Politicians and the gender debate

[ChristinaXYZ]

Why oh why are they almost all in the Tory Party - the ones that get free speech in general and women's right specifically.

Rishi Sunak last night:

"In a rare intervention into a campus free speech row, the Prime Minister told The Telegraph that the vocal few must not be allowed to shut down debate and that universities must support, not stifle, contentious discussion.

He said: “A free society requires free debate. We should all be encouraged to engage respectfully with the ideas of others.

“University should be an environment where debate is supported, not stifled. We mustn’t allow a small but vocal few to shut down discussion. Kathleen Stock’s invitation to the Oxford Union should stand.

“Agree or disagree with her, Professor Stock is an important figure in this argument. Students should be allowed to hear and debate her views.”"

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2023/05/29/universities-free-speech-rishi-sunak-kathleen-stock-oxford

and then again this afternoon he quote tweets the above Telgraph article and reiterates:

"A free society requires free debate.

@Docstockk's invitation to the @OxfordUnion should stand and students should be allowed to hear and debate her views.

We mustn’t allow a small but vocal few to shut down discussion."

https://twitter.com/RishiSunak/status/1663543575991435265

Meanwhile Ed Davy and Keir Starmer are really confused about what a women really is and no senior Labour figure is prepared to support the brilliant Rosie Duffield.

There seems to be what I think is a misunderstanding about what free speech means. Free speech is your right to say what you want in your own capacity as an individual.

I work in a customer facing role having direct communication with them.
When I communicate with customers it's my job to provide help to them. What I'm not allowed to do is for instance tell them about my political views. Some of them are a pain in the arse, but I'm not allowed to have a go at them telling them why they are a pain in the arse. If something important happens in the cultural topics I follow I don't get to tell customers about that.
None of that is impeding my free speech in anything but the most absurd of interpretations. My employer doesn't care what I say outside of work in my private capacity as an individual.
A maths teacher has no rights to seach sexuality to kids instead of maths, and it's no a violation of their free speech to be stick to told teaching maths. Similarly if I have an accident and an ambulance turns up I expect medical care not a lecture and slides about their recent holiday.
A civil servant is meant to be impartial in work. Outside of work they can support any political causes they want. What they cannot do is support those causes through their work unless those causes are deparmental policy that they are following.
Free speech does not mean you can say anything you want to anybody while you are being paid to do a job that has nothing to do with your views.
When you are not on work time and not publicly representing your employer you have freedom of speech under the law.

Impartiality is tricky.

Language used carries meaning. So one term over another represents a position

A neutral line would have to be crafted, not sure exactly what it would be

We should work to persuade and help them understand the issues.

What about the idea that they should work to understand women's issues? And 'we should persuade them' is not an unbiased starting point.

Indeed.

Fucking right. I'm not trying to convince them of anything, it's them who wants women's votes. Allegedly. Actually, I don't think they do, anymore.

Agree.
And note to the author: it's single-sex spaces, not safe spaces. Words are important.

Some good comments underneath the article, including the following (my bolding):

In your article you say “Liberals will instinctively support diversity and the rights of minorities against those who would push back their rights. But we should also have some sympathy and understanding for those who find acceptance of new elements of diversity difficult. We should work to persuade and help them understand the issues.”
I would argue, very strongly that the first sentence is is not liberal, but just being a soft touch. Surely you must believe that the Lib Dem way is for us to “seek to balance the fundamental values of liberty, equality and community,” and not choose a side simply on the basis that it comes from a minority.
You then say “But we should also have some sympathy and understanding for those who find acceptance of new elements of diversity difficult. We should work to persuade and help them understand the issues.” That comment ignores the distinct possibility that a ‘new element of diversity’ is not as unfailingly good as its proponents might portray it. In that case, Liberals working to persuade people, before having analysed and considered the new element’s appropriateness would be an abandonment of one of our core values and as such not liberal.
Surely the first step should be to make sure that you ‘understand the issues’ on all sides, and not discard ‘old elements of diversity’ simply because a group is proposing a new element and apparently seek to substantially undermine the old element.
My liberalism leads me to instinctively support the weak against the powerful, although I try to temper it with some analysis before coming to a view. One side in this debate does seem to have a very vocal and powerful lobby in favour of change. I am not at all sure this is the correct way.
What makes you so sure in this case your way is correct?

This! Brilliant!

One of the most common reasons that Conservatives ban books is because they contain references to sexual or physical abuse of children.

As an example of this, the fourth most commonly banned book in US schools is The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison.

Banning books helps to safeguard child abusers by keeping their young victims in a state of ignorance. Taking books that contain references to child abuse out of school libraries is a cruel and cynical move that stops abuse victims from learning that what happened to them was wrong.

@landOFconfusion
You think it's the conservatives not the progressives that are trying to enable child grooming? Of all the things going on like drag queen story hour morphing into sexualised performances with children present, don't tell parents, creepy men on social media telling kids "go no contact with your family, I'll be your new family", actual court convictions and jail time for pedo progressives, and you think it's the conservative position that is the risk to kids?

You chose your MN handle well.

Also don't TRA loons burn JK Rowling's books? After they have bought them specifically to burn them?! 😂

I don’t think the UK is big on book banning, that’s more a US thing. We have age ratings for films, some books are surely age inappropriate for small kids. A low key message about “being different is fine” is surely all that needed for little ones. A trained teacher should give sex Ed. at the appropriate age, but without the ideological indoctrination - we need to strip out the stonewalling.
Back to politics, I think the Lib Dem’s on this issue are idiotic and the Greens pretty malevolent really and deeply misogynistic. With Labour I think Starmer just doesn’t think it’s worth taking on the Momentum woke bros. This is disappointingly cynical for someone with his background - he can see the issues. Very difficult to know how to vote.

The entire point of education and the university system is to present that -

Some people think X, and some people think Y.
Some people think ABC.

That's the point of free speech, it's to express different ideas and beliefs in an environment that enables society to grow and live together.

As soon as you get one viewpoint dominating, saying "you cannot say or even think X otherwise - bad punishment" it causes huge problems.

We've seen this from extreme left governments like the Communists in Eastern Europe,n and extreme right governments like the Nazis and extreme religious governments where they have Sharia law etc.

As soon as a pattern is noticed, where people are excluded from the educational environment or workplace environment for expressing their normal points of view (as GC feminists have found themselves), it tells us that things are getting extreme and we need to wake up and be EXTREMELY worried.