Another stonking column from Hadley Freeman

[SpringCalling]

‘Liberal’ thought police echo Salem witch trials

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/21eff8d0-fc8e-11ed-aa31-73394e195d29?shareToken=60d60e218a05fd3d5eac761e0767a2e5

She's always brilliant, and she's spot on here - people (mostly women) effectively being put in the ducking stool for thinking the wrong thoughts

We, sadly, live in terrifying times. The world has gone mad and I feel so sad that no one is allowed an opinion that goes against the grain

Smacks of the Emperor's New Clothes to me

Hadley nailed it.

Incidentally The Crucible is going to be at The National Theatre from 7 June.

Hadley leaving the Guardian was the best thing that ever happened to us.

She must be enjoying the freedom to stretch her metaphorical legs and write what she wants.

I bet she's had that article in the draft folder for a while now.

An absolutely excellent article. It's a shame that it can't be published in (her old paper) the Guardian to give their readership some food for thought.

Or even the BBC. Their current biased coverage is getting beyond the pale in the lead up to the debate on 12th June. For example, their report on the EHRC investigation being stopped stops so far short of where it should. The idea that Baroness Falkner has been misrepresented isn't anywhere near the article, even as a "some people say" type statement.

BBC biased reporting on EHRC investigation

The review in question was written by Roisin Kiberd (daughter of leading Irish journalist Damien Kiberd, niece of author and professor Declan) and published by the Irish Independent.

It also repeated Russell -Moyle's vile comments about JKR weaponising her pain, and extended it to Hadley.

Thank you for sharing. Excellent article.

Hadley is brilliant. The reasoning the paper gave for dismissing her complaint is fatuous.

Twas another good article.

The Guardian at some point in the not too distant future will come to regret losing all their great female writers.

Meh! They brought it On themselves by siding with the side that just writes piffle

The Guardian at some point in the not too distant future will come to regret ceasing to be a serious newspaper.

Actual witch trials: persecution and murder of a small group of people that for one reason or another don’t fit in, encouraged by the powerful - religious, political and royal leaders.

It’s remarkably offensive for GCs to claim they are experiencing something similar. It’s downright hilarious for them to be making such claims when the media is predominantly on side and the government is entirely on side.

Guess what Hadley: you got some criticism you find unfair in a foreign newspaper. You have the privilege of complaining about that review in a much better known and more popular national newspaper. You aren’t an oppressed minority. You’re not going to be seen as one no matter how hard you try, no matter how much you use the media to portray yourselves as one.

Gooner so was it you that wrote the review? Well there is certainly no way that “trans” people are the most vulnerable and marginalised, and even if you could define “trans” the medics should certainly not be cutting off body parts…(see the detranitioner article in the same paper today)Wonen are speaking out and men don’t like it.

Someone has apparently never heard of the very common usage of terms like "Statlinist witch-hunt" or "McCarthyite witch-hunt". Metaphors can be difficult, I suppose...

Extraordinary. @TraumatisedGooner seems to have missed the point HF was making, and has managed to construct a narrative that just didn't happen (HF didn't say "unfair" she said "misrepresented" - untrue). Why? What for? Is it a Manichaean belief that the world is constructed on a conflict between absolute good and absolute evil, that the only point of discussion is to seize power for your own side? Any fabrication, any misrepresentation is acceptable as long as it promotes the cause? Or is it just limited reading skills?

Absolutely.

Yet the paper dismissed my complaint because, the editor wrote, none of the doctors used the specific phrase “trans men are confused anorexics”. No, they didn’t, I silently raged in my kitchen, because I never asked them that. I don’t even think that. The only person who used that bizarrely reductive phrase was the reviewer. But I’m damned for it.

Excellent article.

The only point I take issue with is that to state a truth bluntly and factually is somehow 'disgusting'.

It is not.

Hadley's so sensible. Thanks for the link OP. Always a pleasure to read Hadley.

And yet Emily Bridges not being able to race in British Cycling's women's category - because they are male - is genocide and calling it that isn't offensive at all. OK then...

Great column - and as is happening everywhere now people are waking up to all this - so many good comments below the line

You aren’t an oppressed minority

Hadley’s a Jewish woman, @TraumatisedGooner . Yes, she is from
a minority that is frequently oppressed.

Arthur Miller was the one who conflated policing thought and language with the Salem witch trials. If you think you know better than the Pulitzer Prize winning playwright, that’s a serious delusion on your part.

Oh hi!

you are hunky dory with criticising people on the internet who don’t share your belief system

that means you’ll find it super easy to explain the gender identity that trans women and cis women share, which is one of the central tenets of your beliefs

unless you’re intellectually bankrupt?

Excellent article thanks for sharing OP.

Though - slight diversion here - I find the Crucible itself pretty sexist. The victims were primarily men, plus one virtuous elderly lady, the accusers were teenage girls. Good old Arthur Miller, takes events that predominantly impacted women and made it all about the menz. But then I don't think you win Pulitzers for writing about women.

Back to the main point, you cannot win in any battle with TRAs because they will express your real thoughts for you (witness this thread) and convict you on that basis, whatever you actually say or think.

Only for simpletons, i'll be bound.

And lest we forget that Hadley is Jewish and lost family members during the Holocaust.

If we're taking a leaf out of that dickhead cyclist's book and using language like that.
I don't know how he has the nerve to use such ridiculously hyperbolic language like that...without blushing, too.

@TraumatisedGooner It's shocking you're unaware that women are oppressed.
Don't want to be - don't see oppression as some sort of prize - but are.