 10 at night. He came to my house.

Hallock said it began in the local baseball field, Holder Park. They were sitting in his truck when she first saw someone walk by.

"I told Chip there was a black guy on your side and he rolled up the window real quick," she told investigators in her statement.

Twenty minutes later, she says, Chip stepped out and she heard him say "hold on man."

"Chip had a gun in his glove box. I took the gun out of the glove box and stuck it under some jeans that were next to me," Hallock continued.

And then, she says she saw the man again:

Detective: Did you see that the black male was armed at that time?

Kim Hallock: Yes, I did.

She says the man tied Chip's hands with a shoelace. Then, he ordered her to hand over money from Chip's wallet. And then, with everyone in the truck, he drove them away -- steering, shifting gears and somehow holding a gun on them all at the same time.

Kim Hallock told police that when they got to the grove, the man yanked her out of the truck and then Chip--his hands still tied--somehow managed to get a hold of his gun hidden on the truck seat.

"Chip, his hands were behind his back, he leaned out of the truck and somehow shot at the guy and the guy stepped back. Chip jumped out of the truck, I jumped in the truck ... and I heard about five or six gunshots," she told investigators.

Play Video

The Brevard County Sheriff's Office interviewed Kim Hallock hours after she says she and ex-boyfriend Charles "Chip" Flynn were abducted from a l...

She said she then drove those three miles to Chip's friend's home to call for help.

"Wouldn't you stop at the first telephone that you came to, the first home that you came to, to call 911?" Rhoad asked.

Washington D.C. attorneys Bob Rhoad, Keith Harrison and Jeane Thomas are working to win freedom for Crosley Green.

"48 Hours"

Crosley Green's current attorneys say a lot of Kim Hallock's story simply doesn't make sense.

"It's bizarre -- to be charitable," said Thomas.

"Chip ... with the gun in his hands tied behind his back ... opens the door of the truck and propels himself out of the truck, shooting at the black guy," Harrison said of Hallock's story.

Still, police seemed to take Hallock at her word, even though parts of her story changed. And she couldn't describe the assailant very well.

"I really didn't get a real good look at him. I was really scared," she told detectives.

The details she did give didn't really match the man detectives had in mind: Crosley Green, a small-time drug dealer recently released from jail. But later that night, they showed Kim a photo lineup with six photos. Hallock chose photo No. 2 - Crosley Green.

"That's a target with a bull's-eye for Crosley Green. ...His picture is smaller and darker than the other pictures," Harrison said of the photo lineup. "Anybody involved in police investigation and prosecution knows this. ...the position that your eyes are normally drawn to are right in the middle."

"It's a black spot," Green said of the photo. "That's what you focus on, that black spot."

Crosley Green, better known as Papa, became the father figure for his large family after his parents died. He admits he was no angel, but he says he has never done anything violent. At the time Chip Flynn was killed, he says he was with friends around two miles away.

"I kidnapped no one. I killed no one. I did none a those things," Green told Moriarty.

"The task at hand was finding a black guy to pin this on. And unfortunately for Crosley ... that's where their attention focused," said Rhoad.

"So when a young white woman says, 'A black man did it,' nobody questioned it?" Moriarty asked Tim Curtis, a local body shop owner and friend of Chip's.

"I don't think nobody questioned that," he replied.

Curtis also knew the Green family and helped spread the word: Crosley Green did it.

"...there was a lot of racial words bein' used. 'We're gonna get him, we're gonna get him. We're gonna get him. We're gonna get him.' You know?" said Curtis.

Crosley Green was arrested and charged with kidnapping, robbery and murder. At trial, prosecutors pointed to what they said were the killer's shoeprints found in Holder Park.

Footprints found at the crimescene

Assistant State's Attorney Christopher White--now retired-- told jurors that a police dog got the scent of those prints and tracked that scent to the vicinity of a house where Crosley Green sometimes stayed.

"You've seen those shoe impressions. It wasn't just her and Chip out there," White told Moriarty. "The shoe impressions were followed ... from the site where the truck was parked ... supporting what Kim said about there being a third person there, a black male, who abducted them and did these things."

But White was never able to match those shoeprints to Crosley Green or anyone else. What's more, not a single fingerprint of Green's was found anywhere on the truck. And despite Kim Hallock's claim that Chip had fired his gun trying to save her, no gunshot residue was found on Chip's hands.

"She's saying he fired the gun, and there be no gunshot residue left on his fingers? Is that possible?" Moriarty asked Harrison.

"It's highly improbable," he replied.

Still, prosecutors found three witnesses with criminal pasts who claimed Crosley had actually confessed to them -- most damning, his own sister Sheila. Before the case went to the jury, Crosley Green was offered a deal: admit guilt and get no more than 22 years.

"So why didn't you take it?" Moriarty asked Green in 1999.

"I didn't kill that young man. I keep telling you I didn't kill this young man, so why should I take that plea bargain?" he replied.

It took the all-white jury just three hours to convict Crosley Green; the judge sentenced him death.

"What's it like being here on death row?" Moriarty asked Green.

"It's hell," he replied. "It's hell to me because I'm here for a crime I didn't commit."

"Don't kill this guy. He didn't do it. He's innocent," said Joe Moura, who was a"48 Hours" consultant.

Back in 1999, Crosley Green spoke about the obvious inconsistencies in the case against him.

Crosley Green during a 1999 interview with "48 Hours" correspondent Erin Moriarty.

"48 Hours"

Kim Hallock had told police her assailant had long hair that covered his ears.

"Was any of your hair over your ears?" Moriarty asked Green, whose hair was cut short and above his ears.

"They way I look now is the way I looked then," he replied.

When "48 Hours" first reported on the case, a team of private detectives from around the country who believed in Crosley Green's innocence were working pro bono to prove it.

"It's not every day do you see this kind of injustice," said Moura.

Moura found it difficult to believe that Crosley had confessed to three people.

"So Crosley ends up shooting somebody. And he decides he's gonna tell everybody in town, 'Guess what, it was me.' Not credible. It's not credible at all," he said.

So Moura tracked down those witnesses. Sheila Green told Moura that she had lied at trial. Even though she knew she could be dooming her brother, she said she had no choice.

Sheila Green talks with Erin Moriarty in 1999.

"Basically, they told me that this was my last chance to help myself, 'cause I was already convicted," she told Moriarty in 1999.

At the time she testified, Sheila was facing sentencing on drug charges herself.

"What did they say would happen if you didn't testify against your brother?" Moriarty asked Sheila.

"I would never see my kids again," she replied.

And when Moura found the other two witnesses, they told him similar stories.

"Every witness recanted their story," Moura explained. "And every one of them had reason to be afraid of the police. ...They were squeezed. ...And they were squeezed hard."

With Crosley Green's sister and his two friends recanting, the private detectives focused on crime scene evidence: notably, those shoeprints in Holder Park that prosecutors said corroborated Kim's story.

Visit link:

Crosley Green's last chance for freedom - CBS News

Managing just four hits and two walks at the plate, the Florence Freedom, presented by Titan Mechanical Solutions, were shut out by the Southern Illinois Miners, 2-0, on Saturday at Rent One Park.

Starters Steve Hagen (3-1) and Matt Parish (3-3) dueled throughout the evening, but the Miners (33-50) got the only run they would need on a solo home run from James Alfonso in the third inning, a towering shot that came at the end of an eight-pitch at-bat.

In the fifth, with runners on first and second and two out, Southern Illinois added a run on a RBI-single to left field by Ryan Lashley. Nolan Earley had advanced to second on the play, but as he rounded the base, left fielder Andrew Godbolds cutoff throw to third baseman Taylor Oldham went to second, where Fraga tagged out Earley to end the inning.

The Freedoms (54-30) best run-scoring opportunity came in the second inning, when Jordan Brower hit a one-out single up the middle and, after a lineout by Keivan Berges, took second on an infield single to third by Austin Wobrock. Lashley threw the ball errantly past first base on the play, allowing both runners to advance one base each. But Garrett Vail struck out to end a seven-pitch at-bat, and Florence would put just one more runner in scoring position against Parish through his six and two-thirds innings.

After Parish issued a two-out walk to Wobrock in the seventh, Kyle Grana entered in relief and induced a flyout to end the inning, then retired the side in order in the eighth.

Following seven strong innings by Hagen, who allowed just five hits, Jack Fowler pitched a perfect bottom of the eighth for the Freedom, keeping the deficit at two runs entering the ninth inning. With closer John Werner on the mound in the final frame, Collins Cuthrell drew a one-out walk and took second on a two-out wild pitch, but Berges struck out after battling for eight pitches, ending the game.

The Freedom will play for the series win in Sundays rubber game, with first pitch scheduled for 5:05 p.m. at Rent One Park. Braulio Torres-Perez (5-1) will start on the mound for Florence against Southern Illinois right-hander Zach Cooper (4-9).

The Florence Freedom are members of the independent Frontier League and play all home games at UC Health Stadium located at 7950 Freedom Way in Florence, KY.The Freedom can be found online at FlorenceFreedom.com, or by phone at 859-594-4487.

Florence Freedom

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Freedom shut out by Miners in pitcher's duel, look to rebound and take series today - User-generated content (press release) (registration)

Carrolls Board of County Commissioners will meet on Wednesday, Sept. 6, for its first discussion of the Freedom Community Comprehensive Plan.

The commissioners will meet with the Carroll County Planning Commission from 6 to 8 p.m. in Room 003 of the Carroll County Office Building in a joint session that is open to the public, although no public comment will be accepted. Public hearings for that purpose will be conducted at later dates.

The Freedom Plan creates a guide for future long-term growth in the South Carroll area, in terms of roads, resources and future land use designations, which can then guide future zoning changes. State guidelines require the plan be updated every 10 years, but it was last updated in 2001 the planning commission spent the past year drafting a new plan, which it accepted in April.

The planning commission voted on July 18 to approve that plan, which is now coming before the county commissioners for further public debate. The county commissioners can either adopt the plan as is, reject it, sending it back to the planning commission or make changes to and then adopt the plan.

Adoption of the plan is the official term for voting to finalize and enact it.

By meeting jointly, Matt Helminiak, president of the planning commission said, the hope is that the board of commissioners can learn the background behind the decisions made for the plan before debating it.

As we were getting feedback, writing the plan, writing the other chapters, we made changes to certain properties based on feedback we were getting both from the public and the commissioners, he said.

Things changed multiple times, and this gives the commissioners a chance to ask us to explain our reasoning for why things are the way they are in the plan.

The risk otherwise, and what has happened in the past, said Commissioner Dennis Frazier, R-District 3, who has served as an ex-officio member of the planning commission since December, is that the Board of Commissioners would dig into a decision they questioned and end up relitigating the same arguments the planning commission had already spent many hours working through.

On the surface it might look like, I dont agree with that, but once they hear all the deliberation that went into it, they say, Ah, I understand now, he said. It makes sense to have a joint meeting like this to see exactly what the process was gone through by the planning commission, and then the board of commissioners can make much more informed decisions about what they want to change and what to keep.

That power of the commissioners to change some parts of the plan and to keep others, is actually rather new under state law, according to Helminiak.

Usually the way the process works is the planning commission writes the plan, votes on it, puts a bow on it, sends it off to the commissioners for their review and approval or disapproval, he said.

In the past, that meant that if the commissioners could not agree on a sticking point, they would have to send it back to the planning commission to start over from the beginning.

That happened with the county master plan the last time around, Helminiak said, referring to the rejection of the 2009 Pathways Plan. They did not have the tool in their toolbox of being able to modify a plan and it was just accept or reject, and they rejected the county master plan and sent it back and we had to rewrite it.

By beginning with a joint meeting to avoid unnecessary duplication of effort, and using the boards new powers to make changes to the Freedom Plan, Frazier hopes the commissioners will be able to move quickly to adopt a final plan and meet the requirements of state law.

I do think its helpful, he said. If theres one or two things the Board of Commissioners doesnt like about it, they can make one or two changes, instead of saying, I dont like this and because of this were not going to accept the Freedom Plan, which I think would be a terrible mistake.

Helminiak is optimistic that will not happen.

I think it will be a positive experience, he said. Even when they disagree with us, [the commissioners] are a thoughtful group who have our best interests as a county at heart.

The next steps in the process will be to hold at least two public hearings for public comment in the Freedom area, Frazier said.

We also want to have it streaming and online and so forth for people that cant make the meeting and everyone has a chance to see what is going on, he said.

After that, any necessary changes will be made, and, hopefully, Frazier said, the board will vote to adopt the Freedom Plan.

I think its a really well thought-out plan. A lot went into it. I dont see it not moving forward, he said. Im not saying there wont be a change or two, but I dont see it not going forward.

If you go

What: Joint meeting of the Carroll Board of County Commissioners and Planning Commission on the Freedom Community Comprehensive Plan

When: 6 to 8 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 6

Where: Room 003, Carroll County Office Building, 225 N. Court St., Westminster

No public comment will be accepted at this meeting, but at least two future public hearings will be held at later dates. Public comments may also be sent by email to commissioners@ccg.carr.org.

Recordings of all the meetings will be available online at http://www.youtube.com/user/carrollcountygov.

For more information, contact Roberta Windham at 410-386-2043.

jon.kelvey@carrollcountytimes.com

410-857-3317

twitter.com/CCT_Health

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County Commissioners to take up Freedom plan at Sept. 6 meeting - Carroll County Times