James Kirkup's article in the Spectator yesterday is really significant
in the context of the response to Brian Paddick. The response to his tweet can viewed with much greater awareness.....
It would be completely counter-productive to react with hostility to him...
blogs.spectator.co.uk/author/james-kirkup/
"Bluntly, why the hell is no one in politics shouting from the rooftops about this stuff? We’re talking about people trying to put the frighteners on Mumsnetters, for goodness sake. In any other area of public life, politicians usually fall over themselves in their rush to speak up for middle-class working mothers. Yet the politicians who were desperate to talk biscuits at Mumsnet Towers are curiously silent about the intimidation that some women now report there.
If this was simply a story of a small number of nasty people online and – sometimes – on the street doing bad things to women who speak up about a political issue, I suspect this problem wouldn’t persist. The relevant legal and political authorities would indeed pay attention to that fear, and maybe even do something, even if that was just listening to those women, meeting them, answering their questions.
But that doesn’t seem to be happening. It’s because those women have been – quite successfully and even skilfully – demonised and stigmatised, put beyond the pale of civilised debate as those who question orthodoxy often are. They’ve been given a name, a name that means they’re bad people, people who should not speak and should not be heard That name is “Terf,” which once meant “Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist” but now appears to stand in its own right as a term of abuse and dismissal alongside the other short, harsh words often used to question the worth and virtue of women.
And that small number of people who direct violence and abuse at “Terfs” are swimming in a larger sea of contempt and dismissal. Their conduct takes place in a social context where hostility to “Terfs” has become not just normal but even amusing, where there is no social cost to talking about and perhaps even inciting violence towards women who hold “unacceptable” views. Simply, some people, including people who would never themselves engage in that sort of violence, are doing things that make violent discourse and even violence look and feel OK. Sadly, they include journalists and politicians, people who parade their support for minority groups but speak about feminist women in terms they would never use about other people."