Northumbria University - Sarah Phillimore and Harry Miller 'seen as a 'safety and wellbeing' risk to an entire university.'

[ChristinaXYZ]

Open letter on Sarah Phillimore's website shows how deep the interference with debate and free speech goes at some universities.

sarahphillimore.substack.com/p/a-letter-to-northumbria-university

So you think that someone who has co-founded an organisation that tweets #SayYesToHate on the Transgender Day of Remembrance, and to the present day overtly stands by that tweet, should have a platform to speak in universities?

I'll try that again.

@SilverCatStripes

So you think that someone who has co-founded an organisation that tweets #SayYesToHate on the Transgender Day of Remembrance, and to the present day overtly stands by that tweet, should have a platform to speak in universities?

Do you think Sarah Phillimore should have a platform to speak at your university?

The Transgender Day of Remembrance, is that the day when we will remember the 177 trans women killed in the UK between March 2021 and April 2022?

Oh, hold on a minute, I got that wrong a bit, the 177 trans women killed in the UK. There that’s better. Be nice if those sisters, daughters, mothers, aunts, nieces and granddaughters had their own Transgender Remembrance Day but I’m sure the kind transwomen won’t mind sharing.

Are you implying that it's fair enough for someone to tweet #SayYesToHate on the Transgender Day of Remembrance because women are killed too?

Of course SP should have a platform. She is intelligent and articulate and I assume, given her profession, an astute debater. Any uni should be delighted to have someone of her quality debating her perfectly legal view.

Universities should NEVER be places where debate is stifled, only one view expressed, dissent banished. Every legally held view should be up for robust debate. That's half the bloody point of going!

So you don't see any problems with someone tweeting #SayYesToHate on the Transgender Day of Remembrance?

No, I am just reminding myself that the number of women killed in the UK annually works out to about 3 a week whereas the number of transwomen killed in the UK in the last five years barely reaches three.

No, I don't actually have a problem with that. Partly because I think there is more to the argument than just a hashtag, and partly because people who cry and feel unsafe about fucking Twitter need to grow up and learn to debate properly.

Happy now?

Every murder is a tragedy, but this has no bearing on whether it is acceptable to tweet #SayYesToHate on the Transgender Day of Remembrance.

So you don't see any problems with someone tweeting #SayYesToHate on the Transgender Day of Remembrance?

1. You're the only one on this thread who has said that she/faircop tweeted that. Others have said it was reported falsely by a third party. As I am not on twitter I do not know which is true, though I suspect. Whilst it's not something that I would tweet if I was on twitter, and it seems nasty, it's pretty mild given the abuse GC people have received - certainly nowhere near as bad as die in a fire, or hope you get raped.

1. Regardless, SP has legitimate views, and should be free to debate them - particular in a university where debate should be encouraged.

I went and read the open letter too. I agree with an earlier poster who said 'She is saying that a third person says fair cop is stating that hashtag, not her, not fair cop'.
You are wrong or wilfully disingenuous.

Have you read the Sarah Phillimore's open letter which is linked to at the top of this thread? The person who purports to be Sarah Phillimore in it (and we have no reason to believe it is not Sarah Phillimore herself, as far as I know) acknowledges their membership of Fair Cop, the social media posting by Fair Cop that we have discussed in this thread, and explicitly stands by that post. The Fair Cop website seems to have her photograph on it?

If this is the Sarah Phillimore in question and there has not been misrepresentation anywhere, she has been described on this thread as an 'intelligent and articulate' person. Do you think therefore that she should have the judgement to recognise the potential consequences of such a tweet? That it might endorse and encourage people with transphobic views? She's apparently not an ignorant person, so she should have had a bit of insight here, no? I think any half-intelligent person could appreciate this. So what are we to think? That she has the intelligence and can appreciate that this tweet has the potential to endorse and encourage people with transphobic views, and she supports the tweet anyway? What does that say about her, if it is indeed her?

A reminder of the Fair Cop attitude to hate, since this seems to have been repeatedly overlooked: "Don’t tell me about hate" www.faircop.org.uk/dont-tell-me-about-hate/

Yes I know she is in faircop - that's not in dispute. What is being disputed is whether that hashtag came from them. You say it did. Others say someone else falsely attributed it to faircop. (It was me that called her intelligent and articulate btw ).

The thread is about an attempt to no platform her. You have repeatedly asked whether I and others would support her speaking at a uni event. The answer, irrespective of whether the tweet came from faircop or not, is emphatically yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.

I hope that is clear. I do not support no debate. I support everyone's right to voice their legitimate views, even those I vehemently oppose. I particularly encourage debate of those views in a university setting.

"#SayYesToHate is a statement of defiance against the utterly ludicrous
@CollegeofPolice definition of recordable hate. We are seeking to have this overturned. @SVPhillimore and @HarryTheOwl101"

The content of a tweet by WeArwFairCop on 20/11/2020.

There you @suggestionsplease1 The tweet itself. Clearly made to highlight the College's position on recording hate crimes. Not an attempt to incite hate towards the trans community at all.

You misrepresented, or someone else did and you parroted their view. what a surprise

You will know the other tweet made with that hashtag by Fair Cop in response to West Yorkshire Police's tweet supporting the Transgender Day of Remembrance.

Very interesting questions. I hope we get the answers.

This is a bit of a strange blog.

It follows the same initial tack as @viques post of 22.15 - to distract from the issue at hand by bringing up tragic, but irrelevant circumstances. It is horrific that SP experienced abuse and hate for a disability but it does not follow that because you have experienced hatred yourself that you are incapable of being hateful.

She then appears to imply that this tweet was 'stupid' (she earlier asserts she did not tweet this herself but supports it). I don't really follow why she would continue to support what she describes as a stupid tweet. Why not just say she doesn't support it?

She then goes on to assert that there are a number of reasons a person might be hateful, which is of course perfectly true. But the law doesn't (usually) preoccupy itself with the reasons someone might come to be hateful - it has to to deal with the facts, and concern itself with harm caused to others, regardless of the individual history and psychology of perpetrators. It should act as a deterrent to others when it judges a communication has gone beyond freedom of expression to become a hate crime.

So all in all, it sounds like does recognise that the tweet was problematic, but stands by the right to post problematic tweets. Everyone has got their line, but for me I would not be keen to invite someone who maintained their right to support such a tweet on such an occasion to speak at a university.

I believe she has the intelligence and insight to recognise that tweet has real potential to endorse and encourage people with transphobic views and that she should disavow it, but she does not, and persists in her support for it.

"Thanks, but no thanks. Hate is as legitimate an emotion as love or indifference and, like our thinking, our emotions are not a police matter. Of course, say we say No to criminal behaviour. But we #SayYesToHate."

A tweet by WeAreFairCop on 20/11/2020
Which is the one I think you are referring to although please do post the correct one if this is not it.

I would not be keen to invite someone who maintained their right to support such a tweet on such an occasion to speak at a university.

Fair enough, but she was invited and no-one was "harmed" or "unsafe". She hasn't committed any crime - although she has been accused of Orwellian thought crimes hence the reason that Fair Cop exists in the first place. Interesting that Craig McLean failed to respond to Sarah Phillimore's request for comment on her critique of his woeful report - engagement with the actual arguments would have been a good place for him (and the university) to start.

I’d say so yes. That’s probably in part because I attended a very good university which didn’t try to shield anyone from views that they may disagree with.

They’d likely have even allowed people to speak who believed in an innate gender or that a man could become a woman by fiat, should anyone have been foolish enough to invite them to speak.

It seems like they don't teach literary modes at university any more, either. Goodness knows why the students pay for it.

Do they teach critical thinking? Debating? How to take apart the opposing argument, or if that is not possible, how to learn from it and change one's opinion? How to debate honestly and courteously, without always assuming only evil inventions from the opponent?

Sadly, I don't see a lot of evidence on this question. That tweet seems to be countering the idea that people's inner thought should be policed, not just the actions they take. It's a rather outrageous way of making that point, but then it's also outrageous that the police was/is recording something called non-crime hate incidents.