Labour would add "legal but harmful" BACK into the online bill

Do you honestly think people with gender-critical views living in the UK are "being silenced"?

Yes. They are demonstrably being silenced, sacked, bullied,

JK Rowling has just short of 14M followers and every opinion she has is published by the daily mail for one example.

I don't think that JK Rowling has been silenced. But the way she has been treated will make a lot of other people without her wealth think twice about speaking out. She has received an awful lot of abuse and this sends a message out to all women everywhere that if they speak out on the sex and gender issue they will also possibly receive abuse or complaints to their employers. This obviously has the effect of silencing people. I know I don't always say what I actually think on the matter because I don't want to deal with the potential consequences having seen what other women have had to go through.

When Kathleen Stock left her role in the college, she spent over a month on TV/newspapers/radio etc daily as a platform for her views as another example.

I don't think Kathleen Stock has been silenced and she has stated that she won't be silenced. But she also says she has had a lot of "in private" support from many women who say they dare not speak up because they do not want to risk the consequences. This pattern repeats in every one of these high profile cases. A person publicly speaks out and is then demonised by trans activists. They then state that they are in receipt of hundreds of supportive communications from people who dare not speak out because they cannot risk losing their job or alienating friends and family or receiving abuse.

This is all nonsense though, really. If something is so ‘ harmful’ that it can be demonstrated certainly to cause measurable harm, then draft a bill to make that specific thing illegal ; then debate it, preferably after submitting it to public scrutiny by including it in your manifesto ( wry smile).

im a bit conflicted on this bill. Although I do agree children’s access to harmful media needs to be restricted, I do think that restricting speech is also harmful. Who decides what is hate speech? Who decides what is acceptable to be said or published? I suppose one way it could be done in future is to have biometric access to porn or other adult sites, where a fingerprint could be used as access to them, with each device having different internet profiles for each user It would then be up to parents or guardians to ensure that the right profiles were set up for their family members, and if children were exposed on those devices, that would be on the parents.

I don't agree with any proposal to censor/ban "legal but harmful" topics.

There's a lot of things that sound good on paper but in practice are just completely unpractical to actually enforce and there's also the issue of having free speech taken away.

Do you honestly think people with gender-critical views living in the UK are "being silenced"?

JK Rowling has just short of 14M followers and every opinion she has is published by the daily mail for one example.

When Kathleen Stock left her role in the college, she spent over a month on TV/newspapers/radio etc daily as a platform for her views as another example.

It is the top 10 weirdest things Margie has said this week to be honest.

Want to know what silenced actually means you have a lot of choices of countries to live in, try Afghanistan, China or N. Korea.

This really does win idiotic statement of the year.

Noone has ever been prosecuted for misgendering and I'm sure noone ever will be.

Oh well, how reassuring that Margarita Pie is sure that no-one will be ever be prosecuted for misgendering. We can all rest peaceably in our beds knowing that this ideology has pushed as far as it intends to go now it has achieved equality of being able to alter official documents to contain completely incorrect information. It is inconceivable that these same ideologues would ever consider pushing for non-compliant women to be prosecuted for calling them the "wrong" pronoun.

(it's been debated to death and has majority of public and politician support)

Untrue.

www.holyrood.com/news/view,only-a-fifth-of-scots-back-plans-for-selfid-transgender-laws

'53 per cent of Scots believe that a doctor’s approval should be needed for a person to change their sex'

It boggles my mind that grown adults, who have been elected in a major political party and are responsible for drafting policy, cannot see why this is a bad, bad, terribly dangerous idea.

I used to think that and now I just think they are doing it because they support it.

100%

I really don't think anyone is being silenced. Prominent gender-critical figures have large platforms and the media often relays their opinions. Gender critical people are speaking and been heard by and listened to by millions.

Scotland's GRC finally looks set to pass (it's been debated to death and has majority of public and politician support) but it's been delayed for years and given extra public consultations because of GC people speaking up against it, same with the UK's gender conversion therapy ban which is still on hold.

Just because the majority of the population don't agree with you doesn't mean you are "silenced", and just because a heckler was thrown out of a talk which wasn't even about the GC discussion doesn't mean you are "silenced" either.

"Frankly I don't want to find out what it's like to live in a country that hands politicians that kind of power"

Want to know what silenced actually means you have a lot of choices of countries to live in, try Afghanistan, China or N. Korea.

Business will be booming for VPN providers when/if this passes, that's for sure.

I’m also not against the whole of this legislation. I was listening to Miriam Cates the other day talking about pornography and how easy it is for children to access it online. Legislation is sorely needed to protect children from harm.

"how could people issue rape threats and death threats to women and Dix them if it was made illegal"

There are existing laws to cover threats of violence, malicious communication, intentionally putting someone in a state of fear and alarm, things like that.

I'm not too sure where doxxing would come under in existing law, probably under stalking/harassment laws or something.

"if women were prosecuted for ‘misgendering’"

Noone has ever been prosecuted for misgendering and I'm sure noone ever will be.

No of course not. But atm it does feel like we are heading towards a Labour victory but not because voters are inspired by Labour, just that they are so sick of the Tories.

Surely if it’s harmful enough to ban it in a democratic society, that should be managed through legislation, not on the say-so of whoever currently owns Twitter?

• but looking at the rest of the posts, I wonder whether this line of argument is already agreed here?!

100% this.

And actually, to the point where it goes beyond anything to do with gender ideology, or women's rights, and shows them to be an immediate danger, people who should never be in power, no matter what.

It boggles my mind that grown adults, who have been elected in a major political party and are responsible for drafting policy, cannot see why this is a bad, bad, terribly dangerous idea.

She says "Russian and Incels" but in practice she means "women saying women don't have penises"...