The managed silence of women in politics

[IwantToRetire]

None of this needs a censor’s red pen. It takes venue policies, “values” statements and security theatre – and a legal climate ambiguous enough to chill – to make people police themselves. That’s how self-censorship becomes the house style.

You don’t need prohibitions when you have process. Venue terms. HR protocols. “Dignity at work” rules stretched past their purpose. Security assessments that become vetoes in all but name.

Layer in legal fog – see the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act, with its elastic definitions of “abusive” speech – and the effect is predictable: people trim sentences, swerve topics, decline invitations, and ladle on caveats until the point collapses.

Result: careful words, careful silences, careful disengagement. The oxygen leaks out of debate and everyone learns to breathe shallowly.

... watch where the stage literally disappears – where apologies are issued for a guest’s presence, and “security” is the pretext for cancellation. It clusters around women who speak plainly on sex and gender, or whose faith informs their politics.

For years they were told to take up space. Now the instruction is different: mind your tone, moderate your beliefs, make yourself smaller. That’s not equality; it’s an equal-opportunities gag.
Hard censorship is obvious: a cancelled event, a withdrawn platform, a disciplinary.

Soft censorship is subtler and more corrosive: “we can’t support the impact of hosting you”; “let’s not distract from priorities”; “for unity, could you not raise this now?” None of those measures bans content. All shrink the space where women can contribute. ...

Continues at https://thinkscotland.org/2025/11/censorship-with-paperwork-the-managed-silence-of-women-in-politics/

Rosie Duffield, one of the politicians mentioned, is of course English - but I can’t quite see how the problems she faced at the hustings were directly the fault of the government or opposition at the time? Of course she was horribly let down by her party but in practical terms of how hustings are managed is that more at the level of the party at constituency level?

It isn't just Scotland though.

The mechanisms described by the article have played out everywhere someone has authority to set the terms of engagement.

Universities and academia, the arts, online forums and commentary, left and centrist news outlets, professional bodies and workplaces.

In all these places, women who believe their sex is significant to the challenges and opportunities that they have in life are staying silent about a vast injustice that is being done to us in order to participate at all.

Women are having to choose between maintaining some sort of female voice but with the trade off of implicitly condoning the sexist denial of women's full reality, speaking up once with honesty and for that being denigrated, demonised and denied a voice thereafter, or simply walking away altogether.

I've faced it personally. I walked away.

It was a local activist group for a cause that really mattered to me, but when I was told straight that I could only stay if I never mentioned such heresy (trans women are male) again, I chose to leave.

It was a loss to me but I wasn't prepared for my visible presence as a wonan to be fig leaf that let those men (yes, mostly men) continue to identify as progressive and feminist when the reality was they were controlling what women were allowed to say about our own lives and we were only accepted if we said things they were prepared to hear.

They wanted us there being "equal" and telling the stories of sexism that allowed them to feel smug and superior for not being like those other men, but not telling the stories that challenged their own sexism.

We just need enough people to scream 'Fuck This Shit' and crack on with getting normality [and facts, lets not forget facts] back on the agenda.

I've heard even the NHS are starting to roll back 'pregnant people' to actual 'pregnant women' this morning.

I'm university educated and academic myself but many of my close women friends aren't. They will never talk of "chilling discourses" but they know what women are and they know what transvestites are and they do not want transvestites in women's spaces. Most of us are old enough to remember "I'm a lay-dee!" From Little Britain (funny how they've never been cancelled) and think that's exactly what it is.

We know what mothers are and the toll and cost of motherhood. We want to be called mothers because it is recognition of an achievement. We don't want our historical words taken away, and certainly not to please men or deluded women.

So yes, you're right - we all know and feel what's happening, even if we don't all use posh words for it.

I meant wrt lacking alternatives to current govt.

@ZeldaFighter those Little Britain sketches are really interesting. I’m not keen on LB as a whole. Too near the knuckle and cruel- though to everyone even handedly I’d say. I think it’s poking fun AT racism/ableism/fatphobia/homophobia.

However that ‘I’m a Laydee’ is very astute, for the time.

The OP's article is on 'Think Scotland' and in relation to Scotland and politics, written by a Scottish councillor (using AI), discussing Scottish minister/s. Which is why I've focussed on Scottish politics.

I'm sure there are parallels elsewhere, of course.

Thanks OP, that's a really thought-provoking article.

Where venues are concerned, I understand (but don't agree with) their reluctance to host speakers. Look at Filia - graffiti, windows smashed. My local university has cancelled speakers as they were too "risky". Just as the article says: "watch where the stage literally disappears – where apologies are issued for a guest’s presence, and “security” is the pretext for cancellation."

Let’s stop pretending this is about “safety” or “kindness.” When a woman is told she can’t speak on a stage her constituents paid for, that’s censorship. 👏👏👏

When there’s a known threat public safety and criminal damage (as clearly there is when a venue cancels for these reasons) the police should be policing the event! You don’t see football matches cancelled, they proactively have coppers on horseback. Maybe a sporting event is more important than a political one.

Do we know if any of the filia vandals have been identified and prosecuted? Has anyone tried?

Do we know if any of the filia vandals have been identified and prosecuted? Has anyone tried?

Exactly what I was wondering @ErrolTheDragon. I haven't seen any update nationally, has there been any news locally - can anyone in Brighton comment on that?

You don’t see football matches cancelled, they proactively have coppers on horseback.

This! Someone made a similar point about LWS events. At one I went to, the police were warned extensively beforehand about what the TRAs would do. They still didn't keep the TRA protestors away from the women. This doesn't happen at other events - football matches, Britain First marches, etc etc.

Don't forget Natalie Bird and her treatment by the Lib Dems. There's another thread running ATM where at least six posters said they left the party over it's treatment of women. There were even MPs on record saying 'if you don't like it leave the party' which is as anti democratic as it gets. That's not even a forum on the internet. That's participation in politics.

Natalie Bird, was saying that as a survivor she needed male free spaces and that people should be sensitive to this. That's long before the SC ruling and the court cases involved Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre and Sandie and the Darlington nurses and before Isla Bryon.

She wasn't being unreasonable. She just wanted to talk about women and the issues that women have on the basis of sex and she wasn't allowed to.

Because we have to talk about the cat like qualities of whippets.

Nevertheless the point is we are talking about politicians self censoring as in the example I gave of Keir Starmer whom I seriously doubt as a human rights lawyer doesn't understand the human rights principle of self determination & value of identity but disavowed it anyway. So if you'e looking for solutions of what are obviously cynically shrewd political moves to offend the least amount of people possible to get votes I'm afraid you have the wrong profession.

That some pollies maybe GC & hiding it is a function of making a deal with the devil for power rather than censorship. It kinda goes with the democratic territory…

Babs the taxi driver is interesting too.

It does make me wonder if programmes like LB and League of Gentlemen would get made now

Nah, didn't get any of that stream of consciousness... sorry*

*not sorry

Probably not, at least not some elements - any more than shows we watched in the 60s or 70s would be and on the whole good riddance.
Proper satire is still alive and starting to kick again in places on the radio though.

Is it? I am so glad to hear that! I listened to the Radio 4 evening comedy slot for years until it became unbearable - weak comedy, woke presenters, unfunny comedians. I'd love to hear some genuinely sharp and funny voices again.

'What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet'
So please don't deliberately call it a geranium, that name is already taken

What about Rose Scented Pelargoniums? Waa.

As we are on the subject - Kemi Badenoch is vocal and excellent on people criticising Shabana Mahmood talking about migration issues on the basis of the colour of her skin.

The people Badenoch are talking about are not far right nuts, they're Guardian journalists.

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/badenoch-guns-for-the-guardian/

Absolutely not.

It amuses me cos LoG was always about making you feel uncomfortable and ill at ease. That was the point. It was comedy as horror and the concept clearly followed through with Inside No9 and Psychoville is generally how Pemberton, Gatiss and Shearsmith write and what they are influenced by. It was supposed to touch that line you didn't like and ask questions of society and it's stereotypes as a whole.

I didn't like watching it in my early twenties because I found it disturbing and not politically correct. It wasn't for me. But that's it - I chose not to watch it (my Dad loved it and lots of my friends did). According to wiki - Papa Lazarou has been listed as both the 8th and 14th most popular sketch of all time with British audiences, according to the Radio Times and Channel 4, respectively. If you are of a certain age, you will definitely know how much the phrase 'your my wife now Dave' caught on.

But it's not just about Papa Lazarou.

Think of Pauline Campbell-Jones - the jobsworths job centre advisor who was totally unreasonable and inhuman and thought her clients were her subjects and she was Queen. The whole thing is ahead of its time in it's portrayal of the Middle Class contempt for the unworthy on benefits and the system being stacked against people and how it treated them.

It's an observation that you wouldn't get from other quarters. I can't imagine anyone else commenting on 'the local shop for local people' (based on Alston in Cumbria) apart from a bunch of northerners either - a posh dude from the South doing the same wouldn't have got away with it! And actually there's a real ongoing relevance today with the concept.

It poked at the very edges of acceptability for a reason. They are dark and it's an area of British comedy that they've very much taken as their own without much competition.

Weirdly I think Papa Lazarou has probably become less problematic for the series than the characters played by the male actors and Babs the taxi driver. It's almost like drag acting is popular, but oh no you can't do drag like that because it's not fabulous, it's dark and hideous.

I note Pemberton, Gatiss and Shearsmith are all northerners. They meet at the performing arts college Bretton Hall College of Education in Leeds (it's now part of Leeds uni but at the time it wasn't). They are very much outside the Cambridge Footlights circle. (On that subject we were watching Taskmaster the other week and DH made a comment about the footlights. He ended up looking it up and found that just about every series had two ex footlights on and that if you became the president of the footlights you had a 50% chance of a good high profile career in comedy).

So no I don't think for a second LoG would have been commissioned, I don't think Gatiss, Pemberton or Shearsmith would have careers and that would have significant implications for other notable serieses - Doctor Who, Sherlock, Dracula...

In the context of their careers, popularity, influence and the area of comedy they inhibited it's almost crazy to think that LoG ever got cancelled in the first place tbh. You don't have to like it or be comfortable with it - it was an era defining comedy which still has significant ongoing influence - which unlike some of the more trying ones from the 70s - still resonates. I think in a way, you have to let the datedness of comedy simply fade rather than ban.

But I distress as much as it does give much to ponder...

(Intentional derail- spotted an opportunity to talk about Little Britain)

Yes, I agree completely; however I think it was maybe too clever? The guy in the wheelchair clearly taking the "nice" guy for a ride bit into the whole "disabled saint" idea...but then legitimised anti-disabled sentiment as "they're all putting it on".

The skits highlighting the casual racism of the English were spot on though:
WI lady 1 - "Lovely scones, did Janet make them?"
WI lady 2 - "no, it was Shilpa", waves to Indian lady baker
WI lady 1 - vomits
(Quoted from memory so possibly wrong)

DH loved South Park growing up BECAUSE it was offensive. Deliberately so. I don't like it. But he has a real point. It goes after EVERYONE and doesn't have a sacred cast. The idea is precisely that 'no one is above ridicule and criticism'. And this IS uncomfortable. On this point I actually agree with DH that it's almost important to have a series where nothing is off limits.

I get nervous about censorship because you don't have much oversight over who is doing the censorship and whether this means you miss really important issues. I have always had an uneasy relationship with South Park but I guess it's not about me and I do see that it does have a value that I agree with even if I probably would prefer it didn't exist.

Certainly this dynamic has implications - pretty much all current politics revolves around this concept of censored political views coming back to haunt so it's a subject we should be looking at. However uncomfortable it is.

One of the issues at the heart of censorship is the idea of protecting the middle classes from the world. I had a lecture back in the middle 90s where they showed footage from a war zone that was edited from the BBC coverage. It was horrendous. It was about protecting the British public from the awfulness of what the British were doing though. At the time there was a debate about how news channels like Al Jazeera were making editorial decisions to show it. The lecture was about what the political implications of this might be in terms of domestic politics and international politics. Now that debate has really shifted to the same point but with social media.

The underlying point is actually that you can try and sanitise the world to audiences but underlying issues and injustices don't go away.

Part of this is actually recognising that it's not only inappropriate to silence politically. It's a futile exercise as it all comes out in the wash eventually.

Attacks on FWR on MN have been politically motivated to shut down all dissent from a particular group. This isn't the same as someone from outside who has the ability to talk about the subject elsewhere, being given short shrift. The idea it's the same is just yet another strategy to politically silence on MN. The whole point is that we centre women here and then take conversations elsewhere with the idea that women's needs and considerations aren't talked about or valued anywhere else and that they remain important, lawful and necessary to see without dilution before they get to decision making circles. Because issues don't just disappear because they are politically inconvenient to you or at odds with what you believe.

Hi all,
Slight comedy digression aside (as someone v excited about having Inside No 9 theatre tickets), can we say it's good to see this thread get back on track and not personalised.