Stephen Fry should resign from being President of MIND (warning about sexual abuse)

[EnthusiasmDisturbed]

According to Stephen Fry from an interviews he gave in the US

There are many great plays which contain rapes, and the word rape now is even considered a rape,” he said. “If you say: ‘you can’t watch this play, you can’t watch Titus Andronicus, or you can’t read it in a Shakespeare class, or you can’t read Macbeth because it’s got children being killed in it, it might trigger something when you were young that upset you once, because uncle touched you in a nasty place’, well I’m sorry. It’s a great shame and we’re all very sorry that your uncle touched you in that nasty place, you get some of my sympathy, but your self-pity gets none of my sympathy because self-pity is the ugliest emotion in humanity.

“Get rid of it, because no one’s going to like you if you feel sorry for yourself. The irony is we’ll feel sorry for you, if you stop feeling sorry for yourself. Just grow up.”

How can he keep his position with such an attitude. Everyone who works in MH knows of the horrendous impact that sexual abuse can have on someone's life for some it's a life long struggle.

Maybe it's his own feelings that he is fighting against, this is not the first time he has been shown to lack empathy but to have such opinions

I hope he steps down

link

Fair play SF.

I'm sure we've all said potentially dick head things, Fry has done wonders for MIND and is a brilliant ambassador for the charity, he is right about the arts and right about self pity (something he has suffered from, something I have suffered from) it might not have been worded guardedly but that is perhaps part of his point, we are dangerously close to becoming enraged about a comment when it really isn't needed. Though of course I don't have a problem with OPs opinion and I'm sure MIND appreciate any feedback from service users and non service users alike.

I've read his response and tbf it's a pretty good apology.

He evidently feels he worded things badly and it wasn't how he intended it to sound.

But having read his apology I then went back and re-read the interview. And I still can't see where/how he could have possibly managed to get from position A (whatever it was that he was planning to say) to 'grow up'? They are just so polar apart.

How does someone who says that there are few things more horrifying and traumatic in one breath, say something like 'sorry your uncle touched you somewhere nasty'...'grow up' with the next breath?

I have lost any respect I ever had for him.

DH loved him. He watched the interview and vows never to listen to anything he has to say ever again.

Nasty little cunt. SF, not my husband ;)

He sees himself as sooo sensitive but is appallingly insensitive to abuse survivors. How did MIND react to his crass words?

Just on the question of 'no-platforming' --

The Guardian article was written by one of the most egregious no platformers of them all. Oh the irony of someone enjoying the privilege of being a journo and calling kettles black. I love the use of the term 'free speech fetishists' .

Lees is wrong to assert that only those apparently worthy of a platform can have one -- this is the subtext under the sob story of a life that started in Nottingham where apparently the only option for a bright young person who wanted to go to university was prostitution. You don't deserve the right to have utter nonsense listened to whether you are Stephen Fry or someone who claims to have cornered the deprivation and victimisation market.

What this particular member of the chattering classes wants is akin to the 'dictatorship of the proletariat', led by Paris Lees of course. The 'proletariat' being what apparently Lees considers to be the dumb masses you can lead by the nose to accept anything, 51% of whom in many parts of the world now find themselves having to share public loos and locker rooms and other formerly women's only spaces with people who have fully functioning penises but who say they are women. It is rather arrogant to assume the 51% are happy with giving up their rights to accommodate others in time-honoured gendered fashion, or that they like the idea that to object to being taken for granted and having their rights trampled over is akin to siding with privilege against the honest grafters. The attempt to present a 'them and us' universe is very blatant, and execrable.

As a little experiment in freedom of speech, I suggest people here try looking up transactivists on Twitter, maybe even Paris Lees' own account, and post challenges to the idea that men should have access to women's psychiatric wards, women's prisons no matter what offence they have committed including rape of women, battered women's shelters no matter how difficult that might make life for the women there, and should do so just on the basis of "feeling like a woman". You can legally do this in Ireland.

www.telegraph.co.uk/women/life/paris-lees-dear-ian-mcewan-your-ideas-about-penises-are-outdated/
This is the nasty, insinuation-filled way Paris Lees seeks to silence people who dare to suggest that biology has importance. Please note that the the 'transitioning' spoken of means in most cases the wearing of clothing and other external signifiers. Not surgical transformation. And for the most part again, we are not talking about gay men or women 'transitioning'.

I agree with you there, FeliciaJollygoodfellow.

It seems I must have utterly failed to get across what I was actually trying to say and instead offended and upset people who didn’t deserve to be offended or upset.

This is a very precise apology. He isn't admitting he's wrong; only that he didn't get his point across. He is apologising for offending "people who didn't deserve to be offended", not for causing offence.

It's good that he has effectively retracted the remarks which minimised the traumatic effects of CSA and other abuse/assault, but he's not ceding an inch of superiority.

It's "I'm sorry you were offended" instead of "I'm sorry I was offensive

• it's an example of I mean

I actually thought it was a gracious apology and that he should apologise. I dud agree to a certain extent with what he said, and have little truck with self pity, but the 'uncle touched you' bit was utterly grim and wrong and he has, rightly, apologised.

It's a fairly sincere sounding apology, I think. If you cherry pick other sentences you get

I of course apologise unreservedly for hurting feelings the way I did no quibbling there. The rest, coming after that, is a more detailed explanation of how badly he got it wrong, not meaning to, but having accepted that he did.

That he says 'if' and 'it seems' isn't him caviling, it is him describing what his words/actions have done. A turn of phrase that, coming after the unreserved apology for what he did, simply explains what he did not what he meant to do or wants to weasel out of!

But then we are back to that schism: if you don't like him you will only see the worst in that, if you like/don't mind him, you will take it more at face value.

Unless any of us know him, we won't know who is right/wrong in their reading of his words.

To be fair, I can't stand the man, haven't liked him for years. I think he's a dick in many ways.

But that apology seems meant and heartfelt, so fair enough.

Still think he's a cock though.

It's an apology having the appearance of being fulsome while actually being mealy-mouthed. It's lowered my view of him even more.

Excellent post fusion.

If your average Joe made this remark, 99% of the posts on here would be expressing outrage but because it's Stephen Fry, it's ok for some. Doing good e.g helping reduce MH stigma does not negate his sneery comment about your uncle touching you. His turn of phrase is nasty. Odious man.

But, that clever man who uses words well put that "if I" after he said I of course apologise unreservedly for hurting feelings the way I did

It only becomes mealy mouthed if you take one sentence out of the whole. Sense is built up over a number of sentences. You can make anyone say anything if you cherry pick tightly enough!

if you don't like him you will only see the worst in that, if you like/don't mind him, you will take it more at face value

I can't stand him and I gave it the thumbs up

imo an apology from SF is a biggie

as pps upthread have said- saying sorry is not a thing he goes in for

Stephen fry is a survivor is child sexual abuse, even so people are interpreting his words wrong. Should all arts with sex or abuse themes be censored? Should Eastenders not educate on rape?

Stephen Fry is a self obsessed knobhead.

Wouldn't it be great if we could get all self obsessed knobheads to resign. The House of Commons would soon empty for a start.

Ignore the idiot.

If you get upset over themes in fairy tales or plays then don't go to see them. It's pretty easy. However we must never stop children studying the past or plays at school just because a very few have to avoid certain issues.

A much much more important issues of mumsnetters is the appalling censorhip we see around us every day. Let that be our topic for campaigning for much less censorhip than there is and for free speech.

Muddha: the installation piece Exhibit B was cancelled because protestors objected to some of the images within it.

I completely agree with Eustace about the threat of rising censorship. Unfortunately the completely crass and insulting way SF, who should know better, chose to address this has obscured what he was actually talking about.

The NoPlatform movement, the demand for a Safe Space, the ways in which Universities are becoming places where reason and open debate are not trusted...all deeply shocking. And whilst this is not censorship as officially opposed by the state, as in China or Saudi Arabia, for example, the state has completely failed artists such as the writer of Bhezti and Birminghsm Rep, and of ExhibitB and the Barbican, because the police and local council did not protect the right of the events to go ahead.