In virtue of my heretically archaic views about biology and the importance of women’s rights, I’m the target of quite a lot of rude online behaviour. The other day, for instance, I learnt I was lucky I hadn’t been hanged yet. So you might expect me to be emphatically in favour of attempts to remove what the Online Safety Bill calls “harmful communications” from the internet.
This isn’t the case. In fact, I think the Bill’s proposals on this kind of internet content are a dog’s dinner. If implemented, they will undoubtedly suppress desirable levels of freedom of expression on the internet, and cause more problems than they resolve.
Following scrutiny from the Joint Committee, the Bill — which received its second reading in the Commons yesterday — takes recent Law Commission proposals to introduce a “harm-based” communications offence, and places a duty of care on internet providers and websites to restrict content which meets the definition of this proposed offence, give or take a few tweaks. Specifically, they will be required to restrict any content where there’s a “real and substantial risk that it would cause harm to a likely audience”, the sender “intended to cause harm to a likely audience”, and the sender has “no reasonable excuse for sending the message”. Harm is defined as “psychological harm amounting to at least serious distress”. What counts as a “likely audience” comprises whichever individual is reasonably foreseen as encountering that content.
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The flaws here were also present within the Law Commission proposals that inspired the Bill. Take the criterion of “psychological harm amounting to at least serious distress”. As many have noted — though apparently not in Westminster — concepts such as “psychological harm” and “distress” are moving targets, semantically speaking, in the sense that the sort of thing they refer to changes over time. For instance, in a society whose primary concern is with the alleviation of negative experience, concepts associated with negative experiences tend to expand their semantic range and become increasingly diluted. So for instance, over time, the category of “abuse” has moved beyond physical events to include emotional ones as well; and the category of “trauma” has extended from atypically catastrophic life events to relatively common happenings like childbirth and bereavement.
At first glance, “experts discover new form of trauma!” looks reassuringly scientific, a bit like “experts discover new kind of dinosaur!”. But whereas the existence of a dinosaur is completely independent of the activities of the experts who discover it, this is not the case with trauma. The more generous experts are willing to be in their definitions, the more people will then count as traumatised; the more people who count as traumatised, the more people will define themselves in terms of membership of that group, and so become more able to exert political pressure on others — including upon the experts themselves, of course — to recognise the precise nuances of their suffering.
[su_unherd_related fttitle="More from this author" author="Kathleen Stock"]https://staging.unherd.com/2022/04/five-rules-for-dealing-with-transactivists/[/su_unherd_related]
This is one of what philosopher Ian Hacking has called the “feedback loops” within psychological classification. Of course, this trajectory towards dilution is not inevitable, and partly depends on wider political sensibilities within a given society. In a culture which prioritises personal resilience towards negative experiences rather than their automatic accommodation, the sphere of traumatic events might ultimately contract rather than expand. But we don’t live in this kind of a place.
As with trauma, so with psychological distress. Things that were felt as minor ripples centuries ago, if at all — misgendering, for instance, or cultural appropriation, or the mere mention of a slur in quotation marks, or even just free speech arguments themselves — are now crushing blows for many. This isn’t to deny that strongly unpleasant feelings are generated, even as the category of distressing events and experiences expands. Feelings have a habit of rushing in to fill whatever gap has been culturally opened for them.
The point for present purposes is that the number of forms of communication that meet the Bill’s criterion of risking psychological distress is getting bigger all the time. And as the list of things to be distressed about grows by the year, the range of socially permissible speech contracts. One author cited in the Joint Committee report inadvertently underlined this point, insisting that the Bill should “ensure that a broad range of forms of online abuse are acknowledged (e.g. including, but not limited to, ableism, ageism, racism, sexism, misogyny, xenophobia, Islamophobia, homophobia, and transphobia)”. Such a sentence would be incomprehensible to readers even 20 years ago.
And it’s actually worse than this: for the type of content to be removed, according to the Bill, is not that which actually reasonably causes harm in the form of severe psychological distress, but that which is anticipated by others may do so. This point needs to be considered in tandem with the apparent assumption of legislators that harmful internet content is most likely to be aimed at people in virtue of their race, sex, gender identity, religious affiliation, and so on — that is, in terms of membership of protected groups such as those listed in the Equality Act.
[su_unherd_related fttitle="Suggested reading" author="Mary Harrington"]https://staging.unherd.com/2022/02/why-twitter-is-so-awful/[/su_unherd_related]
The problem here is that the methods likely to be used by internet providers to gauge what would distress a particular protected group are bound to be clumsy. When trying to work out how some group feels, many of us project onto them the feelings we think they should have, or the feelings we think we would have, rather than the feelings they actually do have. And when it comes to trying to reconstruct the feelings of members of minority groups of which we personally are not members, it seems that many of us err on the side of moral caution, and go dramatically over the top on their behalf, anticipating any anticipated sleight as a deeply felt wound without checking we are right. Things won’t necessarily be improved in this regard by internet providers consulting campaigning groups and charities who claim to speak for a given protected group — as the Bill indicates in at least one place that they should — because many of these have a huge financial interest in giving as dramatic an account of a protected group’s feelings as possible.
Perhaps the Bill’s authors believe this all can be easily overcome by the insistence that the sort of content to be removed is only that which is intended to cause psychological distress to a likely audience. This is a false dawn, however. Gauging the intention behind a given statement — what the author meant by it, and what effect they meant to produce by it — requires a relatively deep understanding of linguistic context. But this is the internet we are talking about, where often you only know an author’s name and sometimes you don’t even know that. Character limits truncate explanation, edit buttons are often in short supply, and disembodied statements float around the internet. The Bill even tells us that “an offence may be committed by a person who forwards another person’s direct message or shares another person’s post”, but this ignores multiple ways in which the intent of the original author and the intent of the person forwarding or retweeting it might diverge.
[su_unherd_related fttitle="More from this author" author="Kathleen Stock"]https://staging.unherd.com/2022/03/the-fictional-world-of-trans-activism/[/su_unherd_related]
Here, too, given the current cultural climate, providers are likely to err on the side of caution and ban or restrict rather than leave alone. And here, too, there’s likely to be expansion not contraction in the frequency with which a statement is judged as possibly indicative of the intention to distress. For just as the concept of distress is subject to feedback loops which shift it unstably towards semantic dilution, so too judgements about the presence of an intention to distress are a moving target, depending as they do on prior judgements about what other people conceivably might find distressing. Fifty years ago, it would have been pretty much inconceivable that saying “men can’t be women” could be distressing to anyone, and so equally inconceivable that someone could seriously intend to distress another person by saying this. These days, you can get banned from Twitter because of it.
If their recent behaviour proves anything, it's that these online giants don't need another reason to crack down on content they think will distress certain groups of people. After all, they are already doing this, albeit in a way which reflects the priorities of Silicon Valley technocrats: putting up pictures of penises is fine; saying women don’t have penises isn’t. The result is an impoverishment of public conversation, a sense of burning injustice on the part of many good-faith conversationalists, and huge and unnecessary toxicity between identity groups. Delivering people from psychological distress is the business of therapists or priests, not lawmakers.
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SubscribeI have been a copy editor for nearly 40 years. I’ve now read 3 articles by Ms. Stock, and each one is beautifully written, with humour, panache and deep insight. That this woman was hounded out of her position at a university says everything about the pathetic weaklings administering her former institution, and nothing about her.
Agree, I think she’s now one of Unherd’s best contributors
Entirely agree.
The universities loss is our gain, it might even be a gain for Kathleen, although perhaps not one lined with silver. I rather wonder if these expressions, by Kathleen Stock, of common sense notions are long held views, that she dared not emote, in the interests of career, health and happiness, or was it maybe only at her defenestration that the wool was removed from her eyes, that she might more clearly see the world that is being created, that she maybe also had a part in building or trying to explain ?
I agree. I’ve signed up to her Substack column.
I thought this piece
https://kathleenstock.substack.com/p/lets-abolish-the-dream-of-gender?r=1fl6hp&utm_medium=ios
was a powerful defence of the original aims of feminism and started to change my initial perspective of “you are one of the lefties who helped create this problem.”
I never liked that line of argument myself.
You are right not to like it, but it contains enough to make it plausible, at least part of the time. Some aspects of feminism can overlook the need for men and women to find enough common ground to co-exist. I was always surprised to hear Angela Carter described as a feminist. She struck me as a grown up woman, rather than as an “ism”.
It’s impossible to have a movement that effectively represents half the human species – and men & women are far too entangled with each other for their interests to be neatly separated.
I focus on fighting against sexual & domestic violence, which is treated as a women’s issue but is extremely harmful to men & little boys as well. For example, a man is far more likely to be a survivor of sexual abuse than he is to be a perpetrator.
Yes, most (though not all) perpetrators are men, but most men are NOT perpetrators. In fact, at least one out of six men were sexually abused as children. I say “at least” because when victimization is associated with womanhood, men are afraid to speak up due to fear of being emasculated.
Are you saying anything that i might disagree with?
Excellent comment.
Men are also far more likely to be victims of the huge crime of false accusation of rape.
An excellent link – thank you.
My son is a trans man & I agree with you 1000%. Dr. Stock is brilliant & has said NOTHING to undermine trans rights. It is so called “trans activists” who are harming my son by fomenting a backlash against the ACTUAL trans community (not the online looney-tunes).
Stay strong Dr. Stock! History will vindicate you.
Just please pray that not too many innocent trans people will be harmed by the backlash that trans “allies” are creating by vilifying brave honest women like you.
Great comment. My sister is in the same position as you. I’ll show her your comment.
I have only recently started to read Unherd, and the opportunity to read Kathleen Stock has been one of the best things about it.
I have been complaining for years at the lack of philosophers in the public arena. There is so much sloppy thinking around in the realm of public affairs, and it should be the job of philosophers to put us straight.
Just what Kathleen Stock does in this article. Please keep it up!
Yes indeed, although I think that the 600-odd philosophers who signed this disgusting open letter against Professor Stock ought to be excluded from public life:-
If you want to cancel all those idiots who signed the open letter, aren’t you acting much like they are?
Don’t cancel them, mock them! How about adding another canto to the Wokeiad, mocking snowflake “philosophers”? Maybe a scenario of Socrates questioning the authors of the dreadful letter, exposing their smug idiocy.
I actually finished The Wokeiad a few days ago, Ludwig, and am already thinking about my next project, although I must say that your suggestion is a very good one which I thank you for.
As for we the unwoke engaging in cancel culture against the woke, I’m afraid we just have to, otherwise they will carry on doing it to us. I would like to see philosophy journals, conference calls-for-papers, and faculty job interview procedures explicitly excluding anyone who signed that disgraceful letter. That sort of behaviour should be career-ending.
You might be aware that in NZ there’s recently been a similar situation with an academic lynchmob going after 7 other academics who dared to criticize the inclusion of matauranga Maori (indigenous knowledge) in the science curriculum. Two of the maligned 7 academics were actually investigated by the Royal Society of NZ, which considered revoking their membership. Happily, RSNZ eventually backed down, but the 7 academics never got an apology.
Btw, where will I be able to buy the Wokeiad? It would make a nice present.
I agree, but as a copy editor would you not have changed the article’s opening word from ‘in’ to ‘by’?
Yes, and ‘sleight’ to ‘slight’, but these are small quibbles and I’m so happy to read something sensible and literate, even if it does include the odd typo or leftover trace of an earlier version of a sentence – hardly a rarity in publications of all sorts today – that (as another copy-editor) I try to let these things wash over me.
I also am a copy editor, and my guess is that she wrote ‘In view of’ and her computer changed it when her back was turned…
Copy editors seem to be disproportionately highly represented on UnHerd – which I take to be a good thing!
Her being hounded out had to do with loss of revenue. Much higher ed funding these days is based on metrics like diversity quotas and LGBT friendliness. Universities that fly in the face of this risk losing sources of revenue. Many powerful people (rich white men that are gay or have transitioned) are pushing this divisive transgender issue forward:
Prtizker (owner of Hyatt hotel chain), Martin Rothblatt, Charles Cora (heir apparent of Disney), Tim Gill, Peter Buffet (son to billionaire Warren Buffett) are some of these men. George Soros is also pushing this forward through his Open Society Foundation.
While I think some of this may largely be due to narcissism and delusional thinking on the part of transgender practitioners, I think much of this movement is rooted in abject hatred of women, particularly feminist women who seem to be the main targets. Perhaps as feminists seek to displace men from traditional frameworks of power, these men seek inchoate revenge by becoming their own idealized version of sexualized femininity i.e. in transitioning into women they act as they consider women ought to act and are therefore superior to cis-women.
Hear hear
Agreed on all points. Ms. Stock writes wonderfully well. It’s just a pleasure to read her articles. And her arguments against this awful bill are spot- on. Why don’t the politicians see the danger here? Ten new laws will be needed to clean up the “dog’s dinner” that the implementation of this monstrosity will cause. (Why do we call it a “dog’s breakfast” in the US?)
There are similar bills proposed in both the US and Canada, and if they are passed, they will be just as toxic. The state cannot be the judge of words’ meanings any more than it can decide what recipe for poulet a l’estragon is the best.
It’s not about avoiding harm, it’s about stifling dissent, whatever the useful idiots say.
Since ‘Silence is violence’ can I be prosecuted for causing serious psychological harm by not tweeting anything?
Within five years if things go on like this.
We have already seen several transitions of “you must not say X” become “you must say ‘not X’.” Once you accept the “speech=violence” equation, curtailing bad speech and compelling good speech are simply 2 sides of the same coin. And both are done to make people safe. Who would ever want people to be unsafe?
“Fifty years ago, it would have been pretty much inconceivable that saying “men can’t be women” could be distressing to anyone … These days, you can get banned from Twitter because of it.”
I’m going to conduct an experiment. In about two minutes time I’m going to set up a Twitter account, post the comment “men can’t be women” and see how long it takes me to get banned.
Let us know the result, Richard.
Will do, Malcolm.
14 minutes so far.
https://twitter.com/Richard44574437/status/1516663855212077059
Tried to like it, but of course you have to sign up to Twitter which I refuse to do on account of my mental health. I might change my mind if Musk pulls it off.
Eminently reasonable.
I have upvoted it and added “Trans women are trans women”. Let’s see what happens.
Cardinal Ratzinger, I presume.
I’m amazed your post containing the unsayable phrase hasn’t succumbed to Unherd censorship.
I’m quite disappointed. I don’t want to be on Twitter any longer than necessary.
Twitter is happy to let you scream into the void. Try that with a few thousand followers and see what happens.
I’m beginning to think you’re right. I may try a different message tomorrow, perhaps “Black Lives Matter is a racist hate group” or “Communists are fascists”.
I’ve done all those I assure you, with no effect.
Make your comment a joke. You’ll be hated within minutes. I have just left Twitter for the second and last time. My, what a wonderful day to be doing something else.
You’d probably need a few followers and for someone to report you to be banned.
It’s still there. I may try another comment, such as “It’s right to boo when footballers ‘take the knee'”.
I’ve posted several truths, and they’re not taking a blind bit of notice, so I’ve had to complain to the moderators about my own tweets. Oh, the ignominy! Hopefully they’ll take my complaint seriously.
I doubt you will be banned. I have often stated on twitter precisely that, or that there are just 2 sexes and one’s sex cannot be changed. I’ve usually done it in response to someone bewailing that they had a suspension for saying this. I think maybe its a matter of how much followers you have or something like that. I have about 1300 but that’s not many by twitter standards.
I love it that Dr. Stock pointed out the overuse of the word “trauma”. (If everybody’s traumatized, nobody is).
My father sexually abused me from ages 4 thru 12, and when I spoke up about it, my mother accused me of being insane & the family ostracized me.
That was traumatic.
When I was discussing this with a counselor once, she said she had also been traumatized.
Her example?
A friend had tried to give her a home perm and accidentally caught her hair on fire.
I didn’t know quite how to respond to that at the time, but it gives me a good chuckle today.
Apart from the crassness of your counsellor’s comment, she shouldn’t have been sharing her own experience with you in the first place. A very big no-no in therapy.
That is both awful and funny.
Glad you can have a chuckle about it.
What we need is a CRUSADE against trigger words that people might find offensive or traumatising (or maybe not).
However dire, or dark, the modern world might seem I can still raise a smile or have a little chuckle, I but only have to think of the foresight shown by Monty Python, sitting in a Roman amphitheatre, discussing Reg’s inalienable right to be a woman (and have babies) and I know that the world isn’t all bad or barking. Of course, the irony being, we probably wouldn’t have been able to enjoy the joys of watching The life of Brian if the new Bill enables the sort of zealots and campaigners that Kathleen alludes to.
Blasphemer!
Am old enough to remember the debate between Muggeridge, Palin, Cleese Soper and possibly others about the Life of Brian. It was a debate, not an exercise in censorship. We have to be able to start disagreeing courteously again. If we are all saying and thinking the same, how do we adapt to a constantly changing world?
I have never felt so threatened as someone possessing a genome with 2 X chromosomes, since the present trans campaigns started. Is gender or sex, solely my source of identity? My heritage, home, upbringing , bereavements , education, study, training, encounters, beliefs, passions, marriage of nearly 50 years, dwarfed by my choice of pronouns?
As now sufficiently old enough to ramble, put in a plea for Jerry Springer the Opera, which was cancelled. This Christian loved it.
Problem is that some people seem to get triggered by a punctuation mark. Perhaps they are just dotty. “.!,?” to them, I say.
It’s the legal weaponisation of hysteria, real or feigned.
Exactly.
Take this article together with the accompanying one about Peter Cytanovic, and you will understand with pinpoint clarity everything you need to know about the people who run western society. The ones who both send the threatening missives, then try to pass “protective” legislation against them.
Simplistic reply I know, but what about the distress I feel, as seemingly every day, yet more of these crazy and ridiculous laws, situations and changes occur within the world and society I live in, yet because I am on the other side of the debate from these idiots, my views and feelings dont count? ……….I read just this morning that Police are now actively pursuing people whose facial expressions and stares (No, seriously….) and the possible thoughts behind these are interpreted as a sexual harrasment or assault……..1984 is alive and well today, the thought Police are active and Face crime is a real thing!!!!!
The fact that you are increasingly offended by the topics of today whether broadcast to all of us, or posted on fora, as am I, won’t matter, because people like you aren’t judge, jury and executioner.
I genuinely think woke is bad for my health. I’m on medication for high blood pressure, and woke quite often makes me very, very angry.
I cannot understand why our law makers are pursuing this nonsense. It seems to me there is a very simple solution – all users of social media should be identified (they can use handles / nom de plumes / avatars or whatever, but the platform should only allow them to sign up if they have been properly identified, just like opening a bank account ie the platform knows who and where they are, even if no one else does). This would get rid of all those troublesome bots for a start, whether Russian or otherwise. There is no “moderation” or censorship or manipulation of algorithms allowed. If a user says something illegal (incitement to violence, hate speech, whatever) the authorities in the country concerned can ask the platform provider for the identity of the offender and prosecute them under the law of the land. I realise this will only work in countries where the law itself is just and fair, so sorry to the billions who don’t live in such countries. But better be ruled by laws passed democratically, than by the unseen hand of Twitter, Google and the Metaverse.
I think the brave and brilliant Kathleen (whom our ‘laws’ utterly failed) has well explained what is happening. Our Dis-Honourable confused lawmakers are dangerously inadequate and in thrall to a divisive rights based identitarian credo. A frenzied equality mania and groupthink has let rip since 2010 doing only harm to social cohesion and those it purports to protect. It is incredible that a Conservative government so often feeds the engine of the illberal agenda of the identitarian Left – grievance, victimhood and entitlement – and fails to protect free speech in this country. Statues for JKR and KS outside Parliament please. They are the ones who are doing the job those charlatans inside have turned their back on.
What about political dissidents in places like Iran and Venezuela? Surely they need the protections of anonymity.
The introduction of ” hate crime” onto this country’s Statute Books is the single biggest abuse of freedom and liberty in our history: I was utterly horrified to see that the CPS actually appealed a case against a man who posted about the Grenfell fire, and have now got him a suspended prison sentence. Our judiciary, especially magistrates, are now worthy of the Securitate, and the CPS has become an arm of woke enforcement… all under a Conservative Government? The lack of media comment, let alone outrage about prison sentences for expressing views, viewing ” terrorist” websites, and ” offending” others is of FAR more concern and importance than any other single issue facing Britain, and that includes the Ukraine conflict… or we turn into a cross between Ukraine and Russia
Ps- I very briefly used social meeja, outside the Hunting and shooting seasons, in a bored effort to wind up as many people as possible and encourage as much wrath against me as possible…superb sport! The nastier the comments they responded with the better, as I could ‘ wind further”…… SO… how anyone could actually care what others said about them, let alone seek criminal legal protection, is to me utterly baffling? That is the fun of the whole thing, and my favourite ” reverse quarry” were demi-illiterate Americans!!!
Well, admittedly as a semi-demi-illiterate, on Tuesdays and red letter days, American, I absolutely agree with your denunciation of the so-called “hate crimes” embodied in statutes. It is a bankrupt notion, as it presupposes a Thought Police to enforce it, being subjective as it is. If one bashes or even kills another, the harm done is already well within acts against assault and murder. Overcharging as a “hate crime” is superfluous nonsense. The harm was done. Who (including the perpetrator) even knows why it was really done? As a child I had to open National Geographic to see countries with sacred cows, in the full knowledge I was observing a society which was to our cultural norms unintelligibly exotic. It is not a crime to hate, it is an offence to do physical damage because of it. Hurt feelings are not quantifiable damage.You might as well try to sew buttons on a custard pie. Coercive amity is not a realistic social objective. Good manners are. Once social standards of conduct beyond the irreducible minimum are embodied in law, they begin to favor some to the detriment of others.
You’re “ flogging a dead horse” I’m afraid. All our national institutions, but particularly the Judiciary have become utterly spastic over the past few years, and are mere shadows of their former selves.
This ‘cancer’ is now so deep that any renaissance is now all but impossible, but don’t despair the 12th of August is less than four months away.
As is so often the case nowadays, this has been pushed by a bunch of ethnic minorities and religious zealots who don’t like being criticised because of their backward and extreme beliefs. Take the Muslim faith for example which is outdated and archaic with its headscarves, methods of slaughtering animals and attitude towards women etc… it really has no place in a western and modern society. Yes we will tolerate it because we want to be tolerant but if they take advantage of that to trumpet their “ways” they deserve to be criticised. Equally those whose ancestors unfortunately suffered as a result of the slave trade. They were barbaric times and even more barbaric as you delve further back into history. History should not be erased but be a warning. None of this is simple so criticism and debate are important and extreme views should be allowed to be aired.
Brilliant, lucid writing. What a terrible loss Kathleen Stock is to university life. No doubt it is this very lucidity and ability to construct a reasoned argument that cannot be countered simply by slogans, and which requires intellectual engagement with a different view point that was perceived as so threatening, if not more so, than the actual views she expressed.
On thing that is too often lacking from discussions about free speech is the question of courtesy, consideration, kindness and respect for the other people’s opinions – as distinct from deliberately setting out to hurt or cause offence. This is nothing to do with the law, but we should, and do, try to live to higher standards than merely keeping within the law.
Sorry, but I really want to offend the woke as much as possible.
Correct Sir! “No quarter asked and none given”.
Thank you for that excellent essay that highlights the ineptitude of our so called Lawmakers.
As one of the many millions who joyfully suffer from:- “ableism*, racism, sexism, misogyny, xenophobia, Islamophobia, homophobia, and transphobia”, I rejoice in the fact we are about to get the recognition we wholeheartedly deserve.
For far too long our perfectly valid prejudices have been ignored in favour of ‘Quislington’ drivel. Let battle commence.
(* Whatever that is?)
This government is a pathetic joke. The only part of the internet that will prosper from this bill becoming legislation is probably 4chan.
Or 8chan.
I think the Bill is jolly good, ‘cos it helps us all quickly, easily and ever and again, to adopt that most significant and powerful of modern positions — that of the victim. Everyone must defer to the victim. As that MP showed us the other day, all one’s previous transgressions are forgotten if one can pose as a victim, and everyone will be vying to be the first to BeKind to him, and he will be entitled to have all his (or her) demands instantly met. I can’t wait to claim my victimhood!
Race to the bottom. First one in gets the Darwin Award!
It doesn’t work like that. Some victims are more equal than others.
(Quote): Harm is defined as “psychological harm amounting to at least serious distress”. (End quote).
I have suffered very severe psychological harm that has led to serious stress from politician’s blatant lying!
Can we citizen’s enact a law against lying politicians?!
Oh wait…
When did ‘psychological trauma’ contract to simply ‘trauma’? A consultant in orthopaedics and trauma is likely to give you short shrift if your presenting complaint is ‘death of my dog’.
“Feelings have a habit of rushing in to fill whatever gap has been culturally opened for them.”
Nature abhors a vacuum, and if people haven’t been exposed to proper exchange of opinions then they have a lot of empty space, so a contrary opinion can be shocking. Is it possible to shock an empty bucket by putting it in line with a running tap?
I experience psychological distress every time I hear a Labour politician speak. I demand that only Tory politicians be carried on social media.
(Yes, I’m kidding. But if the other side is going to make absurd rules, I see no reason not to use them.)
I read the penultimate sentence as burning witches…21st century heretics pilloried on Twitter
“Be careful who you choose as your enemy because that’s who you become most like.”
And so the supposed victims of gaslighting become the gaslighters.
Yikes! I imagine a time when just writing certain names will get you banned. Thomas Jefferson! Margaret Thatcher! Cardinal Richleau! Donald Tr…!
“… putting up pictures of penises is fine; saying women don’t have penises isn’t.” A winning line! Thanks for your sanity, enjoy reading your work
I am now awe of Kathleen Stock.
The way she has articulated her criticisms of the online harm bill reminds of a super surgeon that spent 8 hours in a single operation delicately removing a tumour from a friend’s boy’s brain recently.
I wouldn’t like to be on the wrong end of her formidable intellect!
It’s incredible that an citizen of a liberal representative democracy cannot today freely express their view than men cannot be women or vice versa. Clearly appearances and some physical aspects can be altered to make women look like men and vice versa. So am I supposed to self censor my view? It won’t change my discussions with my wife. We agree on the matter. It won’t affect messages between my friends and I who also agree. Does this new law or publication censorship mean that my messages will be interfered with? I assume my iMessage and WhatsApp messages are encrypted but does this law seek to breach encryption? The world gets dafter by the minute.
Great article. The ‘press’ and ‘media’ should be caught by this too. Not for directed abuse but for the stream of distortion, superlatives, and constant noise around subjects daily. Brexit, Covid pictures of viruses eating nurses, financial collapse as the economy booms. The constant depression spouted has led to a melancholy in English society at best and forged a divided ‘polarised’ society at worst. It’s disgusting. Moreover it is done without a care for the wellbeing of the people. It’s a complete abandonment of whatever duty of care they should have as a participant in society. They don’t deserve us.
Radio 4 presenter this morning:
“….unfettered free speech…..”
Presumably as opposed to “fettered free speech”.
Come on, everyone who supports fettered free speech, put your words where your profound thoughts are!
Join the Fettered Free Speech Union.
The ONLY reason why some people seek to suppress genuine (“unfettered”) free speech is because they can’t defend their untruths by honest means.
Really enjoy Kathleen’s work, thanks for giving her in face of aggressive and vehement opposition.