Harry miller arrested

[chilling19]

twitter.com/i/broadcasts/1jMJgemEeybKL

It's absolute bollocks, isn't it. In fact, it's the opposite. That transactivism is trying to turn gay kids into straight kids by claiming they're the opposite sex.

That transactivism is trying to turn gay kids into straight kids by claiming they're the opposite sex.
Well yes, and often sterilising them. That is one of the things I find most alarming.

I don't think it's particularly funny. Lawrence fox is someone I find unpleasant, objectionable and irritating. Harry seems like the kind of man I dread dealing with in my professional capacity and would swerve where possible.

but you do understand that we aren't 'defending' a swastika being used we are defending the right of people to be (in my opinion) unpleasant, objectionable and irritating without getting arrested for having those views.

Because who defines what is objectionable? Or irritating? Or unpleasant?

///

exwhyzed nails it

but you do understand that we aren't 'defending' a swastika being used

Many, many people will not understand this, no.
Like the 'gay cake' case that everyone seems to think was a bakery refusing to make a cake for a gay couple.

That's why I find these swastika antics so dickish.

Anyone who doesn't consider that contocted flag to be anything but repulsive is no ally for women or humankind in general. Think what you like about TRAs, it doesn't compare to genocide.

Dark day for mumsnet.

//:

I disagree. You can absolutely find it abhorrent and stand for free speech, even in these cases.

Interesting that throwing the term "feminazi" around seems on the whole, acceptable.

It is a rather recurring point that crops up on here - instead of arguing the issues, posts get muddled into 'what MN FWR is like'. So that makes me a bit inclined to believe that you're not being entirely genuine. Whatever - you know if you're being dishonest, and if you are, you could ask yourself why.

It's possible that it's an attempt to demonstrate the differences between echo chambers and epistemic bubbles.

blog.ayjay.org/a-useful-distinction/

However, if it were, then the people who perceive themselves as disruptive forces that are potentially beneficial for what they bring to a discussion, should be prepared to offer verifiable evidence that stands up to scrutiny.

What that poster is trying to do, LaughingPriest is to try and take things that may have been said in a nuanced conversation, removing the context, and amping the statement up a bit.

So for example while I have never seen anyone say teens can't be gay, they've certainly said that teen sexuality is often pretty unformed, especially in the under 16s. Or that 11 and 12 and maybe 13 year olds declaring their sexuality at school tends to be mainly about the influence of clubs or learning modules, which is why you get these large numbers of 11 year olds identifying as lesbians or asexual.

Usually their point is that there really isn't a need for adults to be pushing kids, even indirectly, to put a label on their sexual identity at that age.

There are always people who seem to take the Oprah view that anyone who thinks they might be anything other than heterosexual at 11 always knows exactly what they are talking about and denying it is akin to saying that being gay is caused by grooming.

Posts like that also like to lazily assume that anything on "the right" is obviously crazy and evil, even people like Joe Rogan who were actually Democrats until quite recently. And obviously they are only white men, as well.

It's mud slinging, hoping something will stick.

This bit supposedly says what happens but it's written weirdly and passively so I can't quite tell what's been left out

It seems like you're missing the point! "What happened" is not that someone posted a meme. That happens all the time. What happened is that someone was arrested for posting a meme and the police broke a bunch of rules to do it and then just for funsies arrested the person who told them they were breaking the rules. Right after the High Court judgement which told them to stop acting like the Stasi policing people's speech. It's rather a big deal.

I presume Miller was involved because this is precisely his wheelhouse and he was asked to get involved?

I don't think there's anything "left out" of the paragraph you quoted. It seems like a very thorough explanation.

If people can't comprehend how satire works, I am not sure where that leaves us.

It is becoming common, among the younger generation, they don't seem to be able to understand for example comedy sketches that satirize particular points of view.

It's oddly literalistic. It reminds me of an odd sort of iconoclasm. Some confusion about dealing with images and their meaning.

I don't think the answer is agreeing that dealing with complex meaning relating to images is wrong. And for that matter, this is a pretty simple satire, it's not that complex. If that is too much we are in trouble in terms of social discourse.

It's oddly literalistic. It reminds me of an odd sort of iconoclasm. Some confusion about dealing with images and their meaning.

In Robert Altermeyer's book on the authoritarian personality I'm pretty sure he said that overly literal thinking is very characteristic of the authoritarian mind.

Mind you, he also said he didn't think there was such a thing as left-wing authoritarianism! It was written during the GW Bush presidency. I wonder if he's had cause to revise his opinions since.

"If people can't comprehend how satire works, I am not sure where that leaves us."

Um...but actual satirists, i.e. people who made a living writing it, have said it's very hard to do now.

I have been caught out in real life a few times by thinking people were joking when they were serious. This can be anything from people thinking I'm not allowed to hold certain views due to my skin colour, to people being angry that some categories of sport aren't inclusive enough.

I have complete sympathy for anyone who can't distinguish satire!

In Robert Altermeyer's book on the authoritarian personality I'm pretty sure he said that overly literal thinking is very characteristic of the authoritarian mind.

theanarchistlibrary.org/library/bob-altemeyer-the-authoritarians?v=1617796298

The book's available online for free so I just Ctrl-F'd "literal" to see if I remembered that right. I don't think I did. He does talk a lot about how right wing authoritarians interpret the Bible literally instead of figuratively and it's fun to think about that in relation to the TRA interpretation of the sacred Tumblr canon.

But I think what I was thinking of was what he'd written about the failures of logic in the authoritarian personality. At risk of derailing (well at least the thread is about authoritarianism!) I decided to C&P this passage because I'd be fascinated to see the same test applied to modern left wing authoritarians.

[Authoritarians] particularly had trouble figuring out that an inference or deduction was wrong. To illustrate, suppose they had gotten the following syllogism:

All fish live in the sea.

Sharks live in the sea..

Therefore, sharks are fish.

The conclusion does not follow, but high RWAs would be more likely to say the reasoning is correct than most people would. If you ask them why it seems right, they would likely tell you, “Because sharks are fish.” In other words, they thought the reasoning was sound because they agreed with the last statement. If the conclusion is right, they figure, then the reasoning must have been right. Or to put it another way, they don’t “get it” that the reasoning matters—especially on a reasoning test.

Deductive logic aside, authoritarians also have trouble deciding whether empirical evidence proves, or does not prove, something. They will often think some thoroughly ambiguous fact verifies something they already believe in.

I recommend the book despite its datedness - as I was skimming through it I kept finding more and more parts that are relevant to the current situation!

Interesting that throwing the term "feminazi" around seems on the whole, acceptable.

Yes, good point. It's so commonplace, that it slipped my mind.

It's just about women's rights, though, so not in the least bit offensive, right?

And for that matter, this is a pretty simple satire, it's not that complex. If that is too much we are in trouble in terms of social discourse.

We are very definitely in trouble.

I saw some idiots on twitter berating David Mitchell because Mark Corrigan in Peep Show is 'racist', like he's not a character that we are supposed to mock, but an extension of the actor's personality. I don't know what we do with people like that.

When Genevieve Gluck was discussing her investigations with Glinner, she had some interesting speculations as to why there is a concerted effort to disdain and attack the viewpoint of lesbians and feminists. Gluck argues that previous attempts (1970s to 1990s) to normalise various paraphilia and to remove the age of consent by forced teaming these campaigns with gay rights etc. were successfully halted by actions from women, feminists, and particularly lesbians who spoke up about their concerns, especially around safeguarding.

There seems to be a recrudescence of concerted action to normalise these ambitions again. Gluck comments on the strategy of the pre-emptive attack on feminists and lesbian by ostracising them and "slandering them as TERFs from the start:" I should think that Feminazis and similar slurs would be part of that strategy.

It's certainly been very successful in scaring a fair number of people away from even looking into what is happening.

wrt to the Denton playbook (see below), lobbying groups have been very careful to work in the shadows which allowed them to succeed with the #NoDebate strategy for a long time. Denton also gifted these groups the time to capture enough organisations and governmental bodies to give an authoritarian weight to the deprecation of concerns and the continuing refusal to engage in discussion.

3 part deep dive into Denton:

Part 1 grahamlinehan.substack.com/p/the-dentons-document

Part 2 grahamlinehan.substack.com/p/the-dentons-document-78d

Part 3 grahamlinehan.substack.com/p/the-dentons-document-part-3

Mumsnet discussions here:

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3756354-RollOnFriday-law-firm-writes-report-called-Only-adults-Good-practices-in-legal-gender-recognition-for-youth?pg=1

Discussion on Dentons

www.rollonfriday.com/news-content/dentons-campaigns-kids-switch-gender-without-parental-approval

James Kirkup in The Spectator

www.google.com/amp/s/www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-document-that-reveals-the-remarkable-tactics-of-trans-lobbyists/amp

That's a really interesting example.

I've actually seen that logic used by left-progressives plenty of times, even before things seemed to go off the rails.

I remember arguing, quite a few years ago now, with the idea I alluded to up-thread - that if homosexuality is inborn we need to accept it as natural and ok, because accepting who people really are is important.

This was a common POV at the time among certain people advocating for gay rights, but it seemed very clear to me that it was dangerously wrong. When I questioned them, their logic seemed to be what you've written above - they agreed with the conclusion it was being used to support, so they thought it must be valid. If I pointed out that it could also be used to support other things they did not agree with, they didn't seem able to deal with it, "that's different." They couldn't reason that even if the conclusion was correct, it must be for other reasons.

I thought that people in more responsible positions were foolish not to repudiate that kind of thinking more carefully, but the attitude seemed to be that if it was an effective argument, the end justified the means.

I see where you are coming from. But it seems to me that what you are describing is kind of the same thing I am - because so many people seem unable to grasp the concept of satire, it seems increasingly difficult to know if people are actually being satirical.

I would say there is a cross-over between people who don't get satire and people who think your skin colour should determine your political views.

It used to be that as a society we mocked people who couldn't distinguish between television characters and real life - the sort of people who yelled at Phil from Eastenders in the street. Nowadays, this is apparently considered to be a perfectly legitimate attitude towards fiction, and university students are encouraged to theorise about it in return for degrees in film studies.

Thank @BernardBlacksWineIcelolly I have been sat here thinking... wtf just happened?

Mangy "I would say there is a cross-over between people who don't get satire and people who think your skin colour should determine your political views."

tough one. I find it's often the people who are most academic and who would say they love satire, who have me labelled by skin colour.

This is identifying but I have been wanting to tell the FWR board for a while so....

I had a bizarre conversation with a 20 something about Trigger's broom. I thought she was trolling me. It took a while to establish that she wasn't.

To sum up, She believes what Trigger believes about the broom, amd now sees figurative as literal. Yes, she is at uni.

I think as a general rule of thumb, if you have a message you want to be taken seriously, whatever it is, leave swastikas out of it.

On all sides, whoever you are. At worst they are genuinely offensive to many, at best it's a lazy trope that has almost become meaningless. Think of a better way to convey your message than swastikas.

I like and enjoy satire. I think satire is nearly always better if swastikas are not involved. I think the only joke I can think of that is funny that involves Nazi imagery is that Father Ted episode, purely because it's so ridiculously overblown.

They have become, culturally, a blunt attempt to troll.

It's encouraged?

now I don't know if you're trolling.

i did have an idiot ex friend tell me Jude Law should set a better example in his private life because of the characters he plays.

i asked if he played a drug dealer, what then? She went quiet.

we have actually arrived in Idiocracy about 30 years earlier than I thought.

We are a long way from the days when civil liberties organizations fought for freedom of speech for actual neonazis.

LaughingPriest "I think as a general rule of thumb, if you have a message you want to be taken seriously, whatever it is, leave swastikas out of it."

yes. Whoever came up with that hasn't done any favours to those of us who are concerned about LGBTQI+.