Flora Gill - annoying article in The Times

[Theluggage15]

Article on cancel culture. Read the first bit then there was this paragraph:

‘ For example, for my generation — I’m 29 — the right of trans people to be protected is as indisputable as the right to sexual or racial equality. If you’re focusing only on the tiny number of women who could be at threat from men pretending to be trans, instead of the real threat faced by trans women now, then you’re not fighting for women — you’re fighting against a type of woman you don’t value.’

Want to go to sleep but feeling really angry. So depressing reading this, I feel worse for some reason when this sort of view comes from intelligent young women.

Sigh, more nepotism. It doesn't help the standard of thinking and journalism to have inherited seats in newspapers.

Oh no, not another one. What a curse that journalism has become a fashionable occupation. Now it’s infested with talentless rich kids who don’t bother with research or fact-checking. I’m slightly relieved this is in the Times, as I detest Murdoch but have recently been buying it to read the brilliant Janice Turner.

Very expensive and privileged education. Bedales boarding school, then Oxford reading Philosophy and Theology. I thought Philosophy was all about learning to think.

Oh fuck off Flora.

@RaindropsOnRosie

I agree with Flora on every opinion she has voiced so far, except the porn for kids website idea. Perhaps instead of encouraging companies to make porn for children, parents could for once educate their kids on consent, sex, genitals, gender, etc. Not difficult and will do much less harm than pretending all porn and sex is vanilla and child friendly.

Crikey. That's brave of you. Did you actually check her whole twitter feed before you said that?

For example, last August, she tweeted this.

It’s homophobic to be 100% straight

Followed by

Have you seen how hot some men and women are?! How can you just blanket say you would NEVER be attracted to a single person of the same sex???? It’s absurd

twitter.com/FloraEGill/status/1298628853968048128?s=19

After a couple of days of going viral and being ratioed, she claimed it was a joke.

That twitter thread isn't going her way - thousands of comments and I didn't spot any that were supportive.
I suppose it's worth considering that some of the advocates of porn for children may be in her social circle? The ones who have successfully infiltrated all the organisations producing pro porn sex ed resources for schools? There seem to be an alarming number of them hiding in plain sight - some in very high places as well.

@OhHolyJesus

Oh fuck off Flora.

I say!

@ScribblingPixie

People have a pop at Giles Coren but I think her career is a far worse example of nepotism. Without her parents' names she wouldn't get a column in a local paper. It makes me really angry to think of all the talented young women she must have leap-frogged.

I get so pissed off at what a waste of private education she is. Just think what someone with an actual brain could have achieved.

The only comment of support I can see on twitter is from a fellow journalist.

Philosophy eh?

Who were those french philosophers who argued that sex with kids was aok?

In general (massive generalisation) isn't there a tendency for thinky types. To take positions that are not generally supported. And when everyone says wtf that's because they're all lacking in intelligence, thinking emotionally etc?

Not philosophers but definitely look at themselves like that- Pullman and that atheist chap come to mind.

Entry level porn then what ?

So we say to our teen girls and boys at 14. Here’s your entry level porn

We will be in touch on what comes next after entry level 1 porn

If they've pretty much all seen porn/ watch it.

Then how will giving them lite teen porn help?

It legitimises porn in general.
If they're watching/ have seen porn anyway then what will it achieve.
What teenager ever thought yeah. I'll stick to what adults say I should have. And definitely not be way more interested in the grown up stuff.

Apart from the whole porn for kids thing.
I mean it's a totally shit idea for what she was thinking about anyway. Useless.

Yes. We need to make it harder to access porn that normalises spitting, choking, and otherwise harming participants, not add in a genre aimed at minors!

I wonder. Would it be possible to introduce a new, higher age rating for some subtypes of pornography?

In all honesty I don't think there's a way to do anything about the easy availability of porn on the net in general. It's here to stay. The only way to do it would be I suppose to have one central global org that has its own site and age verification.
You would need to get every country on the planet to buy into it. And then somehow prevent any individual or org in the whole world from putting any porn up at all. It's just not going to happen. I wish there was a way to lock all this stuff down until a certain age but that's a non starter. If I could do all that I'd be addressing the misogyny racism etc etc as well. But sadly, no.

What I would like in the UK and some of this would be easy and good globally.

• all major search engines to only return porn results if it's obvious from the search terms that's what's wanted.

Currently if no child protection, searching perfectly innocent things can return porn hits. This would be really good for young children. It would pretty much stop the issue of them getting porn results when looking for something innocuous. And it would not prevent those looking from finding it. Small I know but a no brainer to me.

All phones computers etc etc to come with child protection pre installed and switched on for no charge and kept updated for as long as the device is in use. Many many parents don't know enough etc to do it. It should be the default. Can be switched off.
Again no help for a determined older child but helps with younger children etc.

Loads of info (not sure how? Schools are overloaded and often not great at delivering sex ed. Insisting individual parents all have to do it is a hopelessly flawed solution.
Maybe back to wheeling in a telly and watching a super brilliant prog about it all?
Get rid of all the totally dodgy info sites teaching materials that are in schools and kids will be reading. All the you can't watch porn under 18 (haha wink). If anal hurts just try this! Ok kids what sex acts can you do with these! Ok Sam you've picked mouth and anus. Can you tell the class what sex acts involve them?

That's all I can think of for now.

I’m 29 and she most certainly doesn’t speak for me or anybody I know. Any risk to women from men is unacceptable. Minimising the experiences of women assaulted by men is gross.

I think all porn should be banned.

Read erotica. Use your imagination. It would improve literacy and doesn't require anyone to be raped.

Unfortunately with the internet that's impossible.

Without extreme totalitarian control, which is not desirable.

@Peebi

The last par is even worse - self righteous drivel by someone who, one suspects, was offered a writing perch at the Times on the strength of her surname and therefore never had to work very hard at honing her arguments - have a read and tell me whether this isn't classic circular logic: ie the real problem with those who disagree with me is that they disagree with me

Absolutely - notice that bit about the real threat to free speech come from “those who claim our stance is invalid”. That daft word “validate” again. It’s not that she’s complaining that other people think her stance is wrong. It’s “invalid”. Because “wrong” implies there’s truth involved and you can be proved right or wrong. invalid gets round that pesky necessity for one’s opinions to actually be right: it’s more important to have the opinion that’s approved of by others (“validated”) than an opinion that is right.

@Pretaxanger

She's said this now.

@FloraEGill

I think it's very hard to keep teens away from porn. Most 14/15 year olds understand computers far better than their parents and will easily work a VPN

Setting aside the porn issue I'm agog at the stupid age comment. Most parents of 14/15 year olds are 35 to 50 and have had access to computers for longer than their kids have been alive. Some of them have even worked in IT for decades Flora. Some of them invented the stuff Flora.

She really does believe anyone over 30 is a medieval relic.

I teach university students, and far from being tech-savvy digital natives, they are mostly quite staggeringly inept in terms of computer skills, often finding it very difficult to use basic programs, or do as little as carry out an efficient Google search. Sure they know how to tap on stuff, but they are definitely not tech wizards.

Invalid is a very strange word for the context.

Things like train tickets and parking permits can be invalid.

How can a belief, an argument etc be invalid?

It's nonsense.

The last par is even worse - self righteous drivel by someone who, one suspects, was offered a writing perch at the Times on the strength of her surname … Classic circular logic: ie the real problem with those who disagree with me is that they disagree with me

This, 100%. What gets me down about this nepotism is all the talented, conscientious writers whose voices we don’t hear because they haven’t got the right parents or contacts.

Pushing 30 is a bit old for this ‘you oldies are all out of touch relics’ schtick. Grow up, Flora.

@LazyViper

Pushing 30 is a bit old for this ‘you oldies are all out of touch relics’ schtick. Grow up, Flora.

Quite. Flora us no doubt quite clever and is used to being told she is. But to think, given her achingly privileged background that she is some kind of 'everywoman' voice is staggeringly misplaced.

”If you’re focusing only on the tiny number of women who could be at threat from men pretending to be trans”
She is saying two things here: 1) no women could be ‘at threat’ from genuine transwomen; and 2) the number of women who could be ‘under threat’ from men in general ‘pretending’ to be tw is “tiny”.

Someone with Gill’s level of class privilege may well think women’s rights are a done deal from long ago, but both of these assumptions are so obviously preposterous.

Also if you're saying only a tiny amount of women will be affected, you're also saying that these women are acceptable collateral damage to accommodate another 'tiny' minority. I'm not willing to accept that.