Honi Soit should stop publishing autonomous editions. This may sound fucked, but I promise I’m not talking out of my ass. I’ve edited at least three in my time and contributed to many more. This is an insider perspective. We need to sack them off.
I understand the history of these editions. In 1976 members of the gay liberation movement stormed the Honi offices to create Homo Soit. That was cool, and it should be the benchmark for being awarded an autonomous edition. If you can storm the office and defeat all 10 editors in physical combat (keeping in mind that we are all very tall, handsome and strong) the edition is yours.
But it’s not 1976 anymore, and we’re still publishing autonomous editions. We even added a new one this year. Why?
There is no legitimate argument to support such editions that isn’t rooted in identity politics, which is the cancer of the Left. In any case, at least three of the ‘identities’ that these editions are for — women, queer people and “people of colour” (see last week’s column) — are already sufficiently represented in both the editorial team and reporter pool. We’ll have those three editions back now, thank-you.
Honi is often blasted for being exclusive, which is probably fair, but I don’t think that such an issue can be solved by creating an autonomous edition of the paper for each sufficiently oppressed identity. I would also wager that the largest factor in the exclusivity of Honi (and access to higher education as a whole) is class, for which there is no autonomous edition anyway.
The SRC has limited resources, and Honi has a limited print run. It may not sound like much, but 6 editions out of 27 (even less this year) is a lot. Perhaps it’s time we allow the democratically elected editors to do the thing we were elected for, and edit the whole lot.
If you would like to fight us for an autonomous edition, we can be found in our basement from 12pm on weekends. Please arrive promptly and in appropriate combat attire.