Can you give any examples of this? I haven’t come across it.
What I do come across regularly are bizarre over-reactions from The Perpetually Offended to any perceived sleight of myths or icons unreasonably venerated by assorted right-wing keyboard warriors.
In a social media discussion recently I mentioned that there weren’t any black characters in Dickens’ Bleak House (or as far as I knew in any of his novels) despite the fact that in the London of his time there were lots of black people, and indeed they play important roles in other novels written around the same time (such as Thackeray’s Vanity Fair). I merely mentioned this, you understand, in passing, as an interesting fact, not a criticism or opinion on anything. Not in any way political. But the racist/nationalist snowflakes exploded with absurd over-reaction - eg. ‘the woke police are after Dickens now’. That’s how ‘Perpetually Offended’ they are!
Well - it’s interesting how you saw it - maybe we look at different social media - or different reporting of it.
I remember the discussion around this, and it’s a perfectly legitimate, and I find very interesting subject. I see the problem as setting too much store in a concept - ‘women’ - so that it becomes difficult to acknowledge that in reality all concepts are vague - all indeed originate in metaphor (as Derrida pointed out). Some people really are ‘biologically’ indeterminate, and this is very challenging if you have built an ideology around a sharp distinction between ‘biological’ sexes.
So my memory of this was of an interesting and robust discussion on both sides - in which Rowling was probably wrong - but I don’t remember anybody, let alone any ‘lobby’, ‘going nuts’.
Incidentally - don’t assume that all ‘identity politics’ is left-wing. It most definitely is not.
As Germain Greer said: ‘Equality is a profoundly conservative aim’.
Last time you said this (which you’ve done a few times now, it is starting to look like you have a bee in your bonnet about trans people) I asked what they actually were. Stating transwomen are not women is not a biological fact unless the entire basis you’re using is that of physical genitalia. If so then yes, but that has not been, for several decades, the sole way such a decision is made due to the fact that the world now understands far more about genetics than it did when this was the way such decisions were made. Because Fred the pub bore says “men have ccks, women have cnts, and that’s that” doesn’t actually make it true unless Fred actually knows what he’s talking about, and if he says that he clearly doesn’t.
I wonder if you’re thinking of another Nesrine Malik, because the author of your article is definitely a young woman.
But at least we seem to be agreeing that suppressing freedom of expressionis not the exclusive preserve of any part of the political spectrum!
From what I see of student (and alternative) politics, “hate speech” is often the “free speech” of ideas we dislike. If you restrict it - to make it simpler, and the argument works both ways but differently - to the Left cancelling someone like Tommy Robinson, it’s usually because they say his mere presence will create problems - doubtless because he would be accompanied by a bunch of EDL thugs, and that would bring out thugs from the Left …
Far better - in my view - to engage with people like him to show what he believes and why he is wrong. There are plenty of laws which can be used if he does incite racial hatred, or causes any variety of harassment. You may be surprised to learn that none of his many convictions was for a racially- or religiously-aggravated offence.
Not wanting to claim I’m speaking for NotaLot, but two examples which spring to mind are JK Rowling - whom you mentioned - and Suzanne Moore.
Unless we have a lot of trans forum members and medial and mental health professionals who are skilled in gender dysphoria to comment and educate the rest of us then I think that’s probably the worst idea I could imagine.
Sounds like a good idea in the odd case! There are some threads that a basic level of knowledge is all that is needed, and we can all partake, there are some which, frankly, I haven’t got the slightest clue about, so I read with interest and learn as the conversation goes on but leave the discussion to those who know what they’re talking about.
All I can say is: Precisely! You guys keep producing evidence that proves my point!
So here we have 2 more examples: the Rowling ‘row’ and the Moore spine-chilling ‘witch-hunt’.
What do these - even in the sensationalised accounts quoted - actually amount to?
Rowling:
A bookshop in Australia [really - one bookshop in an entire country?] announced it would not be stocking new Rowling books [just keep selling Harry Potter!], following in the footsteps of several bookshops around the world [well, actually 3 bookshops - and that was not about transphobia anyway!]… Newsweek reported a new TikTok trend [that nobody else seems to have noticed - must all have been looking on Facebook I guess].
Moore:
A strongly worded letter to the editor [was sent by staff protesting] a pattern of publishing transphobic content. [The letter does not mention Moore, and is mainly about discrimination in the workplace, which led to 3 trans people actually losing their jobs.]
In what way does any of this touch on cancel culture or hate speech? Come on guys - really! Four bookshops around the world stop selling some Rowling books; some newspaper staff write ‘a strongly worded letter to the editor’ about workplace discrimination. Are these really ‘spine-chilling witch-hunts’. Or are they in fact evidence supporting what I said at the start of this little diversion into cancel culture: typical ‘culture war’ tactics: take a couple of isolated incidents, distort them, blow them up into big issues, make up a label like ‘cancel culture’ and dominate the ‘news agenda’ with it.
So would I to be fair, although the mention already that it’s a
is rather a concern already, but it would be good to hear people’s experiences, we’re a significant number of people on here so I wouldn’t be surprised at all if some of us had first hand experience, either ourselves or through people we know, and can really add to peoples knowledge and understanding of a marginalised very small section of society who really need the support of the rest of us.
@Geof_Cox, “what of the main point … [you] made: the crucial distinction between free speech and hate speech ?”
As regards Rowling, you asked for examples of people overreacting and characterising views as hate speech; you got them; you didn’t think there had been anything more than “a discussion around” Rowland’s views; I provided you with a link to the Guardian referring to a row - and you’re still not having it!
You can lead an old Socialist warhorse to water but you can’t make him drink!
I hate the idea that you only have the right to discuss any subject if it directly affects you - ie white people can’t discuss racism because they never suffer from it, similarly unless you’re ‘trans’ you can’t possibly have anything relevant to say because ‘you don’t know what it’s like’.
You have to click through the links in The Guardian article to see just how exaggerated the description of the affair as a ‘row’ is. ‘A mild disagreement among a few people’ would be a more accurate description.
Or maybe I’m just too battle-scarred a socialist warhorse to get upset by the likes of a couple of bookshops stopping to sell a book or two, or strongly worded letters to editors! But wait - isn’t it the right-wingers that are supposed to be rough-tough-old-warhorses? and aren’t the snowflakes all supposed to all be on the left?
Could it really, in reality, be the other way round?
I think that’s what made me think of Dr Zelenko and why I posted that link…
I’m historically pro-Palestine and Gaza (just anti all war and violence and oppression really) and I started to see little clips of Dr Zelenko months back probably out of context and I thought I might not be interested but he’s now appeared on many round tables and talking with many doctors and scientists and recently I watched him talking to Jewish elders…he cares very much not just about the children of Israel but all children worldwide and all of humanity…
I hear opinions that somehow it’s “anti-semetic” to compare what happened in Nazi germany to outspoken critics now and then I’ve listened to an elderly Jewish lady on a covid 19 vaccination round table who lost most of her family in the Holocaust and ended up as a 6 year old in New York and I just think when did we stop listening to each other and start believing that governments and big pharma are only acting in our best interests…???
Yes when does free speech become hate speech and who exactly is making those decisions…???
I think the snowflakes - those who want to shut down debate rather than engage in it - are on both sides, and largely composed of people who lack the ability to engage in debate. Though there are some who are far more cynical than that.
