Cancel Culture and The Chilling Effect - a thread to share your experiences

[ArabeIIaScott]

Does the 'chilling effect' or 'cancel culture' affect you?

This is an anonymous forum, so we can speak relatively openly. But how do we speak in real life?

Are you comfortable to talk about gender/sex openly?
Would you raise it at work?
Would you/do you raise it with your child's school?
At home?
On social media?

Are women able to speak about these issues?
Have you done so and experienced consequences?

I think the effects of these issues have far reaching consequences that we really have hardly seen reported or looked at so far. How's it affecting society, women in society, relations between groups?

Thanks.

And my teenagers think it’s a pile of horseshit.

Was my post deleted because I used the expression bodily mutlat**s?

Mutilations

This - entirely. My organisation is very ver captured. Stonewall all the way. I once asked the equality and inclusion lead for a translation of all of this. It was just garbled word salad that had been fed to them.

Are you comfortable to talk about gender/sex openly?

At home and with immediate family, yes. With friends - no. Have to test the waters first - suspect some have drunk the kool aid (mainly those working in education ffs) and many just dont care/arent engaged.

Would you raise it at work?

Not actively but I don't participate in anything gender-ideology related and I will not go along with it if challenged. Pretending to believe something I do not is out of the question for me.

Would you/do you raise it with your child's school?

Yes - have v young DC and will ask to see what they are being 'taught' in this domain.

On social media?

Don't participate in social media but do read twitter occasionally.

Women's Groups?

I have had to self-select out of several groups I would have considered joining (feminist groups, bool clubs and ante-natal classes!) due to language used.

I've been quietened, not quite cancelled, but almost. I am less vocal because I want to keep my students talking and discussing, not just avoiding me. I feel I can do more that way.

I have surreptitious conversations with other middle-aged women at social events & sometimes at work. There are codes or code words one can say to carefully test out the waters. I had one such conversation at a work event last night and we bonded over what's going on. We both laughed about how we circled around the subject till we knew we were "safe."

I do this too! Circle round it with female friends, until I feel assured that they’re not handmaidens of the TRAliban.

I’m old, and fairly socially isolated , not working , but I speak out. I actually raise the topic in the few social groups I attend, I find that most people are unaware of the truly dire state of womens rights in this country ( much worse elsewhere in the Anglosphere though) and are actually quite shocked when it is brought to their attention. I have addressed and raised the topic in craft groups, U3A and Church. I will not be silenced, this is my hill to die on.

DH has been peaked by me and is now actively campaigning within a heavily male biased sport in which he is involved, in which the governing body has enabled the intrusion of men into womens teams. He is making headway, again, many people ( men) just didn’t realise the scale of this shit and are shocked when they do.

I financially support the FSU, Spiked, and Glinner. I have withdrawn legacy promises to captured institutions and told them why.

Socially most of the people I know think that this is all a ‘ young person’s nonsense’. I don’t see one female friend any more because she has drunk the Kool aid and believes that Jazz and Jackie were really girls in boys bodies. I can’t be bothered talking to someone whose brains are in the recycling.

My most intimate circle are all pretty GC, having witnessed the spectacle of a previous intimate claiming to have changed sex, and the appalling fallout suffered by his girlfriend as a result.

Possibly - I didn't see it so hard to say.

It means that the thread is being monitored and they don't want us to talk about the subject.

A useful demonstration of the chilling effect in action.

Women self police their words a lot on here, but if we accidentally allow some wrongthink to slip out, there are observers ready to police us and have us silenced.

Are you comfortable to talk about gender/sex openly?
I talk about it with friends, my children and my DP, but not to the world at large. DP is fascinated and appalled, friends are on the same page as me mostly, DC roll their eyes but are not taken in by gender ideology either

Would you raise it at work?
I have done, in raising concerns about safety e.g. of anyone being able to identify into a women's ward. I work in a very captured NHS hospital and all of my concerns have been dismissed with suggestions that I attend indoctrination further training to better understand LGBTQ+ (but really trans) issues. I would definitely not have said anything before the Forstater ruling though, questioning the ideology is defined as a possible hate crime in hospital policy, I wouldn't have risked it before Forstater.

Would you/do you raise it with your child's school?
I ask to see the materials for every PSHE event and have made it clear I do not want my child taught that their or anyone's body is 'wrong'. I also questioned their engagement in a rainbow flag award scheme, got fobbed off but don't appear to have been blacklisted as a bigot either

At home?. As above, my DC roll their eyes at me but aren't taken in by gender ideology so I'll take that as a win

On social media? only on MN and kiwifarms

Are you comfortable to talk about gender/sex openly?
I now ‘test the waters’ and if someone seems to believe the ideology, I don’t discuss it with them.

Would you raise it at work?
Absolutely not. I self censor myself in lectures to be extremely careful about how I describe/frame any possible reference to sex/gender. Our university is very captured. Good friends at work are also captured and I don’t try to discuss it any more. I don’t include my pronouns but was caught off guard in a meeting where all 30 people in the room introduced themselves by name and pronouns and I went along with it. Risks are far too high. One faculty member nearly fired for raising an eyebrow in a staff meeting.

Would you/do you raise it with your child's school?
No. They’re captured too.

At home?
Alas, my DC wholly captured. Long running points of conflict going back to JKR’s essay. I backed right off when I realised that my counter arguments just sent DC back to the internet for more material to counter with. Makes me do worried about their susceptibility to potentially harmful stereotypes. I hate the likes of Elliot Page and Ash Harding posting those bloody photos of themselves topless whilst pointing to their mastectomy scars and smiling. Thanks to Bryson there was finally agreement that perhaps some TW are not W…. All DCs friends and cousins etc wholly signed up to and card carrying members of the ideology. Many transage, NB, trans etc. DC is so kind and non judgemental that they attract narcissistic mates.
Am sick with worry about it all.

On social media?
Not on it apart from here.

there are observers ready to police us and have us silenced

What’s happened to other university faculty has definitely silenced me.

Have started having some gentle conversations about it in work. Public sector children's services. Trying to gently guide some of my senior management team to having an evidence based approach. It is very light touch though as I am fearful about my job. I am wanting the outcome of Rachel Meade against her LA and SWE, hoping that might make me slightly more confident.
In my personal life I'm very out and have peaked most of my friendship group.
Don't post anything on social media as worry about work.

Interestingly, just saw this The Graun

A 2018 report by the parliamentary human rights committee found that while some worrying examples could be cited, “we did not find the wholesale censorship of debate in universities which media coverage has suggested

No wholesale evidence because it works in a much more chilling and incremental manner.

Furthermore, DrBlackbird, things have moved on hugely since 2018 - that was five years ago now.

I was still heavily involved in corporate LGBT+ activities back then, and I think it was probably only in around 2019 that I noticed people were actually meaning it literally when they said TWAW, and when that obviously started to have practical consequences in the workplace.

I believe the landscape is very different now from in 2018 (probably intensified and accelerated by lockdown, as it's all very well saying that TWAW in the comfort of one's own home, but it's a bit different when confronted with the reality of that back in the office), and I think a survey now would likely have quite different results (although logically it's always going to problematic to try to find evidence for the absence of silenced voices because they're, well, silent).

Are you comfortable to talk about gender/sex openly?
I might try and shoehorn it in obliquely, to make the point that sex matters. But don't tackle it directly.

Would you raise it at work?
Covertly and carefully. I have one GC colleague. Lots of woke clients. Would not raise it with a client.

Would you/do you raise it with your child's school?
I really want to and have taken a tentative first step. My DCs are older now so I'm not hanging around at the gate.

At home?
Yes. My DCs are GC, for now. But like @Novina they get stressed and shut the convo down.

On social media?
No way Jose. I have previous experience: divisive issue + social media = burnout
I read a lot and mentally respond.

Even on here I censor myself to avoid outing.

One faculty member nearly fired for raising an eyebrow in a staff meeting.

How did we get here?!

Shocking.

My post being deleted for using the words “bodily mutilations” shows the chilling effect in action.

Shocking and horrific. I name a lot on this board because I’m fearful of saying biological sexuality matters - in 2023!

Here’s Prof Winston on those mutilations https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/transgender-surgery-mutilation-robert-winston-b2122965.html

Surely HQ can’t cancel Prof Winston.

• Biological sex

I left a well paid job because of the insistence of buying in to the organisational values which were heavily focused on D and I and the encouragement to add pronouns. Went self employed for a while but really discovered that one can't survive, unless very wealthy, and not be concerned for one's living, for speaking up.

Yes but people need to work and feed their families. I simply cannot afford to lose my job and my mental health would not take the hassle and ostracism that would come with being openly GC in a school setting.

Dr Winston gets deleted less because Dr Winston is a man.

Tiny I'm sorry to hear you have all that pressure on you. We all do what we can, loud or quiet.

Why are teachers & educators buying into this so much?