Graham Norton has terminated his Twitter account after attacking JK Rowling

[SwanageBay]

Well that's one less beardy man on there defending rape and death threats.

This is the issue. If only trans people are to be listened to on their access to women's single sex spaces then that is a massive issue. I think he was and is being disingenuous. He wasnt forced off a social media platform or banned by anyone.

So you’ll support Norton facing ‘consequences’ for his free speech then won’t you.

You read a lot of articles in papers, by people complaining about cancel culture. And you think, ‘in what world are you cancelled?’.

Can I ask posters what other group of people are regularly 'complaining' about 'cancel culture' that would be relevant in a question that started off by mentioning Joanne Rowling?

What other groups are related to Joanne Rowling that would be 'complaining' about cancel culture?

Or are we supposed to detach Joanne Rowling from the discussion despite her being mentioned in the lead in to two specific questions?

We are supposed to not think that whatever point Graham Norton was making was a point meant to reflect his feelings on the person mentioned at the start of the question in each case?

That he just made random points in a question where Joanne was specifically named?

Are the death threats an acceptable consequence? Is all the material on Terfisaslur and acceptable consequence?

Where are the consequences for those violent and abusive exercises in "free speech"?

He did mention experts. He didn't say that parents of trans-people are experts, he mentioned them in the same sentence, i.e talk to trans people, their parents and experts.

I have seen the interview (it's very good) but even if you haven't the transcript is upthread.

‘It is the Michael Gove thing about enough experts. No. Please can we have some experts. Can we rustle up some fucking experts and talk to them rather than man in shiny pink suit.”

I.e. why would you talk to me about this issue, I'm just a chat show host, talk to the experts.

A sensible quote for any issue under consideration. Pay attention to experts, not celebrities.

So who are the experts?

According to the transcript earlier in the thread he said:
talk to trans people, talk to the parents of trans kids, talk to the doctors, talk to someone who can illuminate this in some way’.

He could have said: talk to female prisoners who have had to share prison space with male rapists. Talk to teenage girls who have seen their hopes of a successful sporting career destroyed because a teenage boy is now running in the under-18s 100m race. Talk to the female swimmers who had to share a changing room with a man who walked around with his balls on full display.

Why didn't he say that?

Yes, I agree that having people disagree with what you're saying and saying this to you on social media is a consequence of going on a TV show and having a public interview, yes. I don't agree with JKR putting words in his mouth.

In much the same way that I agree people disagreeing with JKR is a consequence to her posting her opinion on Twitter. I can simultaneously disagree with the horrific death threats etc. It's not black and white.

I’d say that JK is entitled to be considered an expert. She clearly knows her stuff.

@OldCrone well certainly not JK Rowling.

whst on earth would she know about women and girls. Or vulnerable children. Or safeguarding. Or male violence.

oh. Hang on.

In most fields, an expert would constitute someone with formal qualifications and years of professional experience in a particular field.

I wouldn't know who Graham Norton was talking about, because I'm not Graham Norton. As I don't know, I'm not going to assume that by "experts" he meant John down the road who is a sexual assaulter, nor Mermaids, nor anyone else.

Joanne does have the lived experience (domestic abuse victim) that we keep being told is so important.

Oh sorry, just not when it's women, forgot that bit.

Just reposting this post here (thanks KatMcBundleFace) for context about things Graham Norton has said in the past.

It is pretty clear that he is disparaging about Joanne Rowling in these quotes.

I wonder if GN and BB are actually now having a little wonder about the modern meaning of ‘accountability’ in an era of mob rule… Maybe JK has managed to raise awareness about that.

Is that not just him having his own consequences, by that logic? I don't agree with him, fwiw.

Because I should be working and I'm tired and procrastinating, I've googled the definition of an expert and this is what wiki (obviously the best source) has to say:

An expert can be believed, by virtue of credentials, training, education, profession, publication or experience, to have special knowledge of a subject beyond that of the average person, sufficient that others may officially (and legally) rely upon the individual's opinion on that topic.

Seems a sensible definition to me. JKR may have a passionate interest in the topic, but I don't think she has the credentials to be cited as an expert in a court of law. Presumably there are genuine experts (medics, psychologists, psychiatrists etc) who are GC and would meet these criteria. If not, that would be illuminating in and of itself.

All of those stressing about poor Graham being "cancelled" could maybe take a look at the latest posts on the thread about Rachel Meade - a social worker dragged before a "Fitness to Practice" tribunal by Social Work England for posting comments on her private facebook page during the consultation about the GRA. One of her crimes was to criticise Mermaids. Since the revelations about the paedophile / porn / safeguarding failings at Mermaids, the charges have incredibly been withdrawn!

www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4452631-Rachel-Meade-Social-Worker-being-suspended-for-transphobic-Facebook-postss?flipped=1

This is what's happening to women (and men) all over the country & why JKR is a legend for using her inability to be cancelled to stand up for safeguarding and women's rights when so many dare not speak out. The failure of so many to recognise this and to misrepresent her actions as "accountability" is depressing.

And apparently, this is what she said.

Is this the only thing you found that she said Feyrethefae or have I missed the others you posted? I want to get some more of the context together.

Nonsense. JKR is not an expert, she's a children's author. And yet she's given a platform for her views the rest of us could only dream of - because she is a famous person, not because her knowledge or the worth of what she says is more than anyone else's. Far from being cancelled, her every word is amplified out of all proportion, not because of what she says but because of who she is. Norton was absolutely right to point that out.

Exactly

I didn't say her voice shouldn't be amplified necessarily.

I do, however, agree that her opinion (and the opinion of lots of famous people) is given more weight, public attention, and airtime than, say, a safeguarding expert who's worked in the field for years.

This is case for almost anything - if Judi Dench says "Aldi yoghurts are shit", that's going to be a Metro article. If I, a (hypothetical) dairy produce quality expert, say actually I love Aldi yoghurts, nobody cares, because I don't have the fame attached. Does that mean her opinion on it is more important? No, it's just got a bigger audience. But if 100k people retweet her saying they're shit, and a few papers do a piece on it, and Dawn French and Steve Coogan come out and agree they're shit, then in the general discourse, Aldi yoghurts have now been deemed shit - because the voice given the platform is heard.

It is undeniably true that being famous and weighing in on an issue has the ability to a) drown out voices without the same platform and b) sway or change the conversation in the public eye. It distills nuanced conversation down to hot takes and tweets and throw-away comments and makes it about A Celebrity Opinion rather than the debate as a whole.

Any celebrity has a right to an opinion on any topic. But their opinions often dominate a conversation (or how it plays out in the media) and that's very rarely a good thing in my opinion.

I think his position is fairly reasonable and completely unremarkable. Yes, he might be a bit ignorant, but isn't that what he's saying, that his opinion is neither here nor there? I bet he would rather not have been asked about it.

Obviously he's not going to meet strict purity standards for the feminist position on this issue (the position that I personally support), but so what. He's not a feminist and it's not his position. People who obviously don't mean any harm either way and might have just put their foot in it a bit don't deserve to have their words picked over and interpreted so as to generate maximum offense.

This is all getting rather juvenile and hypocritical.

I'm sorry, I don't understand. Do you mean her other tweets about this topic? I can screenshot them and add them to this thread if that's what you mean.