John Davison BAFTA Tourette’s incident and competing rights

Quite right. Those women who get all upset because they hear the male voice of a transwoman at the other end of a rape crisis helpline need to just “get a grip”. Losers.

I don’t necessarily agree with the joke (or find it funny) but Jack Whitehall made jokes about the situation last night at the BRITs, so are we upset about that too?

I appreciated Jayme Lawson’s (who also starred in Sinners) view where she spoke on the fact that none of the people involved were protected: x.com/thr/status/2027961255533900157?s=46

Worth a read

https://jennmjacksonphd.substack.com/p/ableism-will-never-end-anti-black

Further developments in the story.

https://x.com/HadleyFreeman/status/2028104586414768396?s=20

https://nitter.net/HadleyFreeman/status/2028104586414768396#m

"On the one hand, two wealthy, successful men living their lifelong dreams get called a horrible name at the Baftas On the other, a man with a lifelong, life-crippling neurological condition now held up for global mockery. Hard not to see this as the endpoint of identity politics"

Replying again to point out how you're minimizing a PTSD/trauma response in a women's forum. In a thread about disabilities. FFS

whoosh

What part of involuntary don't you understand?

Or do you think reliving horrible, painful abuse is not harmful regardless of my feelings about it? My doctors disagree.

Choose not to be harmed, and you won’t feel harmed. Don’t feel harmed, and you haven’t been.
Marcus Aurelius.

I'm into pragmatic understanding and solutions which deal with realities that are sometimes inconvenient. Cos those are our conflict and crunch points in society.

Again attempts to control meaning and consensus. Are you a man or a transwoman?

OP
It’s interesting how this is being discussed atm. I see Ash Sarkar has framed it as an example of competing rights between disabled people and victims of racism, forgetting about intersectionality. But there is a struggle from those on the extreme left to see how women’s rights are compromised by ceding to TRAs.
not expressing myself very well but thought it had some interesting parallels with the sex and gender debate.

One of many possible interpretations of the OP's post, by someone not trying to control the narrative, is: The OP is talking about rights and considerations which sit both inside and outside of legal frameworks. The clue is in the word – intersectionality – the idea that people’s experiences of injustice aren’t shaped by just one thing, but by a mix of who they are and how the world treats those parts of them at the same time. It does not fit neatly into legal frameworks, yet it exists.

We are talking to different parts of the issue. I’m interested in how this works in real life to minimise harm and maximise cohesion. In this specific example between people with the protected characteristic of Tourette's, a disability which may carry the risk of involuntary racial tics, and people with the protected characteristic of race who may have involuntary trauma responses. You keep dragging it back to legal tick-boxes so you can say “job done”. But legal compliance isn't cohesion.

Intersectionality reflects lived harm and history shows the law rarely leads on justice or protection from harm. It gets dragged there by people already living with inequality or by those with the power to push for change. The courts didn’t pioneer racial equality or women’s rights, they gave in to relentless social pressure. So, unfortunately, it is never “job done” with the law.

Legal protection can also be rolled back or fail in practice (past: Windrush, Future: reproductive rights? Equalities act?). When communities have seen systems fall short of protecting them in the past, trust in those systems is no longer automatic. That matters in conversations about trauma, which I have tried to explain from the intersectional position of a Black woman. Trauma responses don’t emerge from theory, they are shaped by experience and history. So looking beyond legal solutions is not dismissing the law, but recognising that trust is built socially as well as legally.

Even when the legal bar is met, outcomes aren’t equal – just ask women navigating rape or domestic abuse cases, or ethnic minorities facing sentencing disparities. Courts intervene after harm, they don’t prevent it. Why are you so insistent that solutions must sit only in a system that has helped shape inequality? Is that misplaced faith? Or is do you have some other motive? Because real solutions usually start socially, and intersectionality matters here. The law catches up later, sometimes well and sometimes not.

A last thought : if legal rulings are meant to settle things, how is that working out with the Supreme Court decision that was supposed to bring clarity to women’s single-sex spaces?

The furore around this story reminds me of what happened when a driver suffered a seizure at the wheel and killed two children.

There was a massive pile-on from people saying that she was lying, insufficiently apologetic, drove the wrong sort of car, was a rich b who manipulated the investigation, and, yes, was a racist (she was white and the victims were not) enjoying white privilege. No-one was crass enough to suggest the grieving relatives should count themselves lucky it was 'only' a no-fault collision - but lots of people reacted exactly as if that was what the driver's 'apologists' were saying.

I won't post a link because it's still technically under investigation (it was reopened under pressure of public opinion but seems to have stalled), but here is a recent similar story:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cj32lpp445xo

.....two experts had reviewed the evidence available and had both concluded on the balance of probabilities, [the driver] had suffered a seizure.....[The coroner] added it was unlikely the driver had fallen asleep at the wheel and there was "nothing amiss" with the van. In a statement, [the driver] said: "I am devastated. I would like to express my sympathy to the family and I hope the passenger is OK. I can't explain the crash, I can't remember anything, I don't know how or why it happened."

Notably, the driver is not apologetic, despite having been the unwitting cause of terrible harm. Hopefully, he has not suffered backlash, but if he did it would not be surprising, because humans want someone to blame, not to be hateful, but because it bolsters their sense of control over their own lives. They like to think that if they always do the right thing, they will become neither victim nor perpetrator. Life is not so tidy.

"It’s still being lost on a couple of posters that grace and understand HAS been given to those who find the word triggering."

This isn't entirely true. People who have talked about certain tics being triggering have been called unintelligent, irrational, self-centred, playing the victim, choosing to be offended, calling him racist, and much more. There have even been comments saying that people attending the BAFTAs shouldn't have been pre-warned, lest they choose not to attend.

Although it is, of course, absolutely terrible the way that he is being treated. People just don't know how to be moderate. Everything is so polarised and extreme these days.

AccidentallyWesAnderson I don't claim to have all the answers or to be perfect. I do recognise that there is no perfect solution too. Unfortunately I do think there's limits to the law and theres areas where not everyone can be protected all the time. I don't believe in authoritarian approaches to speech and thinking whichever direction they come from as they are problematic. You can't prevent all harm no matter how well intentioned and noble you are. No matter how unfair this might be in some circumstances. I don't think the Equality Act and our Human Rights laws set out to do that either - they only set out to minimise them as far as possible. I think there's a fundamental failure to understand this and the reality of the world. We live in a me, me, me era which doesn't want to acknowledge that which is really difficult to navigate.

I am fully aware that lots of people will not like me pointing this out too. It's the nature of the problem though.

It's certainly done nothing to increase my opinion of Americans. Jamie Foxx's spur of the moment comment has ruined a man's life. Which Jamie absolutely didn't know at the time, he was just giving his honest opinion without knowing the facts, but that's what happened.
John's never going to trust the BBC again is he. Scummy company.

It’s disgusting. He’s a bloody working class man from Galashiels who has struggled all his life. Has anyone ever been to Galashiels? Loving the memes and tweets coming out to support John.

And that poor lovely girl on Tik Tok who has Tourette’s and coprolalia who eloquently explained all about the condition, tics etc has put a post up saying she’s to come off tik tok due to the abuse she’s getting, from her own black community! Well some, there’s plenty of black people on Tik Tok telling those insulting John to get a grip, he’s got Tourette’s.
Some comments are saying she’s choosing her disability over ‘being black’, that’s a direct quote btw. Why is it one over the other?

It’s still being lost on a couple of posters that grace and understand HAS been given to those who find the word triggering.

Red, your posts are eloquent and thought provoking.

Oh any social media you care to look at. It’s everywhere. Vile beyond belief. The man could not help it and has apologised.

So JD has been deliberately targeted and effected as a direct result of the broadcast... What's that conversation about protecting and harms again?

That's really scary.

On Twitter, by any chance? I tend not to go to places like that online, because they have so many ugly, extreme, rage-bait posts designed to shock and provoke engagement.

But it's terrible, regardless. The sort of vitriol spewed by people online is awful.

Well I’ve seen people saying he should have his tongue cut out, he should be muzzled, he’s a racist, he should be financially penalised, the film should be boycotted.

I’m done.

I'm not on other social media, so I don't know about the social media situation beyond generalities.

That's terrible about his bike. If it was because of the BAFTAs and not just some young idiot being dicks, that's awful - imagine actually going to someone's house and stealing their bike because they said a word? Crazy. Looking it up I've read that at least the police got it back for him! So that's something.

It seems like a lot of people don't want to extend any grace to either 'side', so to speak, which is pretty typical. Here on Mumsnet, though, it seems there are an unexpected number of people totally dismissing black people's experiences in the process of supporting JD. I'm sure elsewhere it skews the other direction, but that's just what I've seen here.

Hah, fair enough as to the premise of the thread! Although it talks about competing rights not legality explicitly, so a lot of people are talking about balancing people's needs, and not so much the legal side of things - probably because it's difficult to figure out the legal minutiae on an online forum,

As for the rest of your comment, that's obviously not meant for me. Or maybe none of your comment was meant for me?

The poor man even had his bike, his only mode of transport stolen

Ffs. What is wrong with people.

His bloody film couldn't have come soon enough.

But no grace has been extended to John. I’m utterly furious about the disgusting bullying of a disabled man I’ve witnessed all over social media. It seems inclusion is only given lip service. Offending people is sufficient to have that inclusion withdrawn.

I’ve donated to a Tourette’s charity in disgust. The poor man even had his bike, his only mode of transport stolen

The opening premise of the thread is about competing rights and the comparison to other issues - namely gender / sex. Legalities are fairly relevant to that.

As for 'rambling' and chatgpt. Well if that's your rebuff I think it's the equivalent of sticking your fingers in your ears going la la la. I didn't expect anything other than that.

My points still stand to those who want to consider the premise of the OP and the issues that arise in that context.

Oh and I'm never going to apologise for 'rambling'. Cos bloody hell I've been doing it on Mumsnet for years and over the years I don't think it's served me badly. I'm not really into thought terminating clichés, 256 character comments and jumping on the latest approved passing bandwagon of opinion for a reason... I'm into pragmatic understanding and solutions which deal with realities that are sometimes inconvenient. Cos those are our conflict and crunch points in society.

As @Socrateswasrightaboutvoting touched upon, the first thing I took away from reading your post, @RedToothBrush is that you're talking about legality, when you should've noticed that right throughout this thread, and many of the others, legality isn't really the focus.

It's more about recognising that yes, a person who has Tourette's cannot help their tics and is not doing them on purpose, and that must be incredibly difficult to live with...but it does not erase the potential impact of those tics on others.

If people can be understanding of Tourette's Syndrome, then a little grace and understanding extended to those who may feel triggered, confronted, or injured by a person's tics should be possible too.

When people say they feel offended or hurt by someone ticking an offensive slur, especially if they're not familiar with coprolalia, it's not helpful to come down on them like a ton of bricks and tell them they're irrational, ableist, self-centred, lack intelligence, just want to cry racism, are playing the victim, or are trying to blame the Tourette's sufferer. In fact, it'll just make them feel more attacked, and become defensive.

It's possible to both not blame the person with Tourette's and feel sympathy for them, and also be compassionate towards people who were upset by a racial slur. It doesn't actually have to be one or the other.

I told Chat GPT what I wanted to say and asked it to compose my response because, child, your rambling post is not worth the effort.

I think we’re talking about slightly different things.
You’re focusing on what the law can realistically enforce — thresholds, intent, proportionality. That matters, because any real-world solution has to exist within practical limits.
But I’m not asking what should be illegal.
I’m asking how people live alongside each other when harm can happen without intent.
Two involuntary realities exist here — Tourette’s tics and trauma responses. Both are physiological. Neither is chosen. The law can help set boundaries, but it doesn’t resolve everything that matters in day-to-day coexistence. Not all harm is legally actionable — and yet it can still be real.
So this isn’t about banning words or chasing people with Tourette’s.
It’s about recognising that understanding someone cannot control a tic doesn’t mean the impact disappears — and recognising that impact doesn’t mean Tourette’s should be punished.
When race and disability meet, they can come into tension. Both are protected characteristics. Neither automatically overrides the other. That’s exactly why this isn’t something the law can neatly solve on its own.
The goal isn’t to make one “win” over the other.
It’s to acknowledge that both involuntary responses can exist at the same time — and that shared space sometimes requires understanding, flexibility and context.
The law sets limits.
But humans still have to live together within them.

Different century - same playbook.

It was broadcast on a two hour delay, so no one who watched it on the Beeb broadcast would have been aware of those other incidents. But first hand reports from other attendees and even John himself confirm that he ticked about 17 or 18 times in total before leaving the auditorium.

The reason I mention it is that the BBC have got form for this with very high profile incidents from live broadcast last year, eg Glastonbury, and again they took a long time to take down and edit the iplayer version after a great deal of fuss. I would have thought that if lessons really have been learned then a) they should never have put a microphone near John in the first place and b) they should have honoured their promise to him to edit out all of his tics. They failed him massively. In fact it’s such a big cock up that I wonder how it possibly could have been honestly made again after the Glastonbury fiasco. And raises a hint of suspicion that it wasn’t an honest mistake at all.