John Davison BAFTA Tourette’s incident and competing rights

[slet]

It’s interesting how this is being discussed atm. I see Ash Sarkar has framed it as an example of competing rights between disabled people and victims of racism, forgetting about intersectionality. But there is a struggle from those on the extreme left to see how women’s rights are compromised by ceding to TRAs.

not expressing myself very well but thought it had some interesting parallels with the sex and gender debate.

I wonder if his partner was 'burnt out' by all the philosophical mansplaining. Or bored.

www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5361843-single-sex-changing-spaces-in-brighton-secondary-schools-part-4

Especially when the view he's espousing directly supports the view that women and girls should just get over any discomfort they feel about men/boys in loos. He's arguing for the other side here.

Edit: Sorry, mean to quote @ElenOfTheWays

Oh. Ok it seems very counter intuitive of him. He's certainly not doing his cause any favours on this thread by acting like such a dick. I guess that's why I questioned it.

I completely agree. It's very odd.

There were vocal tics on the night that happened that are also phrases considered insulting to women - we discussed it earlier in the thread. I posted a great video explainer from a young black woman with TS, her explanation of the issue really helped me to understand the issues involved even more.

Davison's tics aren't 'aimed' at anyone, they happen outwith his control: he's hearing his body saying them at the same time as the other people around him are.

Coprolalia is not a reflection of the speaker's inherent beliefs and feelings so it's not rational to hold someone responsible for their vocal tics.

I can't imagine it's pleasant, if one is not used to it, to hear these unpleasant phrases but it's essential to remember that they are unintentional and to not see the person with TS as culpable.

Going back to the main topic of the thread, I couldn't agree more strongly with @TempestTost :

I've often thought in recent years that we are creating a way of thinking about words and certain kinds of actions that gives some of them an almost magical-power significance.

I think that most days. As a linguist, this both saddens and infuriates me. It makes good communication almost impossible.

As a society, we seem to be hell bent on creating taboos and/or shibboleths on all sides of the political spectrum. I find it po-faced, priggish, performative in a lot of ways and largely counterproductive because, in general, people don't enjoy being lectured, condescended to and policed - eventually there's a backlash which ends up making things worse.

Have things not always been like that, really? It's just that back in the day, the restrictions on language were dictated by religious sensibilities, and now they tend to be dictated by identity politics sensibilities.

I notice that people seem to want to police what others say, yes, but then on the other side, you have people wanting to police how others react to things they say or do. So there's policing from every angle.

In general though, people tend to make arguments from emotion without logical consistency, which makes discussion difficult. I think we're all prone to that, and emotion obviously needs to be taken into account, but a lack of logical consistency - if this applies to x, then it should also apply to y...except it doesn't, because the argument is logically inconsistent - is frustrating.

Some of his tics on the night were.

We shrugged and moved on.

They were aimed at people. Not intentionally of course but factually, the tics were triggered by who or what he saw, hence why they seem to 'fit' whomever he's looking at (See his tic infront of the Queen). We mustn't obscure reality just because we are trying to be defensive.

However, saying he's guilty of intentionally ticcing words that people find despicable is not the point of my post at all and not something I would say because I'm very aware of Coprolalia. It's simply intrusive thoughts laid bare, like thinking out loud - the kind of thoughts most people can filter, suppress and shake off before they ever reach the surface. That ability helps keep society peaceful, but someone with coprolalia doesn't have that filter or ability to control it. That’s a fact.

It also neither confirms nor denies anyone's inherent beliefs. Only the person knows what they really think and if their actual views match up with any of those intrusive thoughts. The same applies to people who can control/suppress theirs.

But my post was actually addressing mumsnetters who can never seem to relate to anything or anyone unless it's to do with all the things they label as "Misogyny" or to use them to prove a point. You see it in this issue when some people specifically search for black people with tourettes who happen to support their views. Other times, those black people won't matter to them. I don't think most people need to be lectured or educated on Tourettes, I don’t see that as the point most of them are making.

It's not about the involuntary action (the tic) but the intentional action afterwards that shows you someone's character. And whether posters can recognise those two things as separate - or choose not to - tells you something about them as well.

I would agree that sometimes people on FWR can be particularly attuned to things they perceive as misogyny, and not treat them as they might another issue. Overall though I think most people here try to be very even-handed about how they approach things.

In this case, I don't think your comment has any legs at all, there is no reason to think anyone on the thread would be bothered by nasty comments relating to women in the same scenario, and in fact they did seem to occur and no one was bothered.

As for the idea that people were somehow seeking out black people with Tourette's to comment, of course people were interested in doing so, given that any time anyone says anything relating to any group they are told straight away that they aren't supposed to have a view unless it has been somehow informed by members of the relevant group. You might consider that people also might simply like to hear the perspective of someone with a foot in both camps, so to speak, in order to actually learn about that experience.

I'm quite curious as to what is the basis for your claim that they wouldn't care what anyone black would say under other circumstances.

It's not unique historically or across cultures, but no, thinking about language that way, as if words have magical powers, is not something that is equally evident in all times and places.

Swearing is not the same thing, although it's true that current swear words tend to be about identity, whereas at other times they have been other kinds of words.

ArrghNoJustNo

It's not about the involuntary action (the tic) but the intentional action afterwards that shows you someone's character. And whether posters can recognise those two things as separate - or choose not to - tells you something about them as well.

Assuming that this paragragh is about John Davidson.
What more do you expect from him?
He has put out a general statement and apologised directly to those directly affected.
I also wonder if this paragragh is also pointed at DL and MBJ, neither has put forward a statement to mitigate the abuse that JD has had to deal with due to his disability.

I'm not sure what you mean by "as if words have magical powers,"

Are you talking about a trauma response? I think that's what most on this thread have been discussing. If so, let me quote Socrateswasrightabout voting. I apologize if this is unclear but I hope it helps people understand. I haven't had much sleep and I'm suppressing my Tourette's tics so my thoughts may be garbled but I hope this helps understand what those here who are focusing on a PTSD/trauma response mean.

NB: My PTSD is different from the below in that I can realize even as I'm having flashbacks, etc that the things I'm experiencing aren't really happening. But my body and brain still react as if they were. I feel terror and pain, my heart races, my blood pressure increases, I have intrusive thoughts, I may shout (often from Tourette's tics) or I may freeze and be too afraid to move. I still realize that I'm not in danger (except from my high blood pressure, motor tics, etc) but it doesn't matter, But the rest of the below holds for me and is true for many people with trauma responses.

@Socrateswasrightaboutvoting
Context kicks in after the trauma response.
Chatgpt
Here’s a simple, layman’s way to explain it:
Your brain has two main “safety systems”.
The amygdala is the fast one.
The rational brain (the thinking part) is the slow one.
The amygdala’s job is to keep you alive. It scans constantly for danger using past experience. When it spots something that might be a threat, it doesn’t stop to think — it acts.
It hits the alarm.

That’s when you feel:
heart racing
muscles tense
on edge
This is fight - flight - freeze.

Only after that does the rational part of your brain step in.

The rational brain asks:
Is this actually dangerous?
Was that a real threat?
Am I safe?
Sometimes it says:
False alarm.
But by then, the body has already reacted.

Think of it like this:
The amygdala is the smoke alarm.
The rational brain is the person checking whether it’s toast or a fire.
The alarm goes off first to keep you safe.
You figure out the truth after.

edit: typo

To echo GenderlessVoid, in what ways are words treated as though they have magical powers? Especially in regards to this situation?

People tend to become offended over others disagreeing with them, as disagreement tends to be less tolerated in general casual interactions. In casual conversation I think people should be more capable of agreeing to disagree without taking it personally.
That's not thinking words have magical powers though, that's being intolerant of disagreement.

And I'm not sure that applies to discussions in forums such as this, where sharing one's viewpoint and defending it as valid or correct in order to persuade others to agree is an explicit part of the purpose of discourse. We could all just agree to disagree, but then there would be no point in discussing the issue at all.

The only thing most people have in common on here is being GC. Or in the case of some posters, are willing to present as GC in order to earn trust on the board. This covers a very broad church from the most dangerous misogynists who clearly know what a woman is so they know who to oppress, to extreme religious fundamentals, to right wing people using the trans issue as a trojan horse to challenge all equalities, to genuine concerned women.
Of course people are not 'even handed'. Typically they have consensus on the things that are directly tied to GC beliefs but will express bias in accordance with their other beliefs.
This is why there is agreement (or silence) when it is said that 'cis' is offensive and other slurs against other groups are 'magic words'.
This is why a man is welcomed onto the board by women supporting and encouraging him, praising and thanking him for his support of single sex spaces for his daughter, then once he has his feet under the table, he feels emboldened to tell a woman to 'reframe her trauma'.

It took me a while to find it again but this is an interesting sociolinguistic study of the interaction between perceived social background and styles of swearing. I though it might be of interest here given that we're discussing cross-Atlantic reactions to a white working class Scottish man with Tourette's:

https://eprints.soton.ac.uk/471328/1/Journal_of_Sociolinguistics_2022_Hunt_Swear_ING_ain_t_play_ING_The_interaction_of_taboo_language_and_the.pdf

"People have a linguistic knowledge of swearwords - they have an understanding of the criteria that make up a swearword (see e.g., Ljung, 2010) in order to differentiate them from neutral words, including the pragmatic functions of, for example, expressing emotion or verbal emphasis, and their knowledge of swearing consists of all their previous experiences of it. People also have a social knowledge of swearwords. They know why particular topics are societally taboo and they have an expectation of the types of people who are more likely to swear than others and the situations in which swearing is most likely to occur. People’s previous experiences include both the linguistic aspects (e.g., the specific word, its pronunciation, and the other words around it) and the social aspects (e.g., the speaker and the setting) of the swearword they heard.

Swearwords are an area of language in which the social is always present and for which an integrated model of sociolinguistic cognition is a must. What makes swearwords taboo is societally dictated. Their deployment in conversation is socially motivated—with the exception of people with certain neurodevelopmental disorders, one always has the choice not to swear, but people do so to achieve particular social goals. They are perhaps the best example of stylistic choice that speakers make in order to place themselves in the social landscape...

...Swearwords are socially salient to the extent that they can affect how other linguistic sources of social information are perceived, which can make them central to a person’s speech style. Effective models of communication must therefore account for swearwords and their potential not only for their own meaning-making, but also for their potential to influence the emergence of social meaning in the context of broader speech styles"

Thanks for the link @UtopiaPlanitia , very interesting.

Personally, I take 'magical words' in this context to be those that take up a disproportionate amount of space in people's consciousness.

A word, any word, is still just a word. A word that no one dares to even utter in a metalinguistic context (i.e. say/write a word so you can discuss it) is one such magical word, I'd say.

Yes, this is a very good explanation.

A word so potent that simply seeing it in print has devastating effects, so it has to be bleeped out.

We now also have words where, even though they were never slurs as such, or even rude, they are now forbidden because they somehow remind people or other bad words.

The assurance that something terrible will happen when the word is invoked, totally apart from any context, is magical thinking.

I think the idea that it's all about trauma is a distraction. Yes, there are people who are traumatised, but we don't, and can't, structure society around those who have that level of traumatic response, that is why trigger warnings are not really very useful. Trauma isn't the reason we don't swear at people in public, (and it's not the reason we don't have men in women's private spaces, either.)

We don't shout racial or other slurs at people in public because it's fucking rude, to the people being shouted at and everyone else as well, because of the meaning of the language. On the other hand, we might have a film like Sinners, where we can hear the exact same words, and the context means it isn't rude in the same way, it's part of a story.

The assurance that something terrible will happen when the word is invoked, totally apart from any context, is magical thinking.

I don't think that's why a lot of people don't like hearing certain words? No one is thinking that anything terrible will happen if the word is invoked.

It's more that the word is a sharp, intrusive reminder of the dehumanisation of an individual and demographic - and of the reality that many people still see that demographic as less than human. "Hey, you're not properly human, by the way - just in case you forgot about that, we thought we'd remind you."

This works for both certain racial slurs, and misogynistic slurs, where that demographic has been systemically dehumanised and objectified by those in power, suffered with less rights, and still doesn't have equality.

I don't dislike the word 'bitch' because I think something bad is going to happen if people use the word 'bitch', and I don't dislike it because it's rude - who cares about rude?

I have a deep aversion to the word because it is a reminder of the knife's edge that women as a demographic live on, where our 'rights' are in fact privileges that could be taken away at any time, and a good portion of society - including other women - see us as less than men; barely even human. It is a repulsive word when applied to women.

Nothing to do with magical thinking or rudeness.

Under the Equality act there wouldn't be a conflict of rights here. On the one hand you have a disabled man, he is covered. On the other you have a black men. Being black in itself is not covered under the EA. Racism is covered and protection against discrimination due to racist beliefs. There was no racism and no discrimination here, John was not being racist and doesn't hold those beliefs therefore the black millionaires would not be covered. They are not victims. They may be offended but that's a different matter. They're behaving like children tbh. Any right thinking person would have told John not to worry and moved on with their lives.

When it comes to the gender woo this has been a deliberate strategy.
It's much easier to eradicate women's rights when you have destroyed the meaning of the word woman.
Ditto the conflation of sex and gender to promote 'affirming' healthcare, aka sterilising confused kids.

We don't get to control how other people think. (Or feel). That is 'thought control'. And it is both impossible and very, very damaging to a healthy and functioning society.

What we can do, is through social norms, laws, good parenting and education, as examples, is to encourage people to behave in ways that don't harm others. These behaviours, unlike thoughts and emotions, can be clearly observed and robustly evidenced.

Suppose I were to run a small company and I employ someone with Tourette's who shouts the N-word at his black colleagues, and 'Fat C*/Slag/Whore' at his female colleagues, and 'Paedophile' at gay colleagues.

It wouldn't be the person with Tourette's fault at all. He is not racist, sexist or homophobic. Under the Equality Act 2010, I'd rightly have a duty to make 'reasonable adjustments' to support him.

I also have a legal responsibility for the well-being of the rest of my team, and to prevent them suffering harassment and/or victimisation. As an example, under the Equality Act 2010, I have a duty to protect my employees from racial harassment.

Harassment is defined by its effect on the victim. It is not defined by the intent of the perpetrator. Even if the slurs are involuntary, they can still create a 'hostile, degrading, or offensive environment' for the black, female and gay employees.

As the employer, I would be held legally responsible for harassment that occurs in my workplace if I failed to take 'all reasonable steps' to prevent it.

It IS a balance of rights.

Exactly, being rude and being offended are completely normal events in everyday human interaction. They shouldn't be elevated to some sort of unbreakable taboo.

Agree that the potential trauma of a minority of people cannot be the basis of how human behaviour is structured in a society. It's simply not practical. Rules exist, as do exceptions. But the exceptions don't negate the rule.

The idea of the decadence of Western society constantly comes to mind lately. Echoes of the decadence and fall of Rome. Even down to the generalised mental malaises. The time comes when a society starts having too much time on their hands, as it were, and it starts eating itself. And here we are.

I've often said that 'trans' is a magic word that makes people's brains fall out. It has the power to make people forget everything they know about safeguarding, child development, human biology, male sexuality, criminology, domestic abuse, statistics, medical ethics, sports ethics, health & safety ... and the equality and human rights of everyone else.

We're allowed to say 'trans', in fact it's widely encouraged. What we are not allowed to do is question it. That's when we are punished.

I agree this is another magic word that operates in a different way. It must not ever be said, it must not ever be written (except when magically transformed by the skin colour of the speaker).

There was a case not so long ago of a man who was dismissed for saying the full word in order to discuss it during a training session at work. He was awarded £490,000 for unfair dismissal and disability discrimination. The judge was extremely careful to preface his full reasons:

5. The tribunal believes the Bank was entirely reasonable to hold the view that
(1) the full N word is an appalling word which should always be avoided in a
professional environment; and (2) even if no malice was intended and the full
word was used not as a term of abuse and not as a descriptor of people,
nevertheless, simply hearing it said is likely to be intensely painful and shocking
for black people because it may well echo other discriminatory experiences in
their lives and because of its history and derivation. Indeed white people might
also be very uncomfortable if the word is used in their hearing.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/64e88740691aa3000da56dec/Carl_Borg-Neal__vsLloyds_Banking_Group_Plc.pdf

The word is so powerful that even if someone says it completely involuntarily they must be hounded and condemned and threatened and ridiculed across the internet for over a week. No apology or explanation will ever be enough. It never is. Even saying it involuntarily is unforgiveable.

I can think of no other word which operates like this, at least not to anywhere near the same degree.

The irony on this thread is striking. The same women fight passionately for the rights of / against the erasure of women are comfortable erasing the harm Black women are describing and also that of a woman with Tourette's.

This link, below, is humanity and integrity, not the institutionalised thinking demonstrated on this thread time, after time.

https://m.youtube.com/shorts/MNsG0KXtEYg

If you think the N word is magical thinking you are just showing us who you are.