What’s the worst case of silencing you’ve seen in the UK?

[ChristinaXYZ]

Interesting article asking the founder of the Free Speech Union What’s the worst case of silencing you’ve seen in the UK?

Toby Young: "The mobbing of gender-critical feminists by trans-rights activists has been one of the worst manifestations of cancel culture, particularly when their employers have colluded in the persecution. It cannot be an accident that the people the woke thought police have singled out for the most vituperative abuse are women.....

...The woke cult is a religious community without a church, so you cannot demonstrate your piety by going to a particular place every Sunday at 11am. Instead, its members demonstrate their fealty to the community by fervently promoting its beliefs – and the more absurd those beliefs, the better they serve that purpose.

Anyone can argue against racial discrimination. But to argue for the inclusion of transwomen in women’s-only sports, and to claim that trans athletes have no natural advantages over biological women, is quite difficult and therefore serves to signal to other members of the cult that you’re a true believer."

He also discusses JK Rowling.

furneytimes.com/2022/01/16/free-speech-wokeism-cancel-culture/

Brace yourself for the "Toby Young is a Bad Man. You are aligning with the Right Wing" comments [eye roll]

Related to this, one of my favourite moments was Owen Jones asking on Twitter why feminists weren't speaking up about something, only to be reminded that he'd blocked them all.

@ThatsWhenTheCannibalismStarted

Brace yourself for the "Toby Young is a Bad Man. You are aligning with the Right Wing" comments [eye roll]

Ha! You're right! I've already had one of those comments when I posted this on Ovarit. The vicious purity circle!

@EishetChayil

Related to this, one of my favourite moments was Owen Jones asking on Twitter why feminists weren't speaking up about something, only to be reminded that he'd blocked them all.

That's something I wonder about on Twitter. So many people seem to have to adjust their settings in order to have a civil experience on Twitter that they often seem to miss answers made in good faith to their discussion points.

The very worst thing is self censorship. This is pernicious and seeps in everywhere. It destroys democracy without the need for a dictator

@highame

The very worst thing is self censorship. This is pernicious and seeps in everywhere. It destroys democracy without the need for a dictator

I always think of the Havel greengrocer (quoted here):

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4382551-Live-not-by-lies-Solzhenitsyn-no-tambourines-involved?

Got engrossed in the thread Embarrassing thanks

The silencing of trans widows. Until Tinsel Angel broke the mould and spoke up it was next to impossible to the rest of us to speak up.

@ThatsWhenTheCannibalismStarted

Brace yourself for the "Toby Young is a Bad Man. You are aligning with the Right Wing" comments [eye roll]

But it’s true. Many posters here are aligning with the right wing side of U.K. politics. So why deny it?

The question I would ask is what is wrong with that?

Why should the right automatically be considered wrong or bad and the left automatically be considered correct and virtuous?

Many people seem to believe this but I can see no reason for it.

It’s interesting that if you poll people on policies rather than parties the voters of one party often agree with the policies of another party.

People can be massive twats about some things, but right about others. See also Liz Truss.

One of my biggest beefs with the TRA movement is that it has forced me intermittently to agree with Piers Morgan.

It's pretty daft to assume that just because you disagree with someone on some, or even most, issues, you can't possibly agree with them about anything.

The question I would ask is what is wrong with that?

I think part of it is that people have this idea that a lot of "those people" want to do things like deny women the vote or pay them differently.

I know quite a few people who vote on the right, and I've never heard any of them say anything like that - the closest was a women who said she wasn't sure the vote was as important as people thought because she thought voting tended to be a bit of a scam anyway. And her political views were very unusual in general.