I’m turning on “payments”

But there’s no need to panic

Dear subscribers, 

As many of you will know, three months ago I was sacked as a weekly columnist for The Age, the Melbourne paper that had been my intellectual home for about 25 years, after I publicly criticised the paper for censoring me on the “trans” debate. 

East side, Berlin Wall. Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash

The trigger for my comments was The Age rejecting a commissioned piece on the exponential growth in minors wanting to medically transition to the opposite sex and how this trend is sparking alarm among health authorities across Europe, with several countries restricting access to puberty blockers and hormones.

I published the piece on this Substack. I also revealed I’d been muzzled on trans issues more broadly — including being stopped from holding governments to account for their laws and policies on self-declared “gender identity” — because of internal pressure from (mostly) younger journalists at the paper. If you’re unfamiliar with the saga, check out my post “Me and The Age: a late divorce,” and/or the ABC’s Media Watch report, which itself unleashed a tsunami of complaints from trans activists. I’m waiting for host Paul Barry to sue me for his ulcer. 

While the trans debate was the sole reason for my falling out with The Age, it’s also true that in recent years the scope for debate has narrowed on a range of identity-related issues. Every so often I pull up a column I wrote only a year or two ago and wonder if the same piece would be published now. 

This is not a problem specific to The Age or to the Australian media; it’s a broader drift in progressive politics towards “stay in your lane” orthodoxy — the notion that only a black person can write about racial politics, only a woman can write about feminism and so on — and towards orthodoxy full stop. 

Once upon a time in the West censorship was associated with right-wing conservatives, and we can still chortle about the red state bible bashers banning Shakespeare from the classroom on grounds of “raunchiness.” But in a trend that I reckon accelerated during the Trump presidency, the mainstream political left now finds itself reflexively hostile to intellectual freedom, seeing the robust contest of ideas as scary and inherently “harmful.” The pathology has certainly taken root in Australia’s Labor party; as we speak, governments around the country are busy passing or proposing anti-vilification or “misinformation” laws that could seriously undermine free expression.

Unsurprisingly, more and more people are looking beyond the mainstream media to an increasingly rich heterodox ecosystem of news sites, Substackers and podcasters. 

This is where Szego Unplugged sits. 

I admit I initially gave little thought to this new venture. I was in a great rush to publish the rejected Age piece; that was all. Then once this Substack was all I had (cue the violins), I just wrote —  and felt a surge of energy. You might not agree with everything I write; you might even find some posts enraging or upsetting. But the good news is you can blame me alone. My work is not subject to editors, newsrooms, social media mobs, commercial donors or activists of any kind. 

Because as George Orwell wrote in his 1946 essay “The Prevention of Literature,” censorship and even worse, self-censorship, leads to bad writing. 

“To write in plain, vigorous language,” Orwell explained, “one has to think fearlessly, and if one thinks fearlessly one cannot be politically orthodox.”

Alas, independence and freedom come at a cost especially during a cost of living crisis. My kids still need to eat. I want Unplugged to be a home for my writing, but I need to make this work financially. A solid number of you have already pledged a paid subscription or seed funding, and for that I’m grateful. Trust me: ruthless self-promotion and putting my hand out for money does not come naturally; the teenage communist in me winces.

So this is a rather long-winded note to say: I’ll now be pressing the “turn on payments” button. Most of my content will remain accessible for free subscribers, at least for now. But paid subscribers will get monthly bonus content — most likely, a piece or a podcast. 

One of the most thrilling by-products of this newsletter is the engagement I’ve received from you readers. The discussion threads under some of my posts are dazzling and illuminating. I want to engineer more such conversations — perhaps a monthly salon-style chat. I think I’ll host one of these later this month and see how it goes. Events of this sort will also be for paid subscribers only. 

Thanks everyone, and stay tuned for more. 

Julie