When she ‘liked’ offensive comments
Oh no, another huge bruiser of a man victimized by a woman who Liked comments on Facebook. That will be ten thousand dollars madam, pay the cashier.
A dispute over a post on Canberra radio newsreader Beth Rep’s Facebook page was meant to end with an apology to transgender activist Bridget Clinch.
Instead, the ACT Civil and Administrative Tribunal yesterday found Ms Rep breached discrimination laws when she ‘liked’ offensive comments on the post, and ordered she pay Ms Clinch $10,000 in compensation.
Ms Clinch — an Australian Army captain who medically transitioned from life as a male to female in 2010 — first came into contact with Ms Rep after the newsreader made online comments about her after International Women’s Day in March 2018.
Here is the former Army captain:
After Ms Clinch complained to the ACT Human Rights Commission about the comments, Ms Rep posted about it on social media, and was subsequently banned from Twitter.
Mediation led to Ms Rep posting an apology on her Facebook page in mid-2018 and paying Ms Clinch $700, but the post attracted 304 comments, many of which were offensive, and some of which were ‘liked’ by Ms Rep.
So the dainty fragile vulnerable ex-captain sued Beth Rep.
Ms Rep, who works for local radio station 2CC, wrote the posts and liked the comments on her personal Facebook page.
The tribunal heard Ms Rep, who works for 2CC, had described herself as a radical feminist who believed in resisting what she called aggressive trans activism.
She told the tribunal that while she was supportive of gender non-conformity, she was concerned about the impact of trans activism on women’s spaces, services and opportunities.
Also, whether the tribunal grasped this or not, gender non-conformity is the opposite of trans, not a synonym for it.
Ms Rep said the online exchange in March 2018 had become heated after a number of provocative and anti-feminist comments were posted.
She argued she did not invite the comments nor coordinate them, and was not an active participant, other than hitting the ‘like’ button.
The comments ranged from “Bridget Clinch is a male bully” to “I hate Bridget and I don’t even know who he is” and the use of the hashtag #istandwithbeth.
It’s possible that I left one or more critical comment. I’m Facebook friends with Beth (or was, she seems to have left it now, understandably) and have commented on her posts and even Liked them.
In addition to paying compensation, the tribunal told Ms Rep to delete “all posts, statements, information, suggestions or implications” on the matter and refrain from the same or similar posts in future.
No wonder I can’t find her on Facebook now.
The bully won. They usually do.
Disgusting.
And coming to a women’s dunny near you.
So that is legal in Australia? What would happen if she refused to delete anything (yes, I know her accounts would be banned anyways) and refused to pay the man a penny?
This is why I sigh indulgently most of the time when I see people posting stuff about how bad the USA is — yeah, say all the bad things about the USA (true or not) but we still don’t do “tribunals” for wrong think yet. There will be cases eventually when the issue of real women’s free speech vs. men’s fantasies being validated by threat will come before our courts. But since the Supreme Court decided that “hate speech” is still free speech……
Of course, that only applies to the government punishing people here for wrong think — the tech bros and corporations are another can of worms but those worms can be squashed if things get bad enough. That is where that 2nd Amendment that so many of us cling to can be useful.
Yup, here in the US at least we’re somewhat protected by the bigotry shield (which is spiked in the inside).
That shirt says it all really, doesn’t it?
What rights exactly did the army captain fight for?
One of the most basic rights is freedom of thought, and that is not exactly a right the captain was fighting for when she (and no I don’t object to calling people by their preferred pronouns) took this issue to arbitration and then to court.
The whole thing kind of reminds of Chapter 5 of the Handmaid’s tale:
In that story, freedom from is a sham designed to eliminate all freedom to. The army captain’s fight was for freedom from things she deemed offensive, and thus reduced everyone else’s freedom to like those things. It looks like the sham freedom that is in fact, an excuse for oppression.
At least, that’s the way it looks to me, or is my way of looking at it completely weird?
BG: We none of us can have the right to be not offended. If you think about it, it cannot be any other way. Otherwise anyone and everyone can lodge some protest or other. Things OK for the Cult of the Holy Aardvark will be offensive to Born Again Zoroastrians. People will teach all sorts of courses in how to avoid giving offence. Others will teach how to avoid taking offence.
OK. If you must travel to Pakistan, and if you must stand on a street corner yelling ‘down with Islam’, you will have problems.
I would say we do have some right not to be “offended” – that is, we have a moral (as opposed to legal) right not to be abused by others. Women have a moral right to be out in public without being shouted at, called whores, ordered to suck anyone’s dick, and so on. There is a kind of tacit rule that we can’t go around insulting everyone who walks past us on the street, or everyone we encounter on social media, and places in between.
But then of course that gets expanded into the kind of bullshit we have here.
But I got tired of the sweeping “nobody has a right not to be offended” meme a long time ago, probably because it was so popular with the MRA Gamergate slime pit etc etc crowd.
I rather liked Hitchens’ positive formulation instead, that we all have the right to be offended; that is, we have the right to consume information that upsets us, and the government (or any other group of self-appointed gatekeepers) do not have the right to censor or hide information from us for our own good.
The problem was that the “nobody has a right not to be offended” meme got translated into: We have the right to offend anyone we want.
On the same note “Every major truth is offensive to somebody” got translated into “Everything that’s offensive to somebody is a major truth”.
Exactly, both of those. I liked Stephen Fry’s delivery of it at the Hay Festival that went viral, until the MRA types made a meme of it and ruined it.
Well, OB, I am not a lawyer, but that sort of talk commonly carries with it a direct or implied threat: of violence or of making the person it’s directed at endure something repugnant. And that is the ‘assault’ part of ‘assault and battery’. Remedy: just call the nearest cop.
And of course, within that framework, the objects of the original abuse are perfectly entitled to return the non-compliment; with interest.
This as I recall came out in Australia in the wake of the formation of the Human Rights Commission, which was set up: to head off the possibility of communal rioting spreading in the wake of the Cronulla riots in Sydney. In the course of those latter street demonstrations, certain remarks were made about Islam by local infidels, and certain recommendations made as to where the Faithful could shove it: which did not go over well. But that is another, and longer, story.
One of the original commissioners, Senator George Brandis, got himself considerable publicity by asserting that “people have a right to be bigots.” Which I would maintain they do, if that is what they choose to be. And I cannot see that it can be any other way; short of having thought police.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-03-24/brandis-defends-right-to-be-a-bigot/5341552?nw=0
Omar:
That’s sarcasm, right?
latsot: I am aware of that cynical American definition of a cop: ‘a small-time crook who has found a soft racket.’
So an American might have to ask ‘what will it cost me to get you to do your job?’ Or ‘whatever that guy giving me shit is paying you, I’ll double it.’ Or whatever.
But from where I live, in northwest NSW, I only have to pick up the phone, dial 000, and wait for the nearest cop to arrive. And in the mean time, get my shotgun out and fire a few practice shots at marauding rabbits.
Omar,
I was referring more to the idea that contacting the police (in any country) is a remedy to the sorts of behaviour Ophelia mentioned. Here in the UK, for example, our police are way too busy telling people off for saying that men aren’t women to do anything about actual harassment, threats and violence. There are only so many hours in a day.
latsot:
Yet, if I was to tell them that I was a giraffe, they would probably lock me up. And I would go quietly, as long as they would allow me to watch as many old episodes of ‘The Bill’ that I wished to after I was booked into The Nick.
Them were the good old days, before all this bullshit began.