Cancel Culture or Free Speech

Doodledog
^Someone I know quite well (and she is in her 40s, so old enough to know better) identifies as bisexual (although long married to a man), sometimes pansexual, neurodivergent, working class and differently-abled - pronouns she/her/they/ them.

She uses all of these 'identities' to excuse various behaviours and to absolve herself from responsibility for them. It goes without saying that there is nothing wrong with being any of those things, but in why bang on about them? It's very Jack Monroe^

And there are more doing that every day. Whatever the latest is, they have it-fine. But needing to declare it to the world? Why? Use it as an excuse? Why?

Maybe it's a way of belonging to a 'club'? Like in school when people choose a tribe and dress and talk the same and listen to the same music. That makes sense in teenagers, but I don't understand why adults need to do it - particularly in the workplace.

Do you know something……I think the younger generations are laughing at us oldies gnashing our teeth and losing our cool over this ‘sex/gender ‘ issue! My 16 year old grandson says nobody his age ever talks about this nonesense…. I was looking after him and younger sister recently , and in the morning when I told them to ‘get ready for school’ he said….” Im identifying as a female today, Nan” …when I didn’t blink an eye , and asked why ? …he said “
Because the boys have got rugby and I just don’t feel like getting my head kicked in today”…..burst out laughing and was out the door before I could say ….had he got his rugby boots ?!

doodledog - Well said! It is worrying that it doesn't feel safe for people to express views which are not attacking others, but are just a point of view.

I feel for JK Rowling for being ostracised for expressing a view, which had nothing to do with hate or attack. It's ok to disagree with her - or others - but to ostracise someone is a bridge too far.

Violetsky Transpeople are entirely accepted - for what they are - Transwomen. But what they are not is women, that fact does not have anything to do with peoples willingness to accept them

John Cleese et al predicted all this almost 50 years ago when they made The Life of Brian .
It was ridiculous then and I’d even more comical now !

Hithere

Hate speech is subjective

I can only dream to fast forward 20 years so society can adapt to changes and adopt the new definition of human rights

The problem with that is look at the way the US (and other parts of the world )is heading with hate everywhere since Trump and now DeSantis…in 20 years if we head that way we all could be under a Nazi-type regime !!
Heaven forfend!

Mr. S. found that sketch and showed it to me Thisismyname. I suppose it was funny then; it isn't funny now though.

Hetty58

Dickens, tedious, oh yes, the same myths appear on here (time after time) and are never resolved. Here we go again with the 'safe spaces' one.

There aren't any - and never have been, so why continue with the myth?

As I've said before, several times, nobody ever checks whether people going in are female.

There aren't any - and never have been, so why continue with the myth?

Oh but there are.

Because it really isn't all about biologically male trans women dashing into the nearest loo for a pee. In a cubicle. Where most people are not taking much notice of one another.

Live and let live. Everyone has the right to be true to themselves. Everyone should be equal. And it wasn’t terribly long ago that suffragettes were protesting for the right for women to vote. All change has to be protested for.

Article by KS about speaking at Oxford/Cambridge Debating Unions. “Warning: contains grounds for optimism” 😁

twitter.com/docstockk/status/1664127028071735298?s=61&t=qph6ruaz5B5GPjDn7jnZBw

The point is "live and let live", but the militants won't do that. Regardless of how they are treated, the militant LGBTQ+ folk are still in a minority yet they shout louder than the people who aren't in that category and so not only get all the attention but are also annoying. If they got on with their lives - and many of them do - acceptance of people for who they are would be easier. That's not to say that anyone who has a genuine grievance shouldn't protest, but it should be for specific inequalities.

Hithere

I love the way people think any new definition will be
a) be truthful
b) be in their favour
c) be impossible to be open to misrepresentation.

They wanted a new definition of the word woman, to include males.
Since woman is an adult human female it wasn’t true.
It has been misrepresented when trans women (males) believe it means they can change sex. They can’t.

Be careful what you wish for.
There is currently a demand for human rights to include the right to end their own lives when they are ill or unable to enjoy good quality of life.
How quickly will that be misrepresented as humans having the right to end lives of others they perceive as not having good quality of life.

Trans , TM or TW, have the right to be trans. Who on here has said they don’t?

Females have the right to do what is necessary to protect themselves from males who might harm them-any male, not just TW. Hence they carry rape alarms, pepper spray, and value spaces where they are unlikely to encounter males who might act in ways that threaten or harm them.

Why do some females want to deny that right?

As has been pointed out by many posters on here, you can’t tell the difference, so we have to rely on the honesty of males, not to use female spaces.
The majority of males are honest in this respect and avoid using female spaces. Sadly. it’s the dishonest males who are responsible for causing the problems.

Sorry rewrite, transwomen are entirely accepted for what they are - then as above.

Nobody is not living and let live (except, arguably, those who go out of their way to victimise anyone who speaks agains them? That's the point.

We keep hearing that transpeople are 'the most marginalised group in society', and that they 'want their rights to be respected', but whenever I ask what either of those things mean in practice, there is silence.

Transpeople have exactly the same rights as others, and on top of that they are a protected group under hate crime legislation. There are no rights denied to them, so why do we keep hearing that there are?

What does 'marginalised' mean in the way that it is used? Is a wealthy, privileged, Oxbridge-educated transperson, such as the ones on the Ch4 programme nearer the margins of society than an unemployed homeless person who rarely went to school? Of course not. Transpeople have 'being trans' in common, and even that means different things to different people; but otherwise are a disparate group of people. How are they collectivised to make them a 'group' for purposes of comparison with other marginalised people? And how are they counted anyway, now that anyone can 'identify' as such at will, and can identify out again the next day if they choose to? It is a meaningless trope that has been repeated so often that few people challenge it.

Thanks for the link grannydarkhair. Very well written and as it says, contains grounds for optimism .

What Billy Bragg actually tweeted
Stock continued “Are we supposed to accept what someone says about their gender identity on their word alone?” I find this odd for a lesbian to maintain. If Stock tells me she is a lesbian, the law rightly requires me to respect that without the need for any further proof

It is a valid point. If someone tells me they are gay or lesbian I will accept them as such. If someone tells me they are a woman I will accept them as such. They may be trans or cis I really won't ask, anymore than I would ask Kathleen Stock if she was absolutely sure of her sexuality.

Smileless2012

Thanks for the link grannydarkhair. Very well written and as it says, contains grounds for optimism .

Indeed. I hope she's right. I have a lot of respect for young people, and definitely don't subscribe to the idea that age always brings wisdom; but equally, the idea that because (some) young people think something it must be right is such a knee-jerk way of thinking, and it is so often used in these discussions. As said in the article, not all people have been captured by the trans lobby.

I remember a conversation a couple of years ago with a group of Masters students. One of them (a pleasant and earnest young man) asked whether I would have allowed my children to read Harry Potter if I'd known then what we know now, clearly expecting me to answer with a horrified 'God no!'. I said that I didn't approve of banning books, asked which bit of JKR's writing the student objected to, and wouldn't let him wriggle out of it with the usual 'oh, the anti-trans bits'. He had no idea what she had actually said that offended him so much, and whereas none of the others spoke up, they exchanged looks and smiled at me. Small steps.

grannydarkhair

Article by KS about speaking at Oxford/Cambridge Debating Unions. “Warning: contains grounds for optimism” 😁

twitter.com/docstockk/status/1664127028071735298?s=61&t=qph6ruaz5B5GPjDn7jnZBw

I looked at this. I think the funniest thing is that a women who found the debating society a place which made her nervous and where she didn't belong in her youth, because of her comprehensive school background (which she is careful to tell us about) Now revels in the approval and applause she finds there and apparently sees that as a valuable approbation. Someone should have told her most people move towards the establishment more as they grow older.

Doodledog

Smileless2012

Thanks for the link grannydarkhair. Very well written and as it says, contains grounds for optimism .

Indeed. I hope she's right. I have a lot of respect for young people, and definitely don't subscribe to the idea that age always brings wisdom; but equally, the idea that because (some) young people think something it must be right is such a knee-jerk way of thinking, and it is so often used in these discussions. As said in the article, not all people have been captured by the trans lobby.

I remember a conversation a couple of years ago with a group of Masters students. One of them (a pleasant and earnest young man) asked whether I would have allowed my children to read Harry Potter if I'd known then what we know now, clearly expecting me to answer with a horrified 'God no!'. I said that I didn't approve of banning books, asked which bit of JKR's writing the student objected to, and wouldn't let him wriggle out of it with the usual 'oh, the anti-trans bits'. He had no idea what she had actually said that offended him so much, and whereas none of the others spoke up, they exchanged looks and smiled at me. Small steps.

Honestly this paranoia has to stop. The trans-lobby??? Who are they?? Where are they????
The fact that one young man hadn't read the badly written books of one author who he had been told was anti-trans proves what? He was a bit thick, perhaps, but little else.

The point is that young people want to be able to question their gender identity just as they have questioned their sexuality and it really isn't up to anyone else to interfere with that, or to tell them that if they have gender dysphoria that it is just a fiction.

GagaJo

Germanshepherdsmum

Presumably those at the Union were more intelligent than the protesters outside.

That's a very loaded value judgement. Not objective at all.

I think it’s fair judgement to be honest. We’ve all seen ‘protests’ which consist of participants just shouting everyone else down. They’re not the least bit interested in reasoned debate. What’s objective about that ?

VioletSky

www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/02/200205084203.htm

Trust the science, more is coming

I'm reposting this because non of the gender critical have bothered to comment on it. It obviously makes them very uncomfortable.
I suspect that any ideas which contradict their insistence that there isn't a problem have to be ignored.
Much like the stuff I posted about male chromosomes and female bodies.

Glorianny You are mixing gender and sex and assuming they are the same thing. Being gay, does not change your sex, just your sexual orientation. Transpeople are Transpeople and that is quite clear. What they are not, after their transition, is men, or women, they are transmen and transwomen.

M0nica

Glorianny You are mixing gender and sex and assuming they are the same thing. Being gay, does not change your sex, just your sexual orientation. Transpeople are Transpeople and that is quite clear. What they are not, after their transition, is men, or women, they are transmen and transwomen.

Agree!

I started to write that I found conflating sex, gender, and orientation unhelpful but my fingers plaited themselves somewhat.